Film Field Trip: Breaking Dawn part I

Okay, okay, Breaking Dawn part I is a guilty pleasure.  But I have a real weakness for page-turning novels!  So, of course, I read the Twilight series.  Enjoyed it.  Not lovely prose, but a fun, fast read with a perfect grasp of the desperate obsession of teen-love.  (Why Edward, at 17 + 100 years, yearns like a teen is a question...)

Anyway.  The films have been cheesy fun... just as long as no one (male) I know sees me watching.  But if the movies so far have been the film equivalent of Nacho-Cheese Dorrito TM chips, this latest one is canned CheezWhiz TM: not nutritious, you're not sure it's food, but yet uncannily palatable, violently-attractively colored, and propulsive!  It can't be good for you or the ozone layer, yet embarrassingly, still kinda fun.

Breaking Dawn part I has several too too silly moments.  I cringed at obviously CG wolves thinking cheddar-y dialogue at each other, synthetic wolfhair blowing in the breeze.  I covered my eyes when vampire venom battles human blood in Bella's conversion scene -  a psychedelic out-take from Fantastic Voyage.  I covered my ears at lame dialogue.  And then there's always the dopey sparkle-vampire thing.  (Someone spent too much time in the girlie aisle of Toys R Us.  "What would make girls like vampires better? Sparkles!!!"  The mercy is it's not PINK sparkles.)

But mostly the film underlines how very very... odd... this story is.  Creepy, actually.

So my recommendation is: if you just can't help yourself, go see it, eat cheese-food products while watching, enjoy!

image borrowed from seriouseats

Remember the opening-the-bag-of-nacho-cheese-chips scene from Over the Hedge?  Here's a CLIP.

Film Field Trip # 3ish

Jane Eyre - really enjoyed it.  A good version I thought that, though it condensed and simplified etc. as a film always does which always irritates a book-lover, nevertheless caught the passionate mood of the story perfectly.  Both this Mr. Rochester and especially this Jane Eyre were very, very good.  Worth seeing!

But I hadn't quite realized until I saw the audience how much of a chick flick Jane's story is... there were a few men in the auditorium, but many of them had a slightly "dragged" look.  Which was short-sighted of them.  I remember one critic, years ago, talking about Freud's question (asked by many other men before and since), "What do women want?"  and pointing out that Jane Eyre gives one answer: freedom of mind, heart, and action; and a loving family; worthwhile work (however humble) that uses abilities and talents, is respected, and has satisfying results; and a little money to make that work not wage-slavery; and beyond that, a soul mate to marry as an equal!  Or... to tell truth... maybe to have a little bit the upper hand there.

This book is emotional, gothic, almost surrealist at moments.  It's an orphan-makes-good story reminiscent of Harry Potter (but with a much tougher school), a combo of Oliver Twist and Cinderella.  In it's day it was also a sort of geometry proof of the theorem that: "Woman has a soul and isn't afraid to use it!"

A very controversial book.