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Archive for Twilight Saga: New Moon

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1

Dec05

Title: Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1

Director/Stars: Kristen Stewart (Actor), Robert Pattinson (Actor), Bill Condon (Director)

Genre: Fantasy

Watched: December 3, 2011

Summary: Cringe, Laugh, or Barf

_

Besides the shameless grab at our wallets (splitting the movie into two parts) BDP1 is certainly the most cringeworthy episode yet. First of all, from a structural point of view, the first half has no conflict. Therefore no plot.

It’s not that nothing happens. We have a lovely wedding video and then a fully censored honeymoon. But plot requires conflict, and the only two bits of that we have here are a brief Jacob/Edward chest thumping and Edward’s steadfast foot dragging at the notion of banging his wife more than once. This section of the film is pure wish fulfillment again. The perfect wedding, the perfect honeymoon. Plus a few bruises and one unwanted demonic pregnancy.

But the second half is perhaps even worse. Here we have manufactured wolf/vamp conflict that really no one cares about and a bit of a minor quandary for Bella and Jacob. Edward (and pretty much everyone else in the film) just does their thing. The inciting incident occurs at the midpoint. And the entire movie, BTW, lacks a villain. Unless you count the very weak antagonism of Jacob’s pack leader Sam. Yeah, no villain.

I’m not sure what the second half is. Special effects allow Bella a credible impersonation of a pregnant concentration camp inmate. Edward frets. Jacob does a lot of running back and forth in the woods listening to the CGI call of the wild. The birth was disturbing, but also felt censored.

Kristen Stewart, however, does a pretty impressive job with this role. Even more than the previous films this one focused on her. We have long, long shots just of her face — like walking up the isle — and she manages to bring Bella’s character to life. I’m not sure I want Bella to be alive, but it’s actually a really solid acting job considering the script. Oh, and she’s looking even better in this film (first half). Bikinis in Brazil are better than jeans and hoodies in Forks. Way better than the Twiggy-supreme look.

Love the claw prints!

Let’s see, can we list some of the more amusing moments: Edward breaking the marriage bed. His cheesy confession to having killed in the “old days” — except wait — it was only molesters, rapists, and murderers. He’s just too pure for any genuine vampire feasting. The way the Brazilian house keeper is magically an expert on vampire babies, even though none of the vampires know anything about them. The wolf voiceover argument and growl fest. That one really takes the cake. The Volturi camp at the end of the movie. And so, so many more.

I was enjoying myself during the film. I laughed a lot. A real lot. But it was “at” not “with.”

And it’s worth checking out this Cracked magazine review of the whole series too.

Read my Twilight review or New Moon or Eclipse or BDP2.

For more Film reviews, click here.

Or discover my own paranormal novels.

Related posts:

  1. Twilight Saga: Eclipse
  2. Twilight Saga: New Moon
  3. Book and Movie Review: Twilight
  4. Movie Review: Adventureland
  5. Truly Deeply Sick and Twisted
By: agavin
Comments (11)
Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: Bella Swan, Bill Condon, Breaking Dawn, Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Twilight, Twilight Saga, Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Twilight Saga: New Moon

Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Nov19

Title: Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Director/Stars: Kristen Stewart (Actor), Robert Pattinson (Actor), David Slade (Director)

Genre: Fantasy

Watched: June 2010 & Nov 16, 2011

Summary: Livarot

_

Eclipse is clearly the lame duck of the three pre-Breaking-Dawn Twilight films. It’s so cheesy that it makes the original and New Moon seem high art. First of all, the A-story is about as weighty as a sesame seed. We’ve got this entirely lame plot where ginger-haired hipster Victoria is still after Bella because of the ridiculous happenings of the first film. In order to thwart the plot crushing clairvoyance of Alice she has to act indirectly, raising an army of “Newborn” vampires to come after Bella and the Cullens. In this featherweight version of the vampire legend, new vampires are not just crazy (that’s fairly typical) but are extra strong. Well, at least we are told this. What we are shown (in the “final battle”) is that the Newborns die easily without causing the good guys to even break a sweat — only a few ribs. I find this incredibly lame. In my fictional universe, vampires grow in strength with the years, but at the same time very old vampires are extremely rare — and extraordinarily twisted, powerful, and dead. Did I mention they only come out at night and like to decorate their enemy’s houses with body parts?

Actress Kristen Stewart, actor Taylor Lautner ...

But none of Eclipse‘s A-story really matters. It’s the B-story (romance) that holds the focus. This episode is all (I mean all) about the love triangle between Bella, Edward, and Jacob. Which is about as cheesy as Fourme d’Ambert, but again does have a certain charm, and more than a little humor. The “plot” forces ever more competition between our studs, leading to post-modern lines like “I’m Switzerland” or “does he own a shirt?” This trend climaxes (or doesn’t) in the amusing talkfest inside the tent at the end of the movie. Jacob has been hanging outside (shirtless of course) in a blizzard, but he ducks in to check on freezing Bella. Poor Edward just isn’t much help — no heartbeat = no bodyheat. “You’ll warm up faster if you take off your clothes,” Jacob advises when he crawls in the sleeping bag, right in front of his rival.

I must also mention that every time the A-story cuts in my skin crawls. The flashback with the Native Americans and the “cold ones” (vampires) was particularly seizure inducing. The little flash overs to Victoria and the Volturi “plotting” are perfunctory and really make no sense given the essentially first-person nature of the narrative. The plot (cough cough) is really driven (and hampered) by Alice’s corny power. This happens in the entire series. Since she can see the future, most decisions consist of her instantly knowing someone is going to show up or something is going to happen. Then they hop to it. Occasionally, like in New Moon, this screws something up briefly. Truth is, this is an amazingly lazy device on the part of Stephanie Meyer. It’s like a continuous deus ex machina. It even traps the author in Eclipse so she has to invent a whole reason Victoria can sneak up on them via her leaving it as a “last minute decision.” This is totally bogus. If she decided to leave it to the end to decide, she’s decided and Alice would know. BS alert!

But I’m not done. Continuing my theory that the series is teenage girl wish fulfillment we have this big B-story thread where Edward wants to get married but Bella resists. I’m pretty sure this is just to create further reason for him to actually do what she (and by proxy her teen audience) wants him to do: propose. Then there is his insistence on celibacy. But others have certainly gone into the whole vampire = the dangers of sex or whatever is going on here.

I’m not sure if I loathe the movie or actually enjoyed it as an odd sociological study (owing to it being so popular) or liked it because Kristen Stewart is hot. It was definitely not because of Edward’s eyebrows or Jacob’s six-pack.

Read my Twilight review or New Moon or Breaking Dawn, part 1 or part 2.
For more Film reviews, click here.
Or read about my own paranormal novels.

Related posts:

  1. Twilight Saga: New Moon
  2. Book and Movie Review: Twilight
  3. Movie Review: Adventureland
  4. The Sure Thing
  5. Back to the Future
By: agavin
Comments (5)
Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: Bella, Bella Swan, Edward, Film Review, Jacob Black, Kristen Stewart, Movie Review, Robert Pattinson, Stephenie Meyer, Taylor Lautner, Twilight, Twilight Saga, Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Twilight Saga: New Moon

Twilight Saga: New Moon

Nov18

Title: Twilight Saga: New Moon

Director/Stars: Kristen Stewart (Actor), Robert Pattinson (Actor), Chris Weitz (Director)

Genre: Fantasy

Watched: Nov 2009 & Nov 15, 2011

Summary: The Moon is made of cheese!

_

In honor of the upcoming return of everyone’s favorite sparkly vampires, I rewatched the earlier offerings. Oh, where to begin. The cheese is so thick in this series that it might as well be set in a Paris fromagerie. But it does have a certain charm. Hands down the best part of the whole series is Kristen Stewart. I have to admit, I do kind of like her. Here she’s severely hampered by the script, but she still makes the best of it. In better movies, like the brilliant Adventureland, she shines (and I’m not talking the CGI sparkle kind of shine).

One really funny bit is how close the real film is to the trailer for the parody movie, Vampires Suck:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksJvEH-R_ew]

Now, Vampires Suck, really sucks. It’s almost unwatchable and all the good parts are in the trailer. But it does point out some of the hilarious cheese in the real films, particularly New Moon. The original story is structured pretty much entirely around the Bella, Edward, Jacob triangle. There is a certain decency to this core. It’s not mature adult writing, but a sort of codified teen girl fantasy. Bella, the weak normal girl, shy and insecure, is pursued by not one but two hunk hotties. The aloof cool type AND the hot and emotional no-shirt-wearing type. Fermented milkish as this is, it knows its audience. Where the movie totally fails is in paying any decent respect to the traditions of Fantasy and Horror. The dreadlock swirling, furry vested members of the Black Eyed Peas (I mean bad vampires), the zero research Matrix dressed Volturi (although their leader plays the role with a delicious camp), and the sparkles. Although they didn’t film in Volterra, they should have, cool city. But the franchise’s mythological characters, despite their continued insistence on the challenges of their existence, have it easy. Really these vampires and werwolves are just wish fulfillment, stripped of the double edged nature of the original legends that spawned them.

See, those older tales, like most folk stories are cautionary in nature. The focus on the karmic cost of power and pride. In the end, it always brings down the monsters. Twilight isn’t about that. It pretends to be. But this is a giant “tell” where the characters and the story pretend to “tell” us that these powers have costs. It goes to great lengths to pretend so. But in the end it’s just complex machinations to support the central triangle of wish fulfillment.

New Moon is considerably better than Eclipse, but both suffer badly from essentially being diversions. Stephanie Meyer apparently originally plotted the story as two books (what became Twlight and Breaking Dawn). When the first did well she inserted two extra installments in the middle. I can’t fault her that decision, made her tens of millions for sure.

Read my Twilight review or Eclipse or Breaking Dawn, part 1 or part 2.
For more Film reviews, click here.
Or read about my own paranormal novels.

Related posts:

  1. Book and Movie Review: Twilight
  2. Movie Review: Adventureland
  3. Breaking Bad – Season 1
  4. TV Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer – part 1
  5. Inside Game of Thrones
By: agavin
Comments (10)
Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: Bella Swan, Chris Weitz, Jacob Black, Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Stephenie Meyer, Twilight, Twilight Saga, Twilight Saga: New Moon, Vampires Suck
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