At the movies: Breaking Dawn - Part Two.

Twilight 4.2 happened to me recently. If you'd like my thoughts on the previous films in the series to prepare yourself, you can find them here, here, and here. There's no working link to my New Moon review, so I have reproduced it below for the sake of completism. Regardless, Breaking Dawn Part 2 is kind of amazing. Read along for the goods...

Also, I'd like to point out something that I've noticed about what I've written about the Twilight experience. I've been judgy and a little off-the-cuff with these movies, but I've also had a lot of fun writing about them (even the time I got hit in the face with a New Moon t-shirt from one of those t-shirt guns like what killed Maude Flanders). As far as keeping up a tradition with a franchise I wasn't a huge fan of, these films were way preferable to the Saw movies...

NEW MOON

So free-thinking High School loner Bella and sparkly vampire Edward are together, moping magnificently throughout their Pacific Northwest High School. Then a papercut turns everything upside down, and the Cullens disappear, leaving our girl Bella a depressive adrenaline junkie with a journal full of flowery sadness. Fortunately, lurking in the shadows is another supernatural dreamboat, this time newly-buff werewolf Jacob, who wants to give his all to make sure that Bella is happy and safe.

The only supernatural force, it seems, that isn't devoting itself to protecting Bella: the Volturi. The Volturi are a mysterious clan of vampires who rule from their mini-fortress in Italy. They maintain absolute secrecy as to the existence of their own kind, though they apparently feast on packs of tourists by the busfull. And it's to them Edward has gone, in order to commit a complicated form of ritualized suicide. Because he thinks Bella is dead, and, despite being 109 years old, he's a guy who doesn't really know what it is that he wants.

That old Three's Company paradox of a labyrinthine plot that could be straightened out if people talked directly to one another... Well, New Moon has that by the fistful. And judging by the response of the audience at the pre-opening night screening I attended, New Moon also has puppies and expensive Belgian chocolate and the finest of champagnes, because that's the kind of response it got.

I can't hate: this is certainly more consistent and visually interesting than its predecessor, and its overwrought silliness is infectious, like a Smiths B-side or mononucleisis. Check your brain at the door and enjoy...

At the movies: Breaking Dawn - Part I.

So, this movie you might have heard of opened this weekend.

As you can see above, it's nonstop hot Brazilian honeymoon action. But there are certainly some enjoyably campy facets. Read all about it within...

At the movies: Eclipse.

My review of the latest Twilight film, courtesy of the Nashville Scene.

Accomplishments, if you can call them that, and a grand frustration.

So, I did some things in 2008.

I was Crispin Glover's photo elf.

I got to see Xanadu on Broadway.

I had a political theory proven right within thirty minutes of McCain's concession speech.

I've made a successful go of not having channels or the Internet in my home.

I finally lost the Christmas spirit completely.

I read all of the Dune books.

I designed curricula for three different possible Cinema Studies classes.

I had two of my photographs published in an international publication (Remix Magazine, December 2008 issue).

I invested locally in two start-up businesses.

I got my certification as a sexually healthy human being (which everyone should do).

I learned how to drive a stick shift.

I survived (barely) the scuttling of All The Rage.

I created this blog.

I saw Bette Midler in Las Vegas.

I had an amazing interview/ongoing adventure with Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin.

I learned that Caesar's Pizza really is the best in Nashville.

I read all the Harry Potter books.

I soldiered on after my house flooded.

I went to the one local wedding I was invited to, but still bear some grumbly rage at the six or seven I was not invited to.

I added Naproxen and Flexeril to my pharmacopia because of freaky biofeedback in my arms.

I saw three hundred and eighty-nine films.

I bid farewell to Constacia, my 1996 Pontiac Grand Prix, and welcomed Brangwen, my 1990 Saab 900.

I lost my weight loss mojo.

I read all the Sookie Stackhouse books.

I never missed a scheduled work shift.

I'm apparently being added to a decently prestigious survey of critics (More on this as it develops).

And despite all this, I still haven't been able to finish the first Twilight book. I've been trying since the day I saw the movie, and I'm still a hundred and fifty or so pages from the end. I've never had this happen with a book before, and I'm utterly flummoxed. I'll say this, though, for Stephenie Meyer; she's the first author who made me think that her book could have its own drinking game, and here's how you do it: everytime Edward says "tell me what you're thinking," you take a drink. Though it's not my fault if you die of alcohol poisioning before anything happens in the book, which you will.

At the movies: Twilight.

Working from the first book in author Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Quartet, director Catherine Hardwicke (Lords of Dogtown, The Nativity Story) has crafted a moody and atmospheric tale of womanhood and burgeoning desire. Teenage Bella (Kristen Stewart, from Panic Room and The Safety of Objects), uprooted from Phoenix and spending the year with her father in the perpetually overcast Forks, Washington, finds herself drawn to the mysterious Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson, current subject of teenage girl riots throughout the country). Drawing on the universal themes of awakening desire, familial upheaval, and collective racial guilt, Meyer and Hardwicke present a new variation on the time-told legend of the blooddrinker. These vampires don’t avoid the sun because it brings death to them, but rather because it makes them glitter like Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie; naturally, they’ve settled in the Pacific Northwest. As always, Hardwicke knows how to get mood exactly right, as always, her grasp on the story is a little bit tenuous. It’s still refreshing, though, to see a film that understands that a heartfelt statement of commitment during a slow dance at the Prom is just as (if not more) important than a climactic showdown with lots of special effects. Major points for a left-of-field use of Muse’s “Supermassive Black Hole,” the return of Sarah (24’s Nina Meyers) Clarke, and for Billy Burke’s turn as Bella’s father, who shows that all the puncture wounds and nonconsensual blood donations in the world aren’t nearly as painful as a cruel turn of phrase from the past.