Movie Review: Twilight New Moon
I am not the audience for this movie.
I did not see the original Twilight. I read the novel and was horrified; how many teenage girls truly believe that men like Edward Cullen exist? (Fewer, probably, than the number of boys men who expect to meet a gorgeous independent woman who caters to their every whim and is miraculously attracted to slovenly underachievers, but that’s a rant for another film.) In real life a man who stalks protects a woman the way Edward does will continue to do so whether her life’s in danger or not. Perhaps the majority of Twilight fans recognize this, and treat the stories as wish fulfillment, much as this reviewer does with good romantic comedies (though not, it must be said, The Ugly Truth, which peddled a similar adolescent fantasy).
On that level, New Moon delivers. It reproduces the central appeal of the books: a man who’s faster, stronger, more romantic, better at playing baseball and musical instruments alike and more beautiful than anyone you could possibly imagine falls for Bella Swan, an ordinary, unremarkable-looking girl, and continually professes not only that he loves her, but that he cannot live without her. So protective is he that when his otherworldly urges place her in danger he actually abandons her to protect her.
This is the basest sort of adolescent fantasy, the kind any writer who’s attended university could dream up, and yet it would be undone by a sense of manufactured cynicism if author Stephenie Meyer didn’t wholeheartedly believe in it. She does, and it would appear a wide cross-section of the western world does too.
OK everybody, the Twilight saga continues with New Moon (ladies please control your crying). We were lucky to sit down with Canadian heartthrob Bronson Pelletier for an interview during the recent press stop in Toronto. Bronson plays Jared in the movie and apparently had to get jacked up to play his werewolf character. He also spoke with us about his relationships with his fellow Twilight actors.
It’s every citizen’s worst fear: a cop who willingly and continuously breaks the law; and even worse, a cop who gets away with it. Yet somehow, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is still an enjoyable watch.
Thanks to illegal digital downloading, album sales are on a continuous decline. And as sales keep sliding, the music industry keeps looking for ways to make big events out of record releases. There have been partnerships with big retail companies (such as Walmart’s exclusive with AC/DC’s Black Ice), large-scale live shows (such as Jay-Z’s event before the release of The Blueprint III), and exciting fan contests (such as Pearl Jam’s artwork scavenger hunt for Backspacer). But as rollingstone.com reports, one sure way to guarantee an album’s success is Oprah Winfrey.
This week on Peak Season: Episode Six
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Bollywood debut was so awkward I could barely watch, but I couldn’t look away either.
Seinfeld’s Michael Richards, aka Kramer, made an appearance on Curb Your Enthusiasm, attempting to make a joke out of his 2006 racist rant at the Laugh Factory, TMZ reports.
The Popular MTV host whose game show helped spark the careers of comedians like Adam Sandler, Colin Quinn and Dennis Leary was found dead in his house on Sunday, MTV.com reports.