Panicking

Watching Panic room again is weird because I'd forgotten Kristen Stewart was in it.


Probably the best performance she's given, which largely revolves around her slipping into a diabetic coma.


Shame that didn't happen in Twilight.

Breaking Dawn

Yesterday I mentioned "Breaking Dawn".

Alternative movie pitch based on that title:

"Dawn is a militant terrorist who has planted a dirty bomb carrying weaponised smallpox in a school somewhere in the US. Detectives Jack Baines and Frank Colt have just six hours to interegate her and "break" her, so they can find out the bomb's location and defuse it, before all hell breaks loose."

I just think that sounds a lot more interesting than glittery vampires.

Twi As I Might

So, Twilight 4A has hit cinemas and now my Twitter feed and Facebook page are full of comments about it.

As you may know from previous rants, I'm not a fan of Twilight, nor of the Twilightification of EVERYTHING else that it has affected.

So I have a message for any woman (or man) over the age of 17, who is going to watch or has already been to see "Breaking Dawn":

I hope that you enjoy it and that it lives up to your expectations. This isn't a joke or the start of a rant; if you genuinely find Twilight entertaining then I hope this new film is enjoyable for you. However, as you're watching a film based on a series of books primarily aimed at eleven-year-old girls, you automatically forfeit any right to EVER judge me for reading comic books and watching cartoons. And I will throw it back in your face if you ever try to.

Just saying.

Hoodwinked

Further to my ongoing complaint about the ‘Twilightification’ of everything we hold dear in society; I have now seen this permeate into fairy tales.

“Red Riding Hood” is the ‘gothic reimagining’ of the classic children’s story, with Gary Oldman playing a devout preacher, Amanda Seyfried playing the crimson covered heroine, and lots of c-list television stars popping up for bit parts.

It’s so Twilight that there’s even a love triangle, with one of the boys Red is in love with being “wrong for her”. Cue lots of brooding and sorrowful glances. Oh and the Wolf is now a Werewolf, because…well they’re kinda popular with Team Jacob, right?

Unsurprisingly it’s not very good, however if I was a pre-pubescent girl who was missing her Twilight fix, it would probably be like methadone for me.
  

I Am Number Bore

With “I am Number Four “we see yet another film in the mould of “Twilight”. This time however, it’s aliens rather than vampires that go through the Twilightification process.

I’d do a full plot synopsis, but there’s not much point. John Smith (The dude who played “Stormbreaker” – you don’t need his real name) is a brooding teenager who’s actually an alien, yada yada yada. He falls in love with an attractive high school girl (the pregnant one from Glee) who is ostracised by her peers blah blah blah. He’s hunted by evil aliens, gets a couple of side kicks (a dog and a geek), and then ends up forming a love triangle with another alien… basically there’s nothing new here.

Despite the fact that it’s cliché-ridden and entirely predictable, it’s not unentertaining. The plot moves fast enough and the fact that John is discovering his powers as he goes along makes him much more interesting than Edward from Twilight. That said, I do have a soft spot for Sci-fi, so maybe I forgave it more than it deserved.

Word of the week

After my Tween Wolf rant, it was suggested to me that as a culture we should make “Twilightification” an accepted everyday word in the English Language. So, before the Oxford English Dictionary next goes to print, submitted for your approval is my definition of Twilightification:

twi·lighti·fi·ca·tion /ˈtwīˌlīt/əfiˈkāSHən/ 

(noun)

1. The act of ruining an already established and well-loved idea by revamping it to include brooding teenagers with big hair and pouts
2. Purposely moulding something to include damp-squib heroines who are surrounded by attractive males in the hopes of finding an audience with pre-teen girls
3. Destroying popular horror concepts such as vampires by making them friendly, glittery and non-threatening   

I think we can all agree that this needs to be in the dictionary, so we have a true word for this menace that must be stopped before it destroys our society.

Quote of the day

"Happy Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend."


- Stephen King

Tween Wolf

So I’ve now been ‘lucky’ enough to watch the pilot episode of the Teen Wolf reboot. You may remember that when I was bemoaning reboots a few weeks ago, I said I was particularly dubious about this one, but I was willing to give it a chance.

More fool me.

Someone has taken the 1985 classic that I loved from my childhood, and Stephanie Meyered it beyond all recognition. They play Lacrosse not Basketball, for crying out loud! When did Lacrosse stop being a middle-class girl’s game?

I’m not going to rant about it, I’m too despondent. If you’re thinking to yourself “It can’t be THAT bad”, imagine this:

Teen Wolf (1985) goes to a bar. It’s 26 years old now, and is comfortable drinking alone. I mean, it’s never had the success of “Back to the Future”, but as Michael J Fox vehicles go, it’s up there. So imagine it’s surprise when Twilight sidles over to it at the bar. At first, Teen Wolf scoffs at the bad poetry and broody looks that Twilight is sending it’s way, but before it knows what’s happening, Teen Wolf is brushing it’s hair behind it’s ears and beginning to think that Twilight is pretty deep. “Why don’t I let Twilight buy me a drink?” it thinks to itself, “What could be the harm?”

One Rohypnol Margarita later, and Twilight is leading a groggy Teen Wolf back to it’s van. Teen Wolf doesn’t like where this is going, but is too out of it to argue. Before Teen Wolf knows what’s happening, it’s being led into Twilight’s house, and down into Twilight’s basement. Before Teen Wolf blacks out, it sees chains on the wall...this place has been turned in to some kind of dungeon.

Fast-forward nine months. Word can’t express the depravity that Teen Wolf has suffered at the hands of Twilight. At first, Teen Wolf had cried itself to sleep, wishing that this was all a bad dream, hoping that the team from “Criminal Minds” would swoop in at some point to rescue it from this hell. But it never happened. Instead, through the months of abuse, Teen Wolf develops Stockholm Syndrome and begins to think that Twilight really loves it. “Twilight is only doing what’s best for me.” “Twilight really loves me.” “I’m pregnant with Twilight’s baby, and we’ll raise it together.”

Until Twilight doesn’t need the chains anymore. Teen Wolf is so compliant, so brainwashed, that it’ll do anything Twilight says. And that’s when Teen Wolf gives birth to the bastard child of this unholy union. And Twilight says, “let’s raise the baby my way”. A part of Teen Wolf wants to argue. A part of Teen Wolf knows this is wrong. But that part of Teen Wolf can’t find the strength to speak up. But Twilight is clever and knows that part of Teen Wolf is still there, so in order to get it’s own way, Twilight suggests a compromise...

“We’ll raise the baby my way, but we’ll let it keep your name.”

Wow, that got a little darker than I intended. But, you know, you can’t hide from the truth.

Rebooting the past

As I’ve ranted about before, it seems that Hollywood are so completely out of original ideas that they need to keep rehashing old ones to try and maintain a grip on their audience. This seems to be especially prevalent in television at the moment.

It’s not always bad. The new Battlestar Galactica was a well constructed, multi-layed series, with complex characters and gripping storylines. To my mind one of the best television shows of the last ten years. But for every Battlestar Galactica there’s a V or a Bionic Woman or a Hawaii Five-O.

Actually, I’m being harsh. I quite enjoy the new Hawaii Five-O, and consider it one of my guilty pleasures. What I like about it is that it’s trash, that knows it’s trash. It doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Which is my problem with shows like Blue Bloods, which pretends to be high brow but is really just trash.

The other thing Hawaii Five-O has going for it is the cast. Despite Alex O’Loughlin being the world’s least expressive human, the show has Scott Caan who’s entertaining, Grace Park who seems to have the Midas Touch for reboots (see BSG again) and Daniel Dae Kim who, after Lost, must have instructed his agent that he only wanted jobs that were based in Hawaii.

I don’t have anything against reboots per-se. Hawaii Five-O, V, BSG et al were all decades old by the time they got rebooted. It’s when they start tossing around ideas like rebooting Buffy (which is apparently on the cards) that I get a bit twitchy.

Which brings me to the hideous trailer I saw the other day for the new Teen Wolf reboot. Now they’re p*ssing me off. Taking a beloved film from my childhood (my God it’s got Michael J Fox in it…the gold standard of eighties fare) and Twilight-ing it to appeal to a tweenie audience. The thought of it makes me physically sick. OK maybe mot physically sick, but close.

I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt though and won’t pass judgement until I’ve seen the first episode myself.

Expect a rant though.

Breaking Dawn

This image did the rounds a few months back, but in light of the MASS hysteria surrounding the Breaking Dawn trailer, I dug it out again.


Twilight sucks by the way...vampires should not fraking sparkle.


If only someone was writing a book where vampires are hardcore again...