"Capitalism is the Predatory Stage of Human Evolution"
Movie Monday
Cripes! Maybe I should get more sleep! I just edited a posting from 2 years ago after I discovered a misspelled word I never caught and a "with" instead of a "will." And, I do proof my work - not that well obviously.
This was going to be a post on War, Inc. but my Verizon recording of that movie and I are separated by about 50 miles right now so that review will have to wait until next week.
However, I did get some unexpected movie news on Saturday - I will be attending a preview of Eclipse! With about 1000 young, screaming girls I'm sure.
How did I get so lucky? Apparently, Nordstrom's has a line of Twilight clothes - that I knew and never could understand since that store and that movie series do not seem to be a perfect match. But, hey, neither were Edward and Bella at the beginning.
If you buy a certain dollar amount of clothes in their teen clothing department, you get a free pass to the preview. If you double that amount, you get two tickets; therefore, the girl and I will be attending the Eclipse preview. Oh, happy day! Oh, happy birthday present for her!
I'm really not looking forward to this movie. Although I did like the film Twilight (see previous posts) Meyers is not a good writer. Very successful, of course, but she really doesn't string interesting sentences together nor seem to believe in character development. This can be a tremendous problem for a screenwriter especially with such a "hot" series.
Let's do a comparison of two movie series to show this. Rather than compare Twilight to HP (which is commonly done) I'd like to compare it with LOTR. OK, you can get up from the floor from laughing.
Last night, I watched The Two Towers, theatrical version, for the first time in quite a while. Boy, does that movie hold up! I think, and have always thought, that's because the acting is first-rate, the human stories holds your interest, and Tolkien gives the actors lines which are just not exposition. ("There is always hope.", "How did it come to this?")
I realized after viewing TTT, that Twilight and LOTR do share the same type of love story - in reverse. Bella wants to give up her mortal life for vampire immortality and Edward is strongly opposed. Arwen wants to give up elf immortality for human mortality and Aragon (at least in the movies) is strongly opposed.
Which leads to a second comparison: the changes from books to movies. From reading Twilight forum postings, the trailer for Eclipse where Bella gets on Jacob's bike and leaves Edward standing there has gotten tons of negative comments. Basically they all say: Bella would never walk away from Edward.
Of course, I understand that the Twilight series is going to be 5 movies and adding sexual tension (which never appeared in the books though Bella does have a wacky relationship with Jacob) keeps interest. But I just doesn't work. Possibly because unlike LOTR, the linchpin of Twilight is Edward's and Bella's passion. Everything else is back story so if you change the dynamics of that passion/love/lust/whatever and you skew the story awkwardly. (Possibly they wouldn't have had this dilemma if the story had not been stretched so thinly into four books.)
Turning the page back to LOTR and you will see the same quandary: the Aragon of the books is a Roland - a true hero and boring. Although Tolkien had seriously toyed with an Aragon/Eowyn romance in drafts, the books had him always true to Arwen, sure that he would finally achieve her and his throne with no obstacles - except of course Sauron and Arwen's daddy insistence that Aragon regain his kingdom before any marriage.
Since there were three LOTR movies, such constancy would not have been good for business so Jackson introduced a semi "love triangle" and Aragon was played angst-filled. This was definitely not true to Tolkien's vision but it worked on both the practical and mythical levels.
For so many reasons, such changes do not work in Twilight. Twilight is a teen movie series coming out of books which are an average fantasy teen series. All the actors are competent but not exceptional (except for some secondary roles such as Aro.) They are reading rather hokey lines and all their energies have to be absorbed in conveying them without causing convulsive laughter from the audience. (Example: the hoot of a scene with Edward and Bella prancing in the meadow as Aro "sees" Alice's prediction in NM. That was so corny and is so easily fixable by having both of them just lying in their sunlit meadow with sparkling diamonds coming from Bella's skin.)
So while LOTR faced the same problem of keeping audience interest over three movies and conquered it, Twilight has a span of five movies with so many fewer workable options. (One of them being different directors on each movie except BD - also a problem with the HP series.)
I guess this is a very long way of saying that I have few hopes for Eclipse. I'm waiting to be pleasantly surprised although I doubt my preview screening will allow me much access to dialogue with all the screaming girls. Perhaps, I could ask the manager for subtitles....
To be continued.
Cripes! Maybe I should get more sleep! I just edited a posting from 2 years ago after I discovered a misspelled word I never caught and a "with" instead of a "will." And, I do proof my work - not that well obviously.
This was going to be a post on War, Inc. but my Verizon recording of that movie and I are separated by about 50 miles right now so that review will have to wait until next week.
However, I did get some unexpected movie news on Saturday - I will be attending a preview of Eclipse! With about 1000 young, screaming girls I'm sure.
How did I get so lucky? Apparently, Nordstrom's has a line of Twilight clothes - that I knew and never could understand since that store and that movie series do not seem to be a perfect match. But, hey, neither were Edward and Bella at the beginning.
If you buy a certain dollar amount of clothes in their teen clothing department, you get a free pass to the preview. If you double that amount, you get two tickets; therefore, the girl and I will be attending the Eclipse preview. Oh, happy day! Oh, happy birthday present for her!
I'm really not looking forward to this movie. Although I did like the film Twilight (see previous posts) Meyers is not a good writer. Very successful, of course, but she really doesn't string interesting sentences together nor seem to believe in character development. This can be a tremendous problem for a screenwriter especially with such a "hot" series.
Let's do a comparison of two movie series to show this. Rather than compare Twilight to HP (which is commonly done) I'd like to compare it with LOTR. OK, you can get up from the floor from laughing.
Last night, I watched The Two Towers, theatrical version, for the first time in quite a while. Boy, does that movie hold up! I think, and have always thought, that's because the acting is first-rate, the human stories holds your interest, and Tolkien gives the actors lines which are just not exposition. ("There is always hope.", "How did it come to this?")
I realized after viewing TTT, that Twilight and LOTR do share the same type of love story - in reverse. Bella wants to give up her mortal life for vampire immortality and Edward is strongly opposed. Arwen wants to give up elf immortality for human mortality and Aragon (at least in the movies) is strongly opposed.
Which leads to a second comparison: the changes from books to movies. From reading Twilight forum postings, the trailer for Eclipse where Bella gets on Jacob's bike and leaves Edward standing there has gotten tons of negative comments. Basically they all say: Bella would never walk away from Edward.
Of course, I understand that the Twilight series is going to be 5 movies and adding sexual tension (which never appeared in the books though Bella does have a wacky relationship with Jacob) keeps interest. But I just doesn't work. Possibly because unlike LOTR, the linchpin of Twilight is Edward's and Bella's passion. Everything else is back story so if you change the dynamics of that passion/love/lust/whatever and you skew the story awkwardly. (Possibly they wouldn't have had this dilemma if the story had not been stretched so thinly into four books.)
Turning the page back to LOTR and you will see the same quandary: the Aragon of the books is a Roland - a true hero and boring. Although Tolkien had seriously toyed with an Aragon/Eowyn romance in drafts, the books had him always true to Arwen, sure that he would finally achieve her and his throne with no obstacles - except of course Sauron and Arwen's daddy insistence that Aragon regain his kingdom before any marriage.
Since there were three LOTR movies, such constancy would not have been good for business so Jackson introduced a semi "love triangle" and Aragon was played angst-filled. This was definitely not true to Tolkien's vision but it worked on both the practical and mythical levels.
For so many reasons, such changes do not work in Twilight. Twilight is a teen movie series coming out of books which are an average fantasy teen series. All the actors are competent but not exceptional (except for some secondary roles such as Aro.) They are reading rather hokey lines and all their energies have to be absorbed in conveying them without causing convulsive laughter from the audience. (Example: the hoot of a scene with Edward and Bella prancing in the meadow as Aro "sees" Alice's prediction in NM. That was so corny and is so easily fixable by having both of them just lying in their sunlit meadow with sparkling diamonds coming from Bella's skin.)
So while LOTR faced the same problem of keeping audience interest over three movies and conquered it, Twilight has a span of five movies with so many fewer workable options. (One of them being different directors on each movie except BD - also a problem with the HP series.)
I guess this is a very long way of saying that I have few hopes for Eclipse. I'm waiting to be pleasantly surprised although I doubt my preview screening will allow me much access to dialogue with all the screaming girls. Perhaps, I could ask the manager for subtitles....
To be continued.
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