Breaking Dawn Pt. 1

My review of the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 is online at WEVancouver.com

Posted By: Andrea Warner

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PT. 1
Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner
Directed by Bill Condon

(Ed’s note: Spoilers ahead)
After plot points about Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 spilled like blood from Bella’s ripped C-section, even non-fans of the series had reason to believe that the fourth film would at least be an entertaining, action-packed WTF. So how can a film that features so many crazy, ridiculous, over-the-top elements — vamp-human sex, a demon baby, blood, gore and a wolf “imprinting” on said demon baby — be so freaking boring?

In part, it’s because Breaking Dawn seems like the ultimate love letter to its fans — Bella and Edward (Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson) get their dream wedding, while wolf-in-no-clothing Jacob (Taylor Lautner) is shirtless within the first 10 seconds — but it also has no qualms about taking those fans for granted. The film’s producers, writers and director know that it simply doesn’t matter. The Twihards will turn out in droves and lap it up without discernment or demand for something better. A terrible script, poor pacing, and lousy effects? So what? Bella gets her man.

As usual, author Stephanie Meyer and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg keep  punching feminism in its baby-maker with Bella’s “empowerment.” When Edward balks at turning her into a vampire she insists, saying, “Hopefully in a year I’m going to look in the mirror and see someone like you.” Then she literally has to cry and beg him to have sex with her on their honeymoon, stating she likes how he accidentally hurts her with his vampire strength. And finally she argues that if her demon fetus kills her it will all be worth it, basically because abortion is wrong, no matter how viciously Edward and Jacob spit out terse sentiments like, “Get it out! You think I could ever love it? I hate it!”

And honestly, that’s even without going into the absolutely ridiculous sanctioned pedophilia subplot that has Jacob, the new alpha wolf — you know he’s grown up because he can grow stubble — who charges in to kill Bella’s half-blood newborn and then “imprints” on her, forecasting a creepy future wherein she looks exactly like her mother and has no choice but to accept her fate as the intended vamp-human hybrid of a wolf-human.

Yep. Enjoy. — Andrea Warner

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson star in the third installment of the teen vampire series, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.

Credit: Supplied

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE

Directed by David Slade
Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner
It’s been three years since moviegoers were introduced to vampire Edward Cullen (ever-brooding Robert Pattinson), human-werewolf hybrid Jacob Black (the now perpetually shirtless Taylor Lautner), and the object of their rival affections, Bella (Kristen Stewart, no longer playing with her hair).

The franchise’s third installment, Eclipse finds Bella a month shy of graduating, but with even bigger changes on the horizon: Edward’s promised to turn her into a vampire if she’ll marry him, even though he’d rather keep her soul intact. (Later in the film, “soul” becomes a euphemism for “hymen.” Enjoy.) Bella’s safety becomes the catalyst for an uneasy alliance between the werewolves and the vampires, who band together against Victoria (a newly recast Bryce Dallas Howard), who, after two movies, is still hellbent on killing Bella to avenge the death of her lover in the first Twilight movie.

To say that this movie is better than its predecessors is faint praise, but it’ll have to do. The first Twilight looked amateur and cheap, and though the script seemed to suffer from the 2007-’08 writer’s strike, the sequel, New Moon, proved films based on a poorly written book series can’t be elevated much above the source material, no matter how hugely successful they are.

With Eclipse, screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg remains a faithful servant to author Stephenie Meyer’s juvenile prose. The repetitive scenes between the core three as they posture, declare their feelings, and rehash the past might please the Twihards, but anyone else will likely get a headache from all the eye-rolling. But under the hands of new director David Slade (Hard Candy), something unfathomable transpires: the movie gets interesting, exhibiting some narrative vibrancy as it attempts to throw off the shroud of terrible dialogue. As the action shifts away from ‘Who will Bella choose?’ and viewers are offered backstories as well as some fun werewolf-on-vampire fight sequences, we get the shape of something that resembles a decent film. —Andrea Warner

Twilight Saga: New Moon review

My review of New Moon appears online at WestEnder.com

Vampires love necking. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson star in The Twilight Saga: New Moon.

Credit: Supplied

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Posted By: Andrea Warner

11/20/2009 12:00 AM

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON
Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner
Directed by Chris Weitz

A sequel is rarely better than its predecessor, but new blood, new bodies, and the relative absence of Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) make this second installment of the Twilight Saga a marked improvement over the first.

New Moon picks up where Twilight left off. Moody and broody vampire Edward is professing his eternal love for the equally besotted high-school senior — and mortal — Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart). Thankfully, the declarations of devotion (it seems every sentence was lifted from a 14-year-old girl’s diary) only last a few minutes before Edward decides the only way to keep Bella safe from harm (that is, his family’s blood-lust and his own brute strength) is to abandon her — so that the vampires who swore revenge in the first film can come back to try to kill her like they promised. Yes, logic is a limited commodity, it seems, in the Twilight world.

Lonely and depressed, Bella turns to her friend, Jacob (Taylor Lautner), and there’s some lovely chemistry between the two as they forge a friendship that presses the “Will they or won’t they?” question, which is interrupted when Jacob pulls an Edward and tells Bella to stay away from him for her safety because he’s now a werewolf and part of a secret wolf pack. That doesn’t really deter Bella, though, since she has a new addiction to danger, But when Edward mistakenly believes Bella has died, he goes to the Volturi, the leaders of the entire vampire race, and begs them to end his life. Bella rushes to save him, and they’re forced to fight against head honcho Aro (a wonderfully campy Michael Sheen).

Though the storyline and dialogue are woefully inept, new director Chris Weitz brings a measure of sophistication to New Moon. A bigger budget certainly helps (particularly with regard to the CGI effects), and it’s to his credit that New Moon feels like a real big-screen event, and not just a movie of the week from the Sci-Fi channel.

Stewart is a good actress who’s often relegated to expressing Bella in one of two ways: quivering breaths to signal distress or saucy defiance to show rebellion. Lautner is charming and proves he’s more than just eye candy, though he spends much of New Moon showing off his crazy new physique (when not in full snarling, furry fury, his wardrobe mostly consists of cut-off jean shorts and that’s it). Pattinson, who’s out of his acting league next to Stewart and Lautner, isn’t given much to do except smoulder and glower. Amusingly, he’s filmed almost exclusively in either slow motion or whip-fast fight sequences.

At 140 minutes, New Moon does start to wane during the last half hour — incidentally, when the vampire action kicks into high gear. The fangs just aren’t sharp enough this time around, but the canine claws prove this franchise has a few hidden pleasures in its cheesy, Harlequin-lite depths. ★★

Anna Kendrick and Kellan Lutz talk Twilight: New Moon

My interviews with Anna Kendrick and Kellan Lutz appear in this week's WE.

Undying and undead love: Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and Bella Swan (Kristin Stewart) in Twilight Saga: New Moon.

Credit: supplied

New Moon Rising

By Andrea Warner

Twilight fan or not, chances are you know that vampire Edward Cullen’s (Robert Pattinson) undying love for mortal Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) gets the sequel treatment this Friday, November 20, when The Twilight Saga: New Moon hits a full fifth of all the movie screens in Canada.

It’s been just four years since the first book in Stephanie Meyer’s four-part Twilight series was published, and one year since the first Twilight film opened and became an instant blockbuster. In that time, the film’s leads have become part of Hollywood’s elite. Even supporting cast members became overnight celebrities, with other film and television offers pouring in.

Kellan Lutz, who plays Edward’s vampire “brother” Emmet Cullen, has parlayed his success into a role on 90210, and has several other projects in the works. But even he admits he had no idea what he was getting into when he signed on for Twilight.

“I didn’t know it was a book series,” Lutz laughs, in an interview with WE. “I thought the script was cool. They wanted me to audition for Edward, and I was like, ‘No, he’s too depressing.’”

Anna Kendrick, who plays Jessica Stanley, Bella’s best friend, is generating early Oscar buzz for her role alongside George Clooney in the forthcoming feature, Up in the Air. She has certainly benefitted from the Twilight exposure. But, due to the first film’s popularity, filming Twilight and New Moon was like night and day. It wasn’t just the locale changes (New Moon filmed in Vancouver, Twilight in Oregon) or the upheaval when Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke was replaced with Chris Weitz; it was that everyone associated with Twilight was suddenly super-famous.

“There were logistical problems,” Kendrick says to WE. “The added presence of fans and paparazzi made it interesting. Filming scenes where what you see is just Kristen and me walk down a street, but right outside the frame is just hundreds of girls watching — it made it a little tricky to get over that for the first couple of takes.”

Twilight fans have been among the most vocal and loyal in pop culture recently, calling themselves Twihards and starting Twilight conventions (or, according to many fanboy complaints, taking over established conventions altogether). Advance ticket sales for New Moon’s opening day have, as of press time, reached $1.5 million, and fans are clamouring to see how the film’s central plot — a brewing love triangle between Edward, Bella, and werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) — unfolds.

Even the film’s stars have found themselves caught up in the ‘Who Should Bella Choose?’ conundrum.

“I’m hardcore Team Jacob,” Kendrick says. “Obviously, Edward Cullen is kind of too perfect to exist in real life. It’s a fantasy, an escape for these girls.”

“I can’t really say much about [what draws women in], because I’m a guy, and I don’t really understand women 100 per cent,” Lutz laughs. “But I think anyone can relate. You want what you can’t have, in a way. The Jacob character — everyone thinks that’s great in the beginning, but it gets too old when someone’s like, ‘Oh, I love you, you’re amazing.’ You want the bad boy.”

Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter who Bella chooses, as the fans have already devoured the books, and simply want to see how their favourite characters come to life. And those fans will be right back in the same place six months down the road, when Twilight: Eclipse opens — to likely decimate box-office records again. See you then.