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grrgoylAlright, fine, I FINALLY saw Twilight. I'm sorry, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kavieshana, I don't think I'll have any trouble resisting the urge to buy it. In fact, probably best if you don't look inside, because I'm not going to be gentle.
Bella moves from Arizona to the tiny town of Forks, Washington. Fortunately she's pretty, so she's almost immediately welcomed into one of the more popular folds. Also fortunately, we don't have long to wait before we get to meet the Cullens, the resident family of vampires. Rosalie and Emmett, Alice and Edward, and of course Jasper (Jackson Rathbone. If he got the role of Edward instead, this might be a very different review).
That was misleading. Jasper is nobody. It's all about Edward (Robert Pattinson), the Willoughby, the Heathcliff, of Forks, Washington. Oh, Edward. La Sigh! I'm sorry, I don't get it. He's airbrushed to within an inch of his life. His hair is ludicrous, and makes his nose (and whole face) slope down so sharply it's like a sheer mountain cliff. He spends practically the entire film with such a look of pained constipation on his face, like he wants to vomit or worse, that it kind of ruined any small attraction I might have had for him. His American accent is almost as spotty as Alan Rickman's, but he covers it by sounding like he's delivering his lines through a mouthful of marbles.
Speaking of line delivery, they both leave pauses in their dialogue so wide you could drive a logging truck through them. As if they're hoping for a natural disaster to come along and halt production before they have to say one more gooey, inane, nonsensical thing.
None of this bothers Bella, of course. For her it's...something...at first sight, except Edward seems barely able to stomach being in the same room with her. He actually covers his nose when she walks into Biology class (where naturally she's his partner despite it being mid-semester), but that's not what made me laugh (the most). No, there's a taxidermied owl with spread wings behind Edward, and the camera angle actually makes it look like they're coming out of Edward's back. Subtle. I'll admit, I LOL'ed, and then paused it to call Tery and LOL.
His standoffish, assholish behavior, we later learn, is because the smell of her blood is "like a drug" to him and he's "never wanted a human's blood more in his life." He tells her "it would be better if we weren't friends." In the real world, her response would have been, "I wasn't aware we WERE friends, you dick" but in the author's little Harlequin universe Bella doesn't stand a chance against Edward's raw appeal (too bad it doesn't translate to the screen). She doggedly and inexplicably pursues him without the slightest smidge of encouragement, despite being shy and withdrawn in every other aspect of her life.
Eventually he can't hide the fact that he's a vampire, especially after he stops a runaway minivan from crushing her with a casually outstretched hand. The first time she nags him about his obviously supernatural nature, his reply is "You stupid, stupid girl." Then he realizes the jig is up and it's immediately all staring into each others eyes and flying through the trees, what every teen girl dreams of.
And Edward IS every teen girl's dream -- a beautiful boy who is terrified of losing control and giving in to his nature (ooh, deep metaphor, Stephanie Meyer), who can't even kiss for fear of letting go and possibly killing her. So it's just a lot of soulful gazing and wistful brushing of fingertips. He even sparkles in sunlight, and I guess I have to thank Joss Whedon's Angel for easing me into the idea of anything less than direct sun being safe for bloodsuckers. Except Edward has to stand in a direct ray to show her (has to actually seek one out in the overcast Pacific Northwest forest, making an already awkward scene ponderous and unrealistic). What's the next part of the myth to fly out the window? Vampires don't actually need to drink blood?
I used to be plenty romantic. In 1998 I saw a film that affected me the way this one has affected this generation: City of Angels, where Nic Cage plays a lovesick angel pining for Meg Ryan, unrequited and untouchable. It might have been schmaltzy to some, but I couldn't take my eyes off him, and in fact he became the first star that inspired that "OMG I have to see everything this man has ever done" feeling in me (I got over it, only to move onto others). It was actually the second DVD we ever bought. Then he had to go make Family Man and that was the end of that.
The difference is Nic and Meg eventually get it on, unlike poor Ed and Bella, whose one scene of "sensuality" (which is promised on the rating screen) has been relegated to the graveyard of deleted material -- because the author is a Mormon and so can't have that racy hand-on-hip action (the other scenes, according to the director, were removed to speed up pacing. It's really hard to imagine the movie moving any slower than it already does). Which I guess also explains all the yearning stares -- boys are better seen and not touched.
Bella goes home to meet the Cullen fam: "Father" Carlisle, an impossibly young and handsome doctor who makes people vampires when their only other alternative is death (and judging from the size of his clan, he's not a very good doctor); "mother" Esme, who is sweeter looking than June Cleaver; and of course the aforementioned kids, sex on two legs every one. I have no problem with vampires being beautiful -- like the Devil, how would you ever lure in victims if you looked as evil on the outside as in? -- but of course these vamps aren't evil. They're "vegetarians" (eat only animals), and only make a token protest to Bella being admitted to their secret society. Since Alice again mentions how good she smells, we can only assume it's her superior pheromone production again giving her an "in." She should bottle it (frankly, surprised someone hasn't already as a movie tie-in), she'd be a millionaire.
A little over three-quarters through the movie, the director suddenly realizes how much screentime has been frittered away with all this exciting mooning about and struggling to keep all traces of emotion out of their performance. Hence the sudden introduction of the "Nomad" vampires, a trio that have been randomly eating stray Forks residents the whole time and somehow are just meeting the Cullens now. Forks is a pretty small town, and it's not like there are that many vampire circles to work through.
So after a few innings of vampire baseball (which is the only good part in the whole movie, but that might only be because Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole" plays over it), the nomads confront the Cullens. First there's all this quasi-animalistic posturing that elicited another LOL from me. Then they all calm down (supposedly that's Jasper's super vampire power, though I had to watch the extras to learn it) and walk away, until the breeze wafts Bella's irresistible scent over James' way. James is a relentless tracker and instantly becomes hell-bent on having Bella. Whether it's because she smells sooooooo much better than any other human or because she's Edward's is also not clear.
He lures her to her childhood ballet school and taunts her long enough for the Cullens to come to her rescue. A dazzling battle ensues, during which Bella first gets bitten by James, then suffers sufficient blood loss to make us wonder if Edward will turn her completely. He doesn't. James gets torn apart and immolated. Edward takes Bella to prom where she begs him to make her immortal, and he refuses like the asshole he is. Cue a quickie appearance by Jacob (Native American werewolf, yeah, I've never read the books and I couldn't miss the coy little hints) to set us up for a sequel, and......scene.
If my action part of the summary seems truncated and brief, I assure you it takes up exactly the percentage of my review that it took up in the movie.
What's worse than the movie is the extras, where everyone takes turns kissing author Stephanie Meyer's ass. Ugh. Then there's coverage of the movie's debut at Comic-Con, where the major stars and moviemakers appear in front of 6,000 squealing fangirls (and about 10 fanboys). You couldn't pay me to be in that room at that moment, and Robert Pattinson looks a little like he agrees. He also looks like he's just woken up in an alley after a week of binge drinking.kavieshana says she prefers him "scruffy." But there's rugged scruffy and sexy: Hugh Jackman, Harrison Ford, George Clooney. Then there's "Ew, I hope you don't have fleas" scruffy, which is what Robert's working.
This has to be one of my harsher reviews. I went into it with an open mind, even looked forward to it. It was just too laughable.kavieshana assures me she laughed just as hard, until for some godforsaken reason she watched it a second time, and something in her brain "clicked off." So I guess you're safe from being Twi-washed as long as you only watch it once.
The soundtrack was likable, but come on, it's Carter Burwell -- he could score Waterworld and partially redeem it.
~*~
Last week Ryan and I were finishing up our workout. It was our leg day, and our first day trying the stairclimbers, so we really needed to stretch out on the way back to the locker rooms. We stopped at the stairway leading up to the classroom area. We even chose the back part of the staircase that's hardly ever used. We had barely begun when a woman came over accompanied by her personal trainer. He said to us, "Just so you guys know, we're going to be using this area right now." "Oh," we said, taken aback. The woman was obviously mortified and tried to intervene. "We're not kicking you out or anything," the trainer ignored her, "but we're going to be working here."
Really? In this whole big facility, you need THIS particular four square feet RIGHT NOW? There aren't any other exercises you could POSSIBLY do elsewhere for the next two minutes?
We walked away amicably, but I couldn't resist murmuring to Ryan, "Jeez, guess you're nobody if you don't have a personal trainer, huh?" Ryan agreed that it was pretty damn rude.
kavieshana, I don't think I'll have any trouble resisting the urge to buy it. In fact, probably best if you don't look inside, because I'm not going to be gentle.Bella moves from Arizona to the tiny town of Forks, Washington. Fortunately she's pretty, so she's almost immediately welcomed into one of the more popular folds. Also fortunately, we don't have long to wait before we get to meet the Cullens, the resident family of vampires. Rosalie and Emmett, Alice and Edward, and of course Jasper (Jackson Rathbone. If he got the role of Edward instead, this might be a very different review).
That was misleading. Jasper is nobody. It's all about Edward (Robert Pattinson), the Willoughby, the Heathcliff, of Forks, Washington. Oh, Edward. La Sigh! I'm sorry, I don't get it. He's airbrushed to within an inch of his life. His hair is ludicrous, and makes his nose (and whole face) slope down so sharply it's like a sheer mountain cliff. He spends practically the entire film with such a look of pained constipation on his face, like he wants to vomit or worse, that it kind of ruined any small attraction I might have had for him. His American accent is almost as spotty as Alan Rickman's, but he covers it by sounding like he's delivering his lines through a mouthful of marbles.
Speaking of line delivery, they both leave pauses in their dialogue so wide you could drive a logging truck through them. As if they're hoping for a natural disaster to come along and halt production before they have to say one more gooey, inane, nonsensical thing.
None of this bothers Bella, of course. For her it's...something...at first sight, except Edward seems barely able to stomach being in the same room with her. He actually covers his nose when she walks into Biology class (where naturally she's his partner despite it being mid-semester), but that's not what made me laugh (the most). No, there's a taxidermied owl with spread wings behind Edward, and the camera angle actually makes it look like they're coming out of Edward's back. Subtle. I'll admit, I LOL'ed, and then paused it to call Tery and LOL.
His standoffish, assholish behavior, we later learn, is because the smell of her blood is "like a drug" to him and he's "never wanted a human's blood more in his life." He tells her "it would be better if we weren't friends." In the real world, her response would have been, "I wasn't aware we WERE friends, you dick" but in the author's little Harlequin universe Bella doesn't stand a chance against Edward's raw appeal (too bad it doesn't translate to the screen). She doggedly and inexplicably pursues him without the slightest smidge of encouragement, despite being shy and withdrawn in every other aspect of her life.
Eventually he can't hide the fact that he's a vampire, especially after he stops a runaway minivan from crushing her with a casually outstretched hand. The first time she nags him about his obviously supernatural nature, his reply is "You stupid, stupid girl." Then he realizes the jig is up and it's immediately all staring into each others eyes and flying through the trees, what every teen girl dreams of.
And Edward IS every teen girl's dream -- a beautiful boy who is terrified of losing control and giving in to his nature (ooh, deep metaphor, Stephanie Meyer), who can't even kiss for fear of letting go and possibly killing her. So it's just a lot of soulful gazing and wistful brushing of fingertips. He even sparkles in sunlight, and I guess I have to thank Joss Whedon's Angel for easing me into the idea of anything less than direct sun being safe for bloodsuckers. Except Edward has to stand in a direct ray to show her (has to actually seek one out in the overcast Pacific Northwest forest, making an already awkward scene ponderous and unrealistic). What's the next part of the myth to fly out the window? Vampires don't actually need to drink blood?
I used to be plenty romantic. In 1998 I saw a film that affected me the way this one has affected this generation: City of Angels, where Nic Cage plays a lovesick angel pining for Meg Ryan, unrequited and untouchable. It might have been schmaltzy to some, but I couldn't take my eyes off him, and in fact he became the first star that inspired that "OMG I have to see everything this man has ever done" feeling in me (I got over it, only to move onto others). It was actually the second DVD we ever bought. Then he had to go make Family Man and that was the end of that.
The difference is Nic and Meg eventually get it on, unlike poor Ed and Bella, whose one scene of "sensuality" (which is promised on the rating screen) has been relegated to the graveyard of deleted material -- because the author is a Mormon and so can't have that racy hand-on-hip action (the other scenes, according to the director, were removed to speed up pacing. It's really hard to imagine the movie moving any slower than it already does). Which I guess also explains all the yearning stares -- boys are better seen and not touched.
Bella goes home to meet the Cullen fam: "Father" Carlisle, an impossibly young and handsome doctor who makes people vampires when their only other alternative is death (and judging from the size of his clan, he's not a very good doctor); "mother" Esme, who is sweeter looking than June Cleaver; and of course the aforementioned kids, sex on two legs every one. I have no problem with vampires being beautiful -- like the Devil, how would you ever lure in victims if you looked as evil on the outside as in? -- but of course these vamps aren't evil. They're "vegetarians" (eat only animals), and only make a token protest to Bella being admitted to their secret society. Since Alice again mentions how good she smells, we can only assume it's her superior pheromone production again giving her an "in." She should bottle it (frankly, surprised someone hasn't already as a movie tie-in), she'd be a millionaire.
A little over three-quarters through the movie, the director suddenly realizes how much screentime has been frittered away with all this exciting mooning about and struggling to keep all traces of emotion out of their performance. Hence the sudden introduction of the "Nomad" vampires, a trio that have been randomly eating stray Forks residents the whole time and somehow are just meeting the Cullens now. Forks is a pretty small town, and it's not like there are that many vampire circles to work through.
So after a few innings of vampire baseball (which is the only good part in the whole movie, but that might only be because Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole" plays over it), the nomads confront the Cullens. First there's all this quasi-animalistic posturing that elicited another LOL from me. Then they all calm down (supposedly that's Jasper's super vampire power, though I had to watch the extras to learn it) and walk away, until the breeze wafts Bella's irresistible scent over James' way. James is a relentless tracker and instantly becomes hell-bent on having Bella. Whether it's because she smells sooooooo much better than any other human or because she's Edward's is also not clear.
He lures her to her childhood ballet school and taunts her long enough for the Cullens to come to her rescue. A dazzling battle ensues, during which Bella first gets bitten by James, then suffers sufficient blood loss to make us wonder if Edward will turn her completely. He doesn't. James gets torn apart and immolated. Edward takes Bella to prom where she begs him to make her immortal, and he refuses like the asshole he is. Cue a quickie appearance by Jacob (Native American werewolf, yeah, I've never read the books and I couldn't miss the coy little hints) to set us up for a sequel, and......scene.
If my action part of the summary seems truncated and brief, I assure you it takes up exactly the percentage of my review that it took up in the movie.
What's worse than the movie is the extras, where everyone takes turns kissing author Stephanie Meyer's ass. Ugh. Then there's coverage of the movie's debut at Comic-Con, where the major stars and moviemakers appear in front of 6,000 squealing fangirls (and about 10 fanboys). You couldn't pay me to be in that room at that moment, and Robert Pattinson looks a little like he agrees. He also looks like he's just woken up in an alley after a week of binge drinking.
kavieshana says she prefers him "scruffy." But there's rugged scruffy and sexy: Hugh Jackman, Harrison Ford, George Clooney. Then there's "Ew, I hope you don't have fleas" scruffy, which is what Robert's working. This has to be one of my harsher reviews. I went into it with an open mind, even looked forward to it. It was just too laughable.
kavieshana assures me she laughed just as hard, until for some godforsaken reason she watched it a second time, and something in her brain "clicked off." So I guess you're safe from being Twi-washed as long as you only watch it once.The soundtrack was likable, but come on, it's Carter Burwell -- he could score Waterworld and partially redeem it.
~*~
Last week Ryan and I were finishing up our workout. It was our leg day, and our first day trying the stairclimbers, so we really needed to stretch out on the way back to the locker rooms. We stopped at the stairway leading up to the classroom area. We even chose the back part of the staircase that's hardly ever used. We had barely begun when a woman came over accompanied by her personal trainer. He said to us, "Just so you guys know, we're going to be using this area right now." "Oh," we said, taken aback. The woman was obviously mortified and tried to intervene. "We're not kicking you out or anything," the trainer ignored her, "but we're going to be working here."
Really? In this whole big facility, you need THIS particular four square feet RIGHT NOW? There aren't any other exercises you could POSSIBLY do elsewhere for the next two minutes?
We walked away amicably, but I couldn't resist murmuring to Ryan, "Jeez, guess you're nobody if you don't have a personal trainer, huh?" Ryan agreed that it was pretty damn rude.
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-06 08:01 am (UTC)Also agree on Robert Pattinson, the hair in the movie was ridiculous. And now he just looks like a skank. Male Paris Hilton-stylee skank.
Jasper was the best thing about that film. I've come to the conclusion it's because he never opened his mouth. I really, really hope South Park will spoof this. Surely they can't resist!
no subject
Date: 2009-04-07 04:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-07 03:28 pm (UTC)I thought I was just stubbornly resisting the hype (I tend to do that -- which explains why I loved "Paul Blart: Mall Cop") until I read the reviews on Amazon and realized many fans of the books agree with me.
The thing I liked about Jasper was he looked the most disturbingly like a vampire -- human-shaped, but his eyes were really freaky. Plus those blond highlights to die for.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-08 03:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-08 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-10 06:38 pm (UTC)OFB
no subject
Date: 2009-04-15 08:11 pm (UTC)