OK before I disappear into a black hole of massive studying, I have to put up this update: I went to the Boston premiere of How to Be!!!!!!!!
Basically: it is one fell swoop of vindication for Rob Pattinson. He is actually really hilarious and acted very, very well!!!
The plot is a little contrived at times and the crazy old therapist guy is a little heavy-handed or hams it up too much sometimes, but overall the script is quite clever and there were some pretty funny scenes where I laughed out loud. Or at least laughed on the inside.
The only real buzzkill for me was the woman who played his mother in this movie. She is either a really terrible actress or totally overacted and downgraded the scenes she was in. The only good scene she was in was the one where she was off-camera in voice-over and talking to Rob's character on the phone.
Also somewhat annoying was the fact that the movie theater was filled with so many teenage girls, man the average age of the audience at this thing was 20 years old at MOST. That's AVERAGE! Not median! LOL. And those females tended to laugh too much at just about everything that was intended to be remotely funny. Otherwise, the movie-going experience was pretty good. The director and some of the cast/music directors came to do a Q&A, which my friend and I unfortunately couldn't really stay for, but it was cool that that happened. (I think I took a pic on my camera phone?)
Obviously this would have been a totally unremarkable indie movie if Rpatz hadn't landed Twilight...but it's a good thing Rpatz can act 4 real!
Seriously, he was a much better actor in this movie than in Twilight.
Okay... #1: K-stew barely got any screen time. #2: The other actors had MUCH better presence/personality/friendliness than K-stew #3: Alice's contacts are so freaky!!!! #4: I really love Victoria/Rachelle Lefevre, she seems really cool and personable! #5: Did I mention K-stew has no vocal inflection or facial animation whatsoever? #6: I'm starting to love Taylor Lautner, he seems like a real cutie. Awww.
*Also...what do U think of that costume Ashley Greene is wearing? It's kind of Plymouth Colony!
See what I mean by over-sexed fangirls and double standards?
Do U think it would ever be okay if someone made a fan-art banner that said "Rape Rihanna" or "Rape Megan Fox" or any other of-the-moment female hottie? Like what if someone made a banner that said, "Oh No Pamela! Error: Pamela Anderson took out her breast implants. Kill the plastic surg! OK... Rape Pam anyway!"
*Although...this is kind of funny, since it shows how un-self-aware some fans are...ha
(apparently Jackson Rathbone is not smoking though, above)
Taylor sez no to cigs!
the best is when the people are clearly freezing but smoking...Rpatz, let us be the ones to warm U up! The Twilight/New Moon set is just one big cig party!!!!! Even Dr. Cullen is smoking...bad doctor!! Bad!
Apparently the only cast members who don't smoke are Taylor Lautner and Jackson Rathbone! (Jasper) Taylor's only 16, so he has to think of his 5 year old fans!
excerpt: Back on the stage at the King of Prussia Mall, Mr. Pattinson continued to stand awkwardly but, somehow, fantastically beautifully at the same time. A local radio D.J. fed him written questions from the audience, but his answers were buried by screaming.
“Do you guys care about the questions, or do you just want to talk about nothing?” Mr. Pattinson asked.
A young woman in a shirt emblazoned with the Cullen family crest spoke for many: “We just want to look at you.”
So, if you couldn't already tell, I'm pretty attuned to the whole women/gender/sexuality/feminism/power construct shit. And I've been thinking.
It's socially acceptable for 5,000 screaming girls to mob a Rob Pattinson mall event and beg him to "bite me" and "have my babies" and (as Tyra Banks said) "throw them draw'rs" (throw panties) at him.
Would it be socially acceptable for 5,000 fourteen year old males to go to a Megan Fox promo event (perhaps for the new Transformers movie? which I am excited about seeing, proving that I can be excited about things other than Twilight), and ask her to have sex with them? And scream stuff like, "Let's make a sex tape!" or "Ride my Camaro!" or other dumb shit like that, whatever would be on par with what Twilighters scream?
I bet a lot of women would take offense to young boyz treating Megan Fox like such a piece of meat!
Is there a double standard with gender and acceptable fan behavior?
Also, I was thinking. Zac Efron inspires crazy fangirl behavior too. And if you think about it, a lot of good-looking male singers and actors have a 99% female fanbase. I mean, the whole reason Twilight made so much bank was because female fans COME OUT like no other. So, female fans make bank. Are good-looking female celebs losing out on this bankability?! And one of the age-old questions of feminists: Are females sabotaging themselves??
I think his voice is kind of weird and the "r"s are really rounded, it sounds like he's holding water in his mouth, if that makes sense. His singing voice sounds more British. I dunno, it's not my cup of tea.
So now that you've read the book(s) and seen the movie-- let's compare & contrast!
The meadow scene: letdown, or just the right amount of lovesick staring into each other's eyes? Edward's skin: sparkly enough? I thought it would be more sparkly. Special effects: the vampire jumping around, the vampire running--kewl enough? Most critics said no. Oh well, Chris Weitz will definitely upgrade the shiz out of that in New Moon, or he'd better considering he was hired (so the blogosphere says) cuz he has experience with CGI and shit from The Golden Compass! (Although that was kind of a failure, commercially...visually it was aight I guess.) Rpatz's acting: I thought it was TIGHT!! Even more reason to fall in love with Edward. Cuz I like how he's brooding and emo in the movie; in the books Edward is actually really arrogant and takes things too seriously, OR he's always "snickering," laughing at shit, thinking he's too good for the rest of us (which...well...he is!) Well, basically Rpatz can do no wrong in my eyes... K-stew's acting: At first I thought this chick was NOT HOT ENOUGH to play Bella. But actually Kristen Stewart is a babe--as one of my male friends put it, "total BABEraham." I saw that when I looked up pix of her in "real life," AKA not real life but photo shoots of her as herself and not in character. Like that famous spread in Vanity Fair and shit. I'm strangely drawn to her look--there are definitely lots of pix of her where she's quite plain, but she can look very very pretty too. Besides, isn't it S.Meyer's point that Bella is not as good-looking as Edward?? So I guess the casting and styling was perfectly appropriate! But what about her acting? K-stew was supposedly the most experienced actor in the young cast; she has had some critical acclaim too but I'm going to hold off on dissecting this for a future post.
I'm not liking how the Prom scene was played in the movie--Bella's dress and look is supposed to be more FABULOUS, not T.J. Maxx Tween. S.Meyer made a big deal in the book (and in deleted chapters that she's posted on her personal webpage) that Bella was wearing a high-ass strappy stiletto to prom. What the fuck with the Converse shoe?!?! That's totally K-stew style, NOT true to character! Bad K-stew! Plus Bella was supposed to resist, not go willingly.
Ballet studio/fight scene--I was fine with it the first time I saw it, but the 2nd and 3rd time, it looked too short, not violent enough? Also, what was with Alice being the one to jump on James and break his neck?
I also like how in the book they never said Laurent was black, they said he was a pale olive-skinned dude with a French accent. BTW, isn't "pale" combined with "olive-skinned" kind of an oxymoron?
I'm sure I'll notice more shit after watching the DVD, cuz I'm definitely buying it the day it comes out, and making all my hapless friends watch it with me.
a) I enjoy reading amateur fantasy chick-lit b) I can project myself onto Bella and enjoy escapism c) Purely guilty pleasure d) Rpatz is hot! e) Something else
So, I know I am getting on this "Twilight" bandwagon really late. But, since the entertainment powers that be seem to be greenlighting the movie adaptation of the whole franchise, the Twilight mania will last well into 2010, so I figured it wasn't too late to start a blog about it.
It's funny because I was still living (expatriated) in Hong Kong when Twilight the movie came out in November 2008, and all throughout college I had never heard of the Twilight books for some reason. (I am a recent college grad.) And even when I came back to America in late November 2008 I still had never heard of Twilight. I guess I was living under a rock??
For me, it actually started with something completely unrelated: The Chronicles of Narnia 2: Prince Caspian. I rented this as a curiosity during Christmas break, watched it at home, LOVED Ben Barnes (the actor who plays Caspian). He is so hot!!! So of course I IMDB'd and Google Imaged him, and then wrote to my friends on an email list I'm on, "OMG new crush Ben Barnes!!!!" Then, someone replied, "Yeah Ben Barnes is cute but Rob Pattinson is hot!!" And someone else replied, "Yeah have you guys seen Twilight?" And then I was like...Rob WHO?
So I continued on my Ben Barnes adoration spree and Youtubed fanvids of Ben Barnes picture montages. Along my Youtubing I came across fanvids of Ben Barnes AND Rob Pattinson montages! So, I watched them, but the whole time I was thinking, "OK who is this pasty femmed out thick-lipped skinny guy??? He is so not that hot...Let's get to Ben Barnes!"
Since Ben Barnes shares a lot of the same fanbase as Rob Pattinson (henceforth referred to as Rpatz), it eventually got through my thick skull (usually I am very perceptive to pop culture, so this was weird!! Maybe I am some kind of "Bella" with my thick skull, hahaha!) that Twilight was a major, major chick lit/tween/pop culture force to be reckoned with. So in late January I tried to watch a bootleg version off alluc.org (great website BTW), but it took too long to load so I gave up. (In the end, I'm glad it happened this way!!)
Then in mid-February, I went into the city for a dental appointment and it was a major buzzkill (an extra-deep cleaning, since I was a bad girl and have not seen the dentist in so long). My gums got a major beating and were shot full of anesthetics; plus my lips were really swollen. I had a few hours to kill before meeting a friend for dinner, plus I didn't feel like hanging out in public, so I walked into a bookstore and thought I would browse for a while. I walked into a display of "Twilight" books, picked up Twilight, and started reading, intending to just put it down after a few pages and move on.
I didn't move on. I didn't even move. I stood in the middle of the aisle for four hours and just read continuously. I only stopped to adjust the strap of my messenger bag when I noticed around page 300 that my shoulder was somehow extremely sore. When I left the bookstore I even considered paying the $10 or whatever to buy the book so that I would be able to read it again on the way home (very atypical of me to buy a new book!).
And then when I got home I went on alluc.org and finally watched a streaming version of Twilight. And then all I could think about for the next week was Edward/Bella and Rob Pattinson. (Unfortunately for Ben, Rpatz took up a huge chunk of the space Ben had occupied.) And I kept thinking about the next time I would be able to get to a bookstore so I could know what happened to Edward and Bella and the Cullens! All the Twilight books were checked out and waitlisted for weeks at my library--devastating! Then I had a thought--Hey, all of these books are probably pirated in full text online!!! (I know it's wrong but I didn't want to be right.)
So, I went and found and read ALL of the rest of the Twilight books!!! New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn--I gobbled them up (in bootleg plaintext fashion, which is too bad cuz I do kind of like the "Twilight" fonts, I'm a font junkie) over the course of 3 weeknights. And these were days I had work! (I work part-time in a public school.) I would literally read till 4am, go to bed for a fitful, shallow, feverish sleep of a mere 3 hours, then wake up at 7am and continue reading. I live in New England and we basically don't use the heater to save money, and it was FREEZING cold in my basement, so cold I wore gloves to use the mouse to keep clicking and scrolling down down down to keep reading the fucking Twilight books and see what fucking happens to Edward and Bella. Sometimes when I was reading these online books I would look at the scrolling bar on the right to see how far down I was on the web page, and I enjoyed reading them so much that I would perversely wish the scrolling bar were not so far down, so that I could keep reading about Edward and Bella! (Mostly wanting to read about Edward, ha.) Of course these web pages are so fucking long that the scrolling bar is the tiny tiny kind that barely moves from frame to frame anyway...haha. While I was reading, I would sometimes laugh out loud at the absurdity of the prose, and the sometimes utterly banal diction, or the overuse of "grimace"--I could go on with these Smeyer gems. But I just HAD to keep going. This is the most addictive series I've read since Dragonlance. And when Breaking Dawn finally ended, I browsed the online Twilight forums (which I had previously avoided to not run into spoilers) and heard about Midnight Sun. There went another would-be constructive afternoon.
Then, I had to relive parts of the movie, because knowing Rpatz is Edward is just...so divine. Then I started looking at the Youtube fanvids...I downloaded the soundtrack...I listened to the score (who listens to a score, for crying out loud?! unless it's James Horner or some shiz)...I looked at the fan sites, the Facebook pages, the magazine spreads, the photo shoots, the promo event photo ops, the Perez Hilton posts, the E! online and MTV.com "news" articles...I am basically now familiar with all of the visual media and blogosphere documenting the Twilight nuclear fallout. I've spent time downloading pictures of Rpatz onto my phone so that he can be my cell phone wallpaper. It's kind of out of control--no, not my sanity. The fact that I have downloaded so many Rpatz pix/Twilight screencaps that I need to come up with a real file-naming convention, cuz "edward0102" and "rpatz in raybans" isn't cutting it anymore. LUCKILY I am only part-time employed right now. In any case, it would be EMBARRASSING to admit how many hours Twilight has sucked from my life. This might have something to do with the fact that this tween behavior coincided with me moving back in with my parents. Some regression is to be expected, right?
So, here I am and it's mid-March and New Moon is about to start filming! So jealous of anyone living in Vancouver... ;) And now I've decided that if I'm going to be obsessed, at least I'm going to contribute something (hopefully) intelligent and/or funny/constructive to this world.
Cheers to the inner tween in all of us!
(I swear no blog posts will be this long in the future.)
This blog assumes deep familiarity with the Twilight canon--you know, the pop culture behemoth and unstoppable juggernaut that is the Twilight saga. But that's not all. We assume you are actually self-aware. Maybe your brain hurts from all the "Edward + Bella tru love 4-eva!!" and "Omg Cullen boyz!!!" commentary on other blogs/forums. Or maybe you cringe inside at S.Meyer's preposterously cliched writing, yet you ate up all those brick-sized books like so many hotcakes. In short, this is Twilight commentary for smart people. As Edward would say--we hope you can keep up!
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