Wednesday, 16 December 2009
Saturday, 12 December 2009
Avatar: The Weight of Expectation | Sci Fi UK
I wrote this this very afternoon. Well i suppose yesterday afternoon and it pretty much got edited and on site straight away. The latest in a soon to be exhausted line of Avatar articles. It could well end up being the film the decade. In fact in several, technical, ways it already is.
Avatar: The Weight of Expectation Sci Fi UK
Avatar: The Weight of Expectation Sci Fi UK
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
I'll be back..............................
Sorry people, I know I've been away for a while. Long story short I've been really ill and truth be told had a lot of bad news on a family level.
Still here I am and late or not Sci-Fi Channel have finally put up my New Moon review. It's meant to be a lead in to a few more articles about the anti-Twilight fervour and Vamps and Werewolves in the 21st Century. It went on a bit as the website articles have a word level of 900 - 1100 words max and my review came out at around 2,200 words. I did put in a break point so there was a chance to split it in two but it's ended up as a shortened 1 piece instead. That's fine and it still reeads well but I'm putting up the full, unedited version here. Like Twilight, loathe Twilight, it's all up to an individual reaction, but regardless of that I just don't buy into the idea that it's somehow inferior and devoid of meaning. As you can see here.......
Buffy, Blade and Twilight in the underworld.
New Moon. Vampires do NOT exist!
OK I’m a little late with this as far as the release of New Moon goes but I have my reasons. By now you should have read the two, differing, reviews of New moon here;
http://www.scifi.co.uk/blog/films/new-moon---the-final-verdict/
http://www.scifi.co.uk/blog/films/new-moon-review/
This time last year was at “war” with the usual internet bad boys over on such sites as Aint It cool News. War is their term not mine I assure you. You see there was the film, which none of us had seen based on a book I’d never heard of called Twilight. I’d seen the trailers and marked it down as film that looked worth 2 hours of my life. But you see apparently these film was aimed at female viewers, Cardinal sin number one and it had a slightly different take on what a Vampire is, Cardinal sin number 2. There was also a lot of stuff flying around about the books being Mormon Propaganda. Again as I’d never read it I couldn’t speak to that point but as for the rest I couldn’t have cared less. I’ll get into that whole thing in the next part of this series but the thing that amused me the most was that for a few minutes I allowed myself to get into a debate as to what vampires can or can’t do, or should or shouldn’t do. Then my inner voice did a roundhouse kick on my brain and reminded me that Vampires DO NOT EXIST (as far as we know) so it doesn’t matter what any author says they can or can’t do. It’s with that point in mind, and extended to Vampires and other mythical creatures that this review is written. I can’t go into the borderline sexists, borderline misogynistic fervour that surrounds reviews, commentary and so called banter re: Twilight without first reviewing New moon.
So let’s crunch the numbers
According to Variety a little over two years ago when Twilight was being offered to non-US distributors there had been a little over one million copies sold. By last week that had risen to over 84 million! That’s a pretty impressive jump by any standards! It probably goes some way towards explaining how New Moon took the opening midnight ($26.3m) and opening day ($72.7m) records in the US; both taken from The Dark Knight. Even more impressive the film had a global opening weekend take of $266.9m with $142.8 from North America and $124.1 from the rest of us. For those that care we little ol Brits contributed $18.7m to that total.
So why all the borax Ev? Well I just needed to point out how insanely popular both the books AND the films are; there’s also the exit polls giving the movie an A- rating and mostly good vibes from the majority of people who went to see it. (As far as exit polls can tell anyway). Better yet the get out clause for the “haters”, that it’s all just mindless, insipid teen / tween, (who else hates that word? TWEEN bah!!), girls watching these films. Well the percentage of patrons under 21 may have increased since Twilight but there’s still 50% of the audience over 21. In other words there are more people like me, adults 18 or over, watching new Moon than there are screaming girlies.
Now I’ll be fair there is plenty here for screaming girlies to well scream at if they want. The slow motion shirt removals of Edward, (Robert “pasty” Pattinson), or the near permanent shirt off style of the far better looking Jacob, (Taylor “I’m only 17 you lusty M.I.L.Ks” Lautner.) But there’s plenty to pay attention to story wise as well. Now I’ll not try to pretend otherwise here I’m a werewolf man. Pure and simple ever since I was a little kid I knew that if I had to become a supernatural creature then a werewolf was what I would be. Bizarrely enough I even remember praying that I could become a werewolf as a replacement for a fancy dress costume for a junior school party. I was so sure God was going to answer that prayer! So when we get to the description of the Cullen’s life in Forks I screamed out in a whisper,” The native Americans are Werewolves!” I’ll admit, even though I was enjoying the film it jumped up 100 points in my excitement scale as soon as that scene finished; all the more so at the end when Jacob delivers the warning. Now I don’t want to get all Harry Knowles pre Underworld, but Vampires and Werewolves a woo hoo & hoo. Bring on new Moon I thought. When I heard Summit were going all Back to the Future pts 2 & 3 with the Twilight movies I decided not to read the books until I’d seen the first 3 films. 19 months wasn’t too long to wait I thought.
So with no idea how the story would flow, everyone else I was with had read the books and swore not to spoil anything for me, I immediately settled into feeling sorry for Jacob. Sure they didn’t force him to keep his terrible extensions for too long but it seemed to me that the movies are Vampire centric. Therefore poor old 16 year old wereboy was headed down friendship road straight to unrequited lovesville. Worse yet Bella’s love is something Jacob despises, instinctively. You see I saw several themes running through this “simple” film. One of them was the issue of love, real or imagined and its effects on both adults and teenagers. Now for the simple folk in the audience this theme was spelled out in large flashing lights onscreen with the appearance of Romeo and Juliet. Still somehow considered to be one of the most romantic books of all time one of its triumphs is having Romeo be a complete and utter idiot. You see he spends all of his spare time moaning about how he’s in love with some woman he really has no true feeling for at all. E has no idea of what love is, but he thinks he does. Then he meets Juliet and suddenly he knows, feel to the very deepest core of his body that he’s been an idiot, that he has had no idea what country love was in, let alone what it actually was. Now he knows, now he knows true love, that thing that you cannot imagine existing without, that thing that makes every single second of your past life simply a means to bring you to this point, to this person. That your life doesn’t belong to you anymore, but to that he or she you are now in love with. There’s a theory that flies around pretty much every adult that teenagers do not know what love is and are hence incapable of being in love. This stems from the contradiction of parenthood that you don’t want anyone fooling around with your kid (daughters especially!) and that you want them happy and married with dozens of kids. To me this film tackles that head on.
Pt.2
Turning 18 at the movies start, Bella is technically and adult, but is she really in love? Truly, madly deeply? Or just that teen approximation that feels oh so, so important, but as Romeo discovered is not the real thing. Edward knows of this, stuck at 17 but with a century’s wisdom he knows that as 18 turns to 21 to 23 that love turns out to be just an intense liking mixed with lust and hormones. This is why he keeps asking Bella for time. Jacob is only 16 with an almighty crush on an older woman, even if it’s only a couple of years older, and a terrible, X-Men like puberty issue making whatever he does feel somehow exponentially greater. His is most likely to be that teen love that burns hard and bright but oh too fast and all too soon is gone. I maybe wrong there as far as the books go, but I think Chris Weitz does an excellent job here, no doubt drawing on his good experiences with American Pie and About a Boy, to take the three paths of discovery and run with them, never quite giving away the final destination. Edward is definitely in love, Bella and Jacob think they are and we are there to see if they do and what it means.
So there I am feeling sorry for Jacob identifying with that whole teenager feeling so much for that girl that you got to just a week, a day an hour too late. Still friends and forever thinking if I’d only asked her out yesterday! Seriously that happened to me. Asked a girl out at 9 in the morning when the other guy had been smart enough to ask her at 7pm the day before! Aaaarrrggghhh!!!
That miserable cry of self pity leads me down the road to another theme I saw in New Moon; Emotional instability, the infamous scourge of the hormonally charged teenager. I’ll start with Bella. I’ve read a lot of reviews, a LOT of reviews that don’t seem to like Bella’s reaction to effectively being dumped. Now I haven’t gotten the scholars at Manchester University to start researching this but I’d guess most people have had the misfortune / fortune to be dumped at least once in their life. Generally it isn’t a good feeling. When you’re a teenager it sucks like a Dyson on turbo. If you’re in love? How did you react? Bella’s night terrors very effectively set the scene not only for how deeply she feels and THINKS she is suffering but also gives us a reason to believe throughout the rest of the film that the nice, friendly shirtless pretty boy she spends all her time with remains just a friend. Without such an extreme reaction, the director / writer go to the trouble of having her dad tell the audience that it isn’t normal, we wouldn’t really believe it. We should also consider the fact that Bella appears to be more than human herself, as such who knows what could happen to her. Forget the teen issue I’ve know plenty of men and women who seemed entirely unable to function when they lost their husbands / wives / partner. So why should Bella be any different? I know of a person, around 18 years old who attempted suicide over a boy who wasn’t going to be her boyfriend. They weren’t even dating, so my personal tolerance for an 18 year olds reaction to losing someone they think they love is pretty high. Break ups / rejection are still considered to be key reasons for teen suicides too; I would imagine that would be all the more likely in people with low self esteem to begin with. Bella is clearly seen to be completely nonplussed by Edward’s interest in her.
So Bella loses emotional control and her life basically ends as a result, this is nicely depicted in camera rotation that takes us around and around Bella’s depressed figure as the months roll by. Edward continues to fight his instinctive desire for Bella’s blood but better than that even harder is his self control in leaving her so she will not be endangered by the dark side of his world. His Romeoesque lack of control when he assumes Bella is lost to him leads everyone down an ever more dangerous road.
The films actual heroes are the werewolves. We’re given several frightening insights into the dangers of their world. None more so than when we meet Emily, fiancée of the Wolf pack leader Sam. A terrible scar, which oddly reminded me Quaritch’s in Avatar, stands as a constant reminder of the dangers of the Werewolves losing their temper. A reviewer remarked that a scene where Jacob warns not to make him angry was reminiscent of The Hulk in a bad way. Oddly enough it isn’t Bruce Banner gets mad and Hulks out it is bad news for sure but he’d never harm Betty. Angering the young Werewolves is very dangerous as they are prone to spontaneous and uncontrollable transformations. As in the case of Emily and Sam and the close call Bella has whilst she bravely, but mistakenly attempts to stand up for Jacob. Releasing their excess energies by cliff diving the Werewolves have been keeping people safe from rogue vampires, spectacularly demonstrated in a Peter Jackson style chase through woods. It was obvious that Victoria was meant to survive for future appearances but having gone to the trouble of advising us that the werewolves were faster than Vampires it should have been a wee bit trickier for Victoria to escape. Having seen a similar scene in Avatar where ducking and weaving only take Jake so far and he is twice caught by his pursuer, escaping by the skin of his back by diving into water. A little wolf style surprise attacks from the sides would have been cool too. The effects were certainly better than in the Ultra low budget Twilight, although they hardly made a big increase here, $50m for a movie of this size is miserly and Chris Weitz’s experience, good and bad, from The Golden Compass appear to have served him well. The Black Werewolf is pretty poor but the others are pretty impressive and neither the budget nor Summit’s ridiculously tight schedule have helped the filmmakers here. An extra month or two of rendering time can work wonders, just ask James Cameron re Avatar or better yet Stephen Sommers about his experience with a studio’s tight schedule and a certain Playstation 1 Scorpion King. It was almost as bad as the “snake” in the latest Orange Wednesdays ad! Sci-Fi Wire were pretty brutal in their description of the lighting in Twilight. They make it seem as though it hasn’t been considered at all. It just looks like the director / cinematographer decided that the only way they could make the daywalker angle really fly was if they made everything seem very dull. I get that choice and I’m sure many directors would have made the same one. Weitz doesn’t necessarily have that problem as the Vampire scenes in Forks are minimal. His lighting better reflects and highlights the ever shirtless Werewolves and also serves to visually highlight the world minus vampires. Cinematography is excellent here and yes, it does look better than twilight.
Next a look at some of the different Vampires we’ve been treated to in the 21st century and why are so many fan-boys up in arms over the Twilight Vampires and the Twi-hards.
Still here I am and late or not Sci-Fi Channel have finally put up my New Moon review. It's meant to be a lead in to a few more articles about the anti-Twilight fervour and Vamps and Werewolves in the 21st Century. It went on a bit as the website articles have a word level of 900 - 1100 words max and my review came out at around 2,200 words. I did put in a break point so there was a chance to split it in two but it's ended up as a shortened 1 piece instead. That's fine and it still reeads well but I'm putting up the full, unedited version here. Like Twilight, loathe Twilight, it's all up to an individual reaction, but regardless of that I just don't buy into the idea that it's somehow inferior and devoid of meaning. As you can see here.......
Does this make them look fat?
Buffy, Blade and Twilight in the underworld.
New Moon. Vampires do NOT exist!
OK I’m a little late with this as far as the release of New Moon goes but I have my reasons. By now you should have read the two, differing, reviews of New moon here;
http://www.scifi.co.uk/blog/films/new-moon---the-final-verdict/
http://www.scifi.co.uk/blog/films/new-moon-review/
This time last year was at “war” with the usual internet bad boys over on such sites as Aint It cool News. War is their term not mine I assure you. You see there was the film, which none of us had seen based on a book I’d never heard of called Twilight. I’d seen the trailers and marked it down as film that looked worth 2 hours of my life. But you see apparently these film was aimed at female viewers, Cardinal sin number one and it had a slightly different take on what a Vampire is, Cardinal sin number 2. There was also a lot of stuff flying around about the books being Mormon Propaganda. Again as I’d never read it I couldn’t speak to that point but as for the rest I couldn’t have cared less. I’ll get into that whole thing in the next part of this series but the thing that amused me the most was that for a few minutes I allowed myself to get into a debate as to what vampires can or can’t do, or should or shouldn’t do. Then my inner voice did a roundhouse kick on my brain and reminded me that Vampires DO NOT EXIST (as far as we know) so it doesn’t matter what any author says they can or can’t do. It’s with that point in mind, and extended to Vampires and other mythical creatures that this review is written. I can’t go into the borderline sexists, borderline misogynistic fervour that surrounds reviews, commentary and so called banter re: Twilight without first reviewing New moon.
So let’s crunch the numbers
According to Variety a little over two years ago when Twilight was being offered to non-US distributors there had been a little over one million copies sold. By last week that had risen to over 84 million! That’s a pretty impressive jump by any standards! It probably goes some way towards explaining how New Moon took the opening midnight ($26.3m) and opening day ($72.7m) records in the US; both taken from The Dark Knight. Even more impressive the film had a global opening weekend take of $266.9m with $142.8 from North America and $124.1 from the rest of us. For those that care we little ol Brits contributed $18.7m to that total.
So why all the borax Ev? Well I just needed to point out how insanely popular both the books AND the films are; there’s also the exit polls giving the movie an A- rating and mostly good vibes from the majority of people who went to see it. (As far as exit polls can tell anyway). Better yet the get out clause for the “haters”, that it’s all just mindless, insipid teen / tween, (who else hates that word? TWEEN bah!!), girls watching these films. Well the percentage of patrons under 21 may have increased since Twilight but there’s still 50% of the audience over 21. In other words there are more people like me, adults 18 or over, watching new Moon than there are screaming girlies.
Now I’ll be fair there is plenty here for screaming girlies to well scream at if they want. The slow motion shirt removals of Edward, (Robert “pasty” Pattinson), or the near permanent shirt off style of the far better looking Jacob, (Taylor “I’m only 17 you lusty M.I.L.Ks” Lautner.) But there’s plenty to pay attention to story wise as well. Now I’ll not try to pretend otherwise here I’m a werewolf man. Pure and simple ever since I was a little kid I knew that if I had to become a supernatural creature then a werewolf was what I would be. Bizarrely enough I even remember praying that I could become a werewolf as a replacement for a fancy dress costume for a junior school party. I was so sure God was going to answer that prayer! So when we get to the description of the Cullen’s life in Forks I screamed out in a whisper,” The native Americans are Werewolves!” I’ll admit, even though I was enjoying the film it jumped up 100 points in my excitement scale as soon as that scene finished; all the more so at the end when Jacob delivers the warning. Now I don’t want to get all Harry Knowles pre Underworld, but Vampires and Werewolves a woo hoo & hoo. Bring on new Moon I thought. When I heard Summit were going all Back to the Future pts 2 & 3 with the Twilight movies I decided not to read the books until I’d seen the first 3 films. 19 months wasn’t too long to wait I thought.
So with no idea how the story would flow, everyone else I was with had read the books and swore not to spoil anything for me, I immediately settled into feeling sorry for Jacob. Sure they didn’t force him to keep his terrible extensions for too long but it seemed to me that the movies are Vampire centric. Therefore poor old 16 year old wereboy was headed down friendship road straight to unrequited lovesville. Worse yet Bella’s love is something Jacob despises, instinctively. You see I saw several themes running through this “simple” film. One of them was the issue of love, real or imagined and its effects on both adults and teenagers. Now for the simple folk in the audience this theme was spelled out in large flashing lights onscreen with the appearance of Romeo and Juliet. Still somehow considered to be one of the most romantic books of all time one of its triumphs is having Romeo be a complete and utter idiot. You see he spends all of his spare time moaning about how he’s in love with some woman he really has no true feeling for at all. E has no idea of what love is, but he thinks he does. Then he meets Juliet and suddenly he knows, feel to the very deepest core of his body that he’s been an idiot, that he has had no idea what country love was in, let alone what it actually was. Now he knows, now he knows true love, that thing that you cannot imagine existing without, that thing that makes every single second of your past life simply a means to bring you to this point, to this person. That your life doesn’t belong to you anymore, but to that he or she you are now in love with. There’s a theory that flies around pretty much every adult that teenagers do not know what love is and are hence incapable of being in love. This stems from the contradiction of parenthood that you don’t want anyone fooling around with your kid (daughters especially!) and that you want them happy and married with dozens of kids. To me this film tackles that head on.
Pt.2
Turning 18 at the movies start, Bella is technically and adult, but is she really in love? Truly, madly deeply? Or just that teen approximation that feels oh so, so important, but as Romeo discovered is not the real thing. Edward knows of this, stuck at 17 but with a century’s wisdom he knows that as 18 turns to 21 to 23 that love turns out to be just an intense liking mixed with lust and hormones. This is why he keeps asking Bella for time. Jacob is only 16 with an almighty crush on an older woman, even if it’s only a couple of years older, and a terrible, X-Men like puberty issue making whatever he does feel somehow exponentially greater. His is most likely to be that teen love that burns hard and bright but oh too fast and all too soon is gone. I maybe wrong there as far as the books go, but I think Chris Weitz does an excellent job here, no doubt drawing on his good experiences with American Pie and About a Boy, to take the three paths of discovery and run with them, never quite giving away the final destination. Edward is definitely in love, Bella and Jacob think they are and we are there to see if they do and what it means.
So there I am feeling sorry for Jacob identifying with that whole teenager feeling so much for that girl that you got to just a week, a day an hour too late. Still friends and forever thinking if I’d only asked her out yesterday! Seriously that happened to me. Asked a girl out at 9 in the morning when the other guy had been smart enough to ask her at 7pm the day before! Aaaarrrggghhh!!!
That miserable cry of self pity leads me down the road to another theme I saw in New Moon; Emotional instability, the infamous scourge of the hormonally charged teenager. I’ll start with Bella. I’ve read a lot of reviews, a LOT of reviews that don’t seem to like Bella’s reaction to effectively being dumped. Now I haven’t gotten the scholars at Manchester University to start researching this but I’d guess most people have had the misfortune / fortune to be dumped at least once in their life. Generally it isn’t a good feeling. When you’re a teenager it sucks like a Dyson on turbo. If you’re in love? How did you react? Bella’s night terrors very effectively set the scene not only for how deeply she feels and THINKS she is suffering but also gives us a reason to believe throughout the rest of the film that the nice, friendly shirtless pretty boy she spends all her time with remains just a friend. Without such an extreme reaction, the director / writer go to the trouble of having her dad tell the audience that it isn’t normal, we wouldn’t really believe it. We should also consider the fact that Bella appears to be more than human herself, as such who knows what could happen to her. Forget the teen issue I’ve know plenty of men and women who seemed entirely unable to function when they lost their husbands / wives / partner. So why should Bella be any different? I know of a person, around 18 years old who attempted suicide over a boy who wasn’t going to be her boyfriend. They weren’t even dating, so my personal tolerance for an 18 year olds reaction to losing someone they think they love is pretty high. Break ups / rejection are still considered to be key reasons for teen suicides too; I would imagine that would be all the more likely in people with low self esteem to begin with. Bella is clearly seen to be completely nonplussed by Edward’s interest in her.
So Bella loses emotional control and her life basically ends as a result, this is nicely depicted in camera rotation that takes us around and around Bella’s depressed figure as the months roll by. Edward continues to fight his instinctive desire for Bella’s blood but better than that even harder is his self control in leaving her so she will not be endangered by the dark side of his world. His Romeoesque lack of control when he assumes Bella is lost to him leads everyone down an ever more dangerous road.
The films actual heroes are the werewolves. We’re given several frightening insights into the dangers of their world. None more so than when we meet Emily, fiancée of the Wolf pack leader Sam. A terrible scar, which oddly reminded me Quaritch’s in Avatar, stands as a constant reminder of the dangers of the Werewolves losing their temper. A reviewer remarked that a scene where Jacob warns not to make him angry was reminiscent of The Hulk in a bad way. Oddly enough it isn’t Bruce Banner gets mad and Hulks out it is bad news for sure but he’d never harm Betty. Angering the young Werewolves is very dangerous as they are prone to spontaneous and uncontrollable transformations. As in the case of Emily and Sam and the close call Bella has whilst she bravely, but mistakenly attempts to stand up for Jacob. Releasing their excess energies by cliff diving the Werewolves have been keeping people safe from rogue vampires, spectacularly demonstrated in a Peter Jackson style chase through woods. It was obvious that Victoria was meant to survive for future appearances but having gone to the trouble of advising us that the werewolves were faster than Vampires it should have been a wee bit trickier for Victoria to escape. Having seen a similar scene in Avatar where ducking and weaving only take Jake so far and he is twice caught by his pursuer, escaping by the skin of his back by diving into water. A little wolf style surprise attacks from the sides would have been cool too. The effects were certainly better than in the Ultra low budget Twilight, although they hardly made a big increase here, $50m for a movie of this size is miserly and Chris Weitz’s experience, good and bad, from The Golden Compass appear to have served him well. The Black Werewolf is pretty poor but the others are pretty impressive and neither the budget nor Summit’s ridiculously tight schedule have helped the filmmakers here. An extra month or two of rendering time can work wonders, just ask James Cameron re Avatar or better yet Stephen Sommers about his experience with a studio’s tight schedule and a certain Playstation 1 Scorpion King. It was almost as bad as the “snake” in the latest Orange Wednesdays ad! Sci-Fi Wire were pretty brutal in their description of the lighting in Twilight. They make it seem as though it hasn’t been considered at all. It just looks like the director / cinematographer decided that the only way they could make the daywalker angle really fly was if they made everything seem very dull. I get that choice and I’m sure many directors would have made the same one. Weitz doesn’t necessarily have that problem as the Vampire scenes in Forks are minimal. His lighting better reflects and highlights the ever shirtless Werewolves and also serves to visually highlight the world minus vampires. Cinematography is excellent here and yes, it does look better than twilight.
Next a look at some of the different Vampires we’ve been treated to in the 21st century and why are so many fan-boys up in arms over the Twilight Vampires and the Twi-hards.
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