New Moon Rising

I love Stephenie Meyer for many reasons. I love that she's Mormon. I love her because she wrote books about not having casual sex and made millions of dollars in the process. I love her because her books are black and white and red all over. I love her because the last line of the last full paragraph on page 197 of Twilight ("It was a colossal tribute to his face that it kept my eyes away from his body") gave my cousin Jazon a new fitness goal: to work out until it's a tribute to his chiseled body that it distracts from his perfect face. Clearly, this is literature that changes lives. And I love Stephenie Meyer for that.

Do her books have shortcomings? Sure. There's a missing comma on page 67 of New Moon, for example. Her dialogue is often coated with a distracting number of adjectives and adverbs. And the way her books progressively romanticize controlling types and stalkers is a little bit alarming. But they can be forgiven all that, because they've inspired something better:

Groomellette Party

In contemporary Caucajewmexdian circles, it is customary to hold a "groomellette" party, or perhaps three such parties, prior to a wedding. While the complementary "bridellete" parties are typically reserved for women only, the Groomellette is open to men and women.

For the first of my groomellette parties, we're planning on screening a film--but it's been very difficult to choose just one. I'm down to a top three list and stuck.

The candidates at this point are:

Quidditch Team Outing

My Quidditch team is going to see Harry Potter 6 tonight, and I'm afraid to say that will probably be the high point of our season.

The Provo Provokers used to be one of the most feared squads in Intermountain Quidditch, but this year has been a disaster. Our top-rated blindside Beater got suspended for the season after getting called for Bumphing, Blurting, and Blatching in our second match; our Chasers have all put on weight since last year; our Seeker got addicted to NyQuil; last year's openside Beater became a Jain, which has thrown off his game a bit; and (let's be honest) my cheerleading isn't what it used to be--all of which has contributed to our second-to-last finish in the conference, just above Unreal Salt Lake.

Here's to hoping the movie is worth the mediocre season. If it's not, that's OK...I'll just cry myself to sleep.

Again.

Peak Oil: A Love Story

This is one of the most innovative independent film projects I've seen in years. Imagine The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil meets The Decalogue meets Dil Se and you're halfway to imagining Peak Oil: A Love Story.

The premise is timely and intriguing...how would the world react if (when?) the energy sources we rely on suddenly stopped being sufficient for our needs? A collection of seven scenes, each depicting a unique story, ranging in length from three to thirty minutes each, take us on the journey. In an intriguing twist, the scenes have Urdu names representing the various "stages of love" from the first meeting of eyes on to all-consuming passion. The way the stages go was probably a much better fit for desperate, unapproved love in rigid medieval societies than for describing healthy, modern romantic relationships, but it does very well at capturing the stages of human response to this imagined (and future?) crisis, going from the first recognition that things have happened that will change life forever through the progressively radical responses.

I won't give away the whole film's plot(s), but do want to put in a plug for Ibaadat, the fifth scene, which features Mormons! Maybe I'm just biased, but I think the scene is also the prettiest...in it, Mormons have activated their lay church organization and old communal economics to make things work. The romance that develops between a convert's daughter and the bishop's son is subtle and sweet, but it's the backgrounds that are the most engrossing. The piece is set in what used to be a suburb, so there are all these vaguely familiar-looking houses, but their yards have been consecrated to the ward and converted into fields that the different quorums and stuff take care of, so the streets are just bursting with life. I don't think I'll ever be able to look at my own street again quite the same way having seen the way people use the land in the film (especially since it follows scenes where people are not doing nearly as well with the adjustment. Brrr!)

Anyway, I highly recommend this movie to anyone who's thought deeply about what the future may hold and doesn't mind sitting through some scary stuff to get to the hopeful parts. (I suppose, after all, that sitting through the scary to get to the hopeful is a pretty accurate description of much of life...) If you see the film, be sure to let me know what you think.