I Like Twilight

I feel like people get hung up on the respectability of various movies they see or don't see. In particular, people seem to be either/or on the topic of the adaptations of Stephanie Meyer's fantastically popular Twilight books. (See Owen Gleiberman's article on the divide here:Retro or backward?)

I think its fine to have an opinion, but to be zealously against something you just know on reputation is just plain shallow. People who rail against the films due to Kristen Stewart's awkwardness, Taylor Lautner's overexposure, massive merchandising, chattering fans, R-Pattz's ridiculous nickname or any other of a myriad of reasons are detracting from the actual films themselves. Films are not their accessories.

It is not to say films are solely a matter of their parts. Films add up to make a wider body of meaning. But I firmly believe that the accessories, the actors, and all the rest of the business, have a secondary meaning to the overall film.

Anyway, Twilight: Eclipse is an entertaining, if slightly goofy, film. In the vampire-human girl-werewolf triangle, emotions reach their climax. There's also some vampire revenge from ginger vampire Victoria and a creepy new vampire army. In the climactic fight, vampire decapitation and limb removal reveal vampires to be a whole weird type of ice people--but that's a concern for another review.

The emotions are at the forefront; Twilight is a modern day melodrama and the anguished looks and long stares are all a part of that. The soft focus and long declarations of love only serve to heighten the emotions. See Douglas Sirk for forerunners.

Leaving Twilight: Eclipse, one feels the need to immediately list pros and cons. Even though I have honestly enjoyed each one, a sort of societal shame sets in. It's probably some cold and hard modern aversion to over emoting, but who cares. Go see Twilight. Nobody can see you in the dark.

I like it. Okay? They're mopey, but it's okay. Really.

Date Night--Defying My Expectations

I was sure I was going to hate "Date Night," the longest night ever, hi-jinks filled comedy starring Tina Fey and Steve Carrell. Critics and magazines all over the place have panned the film. This filled me with a deep, nearly spiritual sadness: as a glasses wearing, intelligent brunette, I tend to view Fey as the ultimate life role model. (My boyfriend and I waited two long weeks before going to see it. We probably wouldn't have gone if it weren't for the free movie ticket I had...)

But I was pleasantly surprised. While the acerbic randomness of Fey was wasted and Carrell was made to be the straight man a bit too much, overall "Date Night" was a pleasant jaunt into the realm of zany film comedy.

The flat-out best sequence was a car chase. Normally, I detest car chases--unless they're in a film that's actually about cars. But this one featured reverse racing, cars hooked together, a Kindle, and a pseudo marriage therapist. Amazing.

"Date Night" could have been better, but for what it was, it was pretty good. At 88 minutes, things moved along briskly, and the goings-on never got too maudlin. It played much like the doofy longest-night ever movies of the 1980s (the kind in which something random would happen to Chevy Chase throughout a foreign city with a comely actress at his side).

So as much as I promote criticism, I suppose sometimes you just have to go and find out for yourself. I knew because of my deep spiritual admiration for Tina Fey that "Date Night" would have to be beyond awesome for me to not enjoy it. While reviews and critics aren't everything, you still have to be up on your movies. Know the actors, the trends, and what the blazes is supposed to be going on. Or you could just wing it. And see something awful.

*Extra note: the teenagers were out in full force at "Date Night." At a four o'clock showing. Very weird.

Three Films I'm Excited About Seeing

1. The Runaways

• I feel more than vaguely ashamed about this. But I like a good biopic. And the Runaways. And Joan Jett. And am intrigued by mumbling, slouchy Kristen Stewart and the fact that Dakota Fanning is a freaking teenager now.

2. Kick-Ass (Trailer starts about thirty seconds in)




3. Hot Tub Time Machine

• You may laugh. You may say, why? But I want to know. Why does the hot tub move through time? Really. True story: the friend my boyfriend and I are going to see this with asked me, "Really? You really want to see that." Yes, yes I do.

Remember Me

I loved Remember Me. Seriously and unironically. And it's not that I'm some sort of freaky R-Pattz fan (although I confess a grudging interest in him as a pop culture phenomenon). It's that I love me a good melodrama.

When I first became a big movie freak, circa sophomore year of high school, I gravitated toward the Hollywood melodrama. There were tears, drinking, and shamed single gals who got knocked up and threw themselves downstairs. Everything about melodramas is pretty fantastic. If you've never seen a great Hollywood era one, I'd recommend The Best of Everything. It has all of the above.

Joan Crawford's eyebrows say it's okay to like melodramas. 

Melodramas can have the most random of random things happen, and it's all kosher. Melodramas aren't about the reality of events, they're about the reality of the human experience. They're documentaries of emotion. And Remember Me, with its random tragic events, brow furrowing, throwing fire extinguishers, crying, hitting, and wallowing runs the gambit of grief and alienation.

Genre aside, Remember Me works as a tight piece of filmmaking. Robert Pattinson and Emilie De Ravin  ably portray star crossed lovers Tyler and Ally. Ruby Jerins portraying Tyler's gifted younger sister is immensely moving. Pierce Brosnan plays a Brooklyn native (!) and Chris Cooper is Ally's troubled father. Everyone is troubled and everyone is believable. The script, even with its sometimes outlandish events, doesn't plod along. The more sentimental speeches are cut before they become too saccharine.

Overall, Remember Me is a much better film than the Twilight-kiddies will require. The film captures a unique and moving experience. All hail the return of the melodrama!

Lost: Plot Twists Movies Can Only Dream Of

Ostensibly, we're in the era of scripted television. All that skanky reality TV aside, scripted television is pretty gnarly right now. Examples of well-written epic television (both recently cancelled and thriving) abound; Mad Men, True Blood, Lost, Glee, Pushing Daisies, How I Met Your Mother, Gilmore Girls are just a few (coincidentally, those that I watch).

Movies seem to have an opposite level of commitment to plot. The more popular a movie is, the more likely it is to be a predictable snooze-fest. Why is this? Wouldn't both be driven by character development and a healthy sense of plot?

My case study for this is Lost. The sci-fi Gilligan's Island is ending in May and I have been Hulu-ing my way through the past 100+ episodes. I'm to the end of the fourth season and have been wowed by the almost acrobatic way Lost's plot balances itself. And yes, I'm going to talk about major plot points now (SPOILERS, for those of you managing a Lost-free existence).

Season One: Like naive tourists in a rough part of town, the castaways of season one only venture into the light when things are safe. The first season functions much like a classy thriller; we see just enough to keep us satiated.

Season Two: The Hatch-ariffic second season plays as a theological debate. The castaways have to hit a button or presumably die, but that's hardly the most best part. The back and forths--between Locke and Jack, between Ben and everybody else--that are played in all grays make many episodes feel like philosophical debates. Additionally, Michelle Rodriguez's Ana Lucia spends a lot of time ass-kicking. Season two plays like a action movie with substance. It moves off of the character-driven base of season one.

Season Three: Camp comes into play when Ben Linus and the suburbanite Others kidnap Jack, Sawyer and Kate. Crucially, this season was not well-recieved. Certain plots felt too much like re-hash--Kate oscillated between Jack and Sawyer for one too many times.

Season Four: Thanks to the Writer's Strike, Lost was a tight plot machine in the fourth season. Flashforwards brought intrigue to current events on the island; on the island there were fresh new characters--Daniel Faraday, be my physics teacher!--and the real promise of escape.

Personally, I dug season three's camp factor, but I know from slight research that it was tremendously unpopular. Things tightened back up when the show's creators worked out a deal as to exactly how long the show would run. This, I believe, is key. Having a finite number of shows, Lost's creators were no longer making a television show and were now making a 100+ hour long film. Given that they are imminently capable, the order of the day comes to orchestrating their opus.

Television writers are getting smarter. They're building shows in segments to satisfy viewers at an incremental level.

The question is, why are films dragging on? I suspect greed. Execs and studio heads want to jam everything into every film to ensure their maximum audiences. Audiences lose in the bargain.



Watch this nifty video. Some folks made a theme song for Lost and won at Comi-con. (Overall, you can see the multitude of plots.)
*Confession: I watch a lot of reality television. But the classy Bravo/Project Runway type. No Flavor of Love (since season one).

Defending my enjoyment of that Kristen Bell movie

Confession, for a second I forgot the title of the movie I'm about to defend my enjoyment of...this may spell forgettable-ness. But really, it's good. And definitely not as a bad as a lot of reviews have made it out to be.

(When in Rome! That's it!)

Anyways, When in Rome, starring Kristen Bell and Josh "Married to Fergilicious" Duhamel is a mostly solid entry into the romcom canon. The set up has Bell and Duhamel's characters meeting cute at a Roman wedding--she's the Maid of Honor and he's the Best man, natch--and subsequently falling in love. There's a bit with the "Fountain of Love" too, which resulted in random characters played by Dax Shepard, Will Arnett, that guy from Napoleon Dynamite, and Danny DeVito. Bell's character, snookered on prosecco, steals their love coins. I guess.

(DANNY DEVITO! True fact: he made Kristen Bell look taller than she ever has in a scene where they were walking next to each other.)

But it's not the plot that's important. You know what'll happen. Never will Kristen Bell wind up with Will Arnett when Josh Duhamel is around to be more compatible age-wise and star-wise. (Not that either are huge stars. But they're the same types of actors.)

What's important is the fact that the banter is snappy, the mood is light, and everything turns out okay in the end. We're in a recession, people! Something has to be predictable, and maybe When in Rome is all we're going to get right now...

So yes, I liked it. I liked it because it was silly and fluffy and still at the end I was happy they had their own Roman wedding. I don't think it's okay that Bell's main quest was to "let love happen"; I also don't expect romantic comedies to be deep voyages into the existential crises of twentysomethings...that's what Facebook is for...

Please enjoy another romantic comedy focused on fluff and love:

Legion

Oh, Legion. It's been a week since I've seen it and still a smile comes to my face as I recall its delicious campiness. I won't spoil it for anyone, but here are some key ingredients:

*A foul-mouthed grandmother
*the wrath of God
*evil babies
*an evil ice cream truck driver
*Dennis Quaid

Basically, Legion is full of camp and good times (while characters are having apocolyptic bad times). By all means, as a film student, I should look down on Legion and dismiss it as mainstream garbage. But I don't. I loved Legion.

Do I think Legion was a "good" movie? I think it was paced well, and that the technical execution made it bounce merrily along in a pleasing way. I do not think it will be lauded in critical hindsight; but so little entertainment is.

Falling Asleep

So I really like the movies. I've gone nearly weekly since the MJR was built by my folks' house circa 1995. (I was ten.)

But sometimes, I fall asleep at the movies. I sense that this is weird. It's only happened three times--that I know of.

1. Chinatown--this was a midnight showing at the movie theater by my college. And it's a good movie. But it was midnight! When it started!

2. The Day the Earth Stood Still--I saw this with my boyfriend and fell asleep during a long stretch in the second half. Because it was a lame, overlong remake. And I was tired.

3. Transformers--I saw this with my family, my boyfriend, and my brother's ex-girlfriend. And I slept very hard for the second half.

I don't know what my point is in blogging about this, but I feel like I'm weird. I guess it would be more weird if I fell asleep when going to movies by myself. And there is something nice and cocoon like about the darkness of the theater.

Romcoms Worth Watching Many Times Over

So here's the thing about romantic comedies (romcoms): they kind of suck but I still like them. At this point, all a romcom needs to be okay is a strong lead, respectable dialogue, and snappy music. To be a respectable romcom, one that doesn't make you feel dirty in the morning, there's another certain X factor.

In no particular order of quality, here are some clips/trailers from respectable romcoms.

While You Were Sleeping



Pretty in Pink



His Girl Friday, a movie I will watch "anytime, any place, anywhere."



Pillow Talk



Annie Hall



Put them all together, and you have what society has constructed romance to be. Or at least some decent songs with fast talking and a dash of spider killing.

Why Film Dorks Can't See "Nine"

I was really excited about Nine, Rob Marshall’s adaptation of the musical adaptation of Fellini’s 8 1/2. Fellini was my college art house favorite. I love his big characters, his noisy chaos, and the whole raging back story of Fellini’s life. (Read “Fellini on Fellini” if you ever have the chance or inclination. Homeboy had a life.)

Unfortunately, they added on that other half. In no particular order, here are nine things wrong with Nine.

1. Nine is too schmaltzy. The play debuted in the late eighties/early nineties. The is, after all, the time period that gave us Michael Bolton. The songs, with the exception of the excellent/terrifying “Be Italian,” are all forgettable and not so good.

2. Nine is too long. Even though it runs at a little under two hours, it felt eternal.

3. Nine is a “modern” musical. That means, according to Rob Marshall, every song is a figment of a character’s imagination. And that means, according to me, that the arc of the movie completely halts every time somebody sings.

4. Kate Hudson sings the worst, cheesiest, most obnoxious song ever. Cinema Italiano may be the only musical song to ever include a lyric about neorealism.

5. There were ladies in it other than Penelope Cruz and Marion Cotillard. Judie Dench was cool and all, but Nicole Kidman really could’ve stayed at home.

6. The whole thing felt like a perfume ad. Not so much with the depth, but lots with the pretty backgrounds and soft lighting.

7. There were too many famous people. At a point, it started to feel like old MGM Cavalcade of Stars shorts.

8. Nine revolves around Italian stereotypes without having fun with them. Everyone mopes around like their Italianess is weighing down every life choice. Except Kate Hudson of course. She’s just excited to be in a movie.

9. Nine attempts to make a commodity out of someone’s life. And while I understand movie making is all about commodity making, it seems like you could’ve made a better movie to make money off of a great director.

So in total, see it if you must. Penelope Cruz and Marion Cotillard are really quite good. And Daniel Day Lewis is the male Meryl Streep. Ridiculously good. But overall, Nine is far less than Fellini deserves.

And to tell the truth, I suspect he wouldn’t have loved it so much. Nine’s kind of a downer.



"The way Contini puts his image through a prism. I feel my body thrill, gives me a special thrill, each time I see that Guido neorealism."

Warm fuzzie childhood movie memories

Dirty Dancing Spice World (I'm not proud) Guys and Dolls (1955) I wanted to be Brando at the age of six. If you add all this up, it probably explains why I felt the need to see Nine. But that's a different issue altogether.