Wake up with a wicked fuckin' hangover around 11:30 or so. I'm out of Advil and am not even remotely close to taking a trip out to purchase some, so I just down a bottle of water and lay in bed for a bit channel surfing. Sometimes you just gotta take a hangover like a fuckin' champ and roll with it. It's tough, but I manage.
As I'm laying in bed flipping through channels, I start to realize that there is absolutely NOTHING on TV this particular Sunday morning (or afternoon if you wanna be a dick about it). I scroll through our movie channels (Encore, Showtime, and Starz), and the ONLY fucking movie on that I have even heard of, fuck my life, is Twilight. Fail. I contemplate getting out of bed to peruse my extensive DVD collection, but my headache and stomach feel so out of whack that I opt to not even stand up, leaving Twilight as the only option.
Now, here's where my Twilight story begins. I first heard of this teen-angst phenomenon back in the summer of '08, when my friend Sammy was obsessed with the books. We were at a party one night and all got so fucking bombed that her and I sat on the back porch for almost two hours talking about movies and sharing which ones we had seen/hadn't seen/should see/should run far away from, etc. Soon enough, she starts going off on this tangent involving this fucking book called Twilight. She explains the story to me, all about how it deals with forbidden love and vampires and shit. Granted I was more than half in the bag at that point in the evening, Sammy sold a pretty fuckin' convincing story and it had me intrigued. Not interested, but intrigued. Later on in the wee small hours of the morning, everyone was passing out and Sammy and I were the only two troopers still going strong. That's when she suggests we go into the spare bedroom where she can read a few passages from this book that she swears I will love.
And, sure enough, I'll probably be ridiculed for this as a man, we literally just laid in the bed while she proceeds to read me select chapters from this fucking book, making me feel like a fucking three-year-old all over again. She pretty much read my to sleep, bless her heart.
Now, the book, indeed, was about forbidden love and shit, a subject that I kinda dig. I'm down with the whole Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet type story. But what she failed to mention, in the midst of selling the book to me earlier, was that it was a story of forbidden love told through the lives of the biggest angst-ridden tweens. All the chicks were whiny and bitchy... and totally prude. All the dudes were total lonely pussies, waiting for that "special girl" who never seemed to present herself, leading them to have total confidence issues and ask the tired old self-loathing question, "Is there something wrong with me?" It's a high school jagged little pill that I just cannot bring myself to swallow.
After that night, I made up my mind that Twilght was not for me. What I didn't know was that it wasn't just Sammy who had stumbled upon this tween-angst gem, but it was quickly turning into sort of a cult following... a cult following that was the basis for the release of the film adaptation that was due in theaters that winter. Needless to say, I didn't see the movie when it was released. I did, however, attempt to watch it when it was released on DVD sometime last year. I'm the kind of guy that needs to see a movie before I slam it, otherwise my insults and negative opinions hold no water, as I didn't actually experience it. I tried watching the movie and ended up shutting it off within the first twenty minutes. Yeah... it was that bad.
Which brings us to today. The movie was already about ten minutes in, leaving another ten minutes until reaching the point I never made it past in my first screening attempt. Much to my surprise, however, I was able to make it, not only past where I gave up the first time, but until the very end. Credits rolling. I did it. Hooray me.
Now I can finally give my total unbiased review on the tween angst phenomenon that we have all come to know as Twilight.
The movie sucked ass...
For a number of reasons...
First of all, being a somewhat avid fan of the "vampire" genre, I was really disappointed at how much this movie completely destroys any and all of the legends that have been passed down from generation to generation pertaining to these demons of the night. I mean, fuckin' a, Edward Cullen, the vampire "love interest", and his entire family, are fucking vegetarian vampires? What the shit is that?! And, not to mention, the fact that the whole goddamn movie takes place in Washington, where there conveniently is little sunlight... very fucking clever. And it's pretty fucking stereotypical that all these "groups" are divided up into little high school cliques. All the prude chicks hang out with whiny pussy dudes and they all flirt with each other like grade-school kids. All the "vampires" are dressed in all sorts of goth clothes. You know who they are, the kids in high school who would all dress in black clothes and sit on the floor in the hallway, never speaking a word to one another, blaring their Paramore and Linkin Park CD's, thinking to themselves how the world will never understand them. Give me a fuckin' break. No wonder the entire soundtrack is filled with nu-metal gems.
The acting is atrocious. Kristen Stewart's take on Isabella "Bella" Swan is one of the most annoying portrayals I have ever witnessed. The broad can't ever hold a conversation with someone without turning her head away in embarrassment. Through the entire two hour film, I think she made eye contact with characters for a total of three minutes. Robert Pattinson's take on the hunky vampire Edward Cullen is completely uninspired and lacks any integrity, delivering each line like a fucking cardboard cut-out with a string attached to a voice box that, when pulled, delivers a line from the book, all while the cardboard picture stares back at you blankly without ever showing an emotion. The other vampires were equally as bad, more notably the vampire James, played painfully by Cam Gigandet, who's other acting credits include that of the UFC-obsessed loss of a human being in 2008's Never Back Down. Watch both of these movies and you will start to understand why Mr. Gigandet will never be up for a best acting award. Fuck it, I'd be surprised if his acting chops can even earn him a Razzie Award.
Now I know this story is mainly geared towards young adults, which it totally succeeds. But fuckin' a... can they push the painfully obvious subliminal message of total celibacy any more? I don't think they can, as it's already being shoved down our throats. Don't get me wrong, if celibacy is your way of life and it makes you happy, then god bless. But don't ram this "no pre-marital sex" message into everyone's head. I'm also a firm believer in letting people make their own decisions, instead of having the media feed what's perceived as right and wrong into their subconscious, all while they peep out a movie that they are interested in because the main character is, like, "so totally hot." Then again, the Jonas Brothers advertise the shit out of their "purity rings", so I can't place all the blame on this trifle of a film.
The only part of the film that I enjoyed was the scene at the end where Bella and Edward are dancing. Why did I enjoy this scene? Because Iron & Wine's song, "Flightless Bird, American Mouth" plays while they dance. Other than that, there was not one thing I enjoyed throughout this film.
My overall consensus... this film succeeds where it was supposed to. It brought in millions and millions of dollars due to tweens and their mothers who all walk around sporting "Team Edward" shirts. And it's usually that kind of audience who will watch a film, not so much for the actual film itself, but to see their favorite characters come to life on screen and watch a bunch of Joe-College looking dudes parade on screen so that they can ogle at them in hopes of one day getting to meet them and, if they are lucky enough, get a kiss on the cheek (cause of the whole celibacy thing...).
The burning question is will I subject myself to even more of the same atrocious cinematic blunders that is the sequel, New Moon? I don't plan on it and, frankly, would rather chew my own face. That being said, however, I do feel somewhat obligated to watch the second film. It's that tired old tale: you don't want to know, but you have to know. Only time will tell. One thing is certain... I will never pay to watch any of these movies. I will wait for all of them to appear on Showtime on a morning when I'm too hung-over to change the movie.
As for the rest of my day... nothing happened. I went to work at 3:00, got done around 8:30, went home, didn't chill with anyone cause I still felt like shit, did some writing, and crashed while watching Frost/Nixon.
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