Bonus Blog: Twilight...My Review

If you've read my blog on any given week, I have a tendency to rant. My favourite ranting topic o' the moment is Stephanie Meyer and the awfulness of Breaking Dawn. I'm also not much of a Meyer fan in general. I read Twilight a while ago, before I knew about the Twi-hards or (Twi-tards, as I prefer) and the Twilight moms. I thought it was an ok book, one by which Anne Rice should feel a little plagerized but I sort of understood why it reached teens. The rest of the series was bland and silly with the exception of Breaking Dawn which should never have been published without mass rewriting and editing.

My hatred of Breaking Dawn retroactively made me despise anything to do with Meyer and Twilight and so when the movie became the cover story for Entertainment Weekly on a regular basis or, at the very least, a huge space-stealer, I was irritated beyond belief. I was sick to death of the hype and still, to this day, can't understand why Entertainment Weekly and other magazines could not promote the far-superior Stardust movie last year with the same gusto. Stardust, based on the Neil Gaiman book, was cute, clever, romantic, hilarious and just a fun ride that makes me want to rewatch it over and over. The original book is a grown-up fairy tale, written with lyric and simplicity and worth ten of Twilight any day.

Yet, because I am a fair Monkeypants, I knew I couldn't complain about a movie without seeing it and so, I knew I had to see Twilight. After all, I'm a firm believer that you can't mock properly without having done your research.

I had no expectations. I expected it to stink. The previews had done nothing to prove otherwise. So I went into the theatre, expecting to snort with derision and emerge at the end, satisfied that I'd been right.

Truth is, that didn't happen. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't a good movie by any means. It just wasn't as horrible as I expected. Given my earlier scathing comments, that's high praise.

Let's start with what I liked. I thought that the scene in which Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and Bella Swan (Kristin Stewart) are paired as lab partners was awesome. The look of revulsion on Edward's face was perfect. The problem was, it made me wonder how much cooler the books would have been if he had continued to loathe her. So much more interesting than puppy-love, don't you think?

Yet this scene made me feel differently about Robert's portrayal of Edward. I got a strong feeling that he was almost mocking the character as he portrayed him, that there was a snarky and bitter undertone in his performance that played perfectly on screen. I'm probably wrong but I felt like Robert didn't think much to Edward and that added a rather good layer to the character who otherwise is one of the wussiest, blandest vampires ever to grace the fiction world.

I also liked Billy Burke's portrayal of Charlie Swan, Bella's dad. In the books, the character has always been rather obtuse and uninvolved in his daughter's romantic entanglement with vampires. Even when she disappeared for months and then re-appeared as a vampire in Breaking Dawn, all it took was for a football game on TV to distract him. I get the feeling that the movie Charlie would kick that Charlie's arse. He's protective, wry and funny. Granted, the man is town Police Chief and he cleans his gun while drinking beer but he's funny and I loved the layers he gave a somewhat background character.

I also actually enjoyed the baseball scene. Set to Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole", the scene is fun and enjoyable. Then again, I've always liked Muse so maybe that was why.

So, see, I can be nice. But I can also be scathing. For example, though Bella Swan has always baffled me as to why Edward can love such a drip, Kristin Stewart's portrayal is beyond dull. She's very pretty and has good hair in the movie. However, she delivers Bella's lines in a monotonal fashion that show that she, like us, is bored with the character. The turning point in the movie in which it went from being decent to being bad was the scene where she confronts Edward and tells him she knows he's a vampire. Ugh. The way she says her lines: "Your skin is ice-cold and pale..." and all that stuff is cringeworthy.

Speaking of lines, there are some stinkers in there. The two worst, sadly, are taken directly from Meyer's book: "And so the lion fell in love with the lamb" and "You're my special brand of heroin". Really? I HATE the lion/lamb line. It makes me think of one of those high-school freshman who want to be writers journaling in their notebook, writing what they think is deep prose but really is a glorified diary entry.

Then there's the special effects. I know the budget sucked for the movie but it seems that they skimped on areas that should have had the most attention paid to them. We didn't need to see Edward jump and run up so many trees. The money spent on that would much better have been spent on makeup. Seriously, Carlisle Cullen looks terrible. You can see the pancake makeup piled on. Maybe it was the blonde hair but he looked washed out and unattractive.

The scene in which Edward shows why he can't go out in the sun (he sparkles- in case you hadn't read the book) was awful. He looked sweaty. He didn't look like "he'd been sprinkled with diamond dust" as the book so frequently and gushingly describes. He looked wet and sweaty.

And then there are the rest of the Cullens. Alice was pretty good, very accurate to the way she is in the book. Emmett was supposed to be strong and big but he looked like a lumberjack to me. Rosalie, played by Nikki Read, was over-acted and pretty terrible. And then there was Jasper. He stood there with a blank look on his face. He's supposed to be able to calm people's emotions, that's his Vampire Power. I now call him Jasper Scissorhands because his hair and facial expression are so much like Edward Scissorhands, he should be sued.

Overall, there were moments where I was entertained. I only cringed a couple of times. I won't mention the author's cameo in the movie. It irritated me, let's leave it at that.

I wouldn't recommend Twilight. It isn't good. It's the type of movie that, if it didn't have an army of militant fans, would probably have flopped and emerged as a DVD rental. It's ok. It's watchable but it won't explain to the non-Twilight readers what all the fuss is about. Harry Potter it is not but then, it doesn't even deserve to be placed in comparison with those books though I'm reading otherwise.

I had to review this movie since I've ragged on the subject so much. I think perhaps if it was viewed as a comedy, it'd be better. I can't help but think Robert Pattinson might like that. Yet, overall, it wasn't as painful as I expected. But it wasn't good. And that, for now, is all I have to say about that.

Random Rants

I'm in the mood to randomly babble and rant today. I have no idea why. Well, actually I do. I just woke up, I don't feel like being a morning person today and I'm drinking the vile office coffee.

On the plus side, I did manage to get rather a lot of good Halloween chocolate, lollipops and candy at CVS yesterday at 75% off so I brought it into the office. I have learned that one of the cardinal rules of getting your coworkers to like you is to give them a copious amount of sugary items. These items are best when in the form of chocolate. However for those smart sucker-uppers like me, you have learned that there's always someone in the office on a diet. Thus, you bring in lollipops (about 1 weightwatcher point each) and Twizzlers- low in fat, high in sugar. I have learned that basic dieters (not the hardcore ones who are truly following a diet) will look at the fact that something has no fat, decide that's a good thing and eat it. I confess that I do this. In my world, when a food is low calorie/no calorie and low fat/no fat, it is good to eat it because it is healthy.

Yes, I am aware that this does not really mean something is healthy. Nor does it mean it's not having a negative impact on my digestive system. There are a lot of other things in food I should be worried about like fiber, transfats, sodium...all that. And, oh yeah, those carbohydrate things. The problem with that is my favourite foods are all high in carbs. I love bread. I love potatoes. I love pasta. So, I've found away around the carbs-are-not-good-for-me-obstacle: I just ignore them and rationalize why I can eat foods anyway. Bread has grains which are good for me. Potatoes are a vegetable and thus, by the Rule of "Because it's a vegetable, it's always healthy", they are good for me. Pasta...well, I usually try to put a tomato-y sauce on my pasta and so I invoke the rule of "Because it's a vegetable" again. By adding a vegetable to pasta, it automatically cancels out the badness of the carbohydrates.

And yes, Captain Monkeypants is fully aware that she is under a self-imposed spell of delusion. Captain Monkeypants is also attempting to be a professional writer and thus, delusion is a necessary survival tool to have in her armory.

I was planning on ranting about Twilight again and why the poster for the movie makes me cringe. So I'm going to. Now. Not to Movie Promoter People: Edward looks like he's about to fall asleep. Also, his eyes do not look like "liquid amber" as described so frequently in the books. They look like he might have had a few too many psychotropic drugs. Also, I know he's supposed to be pale but he's also supposed to pass for a human because otherwise, how could he have been going to school for, like, two hundred years or whatever? The poster makes him look like he's a zombie. It also makes me wonder what he's looking at down on the floor. Did he drop something? Did he spot a particularly juicy spider that he's thinking about eating since he's a 'vegetarian' vampire (only drinks the blood of animals so take that, PETA!)? And Bella...well, actually, she looks as boring as expected. I never could understand how such a drip could get someone like Edward but I suppose that's the point- ordinary girls can find extraordinary men to love them. It's been the premise of every successful romance from Cinderella to today's Chick Lit avalanche so, clearly, it's a formula that works.

Since not everyone has read Twilight, I'll stop now.

Also, the ladybugs are back. Not the same ones since I did end up committing genocide and leaving the poor little buggers (HA!) in my vacuum bag. No, their friends are here. I could hear the flapping of their wings when I woke up in the night. I tried to ignore the fear in me that they would decide to swarm in retailian for the fact that I'd murdered their friends. I was also afraid they'd enlist more jumping spiders to join in the fight. They didn't but the fear was there anyway and so I didn't sleep that well. I'm going to try NOT to vacuum this batch up. But I'm telling you, one indication that they're forming a Gathering and those things are gone.

At least it's Thursday. Thursdays are good. I'm a fan of Grey's Anatomy. Although, I just found out that ABC ordered the show to fire Dr. Hahn....well, actually the actress who plays doctor Hahn who was the lady from Silence of the Lambs who had to put the lotion on (It's way more effective when Buffalo Bill says that in the movie). It's something to do with the fact that the network doesn't like the storyline she's involved in because her character just came out and admitted she's gay. The storyline wasn't that compelling but it was actually pretty natural. It wasn't some ratings stunt but an organic progression of two women who started as friends and grew much closer. I suppose the show did go into a fair amount of detail about the sex between the women but it's on at 9 p.m. It's not like they showed it. I think the show has bigger things to worry about, honestly. I mean, Izzie is still on it. I can't stand Izzie. She's a self-righteous whiner who gets on my nerves.

I'm digressing. I already have a TV blog so I won't go into any more detail. If anyone's interested, it's http://captaintv.blogspot.com/. It's very TV heavy but I love TV so that explains that.

Anyway, that's my ranting for the day. I'm going to go to work now and attempt to put myself in a better mood. Maybe I should have some of the Twizzlers I'm bringing in. They're fat free! This means they're good for me.

Happy Thursday.