In the Name of Journalistic Integrity!

DEAR GOD!!! How do the teenage girls sit through that shit? It's the Friday before Thanksgiving, which means one thing. The new installment of the mediocrity celebrating franchise Twilight, New Moon has descended upon us, ready to steal our hard earned dollars and time. How bad is this movie? Let me tell it like this. There's a segment where the characters go to the cinema to see a bad action movie. A really bad action movie, to be precise, called Face Punch. Face Punch is a better movie then New Moon.
So, the story picks up sometime after where the first left off. Bella Swan is happily enjoying her pale-as-chalk, vampire boyfriend, Edward Cullen; is fitting in nicely at school; and is getting closer to her hella buff, Indian American friend, Jacob Black, who is also a werewolf, but more on that later. Life is going swimmingly, until Bella treats Edward's family to the pleasure of her company, and accidently cuts herself, causing Edward's brother to go apeshit and try to kill her. A very distraught Edward quickly gets out of town, all in the name of protecting her, causing Bella to fall into a depression so deep it borders on gratuitous. Jacob steps in to fill the niche, some familiar bloodsuckers return to cause trouble, and it all ties up nicely in a quaint little Italian village. Now, I'm sure the book told a good story; one filled with great character development and moved at a nice pace. Or, at least it would, if it was written by anyone other then Stephanie Meyer. Anyway, the plot in this movie moves at such a sluggish pace and takes absolutely no time to explore the characters in any sort of believable way that you begin to wonder if a daytime soap was condensed into movie form. Not good, in any sense of the word.
Performances are the same here as they were in the first, meaning, New Moon boasts some truly terrible performances. Kristen Stewart gives wooden a whole new meaning as Bella. Now, don't get me wrong, Kristen Stewart can be good. As proof of this, her work in Adventureland was simply sublime. I even was a little warm to her performance in Twilight. For New Moon she has taken a step back. She is worse in this movie then she was in the first! What the fuck? Everything she does is layered with such overbearing angst that I wanted to reach into the screen and choke the life out of her. It's so unrealistic. Now, I'm not a teenage girl... I don't think, but I'm pretty sure that most teenage girls are more down to earth then Bella, even if their boyfriends happen to be demonic bloodsucking fiends. Expect to see her on my worst of 2009 list in December. Robert Pattinson is back as Edward. He's barely in the movie, which is good, because he's still just as lifeless. Taylor Lautner's role as Jacob has been expanded exponentially, which is not a good thing. Of the three major roles, his is probably the best performed, but it is still a stinker. I understand why he went through all the trouble to buff up for this movie. His most interesting moments are when he's shirtless. He conveys zero emotion when he should be conveying tons. On the brighter side of things, New Moon introduces a few characters who are actually well performed, but woefully underused. Michael Sheen is a delight as the maliciously evil and powerful vampire Aro, and Dakota Fanning shows a side we've never seen from her as the sadistic Jane. Both of these characters, and a few others, only appear in the last 20 minutes of the film, which is such a crime. I would have loved to see a whole movie of them instead of the shit we're stuck with.
Now, you may be thinking, "Oh, New Moon is so bad, but how does it compare to Twilight?" Let me tell you. New Moon is actually better then Twilight! I know! Ridiculous, right? It's a mark of how abysmal the first one is that this drek actually qualifies as better. But, well, it is. First off, director Chris Weitz knows how to film an action scene. The few action scenes that are present are actually a bit exciting and well shot. The CGI is vastly improved over the last film; the wolves especially look very lifelike and manage to convey more emotion then their human counterparts. When your human actors are getting beat by CG wolves, it's probably time to call it a day. The main improvements are actually quite impressive. First off, there's some real, you know, color here. Everything is not as aggressively gray and emo looking. There are some wonderful hues of brown, yellow, and red. And, finally, the big thing, is that the vampires are actually scary in this one. Well, not all of them, but the ones that need to be are. Edi Gathegi and Rachelle Lefevre return as Laurent and Victoria, respectively. The, collective, 20 minutes that they are in the film are the most intense in the whole thing. And, I'm sorry, but Michael Sheen was positively terrifying as Aro. There is a greater effort to make the vampires seem more dangerous this time, and it does not go unappreciated. There is a short segment in the very end, where a vampire leads an unknowing group of humans, children included, into a room where they are to become the soulless bastards' next meal. The scene ends with the human's screams as the vampires have their way with them. This scene is only 30 seconds long, but it was what I wanted from the whole movie! I wanted intensity; I wanted high stakes. I did not want Pattinson and Lautner to spend 2 fucking hours coming up with different ways to tell Stewart that they love her, but that's what I got! How anyone could fall in love with this girl is beyond me. She's a whiney, little bitch! So, yes, there are vast improvements, but, they are so underutilized and poorly handled that I don't even know why I'm writing about them.
As with Twilight, what I'm saying here is going to jack to change your mind on this franchise. The teenage girl fans will love it. Everyone else will hate it's guts. I'm not giving my final verdict on the franchise just yet. The next one, Eclipse is supposed to ramp the action way up, and is being directed by David Slade, who gave us the wonderfully violent, disgustingly gory, and criminally dismissed 30 Days of Night, which is a good vampire film, in case anyone cares to know. Here's to hoping that he will say "Fuck you, tweens!" and bring some actual grit to this franchise, but I won't count on it.
Uggg! My god damn journalistic integrity will the be the death of me! D-

More The Twilight Saga: New Moon News & Previews

Lion Falls in Love With Lamb. Stupid Movie Goer!

Uggg. I haven't been looking forward to this. Like that little speck in the sky that is the massive asteroid that will eventually end all life on our planet, Twilight has been looming over me, ready to destroy me with it's supposed earnestness and sweet love story. I saw a trailer of this a while back, and thought, "Dear God! Could they make that movie look more depressing?" I saw it as some cheap, poorly made fantasy story about forbidden love, only it would be the exact same thing we had seen before. And it turns out I was right.

Twilight's premise can be summed up in a few short sentences. Angst ridden teenager moves to Depressistan. Teenager meets and falls in love with recluse boy. Turns out boy is a vampire. Shit happens. Ok, fine, that's a bit harsh. Here are the details. Angst ridden teenager Bella Swan moves to Forks, Washington to live with her dad. At school, she meets Edward Cullen. Her emotions toward Eddie are a bit mixed, seeing as she is mesmerized by him despite the fact that he acts like a huge dick to her most of the time. It turns out that he is a vampire, and he really wants to drink her blood. So he's being a dick to push her away. Yeah, but Bella's not gonna take that. Eventually they fall in love. Everything works out alright, you say? Ha, foolish human. By some strange coincidence, another pack of vampires comes to town, and they really want to drink Bella's blood. Vampire violence and cheesy love ensues. On the surface, it looks original, but as you progress, it's just a hip, more emo version of Beauty and the Beast. It doesn't really bring anything new to the whole "forbidden love" style of story telling, and I, due to the fact that I am dead inside, found the love story to be completely ludicrous, and actually a little creepy. There are some good moments, but I will talk about them later.   

Kristen Stewart plays Bella. I've heard from a friend of mine that the character of Bella is not supposed to be pretty. So, I guess that aspect of the story got thrown to the dogs, because Bella is quite a looker in this one. She actually does a pretty good job, conveying the right amount of emotion when she needs to. So she basically needs to look distressed for the entire thing. But, she does a decent job, despite the script and direction. Robert Pattison plays Edward. You may remember Pattison from the way his body pirouetted through the air as he died in Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire. (Speaking of which, the new trailer for Harry Potter is attached to this.) And guess what. He did a much better job in that movie then he does here. Sure, he is beautiful, but, unlike Stewart, that is the only thing he has going for him. You see him walk into the frame, and all you can think is, "My God, he is so white!" There is something wrong with a movie when all you can think about is the main character's skin color. There are other supporting roles, but they're not worth mentioning. I will say that Cam Gigandet does a great job as the bad vampire. He looks like he would suck your blood, unlike Edward. 

Director Catherine Hardwicke is not the most likely choice to direct this. On reflection, she probably shouldn't have. Her best movie was Lords of Dogtown, which saw Heath Ledger and Emile Hirsh skateboarding and being cool. This movie could not be more different from that. Instead of the vibrant colors she used in Lords, Hardwicke is employing the My Chemical Romance color palette. That is, gray, white, gray, a little red, gray, some other colors, and gray. This is probably the most visually depressing film I have seen this year. The fact that all the other characters, with there just short of albino skin, almost blend into the background doesn't really help. I don't know what you think, but it helps your movie if you can actually see the characters. The special effects are pretty bad as well. They consist of a vampire running real fast, jumping to enormous heights, or grappling with another vampire. The technique used is simple. Blur the image of the character as he runs, so it looks like he's running fast. You' think they could do better. This movie probably had a huge budget, and by the looks of it, most of that went into voice lessons for Pattison, so that he could cover up that sexy British accent of his. This is not a well directed or visually compelling movie, to say the least. 

Now, and I going a lot of crap for this, despite the fact that it is a love story, and it's meant for "young adults," it is still a vampire story, and that is the movie's biggest flaw. It doesn't feel like a vampire movie. A vampire movie should scare you, a lot. Hey, Dracula was technically a love story, but Dracula managed to scare the shit out of me. Hell, even Queen of the Damned does a better job at giving us potentially life threatening and dangerous beasts. And, for those who care to know, Queen of the Damned sucked. Anyway, Edward goes on and on about he is a monster, that he's killed people. Forgive me, but it doesn't look like he's killed so much as a gerbil in his entire immortal life span. Yeah, I know, I know, I know, this is a different type of vampire, but I don't care. Give me some proof that this guy would rip my head off, drink my blood and enjoy it, and maybe I'll hop on the band wagon.

Now, I said I would talk about the good scenes. There is one good scene that I liked. A dude has his head and appendages ripped off and burned. Delicious.

But, you know what? What I am saying has no bearing on how people will view this. Twilight will make absurd amounts of money. It will probably spawn a clothing line, lunch boxes, beach towels, Hasbro action figures, and more. You have already decided if you love Twilight or not. It will appeal to it's fans; they will just eat it up. I know I'm not the target audience, but then, I do not consider myself the target audience for any film. I review based on the quality of the film, not because I was biased toward the thing before I even went in. So, if you are already a fan, go for it. Damn the torpedoes. For the rest of you? Rent Interview With a Vampire.