So, how about that Twilight, huh?

Howdy. It's been a while, hasn't it?

I got new excuse about why I haven't posted recently. Not busy, not anything. Just lazy. But every once and a while, something drags me out of my hibernation and forces me to rant...

Before I get into it, I just wanna say that for the first time in years, I agreed with the Oscar pick for best picture. But that ain't what this post is about, I just thought I's put that out there.

No sir or madam, tonight's story in a land far, far away from Oscar-dom. It starts in FYE, where our mild-mannered film nut was buying a new set of headphones for his mp3-player. All was going great and mundane. My roommate was there (buying the same, don't ask why we both were sans headphones, I honestly couldn't tell you), and she and I were having a fun and happy conversation about movies (I think it was about Thor or something). And then the clerk said it...

"Hey, would you like to pre-order New Moon?" (For the 3 of you alive who don't know, this is the sequel to the film Twilight, but more on that later.)

I kept it somewhat tame (by my standards, at least) and said no, but it opened a flood gate of bile in me. For you see, I've seen Twilight.

And it sucked.

I'll get more into it than that, rest assured. But seriously, I do not in any way comprehend how this movie faired so well at the box office. It kind of actually made me question my faith in humanity.

Once upon a time, vampires were cool, were badass, were Vlad the Goddamn Impaler! And then came Anne Rice, who took a big steaming dump on the horror mythos and took every instance of the words "terrifying" and "violent" and replaced them with "effeminate" and "angsty" and "vaguely homoerotic." She took everything that made Dracula cool, everything that made Nosferatu a bone-chilling classic and replaced it with foppishness, roses, and Skinamax-quality softcore sex (and acting, for that matter). And she ran all the way to the bank with it, prompting every one who's come since to follow suit. Look at Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example. And this film goes further still with pacifying the vampire by making them "vegetarians" in the sense that they don't drink human blood. Seriously. The vampires actually call themselves vegetarians. And they sparkle in the sunlight instead of the classic bursting into flames, because, well, because they basically couldn't jump the shark fast enough for the ol' vampire mythos, I guess.

And people are eating it up, hence the success of this cinematic abomination. Because apparently girls want their guys mysterious and somewhat effeminate and undead. And guys apparently want to be superhuman and somewhat effeminate and undead. Or something. I studied film, not sociology, for Christ's sake.

But that isn't a fair issue with the movie, just my personal condemnation of this genre as a whole these days. What I actually hated about the movie can be summed up in three major things...

First, there's the fact that nothing that happens in this high school remotely resembles reality. The new girl comes in, and she's immediately accepted and liked and preened over. No one taunts people, no bullying happens, and everyone is accepted, save for the occasional sideways glance at the vampires for being weird. I understand that this is a fantasy world and the film's full of hope and whimsy and fantasy, but if Harry Potter can have Malfoy tossing clash trash at him, then why can't we get one joke about the school's only asian kid? I just need a LITTLE reality.

Second, the production values sucked. I mean, I'll accept the bad actors. But when you have a movie you KNOW is gonna be big, can't you spare a few grand more to make the super-powered vampire running fast actually look good? I mean, in the old Flash TV show (about a dude who runs fast)it looked better, and that was 20 years ago! You'd think we'd be able to make it better now.

Here's a link to what I'm talking about. And yes, this music went through my head when I saw this for the first time, too.

But the big one was the third thing I hated... The entire movie is about an abusive relationship.

Caught you off-guard there, didn't I?

Seriously, let me break it down for you: Girl falls for mysterious, dark, creepy loner. All of girl's friends tell her she should get away from him, and that he's bad news, but girl says no, he's just misunderstood and she loves him. Girl gets hurt and (I swear to God, Budha, Thor and William Shatner I am not making this up) guy actually convinces her family and doctors that she FELL DOWN THE STAIRS. What makes it even worse is that the injuries were obviously made by someone's bare hands. But seriously, isn't that disturbing to anyone else?

So there you have it, why I think this movie sucks. And I just realized I spoiled it for you... You should thank me, since you don't have to see it now.