Reading Life and Death, the gender swap Twilight

I've always been interested in romance stories but I know they're usually written with a set audience in mind. I've seen the first Twilight movie and I think it's well made but again it's not really made for me.

Stephenie Meyer then comes along and rewrites the first book with most of the characters gender swapped. The protagonist is a guy named Beau and the love interest is a vampire gal named Edythe.

Gender swapping is usually like a fun fan fiction kind of thing to do but it's the author herself that does it here. She prefaces the book by apologising to the fans for not coming up with something entirely new and talks about why she wanted to retell a tale of first love in this way. She dedicates the book to her three teenage sons who must've been a source of inspiration.

I'm over halfway through the book. I'm seeing Beau and his developing feelings towards Edythe while the other girls in his class are asking him out to dances. Wow. Later on I see him hanging out with Edythe and she reveals her own deep and monstrous desires for him. She shows him some of her powers. It's nice. I'm getting the atmosphere of a rural-ish place in the Pacific northwest, where it's always dreary and wet. It's familiar and mysterious and I can see it play out for real in a very interesting way.

my top 7 movies 2025

Top 7? Why not top 10? Well um I've only been to the cinema seven times this year. As far as I can recall at least. Sorry.

1. One Battle After Another

2. The Phoenician Scheme

3. The Bad Guys 2

4. The Naked Gun

5. 28 Years Later

6. Dog Man

7. A Minecraft Movie

I'll write about them individually sometime.

Bound (1996) with Bootleg Friday

I'm thinking back to April 2023 when we watched this movie and I'm also thinking about Jennifer Tilly.

Jennifer Tilly always had this sexy charismatic charm about her and a seductive breathy voice. I tried remembering movies from the 90s that had her like Made In America. I hadn't seen that movie in a long time so I looked up a clip and suddenly got reminded of a scene where she cartwheeled across the bedroom naked. I also remembered her in Liar Liar where she would get a little too close to Jim Carrey's character. I didn't know her name but I had nice memories of her.

I never heard of Bound before and it was wonderful to discover it. Not a single person I met who was crazy about The Matrix ever told me about this movie. If I saw it back then I would've stayed being a fan of the Wachowskis after the Matrix phase passed.

In this movie the main character is a tough, hard-working gal who goes about her day doing all kinds of maintenance work, minding her own business, being all strong and hot. I call her the main character because she is seduced by Jennifer Tilly's character and her breathy sexy voice, just like how everyone watching is seduced too. We are this main character being seduced. Tilly's character whispers stuff like "redistribution of wealth" in our ear and calls us "Corky". We're all basking in this chemistry between the two characters and having a good time.

We're drawn into her world. Unfortunately, she's involved with a bad dude who's involved with other bad dudes and lots of ill-gotten money. She convinces us to run away together with all the money. The plot that follows is full of chemistry, thrills and suspense. It's just an amazing movie that kept us all glued and riveted.

One of the bad guys said "capisce" a lot and it was getting tiresome. Then he got owned. He wasn't gonna say it anymore.

The snack I had was ham and cheese vol-au-vents from Centra. They were really good and tasted like jambons. I don't usually eat them because they usually have chicken in them. These ham and cheese ones were delish.

Dead Heat(1988) with Beyond Friday

The trouble with making these posts so late is that it's hard to recall the experience of watching movies in great detail. I'm gonna get stuff wrong too so I'll have to work on that.

It was the end of March two years ago when we watched this. It had zombies, zombies with Uzis(which I called zombuzis), Vincent Price, a big weird dude named Doug who said big weird dude things like "ah'm gonna hurt him" and it played out in fabulously entertaining way.

There was a weird contraption that brought people back from the dead. I may be wrong but there was dramatic Danny Elfman Batman music that played when the contraption was on screen. It was an interesting tone shift from the rest of the movie.

The rest of the movie features its buddy cop protagonists with snazzy action and making snazzy quotes(there seemed to be a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail... "flesh wound" quote maybe?)

They get tangled in this plot about people coming back from the dead. Vincent Price appears in a tape with some very nice exposition.

One of the main guys is Doug, who's just a big weird interesting fun dude. I was always drawn to seeing what funny big weird dude thing he was going to say or do next.

What else can I remember about this... there was someone who was trying to do sewing while they were driving for some weird reason and there was a fight scene in a hallway where neither dude seemed to be getting hurt or showing signs of dropping dead. Maybe they were zombies? I dunno. I should probably watch this again sometime as it was a lot of fun.

Wild Mountain Thyme with Bootleg Friday

On St. Patrick's Day in 2023 we sat down and watched this movie that was widely slated and hated by everyone. It was supposed to be one of the worst movies about Ireland. What I found instead was something that was indeed very weird but it was also very romantic.

It was a fine choice for the occasion, and I had many cans of Club Orange and Manhattan Popcorn to make it even more Irish. I recall getting slabs of Club Orange very cheaply at the time. Unfortunately, in the time since then they decided to put sweeteners in it. That was not a nice surprise.

This movie was a nice surprise though. Sure enough, there was a lot of weirdness in the way characters were speaking, using phrases like "coughing like pertussis" and saying "byebyebyebye" even though they weren't talking on the phone, but there were really nice moments too. Christopher Walken had some lovely sentimental dialogue for example.

One thing that stood out for me was the scene where your one was giving out to your man(sorry it's been ages since I saw this) and she was making sandwiches for him while she was giving out. I don't think he even asked for sandwiches. I thought maybe this is one of the romantic notions Americans have about Ireland? Do American men order their wives to make them a sandwich only to be refused and then daydream of Irish lasses being all feisty, making and throwing sandwiches without being asked? I was thinking maybe their fantasies manifested into what this movie became.

The weird bee thing was fun to see on social media alright.

Other things I recall from this movie were logos in the opening credits that made me think of Gerry Ryan's "Secrets", an artificial-looking outdoor scene that was both rainy and sunny even though our weather is often like that, usage of the seduction music from Dracula, and Jon Hamm.

We all expected something catastrophic, but instead we got something strange and delightful that made me say "what's goin on is this actually good or something"

my top 10 movies 2024

I don't want the year to pass without making a post! Here's a top 10 of movies I saw in the cinema this year:

1. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

2. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

3. Sonic 3

4. Deadpool & Wolverine

5. The Boy and the Heron

6. Paddington in Peru

7. The Substance

8. Queer

9. Despicable Me 4

10. Bad Boys 4

I also saw The Wild Robot and Ghostbusters Frozen Empire. I enjoyed them too. I'll write about them all someday.

Lidl Halloween Snacks

Happy Halloween and sorry for the long break in posting! I keep meaning to and I have made notes about movies I watched this year and snacks I've enjoyed. Will talk about them soon. For now I'd like to talk about some Halloween snacks I got from Lidl. Their display looked really nice.

Halloween Scary Mix

These are jellies that come in six different and unusual flavours, them being Orange & Chilli, Raspberry, Apple & Chilli, Onion, Ginger, Vanilla. I'm not really into spicy sweets that much, though they are pleasant enough. I just think they're a bit strange. The mild spiciness from these is nice and novel. The vanilla flavoured one is really nice. They come in fun shapes like skulls, skeletons, disembodied feet and coffins.

Halloween Super Sour Bones

Bone-shaped fizzy jellies that were indeed super sour and quite firm. They're a dark red colour, but I couldn't really tell what flavour of fruit they were exactly.

Halloween Cruspies

Chilli, wasabi and barbecue flavour coated peanuts. Festive greenish tinge from the wasabi and orangish tinge from the others made this a fun choice. It was my first time trying the wasabi flavour and it makes for really good coated peanut flavouring. The weird thing was the rest of them were barbecue flavoured. I didn't get any chilli ones in here at all.

Halloween Vampire Snacks Ketchup Style

Adorable little bat-shaped corn snacks, even cuter than the ones displayed on the pack. I haven't had the chance to try the ready salted or paprika flavours, but the ketchup flavoured ones are so so tasty. Ketchup is the most Halloweeny fun flavour for crisps too as it's like pretend blood. Ketchup is what was used to reincarnate Count Duckula after all. By far my favourite Halloween snack this year.