Tag Archives: Robert Pattinson

Review: Breaking Dawn Part 2

16 Nov

There are no spoilers in this post.  If you want spoilers, read somebody meaner.

A bit of history for new followers:

Old followers, please bear with me: you’ve read enough about KStew’s and RPatz’s hair here to know that if a superhero needs to kill me, Twilight is my weakness.

I don’t like vampires or vampire movies.  I refused to watch the Twilight films when they came out.  The Hub liked them, enough that our boys had great fun offering to buy him Robert Pattinson posters and bobby socks (something teenage girls wore in the Fifties and with no link to the films, but the boys didn’t seem to care).

Last Christmas, I bought him the Twilight films trilogy box set.   He insisted I try to watch the first one with him, further insisting that they were neither scary nor gory.  He was right.  After the first one I insisted he was horrible for not insisting that I watch these films the minute they came out and I had to have the books immediately or he was going to suffer a long and terrible moan on my part.

I’m not ashamed to admit I loved the films and devoured the books.  I didn’t get to see Breaking Dawn Part 1 in the cinema, even though it was showing last Christmas.  You can read all about how that nearly killed our marriage and what the Hub had to do to save it here.

I was a little disappointed in Part 1 because I read the book before seeing the film and I didn’t like the changes that were made, though I understood why they were necessary.

I read the first three books after seeing the films and was pleased that they more or less stuck to the story.  I liked Part 1 better on second, third, eighth viewing, so I expected to feel the same way about Part 2.

The Review:

I really enjoyed it.  Some changes were made from the original story but it did stick to the spirit of the book.  The main change in particular caught me by surprise and, while I mourned the loss of an element I love in the novel, I believe the change worked really well, and was necessary for the film to work for a wider audience.

As with the other films, a lot of detail had to be omitted but there was enough to satisfy this  – alas, I cannot deny it – Twihard.

The Hub thought it was the best one of the series.  I wouldn’t go that far (Twilight will always my favourite film; Breaking Dawn is my favourite book) but as I didn’t need to fill up on any of the snacks I had sneaked into the cinema in my handbag, I acknowledge that it kept me gripped throughout.

Everyone is gorgeous.  The Hub thought young Renesmee was funny-looking (quote-that’s the ugliest kid I’ve ever seen-unquote) but I couldn’t take my eyes off Jasper’s peculiar hair long enough to notice – what was that all about?

The acting, as usual, was as usual (see here for my review of Kristen Stewart’s facial expressions) but good enough, and I enjoyed the nice touch in the end credits, where all of the main actors from the earlier films were acknowledged.

I would definitely watch it again.

But you knew that: I already have the DVD on order.

One more thing:

It cost us nothing to go: Tesco have an offer until the end of November – you can exchange your vouchers for cinema tickets at the rate of £3 in vouchers for one adult ticket.  As the going rate for an adult cinema ticket before five p.m. is £7.60, it’s an excellent deal.

The film opened today and, as it was my first time going to the cinema on a film’s opening day, I think it counts as a new experience for my 101/1001 challenge. However, I was disappointed to find there was no red carpet.  I felt a little overdressed in my floor length frock.  

Twilight: I Hope Bella Remembered To Shave

24 Jan

WARNING!

PLOT SPOILER ALERT!

 

Cover of "Twilight (Two-Disc Special Edit...

Cover of Twilight (Two-Disc Special Edition)

 

Contemplating my blunt Bic yesterday, and whether it was worth getting out of the shower for a fresh razor (I still have 273 left of the thousand my Dad left when he died back in 2000) or to stay half hairy until my next ablutions, it occurred to me that if Bella didn’t shave the night before she was changed into a vampire – and there is, unaccountably, no record in the book that she did – then she was going to be stuck with fluffy armpits for eternity.  For a female vampire, that would suck.

In Twilight‘s world, vampires are frozen in time, with the same likes, dislikes, looks (the same, but amplified to remove the dross and highlight the gorgeous) and hair.  I know this for a fact, because I have watched the first Twilight film 117 times since Christmas, and Edward Cullen (the delicious Robert Pattinson) has hairy arms and chest in every scene where he shows his hairy arms and chest.

Obsession has its usefulness – Bella got Edward in the end; Edward got Bella in the end, and I got to notice Robert Pattinson’s hair.  His other hair; the one that inspired Jedward:

 

Twilight: A Real Horror Movie

28 Dec

I don’t watch horror movies; I watch few suspense movies; thrillers?  Not at all.  I don’t like feeling frightened.  I don’t read scary books.  I had to forego my daily dose of the excellent Kate Shrewsday over Christmas, because she wrote a three-day ghost story.  The Muppet Christmas Carol is as ghostly as it gets for me.

So vampires…forget it!  The Hub, before he fully understood my need to live in a bubble of niceness, made me watch Scream and Interview With The Vampire.  Being clutched from behind in the middle of a deep sleep in the middle of the night by a terrified wife who woke up and hallucinated giant spiders and pretty vampires and knife-wielding masked men gave him so many near-heart attacks that he decided to stop my film-nasties education, and never resumed it.  Particularly after the night I jumped out of bed, screaming ‘Fire!  Fire!’, having watched The Towering Inferno at last, because ‘it is a classic’, and he realised he was living in a nightmare of his own making. 

Cover of "Twilight (Two-Disc Special Edit...

Cover of Twilight (Two-Disc Special Edition)

 

The Hub likes the Twilight movies.  I bought him the trilogy box set for Christmas, to the amusement of our sons, who laughed at him for being a teenage girl and offered to buy him a Robert Pattinson poster for his wall.

The Hub made me watch the first one.  He assured me I would love it; it wasn’t frightening.  He promised.  He swore.  He was right.  It wasn’t frightening.  I did love it.  It was a romance between a lonely teenage girl and one of the undead.  What could be more natural?

Robert Pattinson was sexy in Twilight; I’ll admit.  It’s not pervy of me to think that because he was seventeen in 1918 which makes him 110 by my reckoning; and that makes him the perv, if you think about it: chasing after a teenage girl.

He was brooding and dark and all of those things women like in a fictional man.  Not so much fun when you have to live with it, I imagine.  Edward (RP) wants Bella (Kristen Stewart); he enters her room while she’s asleep, and watches her.  Just stands there and watches her.  He doesn’t sleep, you see; so that’s okay then.  He follows her, but that’s all right because if he didn’t follow her, he couldn’t save her from the nasty gang of young men who have horrid thoughts about her.  Better the devil you know, I suppose.

Bella is much safer with Edward, because he will protect her from the really mean undead who want to dine on her.  Too bad he’s the one who exposed her to them in the first place.  And it’s fine that he tells her he can’t promise never to kill her, because she trusts him, you see; she loves him.

I loved this film; I did.  I’m eager to watch the sequels.  The Hub was right: it was a romance; it wasn’t frightening.  In the conventional sense.

But sending out the message to impressionable young women that it’s okay to love a man who stalks you and who tells you he might kill you one day?  That’s a real horror story.

*

Postscript

Creating Reciprocity left such a great quote in the comments, I have added it here:

Harry 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

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