Archive for Twilight

I “man-down” and review Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1

Posted in monsters, movies, pop culture, Twilight, vampires with tags , , , , on April 29, 2013 by Paxton

Twilight 4 Part 1

Here we are again, Twilight. Once more we stare at each other across the squared circle in anticipation of this little dance that we’ve done three different times already.  You show up all sparkly and melodramatic and I punch holes into your face until I’m wheezing and wishing I was watching porn.

Let’s begin this dance with a synopisis…

So the movie starts with Bella and Edward’s wedding. It’s in the woods. People show up in florescent tuxes and ascots. It’s all very ethereal and annoying. Not surprisingly Jacob isn’t in attendance until during the reception. He comes with an understandable chip on his shoulder. Edward is now actually trying to be nice and reason with him. For once, I actually feel like Edward cares for Bella.  He tells Jacob that he needs him to help protect Bella. Jacob discovers that Bella hasn’t been turned yet and then he keeps focusing on the eventual “love making” that Edward is going to impart on Bella’s still human vagina and how it could kill her. It’s a rather awkward situation and Jacob just keeps going on and on about it.

After Jacob runs off very dramatically with his pack, Bella and Edward retreat to the Cullen’s private Brazilian island (of COURSE they have an island) to spend what feels like 6 months on their honeymoon. And then Bella and Edward “do the deed” and she and the bed come out looking like the scene of a street fight. Edward vows never to lay with his wife again, until he does about 10 minutes later. Bella turns up preggers with a mutant child that grows months in a matter of weeks.

The wolfpack discovers the pregnancy and plan to attack and kill the “abomination” (I agree).  Jacob violently leaves the pack to protect Bella.  Bella becomes weak and pallid as the baby is drawing off her life force (much like this movie is doing to me).  She painfully gives birth to the child and, in spite, gives it the terrible name Renneesme (I don’t care that it’s a combo of their mothers’ names…it’s still terrible).  Edward injects his “poison” into Bella’s heart after birth to turn her into a vampire but the process doesn’t seem to take and Bella seemingly dies as the Cullens and wolfpack battle.  Jacob goes to kill the child himself now that Bella is “dead” but finds he’s creepily “imprinted” on the horribly named child.  Since Jacob now wants to have intercourse with the baby, by the werewolf rule, she can not be harmed.

Bella and Edward
“Oh look, Jacob wants to have sex with our newborn child. How sweet.”

Bella is cleaned and dressed for her “funeral”, I guess, but suddenly her wounds heal and she awakens as a newborn vampire.  And I suddenly realize that I have nothing left to give this terrible, terrible franchise.  I’m struggling to find the testicular fortitude to finish the one last movie in this saga.  The rest of the movies were bad, this one just was….meh.  It wasn’t just f**king awful, especially compared to the second and third movies, but it’s not good, either.  I was surprised that I liked Edward a little bit more in this one.  He actually seemed less wooden and melodramatic and more protective of Bella.  Jacob was even more of an irritating hot head than usual.  And I used to like him once upon a time.  We get some pretty good vamp vs werewolf action, but the wolfpack people suck.  You know, I try to find one thing I like and two others that I hate spring up and take its place.  Like the movie is actively trying to get me to hate it.

I think I’ve said this before, but I’m going to watch the last and final (praise Jesus) movie out of sheer dogged stubbornness.  But I won’t enjoy it.  Like  experiencing a prison rape at Riker’s Island, I’ve just got to bite down and get through it.

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Movie Board: The Worst Movies I Saw in 2011

Posted in movies with tags , , , on February 10, 2012 by Paxton

Movie Board

Okay, here we are for the second installment of this year’s Movie Board. However, unlike my favorites, I’m not exclusively going off my Movie Board. I’ll be selecting from all the movies I watched in 2011, not just those released in 2011. If you want to see a complete list of the movies I watched, check out my movie log on Google Spreadsheet. Just click the 2011 tab.

Now, without further ado, here are the worst movies I watched in 2011.

Twilight Eclipse
Twilight Eclipse – This was released in 2010, but I watched the DVD when it came out in 2011. What can I say that my review back in March didn’t say? This movie is terrible. More disappointing than the terribleness of this movie is the fact that there was definite potential. A war between the vampires and werewolves. A new vampire, Riley, that is gathering a vampire army. Potential. That is wasted. For more melodramatic romantic BS between the most dysfunctional couple ever; Bella and Edward.  Either kill this series or just kill me.  I don’t care which.

Machete
Machete – Another movie with truckloads of missed potential. First of all, I’m not in love with Danny Trejo like the rest of the geek world seems to be. Trejo should have proved me wrong with this movie, but he didn’t. He just proved to me that he needs to keep doing his awesome character roles like Navajas the assassin in Desperado or Johnny23 in Con Air.  Stay away from lead roles.  Trejo felt very one note.  I just didn’t believe him to be the bad ass the movie wanted and needed him to be.  Great idea for a movie that was completely wasted.  And Jessica Alba, please stop making movies, please.  That is all.

Black Swan
Black Swan – Oh Darren Aronofsky, you terrible, terrible bastard. It all started in 1999 when I first saw Pi. The basic plot idea was good, but the movie was too convoluted and tough to follow. Next I decided to watch Requiem for a Dream in 2001. Ellen Burstyn was getting a lot of buzz for her role and Jennifer Connelly was supposedly in a big sex scene at the end. Unfortunately, again, the movie was convoluted, very, VERY dark and I felt like I needed a shower after watching it. And Connelly’s sex scene was at a point in the movie where you actually felt bad about watching it. I don’t want to feel shame when watching a Jennifer Connelly sex scene because I’ve been dreaming about it since Career Opportunities and The Rocketeer.  And the less said about The Fountain, the better. Anyway, now we come to Black Swan. Starring two of the hottest young ladies in Hollywood. And Aronofsky strikes again by making a hot lesbian scene featuring drunken, angry sex between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis not hot. You win, Sir Aronofsky. I am beaten.

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Girding my loins for Twilight 4. It’s coming…

Posted in books, movies, pop culture, Twilight with tags , , , , on June 9, 2011 by Paxton

Harlequin Twilight

The Twilight series and I have a…complicated history. I think of us as adversaries, coldly staring at each other over the battlefield of pop culture.  We’ve each taken (and given) our wounds, but we rise up to fight again.  And again.

And again.

I first tried to stop the EMO-ification of badass vampires in the first Twilight movie here.

Not content with completely ruining vampires, Twilight: New Moon set it’s sights on raping awesome werewolves.  See that here.

Twilight: Eclipse at least promised a vampire vs werewolf war, but instead ripped off our sack and stomped it into the pavement.  You can read that loveliness here.

Now, the long road is coming to an end.  There is only one more book left in the saga.  And to make it last as long as f**king possible, Summit Films is splitting the last book into TWO movies (a la Harry Potter).

And we finally have an official trailer for Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part I.

Now, if you’ll pardon me, I have until November 18 to prepare for battle.

Looking at some movie branded food stuffs

Posted in advertising, Ghostbusters, movies, pop culture, Twilight with tags , , , , , , on May 12, 2011 by Paxton

If you read this blog you know I love both movies and promotional food stuffs like new soda flavors and candies. I love it even more when they are combined.

Here are some candies, pastries, etc that were re-branded to promote a movie. I’m going to exclude the Star Wars saga from this article because, honestly, I could do a series of articles on Star Wars and food branding.  Images are from my own Flickr stream unless otherwise noted.  See all images BIGGER by clicking on them.

King Kong Twinkies King Kong muffins
King Kong Hostess pastries – Back in 2005, Hostess did a big promotion for Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake. They added banana to several of their products. In the pics you can see Banana Twinkies as well as Banana Walnut mini muffins. Interestingly enough, Twinkies’ original flavor was, in fact, banana.

Hulk Life Savers(Via Jason Liebig)
Hulk Sour Lime Life-Savers – A Hulk branded Sour Lime flavor promoting the 2003 Ang Lee Hulk movie. I don’t actually remember these at all, I just saw the wrapper pop up on my buddy Jason Liebig’s Flickr stream. Jason states that it may have been a Canadian only product.  I like this much better than I liked Ang Lee’s movie, and I haven’t even tried these.


Hostess Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Pies – From 1991. This was sort of a dual promotion. The packaging used artwork from the cartoon, but it was released around the time of the second live-action movie. You can even see a movie promotion on the packaging.  Matt from X-Entertainment did a great write up of this product.  The pies were green and filled with vanilla pudding.  There were four package designs each featuring a different Ninja Turtle.

Incredible Hulk cup cakes(Via Jason Liebig)
Hostess Hulk Cakes – From 2008 to promote the Incredible Hulk reboot with Edward Norton.  These were a Scary Cakes promotion for Halloween that featured green frosting and sprinkles on top.  Hostess also added the Hulk to their regular cup cakes, donuts and Twinkies products, but left the actual cakes unchanged. There was also an Incredible Hulk branded Air Heads candy.

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The Cavalcade’s review of Twilight: Eclipse

Posted in movies, reviews, Twilight, vampires with tags , , , on March 8, 2011 by Paxton

Twilight Eclipse

So, despite the fact I am constantly speaking out against this entire series, I continue to watch the movies. I’m committed at this point. For better or worse, I’m finishing the series. I originally spoke out about the books while I reviewed the first movie here. I watched and reviewed the second ridiculous movie, New Moon, here.

So after the debacle that was the second movie, I was actually excited to see the third movie because the trailer looked good. And what I mean by that is that I didn’t hate the trailer on sight. It looks like they decided to push the whole Bella/Edward nonsense to the back and focus on a new vampire who is creating a vampire army to take on the Cullens.  It looked, well, if not good, then at least interesting. Let’s take a quick look at that trailer to freshen our memories and to give you the state my head was at when I watched this movie.

See, not too bad…considering what has come before.  And I kept hearing from people that this is the best Twilight movie.  However, now that I think about that, I’m not really sure how great a compliment that is.  That’s like being the smartest guy in Special Ed.  But there looks to be some good vampire vs werewolf action, Jacob has that great line about “…killing some vampires” and the new vampire army walking slowly out of the lake.  Not bad, Twilight.  Not bad.

Anyway, in light of this trailer, I recently convinced my wife to sit down with me and watch the third movie (she hated the first two). I’m going to try to keep my review spoiler free.  Here we go.

F**K. THIS. MOVIE.

I hope that’s clear and concise enough to everyone involved in making and writing the movie.  F**K. THIS. MOVIE.  It’s terrible.  That trailer up above?  It’s the second trailer.  I should have watched the first trailer.  In a quick 1:40 trailer you get the best 10 minutes of the movie.  The rest of the nearly 2 hours is taken up with Bella/Edward bullsh*t.  The big Cullen vampires/Wolf Pack battle with the vampire army didn’t happen until like an hour and forty minutes in.  Yeah, for AN HOUR AND FORTY MINUTES I had to watch the sappy EMO melodrama that is Bella with her ENORMOUS two front teeth and hipster Edward who looks like he never washes his hair.  I actually hated this movie MORE than New Moon.  It’s going to be really hard to sit down to watch Breaking Dawn.  I just can’t take anymore Bella and Edward.  Plus, Dakota Fanning and the Volturi only show up in 2 scenes.  And no Michael Sheen.  What’s the point?

So to the entire Twilight franchise, but especially this movie.  F**K YOU and everything you’ve done to the lore and myth of the vampire.

Pattinson pissing on Lugosi's grave

Oh, my wife’s review was something like, “…the only part of the movie I liked was when Jacob took his shirt off.”

So there you go.

I’m going to watch the last movie (Or two, since I hear the fourth is supposed to be in two parts a la Harry Potter)  but only out of stubborn obligation.