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Twilight Saga: New Moon - Special Edition (The)
R1 - America - Summit Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (21st March 2010). |
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The Film
 Some of horror’s earliest origins in fiction come from of Victorian, vaguely gothic, spooktacular horror novels about distressed women in marriages who come in contact with a sort of apparition, ghost, vampire, werewolf, but are safely terturned to the romantic state. Some authors have argued that these were erotic fictions, the unknown serving as an escapist fantasy, though not so bold and daring as to upset the partriarchal order of society by having the women run away, while still eliciting the excitement of the supernatural. All Stephanie Meyer has done is siphoned this down to a thick, congealed, angsty pulp. “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” is some sort of terrible, horrible mess of a film, distilled from Victorian romance and supernatural novels, while injected with the sort of goth/emo angst straight out of high school. It’s vile, really. Picking up after the first film, “New Moon” sees Edward (Robert Pattinson) and Bella (Kristen Stewart) celebrating her… 18th birthday? Really? Alright, well Edward and Bella are in love, but Bella is totally worried about getting old and that Edward won’t love her any more. So she’s all like, hey Edward, I don’t know if we can love forever, frownyface. Edward says I love you though, and so they’re okay. But then Bella cuts her finger at her birthday party with the vampire family, and one of them freaks out over the sight of blood, he totally wants to drink it. And so Edward decides to leave Bella and she’s sad. Like, really really sad. So while Bella’s sad she hooks up with Jacob (Taylor Lautner), well not hooks up but they go to the movies and like hang out. But turns out he’s a werewolf. This is the kind of shallowness to the writing. In an era where the internet has become a haven for fan fiction and art, “Twilight” seems like some grand terrible joke of fan fiction written by a goth girl who thought “Buffy” (1997-2003) was too well thought up, too well written, missing too much drama and angst, or that Anne Rice novels weren’t disinteresting enough. Stephanie Meyer has created a vampire story that is so blasé and uninteresting and I can’t stand it. It honestly may be the most pure vampire story ever since it lacks any sort of soul, passion or emotion. Well except hate. It starts with a poor screenplay that does nothing but pull romantic vampire clichés out of it’s ass and smears them on paper, hoping to feed them to viewers by ramming it, full fist down our throats. None of these characters have depth or story, they’re pieces of a terrible fan fiction that has no basis in a higher story, but just characters fawning over each other aimlessly for two hours. Jacob at one point makes an offhanded comment about living on a rez and going to a rez school, but of course why deal with that sort of character background when he can turn into a werewolf and look hunky for the audience. After Melissa Rosenberg’s sad excuse for a screenplay continues to linger, there are still the actors to put it on and they are bad. Granted the blame isn’t all their fault, considering the incredibly inane script and story, but they sure don’t sell anything that’s worth buying. Here acting just comes down to either whispering, or looking angsty. But there is joy in this movie somewhere. The easy way out would be to make a joke here about how happy I was when the movie ended, but that’s too easy. No, the funniest things in this movie was it’s terrible use of special effects. From the shimmering vampires in the sun, to the cartoonish shape shiftings of Jacob’s native werewolf crew, the CG in this movie is hilarious. Ghost Edward prompted a good series of laughs, as did Bella’s definsiveness when Jacob tries to protect her by turning into a werewolf. Sadly most of these good laughs were better exposed in the trailers for the movie, and it isn’t worth sitting through the 2 hours to try and get to any of it. How this movie lasted for 2 hours is beyond me, but it probably had something to do with Chris Weitz’s directing that drags out every moment as much as he humanly can. By the end of the film it feels like you could have read all four books in the amount of time it took for the movie to run start to stop. But when you mesh all of this with one of the most soul crusingly annoying, depressed indie soundtrack it’s an exercise in pure torture that I can’t in good conscious recommend to anyone. Even drunk people looking for a good joke-film. There’s nothing here for anyone but those already stuck in the world of “Twilight” but even to them it may not be enough, they should probably just go re-read the books while listening to Death Cab for Cutie or Vampire Weekend or whatever the kids listen to these days. This is the sort of movie that makes me feel like an angry old man, full of hate at a world that seems to have forgotten what good movies look like considering the $700 million gross. Get off my lawn and take your “New Moon” with you.
Video
Presented in a 2.40:1 anamorphic aspect ratio the film has a faily good visual appearance but lacks a full form, there’s not enough crispness in some of the colors and contrast of the scenes to really bring a visual look to the movie. Well at least, what few colors are there considering the gloomy, pale and dreary nature of the film. The dark tones still manage to show up well in the film, though it gets almost overbearing in this Northwestern vision of goth paradise.
Audio
The English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack brings together all of the weird "Twilight" sounds of wolves, vampires and slight resonations as people turn into CG wolves and vampires and move quickly. What’s terrible about the quality of the transfer though is the mind-numbingly gloomy indie soundtrack, filled with gloomy acoustic guitars, tambourines, drums and the occasional harpsichord to drive viewers completely insane. This may be the worst soundtrack I’ve heard in a film, and it pains me just to hear the music in small doses as they’re cut into the film. There’s also a Spanish Dolby Digital 51 and an English Dolby Digital 2.0 surround track, including English for the hearing impaired and Spanish subtitles.
Extras
What hast hell wrought with this 2-disc set? An audio commentary, a six-part documentary, some music videos and bonus trailers. That’s it, across two discs. Honestly underwhelmed, but relieved. DISC ONE: The only special feature on this disc is the audio commentary with director Chris Weitz and editor Peter Lambert, who talk about how the actor’s aren’t there because of a burger dispute and the way certain special effects like the sparklyness were thought about. There’s not much technical background to it, but it’s more about how their sponsors put different things into the film and fawning over Pattinson and making jokes. But there are pauses. Big... Pauses... That... Are.... Annoying. At one point Weitz seems to feel rushed, saying the film is moving by too quickly (lie), but then going on to say nothing for a good few minutes. There are some filming stories, but if I don’t care about the movie why should I care about the making of the film? Even “Twilight” fans could be uninterested since there are no actors from the film and the director mostly just talks about the sort of topics that they’ve already hashed and rehashed out on forums, not lending additional insight, except for a few excuses and discussions of effects shots. Bonus trailers are for: - “Remember Me” runs for 2 minutes and 33 seconds. - “Letters to Juliet” runs for 2 minutes and 32 seconds. - “Band Slam” runs for 2 minutes and 36 seconds. - “Astro Boy” runs for 2 minutes and 27 seconds. - “Twilight in Forks” runs for 1 minute and 8 seconds. DISC TWO: The real bulk of the special features here come in the form of “The Journey Continues: A 6-part Documentary on the Making of ‘The Twilight Saga: New Moon’” which runs in sum for 1 hour 5 minutes and 24 seconds. It’s a bit of a beast this documentary, but broken down into six parts each including behind-the-scenes footage and tons of talking head interviews. The chapters include: - “Life after ‘Twilight’” runs for 4 minutes and 30 seconds, featuring all the actors talking about how taking part in "Twilight" has changed their lives. Robert Pattinson seems to dislike the fame, but for all of them it’s a little frightening seeing the rabid fanbase. They all talk a bit about how they came back to the film, how close everyone is on the set and how “New Moon” began. - “Chris Weitz takes the Helm” runs for 4 minutes and 7 seconds, it’s a long discussion about how much the actors love Weitz and how operatic the film is while expanding the mythology. It’s a big excuse to stroke Weitz’s ego. - “The Subtle Details” runs for 7 minutes 48 seconds, speaks with the set and costume designers. Not even this sort of practial effects featurette can cheer me up, with all the footage of the sets and production, location scouting, designing costumes on a massive scale. Mildly interesting from a production perspective. - “A Look at Production” runs for 30 minutes and 10 seconds and is the most comprehensive of the behind-the-scenes segments, talking about the actual production of scenes from wirework to greenscreen, while actually meeting some of the stunt doubles, and some more interviews. It basically runs through every major stunt or scene undertaken in the film in great detail. - “It’s Not Magic” runs for 10 minutes and 28 seconds, looks at going from filming to editing and post production compositing the greenscreen stunts with the actual location plates and the CG that they put together. - “Ready for the World” runs for 8 minutes and 21 seconds, this final part of the film looks at the actual editing of the film talking with Peter Lambert from the commentary to work on the film and editing it down as the film was being put together. Finally rounding out the long documentary with incredibly brief segments on scoring and putting the film into press. Finally are the music videos, three in all: - “Meet Me on the Equinox” by Death Cab for Cutie runs for 3 minutes and 50 seconds - “Satellite Heart” by Anya Marina runs for 3 minutes and 48 seconds - “Spotlight” by Mutemath runs for 3 minutes and 43 seconds Finally is a behind-the-scenes rehersal clip of “I Belong to You” by Muse which is basically a music video, but one of those music videos that’s just a recording of a live show.
Overall
Get off my lawn.
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