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 ...
We saw 2012 yesterday. Sort of interesting if you can sit through 2.5 hours. (be sure on pick out the all the liberal anti-religion aspects)
I heard “The Forth Kind” is a little intense for youngsters but, is based on a true story.
So now they have feminized the male vampire into girly men. Barnabus Collins must be rolling around in his coffin.
I tried watching Twilight. I nearly died of boredom. I had to walk out on it.
LOL
OK, I saw the movie, and it was better than Twilight.
Of course, the girls are just excited because Jacob spends a lot of time topless, and he is pretty buff looking.
And I’ll have to admit, Vampire Dakota Fanning was cool.
(I’m an Alice fan myself).
Let me know what you think of it.
“I try to support as few films as possible”
Why? That’s like saying ‘I read as few books as possible’.
Sensuality is built into vampire narratives. It’s hard to avoid it.
Have a good day.
OK, we went to the movie. My daughter and I had both read all 4 books, for a while my daughter (who is 16) was “into” the books, but after seeing the 1st movie she sold her books, partly because of the hype, partly because the movie was bad, and partly because she likes “real” vampires of the Ann Rynd category, not these metrosexual vampires.
But she had to go to the 2nd movie, because she wanted to be able to say how bad it was when talking to all her friends who were going. Yep, that’s just the way she is, very opinionated but wanting to be informed. Plus, “shirtless Jacob”.
Now, I liked the first movie, in a humorous sort of way. I loved the books, and didn’t like the changes from the book, and thought the director did a crappy job, but they didn’t have a lot of money, and it was unintentionally funny, and of course there was Alice, my favorite Vampire.
Well, after the movie, my daughter declared the movie “awesomist”. I think that’s really good. It ranked well because of “fewer scenes with real Edward”, “ghost edward wasn’t quite so gay”, and “lots of shirtless Jacob”.
The scenes with Alice and Jacob together one especially high marks, (my daughter also likes Alice).
My favorite part was when the entire theatre of people gasped when Bella walked into her house. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know what I mean, but otherwise I don’t think that knowing Bella walks into her house is much of a spoiler...
I also loved Dakota Fanning as a vampire. My daughter didn’t really like the Volturi much, but I thought most of them were cool, and well-played. Also, it was clear that having a different director, and what I have to presume was a much larger production budget, really helped out — too bad they couldn’t use some of the extra money to get a real actor to play Edward. (I’m one of the rare ones who actually LIKED Cristen as Bella, but I’ve liked Cristen in most of her movies (e.g. Adventureland and Jumper).
I felt they did a good job of getting the highlights of the book into the movie — you could watch this movie without reading the book, in my opinion, and still have some idea what was going on (although I think seeing the 1st movie would be a prerequisite for truly understanding what was happening, as otherwise the “sparkly” vampires wouldn’t make sense, nor would the “remember our talk on the beach” since they didn’t re-show the talk on the beach.
Negative-wise, I would have loved more of the wolf backstory — they did the bare minimum (did I mention topless Jacob?) to explain it, but in the book there was a great story about all the wolves, whereas in the movie you still don’t know ANY of the guys except the main character.
In fact, my son completely missed that the “wolf-girl”’s injuries were caused by her boyfriend. It wasn’t a secret, they just covered that entire thing in a single expository sentence between Bella and Jacob.
The movie was VERY SLOW in multiple places. They spent what seemed like 5 minutes SHOWING us how in despair Bella was, and that was BEFORE they showed her moping for months. I felt after about 30 seconds that we had the idea, and they could have used the other few minutes to do a Wolf backstory between a couple of the other wolf-guys.
Top Stuff (me or my daughter):
“Shirtless Jacob”
Alice driving the yellow porsche.
Alice verbal smackdown of Jacob.
Bella Slapping Edward. (OK, that didn’t happen, but if it had, it would have been cool).
Jasper had the best line in the movie. Won’t quote it here though, don’t want to spoil it.
Jasper was a great improvement, he didn’t look like a bad knock-off of Edward Scissorhands. Also, whoever was playing Victoria this time did a great job, I loved her. And the special effects were marginally better, except for the “drowning scene” which had many of us laughing, which I don’t think was the desired emotion.
FInal thought. Edward looks much better and more “manly” when he has his shirt ON — he looked downright effeminate when they put him in a red robe with his chest showing. And compared to bare-chested Jacob, Edward didn’t have a chance.
Anyway, for anybody who isn’t bothered by the general concept of fantasy, werewolves, and vampires, this is a movie you can take your kids to see, they will probably enjoy it, you won’t die of boredom, there’s just enough action to make it interesting, it’s sufficiently campy to get a few laughs, but not a complete joke like the first movie.
Ah, Barnabus. I heard they were trying to ressurect Dark Shadows, I wonder if it’s still in the works.
If they ever put that on Hulu, my daughter would probably watch it. I wonder if they even FILMED it though, or if it was purely live-action?
The bottom line - These books/movies rae dumb (unless you like that sort of thing)
The Lord of the Rings books/movie - dumb (unless you like that sort of thing)
Star Wars Saga - dumb (unless you like that sort of thing)
Any book by Stephen King - dumb (unless you go for that sort of thing)
It’s all about whatever floats your boat. What’s the point of even debating it? The only provable fact is that love-sick pre-teen to young adult women love sappy love story movies and will drop a ton of cash on them - ie Titanic and Twilight.
I’m just glad in our capitalistic (for now) society businesses can make money of these chicks. It’s a good thing.
The number of worthwhile films is always a minority. Same goes with books, music...
Truer words were never spoken.
You’ve got it. Far too many want to apply their own personal taste to others; As in, if you don’t like what i like, or if you like something i hate, you are a loser dweeb without a life. Anyone that expresses that sentiment is a loser dweeb! LOL!
That implies there are no objective standards. Sometimes something just isn’t very good. Regardless of how many people like it.
and whether Twilight is objectively GOOD is of no moment to those who enjoy reading the books and seeing the movies. there are plenty of ACCLAIMED works that i simply have no interest in seeing. what does it matter?
It is the difference between literature/CINEMA and just plain ENTERTAINMENT. Not a soul on the planet is claiming Twilight is the former, but the success at the box office proves that it performs in the latter category.
To those who care about a shared culture it does matter.
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