Scott Pilgrim Rocked My World - A review of Scott Pilgrim vs the World

Warning, there may or may not be spoilers included. this is your only warning.

So what is this movie about? Scott Pilgrim. Bass player. Down on his luck lovable loser. Finds his way into a relationship that kinda sucks and then meets the girl of his dreams. and then in order to date her, he has to battle her seven evil exes. But the movie is better than it sounds on paper. By a lot.

This is one of those directing experiences where you look at the final product and assume someone knew exactly what they were doing and firing on all the right cylinders. This is of course talking about Edgar Wright of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame. This might be better than both of them. I know, I know. Blasphemy. But hear me out. I had one of the most enjoyable experiences with this movie even if I waited for way to long to see this movie early. I'm not even a fan of the books and yet I was fully engaged in the world and the story without much trouble. The movie has 7 elaborate action sequences and they are all beautiful. And I don't just mean in the sense that they are intense and full of emotional packed punches, they are that too, but they are fantastically pretty to look at. So this is a great diversion for me to talk about which is that this movie uses action as an emotional storytelling device to explore back story. Well most of them. There is one fight involving the twins that doesn't have the same kick that alll of the other scenes do, but overall most of the scenes are fantastic. Now I think this is part of Original Graphic Novel writer Brian Lee O'Malley's scripts in the book, but I find it really compelling and it works in a strange, surrealistic way. And part of the reason these scenes work is because there is a sense of magical realism going on. There has to be because when he defeats an evil Ex they burst into quarters. And so we then can move on to the Exes themselves. They are each carefully different from each other while all having an overall theme to them. I don't want to give away any of them because this movie is a hilarious comedy and part of that is these characters reveals, but I will say that the actors are strong in all of them except the twins. Because the twins are such a bit part in the movie and in their purpose they feel like a plot device, not as a part of the story. They are there and then they are gone. As for the other actors you have many solid performances, but none of them outside of the exes JUMP out and steal the show. Okay, that's a lie. The Culkin in this movie, Kirieon I think, is pretty awesome. Our leads are solid but they don't break the mold. See this movie as soon as you can.



This movie scores a rocking A- for being awesome. But when it comes down to me choosing between Inception and Scott as my fave movie of the year, Inception will win. When it comes down to which I'll watch more, Scott Pilgrim shall win.

MR. PILGRIM!!!!

Things on the horizon

overall this is just a rundown of things to come that I am interested in and will likely talk about in some capacity.



Graphic novel reads:
Batwoman Elegy
Omnibi including Daredevil by brubaker V2, Iron Fist, and Captain America

Reaction to fiction: Avatar the last airbender(that should be done before august I hope)

Event Retrospective: Infinite Crisis(hopefully before September)
Event Retrospective: Civil War(hopefully by the end of the year, contingent on acquisition of the hardcovers)

Reaction to Fiction(October, November) The Walking Dead (and other Zombies)

Top 100 film list 2010 edition(this fall)

Game Review:(TBD) Red Dead Redemption

Game Review: (TBD) Metal Gear solid 4

Game Review(TBD): Grand Theft Auto

Game reveiw:(TBD) Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core

Coverage of Pax10

Supernatural Review: Swan Song

NEWS NEWS NEWS - July 22nd EDITION

http://bluray.ign.com/articles/110/1107458p1.html


a full length blu ray of both version of grindhouse, theatrical and extended. The whole thing together in one place. Finally. At last.
October 5th release date set





http://tv.ign.com/articles/110/1107556p1.html

Coming in 2011: A sequel to the animate hit, Avatar:The Last Airbender.

Here's hoping this will lead to an entire series of series.



New photos from Green Lantern: http://movies.ign.com/articles/110/1107775p1.html
Abin Sur looks awesome and fully embraces the roots of this movie. Have fun audience.



http://tv.ign.com/articles/110/1107505p1.html

No more Caprica until January


http://comics.ign.com/articles/110/1107292p1.html
Collectors version of Fallout:New Vegas to include graphic novel prequel


http://www.aintitcool.com/node/45865
Tron:Legacy trailer :D


http://movies.ign.com/articles/110/1107763p1.html
Possible new Judge Dread


New walking Dead poster:
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/45851





This article is our new segment since I wasn't able to get my other one done in time. It'll function by me linking you to other articles and giving you a basic idea for what the article is about. For the details, visit the article because the sites rock.
In addition, these links at the bottom of my articles are recomendations for those interested in the article, hand chosen by me. They are good items. They may be ads, but they are actually about what you want to know.



Grindhouse (Special Edition) [Blu-ray]
Caprica (TV Series) [Blu-ray]

Who is Salt? Jason Bourne. - A reveiw of the movie Salt

Seriously, its a female remake of Bourne series, complete with sequel bait ending. There is really only one or two reasons to see this movie, non of which are must see in theaters moments.


So basic rundown the movie: Angelina Jolie is a spy. Ignore the trailer, it gives you an idea of the kind of game the movie will play, but whether or not she is a spy isn't one of them. She is a spy. A mysterious man walks into her and Liev Schreibers office and offers a cryptic story about a Russian spy set up to kill the Russian president. He then says its Angelina. You also get Chiwetel Ejiofor as a cia agent.

spoilers
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The movie is then is she or isn't she a Russian agent. And I am going to kind of dip into spoilers for this but if you want to know my opinion it's that you should rent this movie, not pay to see it.

So this movie is a spy movie. You have the cat and mouse sequences from Salt(Angelina's character) and the CIA. You have the big action assassination scene. You have the car chase on foot. You have the double cross. The triple cross. You even get a big show down in an underground lair. All of the spy cliches are here. The movie has a fairly clever set up where in about 20-30 minutes into the movie(I don't have an exact time as I wasn't allowed my cell phone, a plight I'll expand on at the end) the movie actually shifts gears into Manchurian candidate territory but pretends to be more bold. Which really sums up this movie, several times this movie pretends to be more bold, and as a careful observer of cinema it was all telegraphed in a style closely akin to looking at a scene of a crime and a movie highlighting which elements are clues. But some people might not see it coming and get caught off guard. But I don't think that is the case. Why? Well let me explain. Originally I thought this movie was treating it's audience with more respect than some movies by not flashing back and explaining everything Ocean's 11 style. Instead what we get is that things just happen and you are expected to connect the dots yourself. What I realized on a second thought process is that the movie might have actually expected you to know what was going on the whole time and so instead the reason it didn't might be because it expected you already knew what happened. That the writers thought it was already perfectly clear and so they didn't go out of their way to explain it. The reason I believe this is because the entirety of this movie is that it is a borne identity clone with Angelina instead of Matt. And without nearly as cool action or intelligence. Instead what we get is an action movie set up to be a series of films. The ending could have been smart and wrapped everything up(the film is only 90 minutes long, they could have spent another 15-20 minutes clearing the movie up) but what we get is Salt on the run. The thing that almost made this movie brave, that 20-30 minute mark moment is that Angelina actually IS the Russian spy that they talked about. It is then later revealed that she actually isn't anymore, but the film was exciting for about 20-30 minutes when there was actually the possibility that she was a Russian spy and this was going to be a movie about Russian Spy from her perspective. That would have been cool.
So there are only a few things I consider cool other than that portion of the movie are two actors. First is Chiwetel Ejiofor who is criminally underused here. He is forced to play a lackluster, under developed character that is more of a plot device than an actual character and gets thrown away about halfway through. And the only reason he works is because he can act and even on his worse days(which really is this movie) he still is a competent actor proving he knows what he's doing. On the otherside we get Liev Schreiber playing this movie perfectly for about 85 percent of the movie. the other 15 percent he's hamming it up chewing scenery but still. It's fun to watch him go to work. He is very likable here. I have to say that when it comes to Angelina her work here is great for most actresses but for her it's actually kind of mediocre. It's not bad. It's good. It's just not great and kind of over par.
The action is better than most but still a bit under the bar set by the Bourne series.

Overall I found this movie to be uninspired and took the easy way out of what could have been a great movie. It gets props for bringing the Russians back into style, now if only we could get a bunch of Nazi's back into the movies and we can stop having terrorists.

The movie gets a C+, if you can look past an ending clearly devised for a sequel I might even give a B-, but I couldn't so my grade is a C-.




A word for my experience. First off, When I arrive at 4(three hours early), and I am fourth person in line, and then by the time the we get let in I'm 34th, something is seriously wrong. I don't have a solution for this problem yet(other than handing out tickets to people, not to passes, as they arrive) or actually yelling at people who join in. Now this doesn't actually stop me from getting in, but I'm certain there are some nice people about halfway through the line that didn't get in because of these line cutters. Some that had been in line since five, which isn't really fair.
They were still handing out passes while the line was going even though the line was clearly larger than the number of people who would actually be getting in.
They had the worst security I've been in. firstly they had the full scale, locking up electronics left and right when they see them(of course skipping anything that doesn't look like it; I know this because I had my psp in a small wallet looking case and they didn't even bother looking in the case) and then once in the theater they were monitoring the crowd using night vision goggles. and overall I wouldn't be surprised if someone still managed to film it.

I don't care how this idea got placed in Nolan's mind, its the best he's ever done - inception Review

Inception

The general idea in this movie is that you can enter someones mind and steal an idea. Anything else I could tell you would be spoilers.


So. I should also just say it right now, straight up, I loved this movie. It was fantastic. This is a film that will easily make my top 20 when I revisit my top 100 list for October. This is the kind of film that will inspire debate. This is the kind of film that makes movies like The Matrix and Fight Club totally simple in that they had one story all along, you just need to watch it multiple times to figure out what that is. This is a story with several narratives. You can look at the film and dissect it several ways. This movie will make you think. It is not a sit down and shut your brain off piece of trash. It is a smart, make you think and question existence kind of movie. The themes throughout haven't even all been discovered by our thousands of minds who have chosen o write upon its existence. instead just know this will twist your mind in ways you didn't think would happen.



The Acting is top notch here. The performances are high caliber. I wouldn't say any of them are oscar worthy or even career defining, but I will say it should open the door for several of the actors and actresses to hopefully get more notice for their talents by the mainstream public. For example while everyone knows her for Juno, few remember her from X-men:the Last stand, or her true piece of absolute magic in Hard Candy. Leo continues to show off the fact that he grew up with the world and proved himself long ago to be more than a child star. And then more thana teen star. And then more than just another actor. Joseph Gordon Levit is a dream as always. There are certain nuances to his performance that really remind me that he is just steps away from breaking out as being known for truly being Brilliant. Ken Watanabe also brings his A game and shows that he actually had more to him that what he was allowed to show off five years ago in Batman Begins.

The effects are mindblowing. These are the kind of effects I love. A lot of them are practical and when they use digital effects the only reason our minds know they are digital is because we look at something and go that isn't possible by any physics I know. which is how it should be. If you were to ask me, I'd easily give any effects awards to Inception over Avatar anyday. There are scenes such as the ones when they are first constructing the dream worlds that stand out as really pushing the technology. But the drawback about this is that they aren't used to much avail later in the film or in the films climactic last hour. Yeah it has a climactic last hour. deal with it.


I really wanted to give this film a full perfect score but it is failing in a couple points. The first major one is that while Nolan as a director has grown and is far more comprehensible in his shots than he once was, there are still the occasional scene where any and all logistics are out the window and I don't really feel like I have a strong mental image of the exact set up, even by the end of the scene. That said, some of the shots are too brilliant for words and most importantly Nolan continues to prove he can shoot cityscapes better than anyone else because he always manages to find a new angle to look at it from, never resorting to stock footage.

The whole thing weaves together in a story that I can't even talk about. But like I said, you will think you figured it out, and the person next to you will have come up with a completely separate response to the movie.


Overall I grade this A.

If a film could stalk you and figure out exactly what you want out of your horror/action movie, then this is the film that did it - a review of Predators

The movie in a nutshell: A bunch of crazy killer types are dropped from the sky. They are being hunted. By the alien race known as Predators.




I really don't want to tell you more because I don't think I need to. Either you already know what the plot is, or you don't. That is literally all you should know going into it. If you saw the original you won't get nearly as much enjoyment out of this one, but it is still worth your time. If you see this fresh you might think it the best action movie in a while.




This is a movie that is kick ass from the first second. It builds faster and faster towards answers and keeps you engaged from that first frame. The most important part is that it skips a lot of what would have been boring set up, and instead leaves that as a puzzle for the characters to solve and it works brilliantly. More importantly, constantly the movie employs LOGIC. It is rare for an action movie to do such, but if a character makes a decision often it makes sense, and if it doesn't make sense it does eventually via a further explanation of character. The premise is well done, simple, and is set up just right so as to keep the audience, as I said, engaged.

The movie opens up setting up a series of stereotypes. They are killers and they are for all intents and purposes a bunch of nameless and faceless characters to be killed off later. and in fact, the movie plays up this aspect by holding back on names until a logical character driven moment for a character. It works really well. A lot of the issues that could have come up are averted by good screenwriting. And you can of course LOL at the fact that Topher Grace gets dropped into this group. But I'll let that stand and let you make up your own mind on his performance when you watch the movie. They do get civilized rather quickly for killers and so they don't quite feel perfect, but they do feel overall solid. The characters are built up as being smart and being said to be actiony. It soon shows that each killer can back up what they claim with action and it is really important that the movie holds it in. Each of the eight main characters are distinct enough from each other that even without names you can know who each is without names. It is kind of hilarious that the Russian uses a minigun. Because both are known to be so efficient.

The movie keeps its first act well paced and shrouded in mystery. This is a movie about characters, not monsters. The sound design in here is really well done and really helps set up the tone between action and horror. It sets everything up through a system of fear so that rather than being about jump scares(there are only 2 or 3 in the movie) they use genuine tension to build towards truly horrific moments. The movie knows who scary it's antagonists are, and thusly slowly reveals them and keeps them in the shadows to remain scary. It is the Jaws effect.


The movie introduces several new alien designs that expands the Alien/Predator universe with new species. The film also gives us some new mythos to the Predator lore and while it does put some of the old non-movie predator movies out of cannon, it is authentic enough that it greatly expands the mythos. Most importantly it shows offa new design for the Predators and then also uses backstory to explain these new changes. It really works well.

The plot keeps up and once the humans finally see the predators they react true to life and once the first character dies, they start dropping for the rest of the film. The movie does eventually slow back down to explain some stuff, but it keeps the tension and the uneasyness going so that when the movie does slow down, you don't feel bored or taken aback by it. It's subtle. Then once a new character is introduced, the film steam rolls into the end of the film and you end up with some fantastic moments such as a predator taking a trophy, a outright duel, and the big finale.

Overall, I was enthralled by the movie and really enjoyed the experience. is it perfect? Of course not. But I also found it to be my favorite movie in the Predator series.

So overall, this movie gets a A-.
Check it out.

Because its cool and popular, and because I haven't done a top ten in a while, The Top Eleven Anime Badasses

The top Ten Anime Bad Asses



11.Alucard from Hellsing
10.Hiei from Yu Yu Hakusho
9.Ruroni Kenshin from...yeah
8.Racer X from Speed Racer
7.Princess Mononoke
6.Zack from Final Fantasy 7: Last Order
5.Light from Death Note
4.Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z
3.JiJi from kiki's delivery service
2.Lucy from Elfen Lied
1.Kurama from Yu Yu Hakusho



There will eventually be explanation for these, but for now, just enjoy the list and figure it out yourself.

One Year Later - A reaction to James Cameron's Avatar

I didn't find myself blown away.


James Cameron let me down by not giving me a new story but instead rehashing an old, tired, warn out story. Stop me If you've heard this one. Military man is sent to make peace with the natives. It works too well and he becomes integrated with the populous. The military machine then is angered when he changes sides and tries to kill them any way. The natives are beaten back until they won't be beaten no more and rise up and scare away the machines. Ferngully. Pocahontas. Dances With Wolves. Smurfs. It's not like the comparisons don't hold up well. I can point that they are all about the white man falling in with the non-traditional natives as well. Now the biggest argument I've gotten is that maybe this generation needs that message. I argue that anyone old enough to know a message when they see one and willing to make a difference because of it, will be old enough to remember at least one of those movies, if not all of them and that this argument isn't valid. I don't want to go into any more specific plot points of this movie, mainly because it hurts my head to remember something I didn't like, but also because the movie was never special enough for me to care. which leads me to my next points...

Characterization. This movie really doesn't have much. Aside from Jake Sully, no seems to be able to remember any characters names. Now Jake does grow and follow a very traditional heroes journey growth structure. And his two human partners follow similar ones as well. while not ideal, it is still better than they have a predictable arc than no arc at all. But let us look at the rest of the characters. They all remain static. The Na'vi all learn that with a tiny number of exceptions, Man can not be trusted. The humans running the military and the corporation still think they are better and that the Na'vi are just savages. Other than those three, no one in this movie has any change. This movie spends two and a half hours trying to grow three characters who complete their change about half way through the movie. All the movie has is plot. That isn't to say that can't be done, just that it's boring. The movie is also a little insensitive in basically saying that unless you can download yourself into a new body, if you are in a wheelchair you aren't fit to do anything heroic. I was really excited about a movie with a disabled protagonist(which this fact was downplayed in the trailers) and was also an action movie. I had hope. But ultimately the movie leaves the potential for commentary about how disabled people are just as effective as non-disabled are but the movie instead was bored with what ti had and just existed.

The acting. Everyone in this movie seems to be bored. None of the acting(except the crazy archetype military leader) have much emotion or reaction. The actors don't seem very invested in their roles and this might be partially do to all of the green screen effects that they had nothing to work with. The acting isn't bad, like most of this movie, it just isn't good either. And the one military leader that isn't bored is chewing scenery and being hammy. I will give props to Sam Worthington becuase I found his turn of being downtrodden and being excited to be good, I just wasn't entirely convinced. Also Giovani ribsi may have been playing an archetype, but he played it up to par and I would like to see more of him as subtle, slimy, greasy villain types.



The graphics look phenomenal, TODAY. Five years down the line, ten? This film will act much like Jurassic Park did and less like The Matrix and Star Wars because the story doesn't hold up. His landscapes,his aliens all look great. The machines look fake(which is surprising) and that's unacceptable because you have created the entire environment. The one good thing I can say about the haphazard effects of the Star Wars prequels is that all of their effects, despite X different teams building it, all look seamless. I believe that all of the CGI comes from the same place. Here, when I look at the quality of the world and the quality of the Na'vi and then compare them to the gunships and the Mech I am simply not impressed and can easily tell they are different. And moreso, once I see this in full 1080i I expect the difference to become even more apparent. So everything that this movie hypes, I.E. graphics are the entire reason this movie exists. Why couldn't they just do R&D to create this technology and then apply it to movies that would actually have some merit to them?

Directing? It's James Cameron. He knows what he's doing.

Ultimately, the movie is a decent scifi film, pretty mediocre though, and I suggest District 9 much more. C-

a note: I went into the movie excited and ready to love it, and I'll admit that when I first watched it I was taken into the movie and just experienced as a good experience. But after a day of thought it slowly fell more and more apart until I realized I was reacting the same way I did to another flawed movie, Jurassic Park. The difference? Jurassic Park is fun on subsequent viewings. Avatar was not.

Its a boy meets girl, boy meets girl's son, boy and girl's son have a battle of wits kind of movie - A review of Cyrus

So here's how it goes: Boy(John C. Reily) meets girl(Marisa Tomei looking as hot as ever. Boy meets girl's Son(Jonah Hill). Son hates boy. Cue plot here. We've seen this story before. So why is this movie any better? Well for starters Girl's Son(the title character Cyrus) is 21 and still lives with his mom. Him and his mom have a deep, best friend mentality. John is a divorcee but is still friends with his ex-wife. there is what amounts to a sub plot about her getting remarried but it doesn't amount to anything. What ensues in this movie is from the very moment Boy meets Son, Son is working to drive Boy away from Girl.

Let's start with the acting. It is without a doubt phenomenal. All three of the leads each act like it is going to cost them their lives to give good performances. You can tell there is some brilliant work going on between them. Each and every moment is earned and works. It is very rare that acting works this well. It helps that it is a small independent film with next to no cast. I large portion of the jokes and the moments and the timing are the actors and they work very well. In fact a minimal amount of the film is script. Clearly set changes are part of the script, but most of what happens in the scene is the actors. This movie lives and dies with the actors and they break the mold and give you a spectacular response. There are some very important moments that if they hadn't been sold by the actors most of the quiet moments where the film could have failed.

This movie fails in one area pretty epically. Directing. The directing is Terrible. This is deplorable. The look of the film, the mockumentery style without being a mockumentary doesn't work. In fact it looks like trash and feels like trash because of it. The only reason the movie isn't a total failure is that the acting and at time the writing is so out of the ball park that it gets you to forget that the film is so poorly shot. This is incredibly disappointing but at least it gets to showcase the actors talents.
So overall I will give this movie a B-. I want it to be better, but it's not. At the very least I can say that score is entirely the acting.

Reaction to Fiction - Twilight series

Welcome to a new column called Reaction to Fiction. In this I discuss the merits of a franchise and its multi-media effects and how it impacts society at large.

Twilight


so a few things. I have read the first book(trash). I can say the movies are getting progressively better at telling these stories. There are still the obvious fundamental problems such as this being a story of necrophilia, Bestiality and Pedophilia, and abusive male figures. I do intend to see and review Eclipse and Breaking Dawn. I am not planning on reading the books but I have read the wikipedia articles and learned their plots, themes, and messages. I am also am a Feminist and equal rights activist. Thus many flaws beyond the writing come jumping out at me.

And you can't blame the vampire craze on Twilight since all of this happened in the 90's with the Anne Rice novels. It's just now with the internet people realize they are en masse.

I will point out that just because something isn't exceptionally written can still be enjoyable. Harry Potter for example. It has it's issues certainly, but it is still a fun coming of age adventure that captured the hearts and minds of a lot of people. Twilight isn't fun. Twilight is a chance for a generic girl to identify with a generic tale that basically sums up as a disney movie ala Cinderella. Seriously let's look at the two plots. Girl lives a life where she isn't pleased with her conditions. Girl finds man who is everything she isn't and from a different way of life. They fall in love without knowing anything about each other and are then abruptly torn apart. The boy then eventually realizes he must be with this girl and goes out to find her and marry her. The reason Twilight is more popular is that it aims its age target a little higher. It takes it to the PG-13 level and introduces teenage problems like Sex and the dream of Marriage(because obviously teenagers are stupid to get married but like to think of it anyways). So why does Cinderella work where Twilight doesn't? Because Cinderella's plights are real. She isn't worried about being uncool in school, the center of attention, or bored. She is, for all intents and purposes a slave. So the need to escape that life is a necessity. The story works further because of its time period. The story is from a pre-women's rights era. Therefore women didn't often have a lot of power to break from their own bondage. And that's not to say they weren't capable of the power, simply that they were systematically denied the rights and the chance to be equals. This is still true today, but it is much more subtle. You can also say similar things with Africans that were actually slaves. But we are here to talk about Twilight. But to complete the obvious parallels I need to point out that Vampirism is used as a metaphor for marriage/sex in the Twilight universe.


These books are clearly the signs of women in abusive relationships surrendering to gender expectations and being passive and incompetent. Meyer's work is doing more harm than good. She is glorifying being subservient and if I hadn't seen her speak I would assume she is just a pen name for some misogynist. Actually Meyer is a misogynist. She has no respect for women nor their ability to make rational decisions. Meyer offers up Bela three options. The first is the stalker that she stalks back. He is mysterious and abusive using phrases like "Get in the Car" and mysteriously being at the same place she is when she is in trouble. Meyer tries to distract you with the fact that He is stalking her by the fact that he saves her. The reality is that she doesn't show us most of the scenes where he is there just watching her and not saving her. And how creepy this is. More so, the one time she does we instead see Bela embrace him for doing so. Then in door number two we have her other would be protector, Jacob. Jacob and Bela's relationship is actually built up. We start by finding out that he is her childhood friend and he slowly becomes a good friend to her. Jacob's previously subtle attraction to Bela slowly grows more obvious to the audience(and possibly to Jacob too, but that' level of detail to a supporting character seems outside of Meyer's level of skill). Jacob is presented as the good guy. The safe bet. The non-dangerous one. That is until he becomes a werewolf. It is here that we begin to see that Bela is only attracted to bad boys because it isn't until this point that she ever truly considers embracing Jacob. And lastly there is the third option where she chooses neither of them. Oh wait, Meyer never presents this option. Meyer has the issue where she thinks that the character she set Bela out to be in love with is the character she should be in love with. It doesn't work out that way. In every way Meyer has set up Jacob to be the healthy relationship in her world and yet she ultimately treats him like dirt and makes him a pedophile. Meyer puts Bela through nothing but unhealthy relationships. Bela is constantly being treated like she has no personality and no ability to make decisions and thus they are always made for her by male figures in her life such as Her Father, Edward, Edwards "father", Jacob, and numerous others. Logically Bela would want to marry her creepy stalker right? Right? Okay so yeah, it doesn't make sense at all. Even in the context of the story it doesn't make any sense at all. Bela is trapped in a cycle of abuse and it is treated like a positive thing. Most of all, I feel bad for Meyer's husband. What must he be like if this is what Meyer thinks all relationships with men are like.

So here is where this all is a huge problem because this isn't the first novels to be like this. Harlequin novels do this all the time. So why is this a problem? It is because it IS so popular. By being a fan of this series you are saying you are a fan of abusive relationships and that's what you aspire to. You basically are telling everyone that you wish to NOT be in a healthy relationship. That you WANT guys to stalk you and treat you like dirt and be disrespectful. So long as they love you. Because that is what is happening in these books. It is the rationalization that it is okay to be in an abusive relationship because he loves you. Now I of course have been dodging the words Physically and Mentally in conjunction with abuse. That is because both are equally wrong. And they both leave scars. And because both are apt. All of the symptoms, all of the actions of an abusive relationship are the same. It is all a matter of where you are being hurt. And you wouldn't stay in a relationship like that would you? I hope not.

When I hear the phrase "I want an Edward" I cringe because it is like saying "I want a stalker that I can be in an abusive relationship with". Oh and the reason he sparkles is to make it even more obvious that he isn't a person, but a toy to be used. There is a phrase when it comes to a capitalistic society which is you pay with your wallet. So the more you pay to see and read these stories the more you tell the money counters, this works, we should make more of this. But it gets worse. You also tell the world this is what you believe. This is how you see things to be. It may not be true, but its what you desire and consider your idealistic view. And it is really bad. People wonder, "Why do crappy movies keep getting made and make money?" It is because you don't pay attention to critics and instead want to see it and then are surprised when it isn't good despite the critics telling you otherwise. The more you embrace popular items the more you try and homogenize what comes out in the future. This is because the moneycounters want to make more money and know that you will go see something that looks familiar than you are to try something new. You'll notice that until the movies came out, most of the books never got passed a second printing. Now they are at their umpteenth printing and the series is like a raging fire. However, the movies are their own beast. With each film, the story telling is getting better. They are getting better performances out of actors, better directing, they are paying attention to what needs to be cut and what deserves more attention. They know the source material sucks so they are making it better. Now that is not to say they are making good movies, but for example Eclipse is watchable and coherent. If your girlfriend takes you to it, it won't kill you. It is better than Last Airbender and last years Transformers 2. That isn't saying much, but it is something.


And before I give you my conclusion I just want to say that Bella as she is written is a thinly veiled allusion to Bela Lugosi, the original actor who portrayed Dracula in the original black and white movie Dracula.

I want to use Buffy the vampire slayer as an example of why Twilight is so bad. Buffy has a similar plot. Human girl falls in love with Vampire boy. But she eventually says something really important which is a cookie metaphor. she calls her self cookie dough, that she isn't ready to be done baking yet. And thus she needs to learn to be a person more before she can make a decision about who she should or shouldn't be with. Buffy shows Maturity to make rational, adult decisions. Something Bela like never could.


So, I want you to think about what you believe, what you want people to think of you when you give your support to that franchise. Is this really how you think of yourself? Is your self esteem really that low? Because I guarantee you that Freddy Kruger is better boyfriend material than Edward Cullen.


And then Buffy staked Edward the end.