I need a happier post up here because every time I think about my friend's sister's baby, I start to cry. So I'll tell you something ridiculous.
My apartment in West Hollywood with Li-Wei had the sort of floor-to-ceiling walls of mirrors that I absolutely hate about LA apartments. No matter where you looked, you could see yourself, and it was awful. But because of this, I never needed a full=length mirror, so I never bothered to get one. Now, though, our apartment has exactly one mirror, the one on the bathroom medicine cabinet, and I need a full-length mirror for my room. I figured I'd take the one that was in my closet in San Francisco, since it doesn't get used by anyone anymore. I meant to bring it back after Thanksgiving, but I forgot... I did, however, open my closet to look at it, forgetting that I had plastered the rim of the mirror with cut-out pictures of cute boys from magazines.
It was perhaps the funniest thing I've ever seen. I'll have to post pictures when I get back for Christmas. My 14-year-old self had put up pictures of all the celebrity boys I loved. The list includes, among others:
Leonardo DiCaprio (DUH- love of my adolescent life)
David Duchovny (OTHER love of my adolescent life)
Ewan McGregor (who is still on my List of Famous People I'd Marry No Questions Asked)
Scott Wolfe (whatever happened to him?)
Noah Wyle (hahahahahahaha)
Matthew Fox
Ethan Embry, formerly Ethan Randall
and, this is the funniest one of all...
Ilya Kulik (yes, the ice skater. Yes, the one who is in Center Stage and yes, the one who is probably gay.)
Also scotch-taped all over the mirror and the closet door are words and pictures that I thought were cool and edgy. It's really quite priceless- I'm almost sad to dismantle it, as it means dismantling a piece of my past, but in the long run I think it's better that the mirror gets used. And of course I'll document it with pictures. Too bad I never documented my wall o' X-Files press clippings with pictures, or my door covered in sexy Leonardo DiCaprio pictures.
Edit 12/10/08: After consulting with Top Advisers Julia and Larkin, I have decided NOT to dismantle the mirror's decorations and instead to leave it up as a testament to my youth, for my future children to laugh at and enjoy. I'll have to go to IKEA and get a mirror or something.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
if you can
I know that this holiday is a lot tighter, money-wise, than most- it's true for all of us. Still, I wanted to pass along notice of a very worthy charity, should you be looking for something to donate to this year.
The following is from an email sent by a friend whose sister and brother-in-law recently lost their 5 day old baby due to developmental complications:
"My sister and her husband have dedicated themselves to raising money to help the pediatric unit of the London hospital that took care of Zoe. We are not expecting you to give--we know how tight money is for us right now--I just wanted you to know about it.
Here is the website where you can contribute: http://www.justgiving.com/zoeedwards"
And here is the blog my sister kept: http://www.zoeandus.blogspot.com/"
Less sad things soon, promise.
The following is from an email sent by a friend whose sister and brother-in-law recently lost their 5 day old baby due to developmental complications:
"My sister and her husband have dedicated themselves to raising money to help the pediatric unit of the London hospital that took care of Zoe. We are not expecting you to give--we know how tight money is for us right now--I just wanted you to know about it.
Here is the website where you can contribute: http://www.justgiving.com/zoeedwards"
And here is the blog my sister kept: http://www.zoeandus.blogspot.com/"
Less sad things soon, promise.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
WHY WON'T MY HAIR GROW??
In the midst of my quest to once again have long hair, and given the fact that my hair is now in this horrible sort of almost-longish mullet stage (reminiscent of when I was little), I have stumbled upon this graphic, and it rang incredibly true:
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Umami!
I have to work backwards in time for a couple days here to catch up on the important things I haven't written about, namely the feature I worked on, Thanksgiving, and the movies I saw over Thanksgiving weekend. So to start, let's talk about the feature.
This was the first feature Will has shot, and I ended up gaffing it despite the fact that there are any number of other people he probably would have preferred to have gaff it. That aside, I think it turned out pretty well. It was directed by Philip Crippen, whom I was always afraid of in college. He was a grad student when I was at NU and graduated when I was a junior, I believe. I worked on his thesis project there, The Roaring Twenties, kind of randomely for a day or two as a 2nd AC. He was also the TA for 380 when I was taking 381, so I had labs with him and Adam Marshall, and he always seemed way cooler than me so I barely knew him at all before this shoot. Now, of course, I am a huge Philip Crippen fan, and I'm really glad I got to know him better ad got to work on this movie, because it was one of the best sets I've been on in a long time.
Not production-wise, necessarily- the crafty was scarce, the 1st AD was non-existent, and the crew was really small- but the crew that there was, along with the actors in the film, turned out to become some of the best people I've met on a set. It was my first experience with how working on a short for 5 days and working on a feature for two weeks (or more) can really make a difference in how you get to know people. I have never really become friends with actors on a set before, but these actors were so much fun, and it was such a small group of people working every day that we all became friends. That alone made the shoot a lot of fun. Sure, there were not so fun parts- like the fact that Philip and his girlfriend live in an apartmet complex basically on a stairstep street in Silverlake, which served as our set, and there were 87 steps just to get to their front door. But the good far outweighed the bad.
I've told both Will and Philip this, and a few others, but it was the first set I've worked on since being in LA on which I was virtually positive that the resulting film would be good. Working on student films is strange because they could end up great, or they could end up just so-so, and some of them end up horribly- you just never know. Umami! (a working title, I hope) is a romantic screwball comedy about an uptight hypnotist who moves into an apartment where a moonshiner has been squatting. The crazy landlord, a doting girl, a caffeine addict, and the police all get involved in one way or another, and in the end, of course, the hypnotist and the moonshiner fall in love. Don't worry, I haven't ruined anything- it's the sort of movie where you're rooting for them to fall in love from the beginning. It's the journey that matters. The script is absolutely hilarious, and the actors absolutely threw themselves into it. There were multiple takes that were unusable because one person or another started laughing halfway through- more often than not it was Will, and you could see the camera shaking (the camera work was largely handheld). It was awfully nice to be on a set where people laughed so much and didn't take themselves so goddamn seriously.
This is, technically, the "biggest" thing I've ever gaffed. I didn't gaff much in college outside of Wizzer, because I mostly did camera stuff. My first year at AFI I gaffed Chris Burgon's Cycle 1, which basically involved putting lights exactly where he told me to put them, and Mark Ingham's Cycle 3, which involved lots of hard backlight and not much else. Then I gaffed Richard's MOS for a day, but that's it, really. It was really exciting to be doing something on a larger scale, although we ultimately had less equipment than even a Cycle project. It didn't matter, though- we made it go far. It was a good exercise in fast, efficient but nice lighting. I think Will and I both ended up learning a fair bit about low-profile sets and how to work with them... which is good, because I'm about to shoot a VERY low profile NYFA thesis film, on which I have basically no crew.
I barely had any crew on Umami! either, but I had some... on most days at least one recent Northwestern grad would show up to grip for me. The producer just graduated from Northwestern, so she got a lot of her friends to help out. They basically knew what they were doing, but they really reminded me exactly how much we learned at Northwestern, and the answer is NOT MUCH. They all knew how a C-stand worked, and to put the knuckles on the right, for example, but they didn't know how to set one efficiently or so that it would take up the smallest possible area. I spent a lot of time re-setting C-stands so that the arms weren't poking out into the middle of the room, waiting to gouge someone's eye out, or re-wrangling cable, etc. The great thing about the Northwestern kids (Mark, Aziza, Malcolm and Bruce... Malcolm, Aziza and Bruce all worked on The Rhimers of Eldritch my senior year!) was how enthusiastic they were. I legitimately enjoyed hanging out with them, which was great. There were a lot of Northwestern kids on set in general, and that was really refreshing after being so immersed in the "professional" world of AFI. AFI sets are fun and all, but Northwestern sets always seemed to be a little more... joyous. People looked at it less as a job and more as WE ARE MAKING A MOVIE WOOOOOOOOO!!!! Which is a nice change of pace.
But like I said, the best thing about Umami! was the people I got to work with, and the fact that I got to spend Will's last two weeks in LA working with him. He moved to New York a couple days ago, for who knows how long, and I'm going to miss him like crazy. There are only so many people in the world who went to both Northwestern AND AFI... thank goodness I still have Kevin. Anyway, the crew all loved each other so much that we went out to a karaoke bar the night we wrapped, and tomorrow we're all going bowling. Dorky, but fun, and I'm really looking forward to it. I hope I end up keeping in touch with all these people.
And now, the requisite pictures:
me, Dan (Aki the landlord), Whitney (Win the moonshiner), Levi (Cal the hypnotist), and Will, shooting the Win hypnotism scene... check out the soft box I built to use as an eyelight! It was pretty killer if I do say so myself.
Win being hypnotized by Cal
Justin (the sound guy) and Philip
Levi and Will shooting a scene in the bathroom (and my softbox at work AGAIN... but it doesn't do as well with photo floods so that will take some tinkering)
Levi, Trevor, Dan, Whitney and Molly as Cal, Tommy, Aki, Win and Cookie
Philip being a French Guyanese drug lord
out of moonshine!
maybe my favorite picture... this was the last scene we shot, the "tofrab" scene
main actress, DP and director with Jack Daniels upon wrap
This was the first feature Will has shot, and I ended up gaffing it despite the fact that there are any number of other people he probably would have preferred to have gaff it. That aside, I think it turned out pretty well. It was directed by Philip Crippen, whom I was always afraid of in college. He was a grad student when I was at NU and graduated when I was a junior, I believe. I worked on his thesis project there, The Roaring Twenties, kind of randomely for a day or two as a 2nd AC. He was also the TA for 380 when I was taking 381, so I had labs with him and Adam Marshall, and he always seemed way cooler than me so I barely knew him at all before this shoot. Now, of course, I am a huge Philip Crippen fan, and I'm really glad I got to know him better ad got to work on this movie, because it was one of the best sets I've been on in a long time.
Not production-wise, necessarily- the crafty was scarce, the 1st AD was non-existent, and the crew was really small- but the crew that there was, along with the actors in the film, turned out to become some of the best people I've met on a set. It was my first experience with how working on a short for 5 days and working on a feature for two weeks (or more) can really make a difference in how you get to know people. I have never really become friends with actors on a set before, but these actors were so much fun, and it was such a small group of people working every day that we all became friends. That alone made the shoot a lot of fun. Sure, there were not so fun parts- like the fact that Philip and his girlfriend live in an apartmet complex basically on a stairstep street in Silverlake, which served as our set, and there were 87 steps just to get to their front door. But the good far outweighed the bad.
I've told both Will and Philip this, and a few others, but it was the first set I've worked on since being in LA on which I was virtually positive that the resulting film would be good. Working on student films is strange because they could end up great, or they could end up just so-so, and some of them end up horribly- you just never know. Umami! (a working title, I hope) is a romantic screwball comedy about an uptight hypnotist who moves into an apartment where a moonshiner has been squatting. The crazy landlord, a doting girl, a caffeine addict, and the police all get involved in one way or another, and in the end, of course, the hypnotist and the moonshiner fall in love. Don't worry, I haven't ruined anything- it's the sort of movie where you're rooting for them to fall in love from the beginning. It's the journey that matters. The script is absolutely hilarious, and the actors absolutely threw themselves into it. There were multiple takes that were unusable because one person or another started laughing halfway through- more often than not it was Will, and you could see the camera shaking (the camera work was largely handheld). It was awfully nice to be on a set where people laughed so much and didn't take themselves so goddamn seriously.
This is, technically, the "biggest" thing I've ever gaffed. I didn't gaff much in college outside of Wizzer, because I mostly did camera stuff. My first year at AFI I gaffed Chris Burgon's Cycle 1, which basically involved putting lights exactly where he told me to put them, and Mark Ingham's Cycle 3, which involved lots of hard backlight and not much else. Then I gaffed Richard's MOS for a day, but that's it, really. It was really exciting to be doing something on a larger scale, although we ultimately had less equipment than even a Cycle project. It didn't matter, though- we made it go far. It was a good exercise in fast, efficient but nice lighting. I think Will and I both ended up learning a fair bit about low-profile sets and how to work with them... which is good, because I'm about to shoot a VERY low profile NYFA thesis film, on which I have basically no crew.
I barely had any crew on Umami! either, but I had some... on most days at least one recent Northwestern grad would show up to grip for me. The producer just graduated from Northwestern, so she got a lot of her friends to help out. They basically knew what they were doing, but they really reminded me exactly how much we learned at Northwestern, and the answer is NOT MUCH. They all knew how a C-stand worked, and to put the knuckles on the right, for example, but they didn't know how to set one efficiently or so that it would take up the smallest possible area. I spent a lot of time re-setting C-stands so that the arms weren't poking out into the middle of the room, waiting to gouge someone's eye out, or re-wrangling cable, etc. The great thing about the Northwestern kids (Mark, Aziza, Malcolm and Bruce... Malcolm, Aziza and Bruce all worked on The Rhimers of Eldritch my senior year!) was how enthusiastic they were. I legitimately enjoyed hanging out with them, which was great. There were a lot of Northwestern kids on set in general, and that was really refreshing after being so immersed in the "professional" world of AFI. AFI sets are fun and all, but Northwestern sets always seemed to be a little more... joyous. People looked at it less as a job and more as WE ARE MAKING A MOVIE WOOOOOOOOO!!!! Which is a nice change of pace.
But like I said, the best thing about Umami! was the people I got to work with, and the fact that I got to spend Will's last two weeks in LA working with him. He moved to New York a couple days ago, for who knows how long, and I'm going to miss him like crazy. There are only so many people in the world who went to both Northwestern AND AFI... thank goodness I still have Kevin. Anyway, the crew all loved each other so much that we went out to a karaoke bar the night we wrapped, and tomorrow we're all going bowling. Dorky, but fun, and I'm really looking forward to it. I hope I end up keeping in touch with all these people.
And now, the requisite pictures:
me, Dan (Aki the landlord), Whitney (Win the moonshiner), Levi (Cal the hypnotist), and Will, shooting the Win hypnotism scene... check out the soft box I built to use as an eyelight! It was pretty killer if I do say so myself.
Win being hypnotized by Cal
Justin (the sound guy) and Philip
Levi and Will shooting a scene in the bathroom (and my softbox at work AGAIN... but it doesn't do as well with photo floods so that will take some tinkering)
Levi, Trevor, Dan, Whitney and Molly as Cal, Tommy, Aki, Win and Cookie
Philip being a French Guyanese drug lord
out of moonshine!
maybe my favorite picture... this was the last scene we shot, the "tofrab" scene
main actress, DP and director with Jack Daniels upon wrap
Saturday, November 29, 2008
more on real things tomorrow...
I never thought I'd be happy to see a schmaltzy Christmas movie kick a vampire movie out of the #1 spot, but it looks like Twilight was only on top for a week.
In the words of Elizabeth Bennett, "I am sorry to be harsh on any of my sex, but..." BUT MAYBE YOU SHOULD GROW A BRAIN AND STOP SIMPERING ABOUT WAITING FOR DASHING VAMPIRES TO SWEEP YOU OFF YOU FEET.
In the words of Elizabeth Bennett, "I am sorry to be harsh on any of my sex, but..." BUT MAYBE YOU SHOULD GROW A BRAIN AND STOP SIMPERING ABOUT WAITING FOR DASHING VAMPIRES TO SWEEP YOU OFF YOU FEET.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
but first, vampires
It started a couple months ago when Tim and I were on the phone, discussing the abysmally dull upcoming movie season. The film version of Twilight came up, and one or the other of us mentioned that we felt obligated to read the best-selling book before the movie came out- the other one agreed. And then I do believe it was me who suggested we both buy and read Twilight at the same time, so that we would have someone with whom to commiserate. The only thing I knew about the book at the time was that it was a best-seller for teens about vampires, and that Joey had hated it so much he had returned the book to the book store, claiming he didn't want to have it in his house. Nevertheless, we both went out and bought the book and hunkered down to read.
I read the first five chapters or so very quickly, admittedly intrigued by the book's premise. The writing was bad, and for the most part the day-to-day happenings were boring, but the concept was ok- girl moves to a new, small town and is suddenly admired by everyone at school, and eventually falls for the hot enigmatic guy in her biology class, who oh yeah, just happens to be a vampire. The teenaged girl in me recognized how romantic all that was, and so I, just like the scads of tweens and teens across the country, found myself sort of falling for Edward Cullen The Vampire. Nevermind that Bella, the main character, was a whiny little superior brat - I got the Edward thing, and why Bella was in love with him. Tim, on the other hand, mentioned that he could "actually feel the book sucking hormones out of him."
So things started out kinda meh but kinda ok, but then OH DEAR GOD the whole thing took a turn for the unbelievably sappy, with endless passages devoted to "oh, Edward is sooooooo pretty, I love him and his white skin and his topaz eys and oh my gosh, when he leaves I am SO SAD, I don't ever want to do anything in my whole life except moon about with Edward." I didn't try to count the number of times Bella claims she stopped breathing when Edward looked at her, but if I had, the result would be very pathetic indeed.
When I was a kid I read the Little House on the Prairie series with my dad, and in one of the later books there is an entire chapter about one brown poplin dress. I think the chapter may even be called "The Brown Poplin." It went into endless detail about this one damn dress, and was dreadfully dull. I couldn't have been more than 7 when we read that, but to this day brown poplin springs to mind whenever someone goes into unnecessary, overlong detail about any particular thing. I thought about the brown poplin a lot while I was reading Twilight. Not only are the chunks of drivel about how PRETTY and AWESOME and GORGEOUS Edward is very boring, they also combine to make the book just about the most anti-feminist text I have ever read. I didn't know that the book was written by a Mormon until AFTER I had read it, or I might have suspected the lack of feminisim, but as it was I was frankly appalled throughout the entire thing. It deeply saddens me that this is the sort of book young girls are embracing in this country. Can't someone get them a Babysitter's Club book and let them read about girls taking action?
What offended me perhaps even more than the giant step backwards the book takes is how, about 2/3 of the way through, it suddenly decided to have a plot. The last third of the book introduces a Bad Guy Vampire and suddenly there is a great deal of drama and running about and fighting and of course LOVING EDWARD EVER SO MUCH.
We agreed, wholeheartedly, that it would be really really hard for Twilight the movie to be as bad as Twilight the book... and we were right, although please don't take that to mean I'm saying the movie was good. When I first saw the trailer I was skeptical as to most of the casting choices, particularly the two leads, Kristin Stewart and Robert "Cedric Diggory" Pattinson. Turns out, I was right about one of them and not the other- Kristin Stewart is EXACTLY as annoying as she appears to be in the trailers, with little to no acting skills. Everything she says she says in the same sort of half-pained voice. Robert Pattinson, on the other hand, did a good job as Edward. He wasn't GREAT- indeed, the script was bad enough to make almost any actor bad- but I can't come up with a young, cute actor who would have been a better fit. There just aren't a whole lot of them out there- they can't cast singing, dancing Zac Efron, because he's not brooding enough, Jamie Bell is too twerpy looking no matter how cute he is, and Shia Labeouf- well, is Shia Labeouf. Who else is there? I'm legitimately asking! I would love to be able to ponder someone else in the role.
(EDIT: imdb tells me that Stephanie Meyers' first choice to play Edward was Henry Cavill, who is on The Tudors. I have never seen the show, but looking at the pictures, he sure would be cute enough. I guess they didn't go with him cause he's too old, which is valid, but kind of too bad. Still, I don't think Robert Pattinson was all that bad, and he had a great fake American accent to boot.)
The rest of the cast was fairly mediocre- Bella's dad, played by Billy Burke, was pretty good, but other than that, the movie seemed to be asking us to simply agree that the people they had cast LOOKED the part, rather than actually exuding the character. And with a couple exceptions (Peter Facinelli being chief among them), the cast DID look their parts, but that should never be enough. I feel like I could recast the entire movie right here and now and the resulting version would be scads better. I'd start with replacing Peter Facinelli with Michael Vartan and Kristen Stewart with Jenna Malone.
Oh lord, what else. I am aware that this "review" has little to no structure, and for that I apologize, but it is dificult to not rant about how bad this book/movie franchise is. One of the main things the movie does better than the book (and there are quite a few of them) is that it introduces the Bad Guy Vampire Clan way earlier than the book did, and thus lends the film some semblance of a plot. The main thing that the movie does WORSE than the book is that where the book lacked notable passion and chemistry between the two main characters, the movie is missing it entirely. You'd think that if you were handed this source novel and told "make this into a movie teenaged girls will swoon for," you'd try to instill at least a LITTLE bit of passion into the screenplay, wouldn't you? But no. The screenplay is, if possible, even more perplexingly boring than the original material, perhaps because a lot of the dialogue is lifted directly from the book. In my mind I could make it read with some sort of inflection, but on screen, the actors read it for me, and read it with zero emotion.
On a final note, the cinematography is simply boring. The DP, Elliot Davis, decided that everything should be very blue, so as to evoke the "cold" feeling of living in the Pacific Northwest and hanging out with vampires. Sure. Fine. Whatever. It sort of works in some ways. What DOESN'T work about it is that the BLUE BLUE BLUE is not offset by anything. Knowing the book as I do, the perfect scene in which to do this would be when Edward takes Bella into a mountain meadow to show her what happens to his skin when he is out in the sun (answer: he gets super sparkly! And Bella loves him MORE!). A scene showcasing sun when the rest of the movie takes place under a cover of clouds? What a great time to use warm, golden lighting to make a point of how special and romantic that moment is? But no. Not only is the scene re-set to be in the middle of a forest with mere shafts of light, the shafts of light themselves are pretty much still blue. How boring. That about sums up the cinematography in the film, if not the film itself.
The two best parts were a) the short scene when Edward drives Bella to school and is wearing sunglasses and puts his arm around her when everyone stares, and b) the massive frame full of graduation caps in the Cullen's house, accompanied by the line "We matriculate a lot." That was clever.
Other than that, you can probably skip both the book and the movie. What does it say about me, though, that I read the sequel to Twilight, New Moon? It says I am a sucker for serials in which I am already familiar with the characters and don't have to work at reading them at all. It's shameful, but true.
I have to copy Tim in his review and encourage everyone who wants to see a good quality vampire movie to go see Let The Right One In, which is everything a vampire movie should be and more.
I read the first five chapters or so very quickly, admittedly intrigued by the book's premise. The writing was bad, and for the most part the day-to-day happenings were boring, but the concept was ok- girl moves to a new, small town and is suddenly admired by everyone at school, and eventually falls for the hot enigmatic guy in her biology class, who oh yeah, just happens to be a vampire. The teenaged girl in me recognized how romantic all that was, and so I, just like the scads of tweens and teens across the country, found myself sort of falling for Edward Cullen The Vampire. Nevermind that Bella, the main character, was a whiny little superior brat - I got the Edward thing, and why Bella was in love with him. Tim, on the other hand, mentioned that he could "actually feel the book sucking hormones out of him."
So things started out kinda meh but kinda ok, but then OH DEAR GOD the whole thing took a turn for the unbelievably sappy, with endless passages devoted to "oh, Edward is sooooooo pretty, I love him and his white skin and his topaz eys and oh my gosh, when he leaves I am SO SAD, I don't ever want to do anything in my whole life except moon about with Edward." I didn't try to count the number of times Bella claims she stopped breathing when Edward looked at her, but if I had, the result would be very pathetic indeed.
When I was a kid I read the Little House on the Prairie series with my dad, and in one of the later books there is an entire chapter about one brown poplin dress. I think the chapter may even be called "The Brown Poplin." It went into endless detail about this one damn dress, and was dreadfully dull. I couldn't have been more than 7 when we read that, but to this day brown poplin springs to mind whenever someone goes into unnecessary, overlong detail about any particular thing. I thought about the brown poplin a lot while I was reading Twilight. Not only are the chunks of drivel about how PRETTY and AWESOME and GORGEOUS Edward is very boring, they also combine to make the book just about the most anti-feminist text I have ever read. I didn't know that the book was written by a Mormon until AFTER I had read it, or I might have suspected the lack of feminisim, but as it was I was frankly appalled throughout the entire thing. It deeply saddens me that this is the sort of book young girls are embracing in this country. Can't someone get them a Babysitter's Club book and let them read about girls taking action?
What offended me perhaps even more than the giant step backwards the book takes is how, about 2/3 of the way through, it suddenly decided to have a plot. The last third of the book introduces a Bad Guy Vampire and suddenly there is a great deal of drama and running about and fighting and of course LOVING EDWARD EVER SO MUCH.
We agreed, wholeheartedly, that it would be really really hard for Twilight the movie to be as bad as Twilight the book... and we were right, although please don't take that to mean I'm saying the movie was good. When I first saw the trailer I was skeptical as to most of the casting choices, particularly the two leads, Kristin Stewart and Robert "Cedric Diggory" Pattinson. Turns out, I was right about one of them and not the other- Kristin Stewart is EXACTLY as annoying as she appears to be in the trailers, with little to no acting skills. Everything she says she says in the same sort of half-pained voice. Robert Pattinson, on the other hand, did a good job as Edward. He wasn't GREAT- indeed, the script was bad enough to make almost any actor bad- but I can't come up with a young, cute actor who would have been a better fit. There just aren't a whole lot of them out there- they can't cast singing, dancing Zac Efron, because he's not brooding enough, Jamie Bell is too twerpy looking no matter how cute he is, and Shia Labeouf- well, is Shia Labeouf. Who else is there? I'm legitimately asking! I would love to be able to ponder someone else in the role.
(EDIT: imdb tells me that Stephanie Meyers' first choice to play Edward was Henry Cavill, who is on The Tudors. I have never seen the show, but looking at the pictures, he sure would be cute enough. I guess they didn't go with him cause he's too old, which is valid, but kind of too bad. Still, I don't think Robert Pattinson was all that bad, and he had a great fake American accent to boot.)
The rest of the cast was fairly mediocre- Bella's dad, played by Billy Burke, was pretty good, but other than that, the movie seemed to be asking us to simply agree that the people they had cast LOOKED the part, rather than actually exuding the character. And with a couple exceptions (Peter Facinelli being chief among them), the cast DID look their parts, but that should never be enough. I feel like I could recast the entire movie right here and now and the resulting version would be scads better. I'd start with replacing Peter Facinelli with Michael Vartan and Kristen Stewart with Jenna Malone.
Oh lord, what else. I am aware that this "review" has little to no structure, and for that I apologize, but it is dificult to not rant about how bad this book/movie franchise is. One of the main things the movie does better than the book (and there are quite a few of them) is that it introduces the Bad Guy Vampire Clan way earlier than the book did, and thus lends the film some semblance of a plot. The main thing that the movie does WORSE than the book is that where the book lacked notable passion and chemistry between the two main characters, the movie is missing it entirely. You'd think that if you were handed this source novel and told "make this into a movie teenaged girls will swoon for," you'd try to instill at least a LITTLE bit of passion into the screenplay, wouldn't you? But no. The screenplay is, if possible, even more perplexingly boring than the original material, perhaps because a lot of the dialogue is lifted directly from the book. In my mind I could make it read with some sort of inflection, but on screen, the actors read it for me, and read it with zero emotion.
On a final note, the cinematography is simply boring. The DP, Elliot Davis, decided that everything should be very blue, so as to evoke the "cold" feeling of living in the Pacific Northwest and hanging out with vampires. Sure. Fine. Whatever. It sort of works in some ways. What DOESN'T work about it is that the BLUE BLUE BLUE is not offset by anything. Knowing the book as I do, the perfect scene in which to do this would be when Edward takes Bella into a mountain meadow to show her what happens to his skin when he is out in the sun (answer: he gets super sparkly! And Bella loves him MORE!). A scene showcasing sun when the rest of the movie takes place under a cover of clouds? What a great time to use warm, golden lighting to make a point of how special and romantic that moment is? But no. Not only is the scene re-set to be in the middle of a forest with mere shafts of light, the shafts of light themselves are pretty much still blue. How boring. That about sums up the cinematography in the film, if not the film itself.
The two best parts were a) the short scene when Edward drives Bella to school and is wearing sunglasses and puts his arm around her when everyone stares, and b) the massive frame full of graduation caps in the Cullen's house, accompanied by the line "We matriculate a lot." That was clever.
Other than that, you can probably skip both the book and the movie. What does it say about me, though, that I read the sequel to Twilight, New Moon? It says I am a sucker for serials in which I am already familiar with the characters and don't have to work at reading them at all. It's shameful, but true.
I have to copy Tim in his review and encourage everyone who wants to see a good quality vampire movie to go see Let The Right One In, which is everything a vampire movie should be and more.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Let The Right One In
I saw an awesome Swedish vampire movie a few weeks ago, and ever since I have been meaning to write a post on it, but of course I never got around to it, and now Tim has written an amazing review of it. I of course could never match Tim's writing on film (or, for that matter, his writing on anything), so I urge you to go read Tim's review of Let The Right One In, and then go see the movie. It's one of the most original movies I've seen in a long time.
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