Posted on 11/23/2009 5:35:21 AM PST by Dr. Scarpetta
"The Twilight Saga: New Moon" features long, steamy, smoldering gazes by handsome, shirtless young men who are vampires or werewolves.
Despite those lingering, lustful looks the film includes only four kisses and not a single sex scene.
Women and girls, who made up 80 percent of the opening weekend audience, said that is one reason "The Twilight Saga" appeals to them.
"I actually like that, the fact that they don't have bedroom scenes or anything," Gabrielle Rivera, 15, said.
Clearly the storyline is working. In the first three days, the box office raked in $140.7 million, according to studio estimates.
That places "New Moon" third behind "The Dark Knight" and "Spider-Man 3" on the highest-earning films for an opening weekend on the domestic charts.
The movies are based on the "Twilight" books, written by Stephanie Meyer.
Meyer, a Mormon, wrote her lead character, Edward, to be a chaste and noble protector of his love interest, Bella.
This may explain why the movie is a hit among so-called "Twilight Moms" who have described Edward as "the perfect man."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
you go, rika! i basically would read anything Meyer writes at this point, based on how much i have enjoyed the previous books. i am finding current events too painful to read the nonfiction current events books on the bedside table these days. i can only stand so much of reality! LOL!
because it’s how you were RAISED and not what you read as a teenager that determined how you all turned out! parents can do their best to keep their children in a bubble, but at the end of the day reality intrudes and it’s how you’ve prepared them to MEET that reality that matters.
and, as a conservative, if you are raising your children properly to know what is good and what is bad, watching a movie or reading a book is not going to disrupt their sense of right and wrong. i believe in reading. period. i have three fully grown [well, the youngest is 15, almost fully grown] morally intact, spiritually secure conservative children. i don’t fear books or movies.
They don’t sell sex, they sell tween horniness, lots of sexual tension, of the type that really appeals to tween girls, but no actual sex.
IMO: I read the first book and it was painfully horrible. It was a bad romance novel with vampires instead of burly manly-men. The descriptions and dialogue were repetitive and juvenile. I read it because my middle-schooler wanted to read it, and I wanted to preview it first to be sure it was appropriate. My assessment: read it if you want to, but you’ll get a better story reading the back of your cereal box.
Did I mention the book is awful?
;-)
I have the advantage of remembering being a teen not that long ago and more importantly having been a teen raised the way I’m planning to raise my kid; sheltered and strictly monitored. Those two words are not bad things.
No. My son’s ex-girlfriend and her mother had him read the first book. He said it’s not a romance novel. I said, oh yes it was and it deals with vampires, which I am not okay with. He didn’t get to read the rest of them or go see the movies. I think it’s really sick.
I don’t object to the vampires per se, but I don’t like the idea that it is good to be totally dominated by an obsessive man (at 100, he isn’t a boy). If he’s staring at her while she is sleeping in her room, he needs to be met with a shotgun full of silver buckshot, or hosed down with Holy Water...or maybe just scrubbed to take the sparkle off of him!
From your description. It is about ‘puppy love’, completely believing this is it wonderful and true. We all remember it.
I heard an interesting interview about a new book ...about raising teen agers ... the point that was very interesting was ... 'children that have been over sheltered, and closely monitored; when they get a bit of independence find someone else to tell them what to do. It is true that being accustomed to having someone else's voice make decisions, ... they turn to someone else's voice. Interesting idea. Of course, it was a psychiatrist that wrote the book. Sorry I do recall the name at this moment.
My son hates Twilight with a burning passion. He loves the “percy Jackson and the Olympians” series though. Pretty good stuff, he started reading them in middle school. Really good unless you have a problem with Greek myths being portrayed as real.
Not just 1 line, there’s some pretty intense descriptions, and the vampire thing comes later, and not as a result.
One scene that amused me in the stories (haven't seen either movie) concerns Edward's ability to read minds. A lot of the novels' conflict deals with how tormented Edward is by the chaotic thoughts of those around him. A waitress in a restaurant that he and Bella attend finds Edward very attractive, and Edward characterizes the waitress as "having a dirty mind." It was an effective device to show how Edward was a product of a different age. When was the last time you heard the phrase, "dirty-mind"?
they did get that scene into the first movie and it was funny!
>He loves the “percy Jackson and the Olympians” series though.<
There’s a movie being made on the Percy Jackson books:
The fourth book carries what could arguably be called a very pro-life message. Which is, I suspect, why a lotta libs hate the books.
So, how do I get my wife to abandon this claptrap? I’ve got 3 daughters, and I cannot see any reason at all I’d allow them to read this garbage. My wife? Totally obsessed with the movie/books/etc. One night, I TRIED watching the first movie without her - and fell asleep. Seriously - it was that bad, the acting, the story-telling, just horrible.
Frankly, I think the whole premise is disgusting, and if it takes over that much of ones mind, it’s probably satanic in nature in that it beguiles one to ignore the reality, opting for the escapism instead.
Note - I don’t play video games, console games, etc, because I have 3 daughters who take up my time. My ‘escapism’ is the National Football League, church, and myriad household chores I do.
Face it, it's a dumb story with cardboard characters, a halfa@@ed plot and pure female-oriented pornography as its only attraction.
If you like it fine...but don't attack others' right to criticize it.
funny, you don’t sound like a libertarian! LOL!
Exactly. :)
I think that censoring any reading child’s books is sad. I read every book I could lay my hands on - including some I found in families I babysat for ;) People knowing I read turned me on to new books, new authors I might not have found on my own at that age. One mom said ‘You might enjoy this one’ and gave me Clan of the Cave Bear at age 16, which led me to read the entire Earth Children series. Another one said, since I liked Gone With The Wind (read for the first time in 5th grade), I might like Forever
Amber. My aunt introduced me to Stephen King my 14th summer, and another adult friend gave me James Herriott. And so on.
My parents never censored any books. I was never into the popular teen series, the Sweet Valley High or Harlequins. I read adult type novels, but I learned far more in them (even of sex or violence) than any teen book. I *LEARNED* with every book I read, literature or fluff.
I was never into the teen series either and never liked contemporary romance novels. As i posted to this thread, when my 21 yo daughter mentioned wanting to read a series of books about vampires, i pooh poohed it and said how stupid, but just casually picked this up at the beach and read it in a day and thoroughly enjoyed it. People who fear their children being adversely influenced by a novel really aren’t very confident of their parenting skills, IMO.
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