Archive for the ‘Twilight’ category

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Ten Reasons To Be Thankful In 2009

November 25, 2009

1.  That Robert Pattinson was not in fact hit by a taxi fleeing fans in New York;

2.  and that he exists.

3.  That Lehman Brothers could only fall once;

4.  and that it didn’t happen this year.

5.  That our President (thank God!) has not been the subject of violent attack, despite all the crazy talk.

6.  That we still have a banking system, despite all the crazy talk.

7.  That Captain Sully Sullenberger did not allow his plane to crash into midtown Manhattan, even if the automatic pilot system supposedly could have landed the plane on its own.  (I don’t believe that.)

8.  That Levi Johnston is not our son-in-law.

9.  That Swine Flu has not mutated into a life-threatening epidemic like the 1917 Spanish Flu.

10.  Speaking of the 1917 Spanish Flu, that Edward Cullen didn’t  survive it.   Or did survive it.  Or did whatever he was supposed to have done.

Enjoy your thanks-giving.

And, as always, thank you all for reading.

(If you get a chance, please check out 1 Mississippi by Karin Gustafson at Amazon or on ManicDDaily home page.)

Categories: news, Obama, Robert Pattinson, Twilight
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Why I Stay Up Late Rereading Silly Books i.e. Twilight (ha!)

August 25, 2009

Why I Stay Up Late Rereading Really Silly Books (Like, I’ll Admit It, Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn, even Midnight Sun….)

  1. Otherwise, I read The New York Times.
  2. Or check on the stock market.
  3. Ugh.
  4. Books like Twilight have happy endings which, at all moments, even the “tense” ones,  can be foreseen by the reader.  Especially on a re-read.
  5. In the world of Twilight, even environmental issues, like the poaching of endangered species in national parkland, are dealt with soothingly.  (The  vampires only go after an “excess” of such endangered species after all, and with only their teeth as weapons.)
  6. And man’s inhumanity to man turns out to be actually vampire’s inhumanity to man, which somehow feels a lot less disturbing …  (I mean, what can you expect from a bunch of bloodcrazed supermodels?)
  7. Health care issues, at least in terms of access to treatment and payment for care, are arranged with breath-taking ease.  Of course, it helps to have a vampire doctor in the house.  And, in Breaking Dawn, a personal x-ray machine.  (Though blood banking’s a bit tricky.)
  8. Hardly anyone in the books seems to actually work at a job for pay except the policeman father (Charlie) who apparently plays cards with other officers much of each day.  Yes, Bella has a part-time job, but whenever this is mentioned, she’s being urged by her employers to take time off.  (The altruistic vampire doctor, who seems somehow to work at the hospital on a volunteer basis,  doesn’t count.)
  9. The New York Times, when I read it, frequently mentions the large number of ordinary Americans not working, being shunted to part-time jobs, or forced to take time off.   Somehow these practices seem a lot more fun in Twilight.
  10. Not only more fun.  More lucrative.  In the best-selling fantasy saga, college tuition and living expenses can actually be earned in one of these barely-existent part-time jobs.  By a teenager.
  11. More importantly, it’s somehow more pleasant to identify with Bella Swan than Maureen Dowd;
  12. More pleasant to read what Edward Cullen has to say than David Brooks, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, and/or Frank Rich.
  13. After all, Edward Cullen is even better than Robert Pattinson.
  14. True love conquers all.

Categories: Twilight, Twilight Saga, Uncategorized
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A Twilight Interlude, Rachel LeFevre-Round Peg in Star-shaped Hole

July 31, 2009

For those of you interested in my posts re writer’s block–sorry.  I’m temporarily distracted by the news that Rachel LeFevre is being replaced as the vampire Victoria in the upcoming Eclipse movie, third of the Twilight Series, and just can’t resist.

I’m sorry, Rachel, but it’s a smart casting move.

You are too womanly for Victoria; too rounded, too soft.  Your breasts are full, your hips are present, your nose is rounded, even your forehead is noticeably convex, you are one curvy dame.  I don’t mean this as a criticism; you have a figure to be envied.  But these are teen books in which narrowness prevails.  Besides, the whole idea is that vampires are stone, hard, streamlined; their bodies weapons; their faces aquiline.

Victoria’s supposed to menacing, to almost kill Edward (Whoa!) but you, Rachel, have the smile of a character actor, someone  who would only kill with poison, or maybe, if the victim were drunk,  a blunt instrument to the back of the head.

You smile is too self-deprecating to be as singleminded as the Victoria in the book, an old Hollywood-style villain, almost cartoonish in her all out commitment to vengeance.  (To get to Edward’s beloved, she forges an army of new-born vamps who come rampaging from Seattle, refusing to be satisfied by anything Starbuck.) 

Hollywood.  That was the magic word in that last paragraph.   Which is the final problem here.  Hollywood personifications are generally to be way hotter than the characters in books.  (See, e.g., Emma Watson as Hermione Grainger, Anne Hathaway in the Princess Diaries, Meryl Streep as Julia Child.)

But in Stephenie Meyer’s books, the vampire characters out-Hollywood Hollywood.   They already look like movie stars; that, in fact, is one of their primary character traits.   So that now that the films are big budget, Hollywood has to go all out (and, I guess, throw out) just to live up to its name.   The brand name too. 

It doesn’t seem fair, but the fans will love it.

 

Check out 1 Mississippi at Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/1-Mississippi-Karin-Gustafson/dp/0981992307/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249040514&sr=8-1

Categories: Twilight, Uncategorized
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