Vampyr Love Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry., Never!

Rating: Null/10 (24 November 2008)

The movie was great. Sun never came out, drizzled nearly every day. A rainy Washington, a dazzling vampire from an interesting vamp family. Somebody named Bella Swan's father, Sheriff's Department deputy Charlie Swan. That's the name of Marcel Proust's hero in the first of his seven novels, Swann's Way. Now I've got to find out if that is something the screenwriter dreamed up, or if the author was responsible. At first it was surprising, but about a third of the way through, you could see plainly how the author was going to keep the antagonism between the two characters roiling: The Vampire loves the girl so much, there's an inner struggle to keep himself from killing her and draining the blood from her body. Naturally, she eats that s**t up, as the FBI guy in Thelma and Louise would say. Each time the vamp goes through this "I want so badly to fang you to death" routine, Bella becomes more bellicosely aggressive. Its startling to guys watching to see how she goes after him. Kristen Stewart who played the girl at the swap meet who has the brief love affair with the young kid in Into the Wild, is doing all the acting in this film. She is mostly submissive and passive but she is the audience's moral guide. She even tells her father to quit eating french fries at lunch, to have a salad like her. The vampire is having nothing, thank you. Stewart has Piper Laurie's chipmunk teeth from the fifties movies Laurie did with Tony Curtis. When you finally see that Bella has jumped on the side of the Family, you know the Studios have at least two sequels in mind, maybe three. Wonderful rainy Washington State exteriors. The look of the film is exquisite and effecting right through to the end of the film. They're leaving high school though, which means no more cheering for the Spartans. She hasn't graduated yet so its only fair that the family place her in Jacksonville High for her last two years. If she isn't in high school, the sequel is going to lose fire. Catherine Hardwicke, who directed the under-rated Lords of Dogtown (2005), which I thought one of the best films that year, was production designer on Three Kings in 1999, as well as on Antitrust and Vanilla Sky. Her direction here may make her the first new major woman director in the Big Leagues in awhile. The movie did $70 million this weekend, $4 million more than the James Bond opener did last week. Its a very big hit. I was scheduled to see the movie early Friday morning at 12:10 a.m., slept through the start, but took the trouble to drive by and discover 30 cars at the Rogers Theater in Sparta at 1:40 a.m.. That one showing in a thousand theaters early Friday at the same time, brought in $7 million. My niece pointed out to me that the film made back its cost including advertising and the cost of negatives on its first weekend, a rare feat in Hollywood. She heard about Twilight from a colleague where she worked in Chicago, and has read one or more of the four books. She is raring to see it today. I'm really onto this not because its a teen film- most of those are nose-holders, but because this is the latest example of an emerging genre known as the Blockbuster Chick Flick. As recently as last year, they were considered risky by H'wood. The reason was that in couple situations which were assumed to be a guy and a girl before the Massachusetts Supremes acted, the guy would choose the flick and it would be Unforgiven or the Hulk or some other male clunker like Appaloosa. But now more than ever, young people are bowling alone. The Studios pulled out the stops for the movie version of Sex and the City. That film was loaded with anti-Male jabs designed to infuriate young guys but at the same time pluck at the strings of a girl's heart. Masochist that I am, I found myself loving those jabs. In the nearly all woman theater where I saw Sex and the City, selected couples were forging the beginnings of same sex marriages as I watched. uh, the film. My niece has since purloined my single copy of Sex and the City forcing me to return to Red Box for a fresh one to make a copy from. Its no fun to watch at home, though, without a bunch of frenzied women in the seats nearby. Since then I have been to every chick flick, even the bad ones like 27 Dresses and the rest of the Judd Apatow awfulness, which aren't just chick flicks but also wallow in male excess like f*rting. Before Sex and the City, women clung to their copies of the Notebook DVD and other Nicholas Sparks tearjerkers. Sparks' latest, Nights in Rondanthe, was a limited success, possibly because there wasn't enough male bashing in it. Its a great time to be alive even with the financial world melting. But parents need to cut back in their efforts at reviving Ophelia. Its young Hamlet who needs resuscitation most.