Untitled.

Well, so this is incredible. Elsewhere: Blogging Game Of Thrones is back at Zachary Little Dot Com. Directory is here.

What We'd Talk About If This Blog Was Still A Thing, Vol. 2

In some ways we're still monitoring the death of This Twilight Thing Of Ours, the entire phenomenon of which is currently gasping its last likely gasps--Breaking Dawn pt. 2 is now available on video, tell your friends--but it is obviously no longer a day-to-day job. Very little happens on the Twilight front. But sometimes, a whole lot happens very quickly. Once more into the breach!

• Spring Breakers is the number 6 movie in America. This is like when Conor Oberst had the #1 and #2 singles in the country and nobody knew what the hell was going on anymore (Mind you, this was back before the Billboard stats were hopelessly fucked forever by inclusion of YouTube views. Enjoy a decade of "Harlem Shake" at #1, America). I haven't seen it yet, but obviously the question is whether it will stand as a real rebuke to the Disney Industrial Complex or if it'll end up just another barnacle on the hull of the H.M.S. Jonas. In a couple of weeks will Gomez et al. claim they were duped and didn't intend to be involved in such a film? (I love that people use the phrase "stunt casting" as if something about this casting doesn't fit. The girls who grow up being fed faux-pure reductive bullshit are exactly the ones who go insane in college, and then seek, or are pressured to seek, absolution when the video goes viral.) Be on the lookout for whether or not Selena Gomez remains unrepentant. Some small part of the soul of America hangs in the balance. 
• And actually I guess the H.M.S. Jonas will probably go down anyway, if the rumors of a Joe Jonas BDSM sex tape are true. Yeah--the fact that whoever is holding this thing timed the rumor to coincide with the wide release of Spring Breakers makes me feel like they are a kindred spirit. Word is the lady in the video (yes, it's a lady!) sees it as her ticket to fame, which is kind of hilariously quaint, in a weird way, isn't it? God, look how far we've come, or fallen, or whatever: Used to be we'd laugh at all the young pretty midwestern things hopping off the bus in Hollywood with dreams of Oscar gold. Now we're laughing at the ones who hop off the bus with a sex tape in hand dreaming of a reality show spinoff and Internet infamy. And they won't even get THAT. Ha! The old media empire is dying.
• Robsten is still going strong though, apparently. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson were reunited this week, after much time apart that I assume was partially related to acting gigs. Has anybody raised the notion that, however contrived or not, the cheating scandal served as a means to sever Robsten the phenomenon from Twilight the phenomenon? All the craziest purists packed up and went home after that, taking with them a lot of the weirdest garbage tied to Stewart and Pattinson's relationship. I can't tell if that is the most naive thing I have ever thought or the most cynical thing I have ever thought. PS: Cosmpolis is now on Netflix Instant. 
• Last thing: sad news here. Ashley Greene's condo burned down over the weekend and her dog died. That is horrifying and terrible, and here at this dumb blog we're sending her only the most positive of vibes. Appreciate your pets, folks. Give them a pat on the head for me, and for AG. 

Don't Watch Butter, Please

One can go a long way with honest scientific inquiry as an excuse. Why shouldn't one read all of the Twilight books, after all? They are, or were, a legitimate cultural phenomenon. Why shouldn't one delve into the strange world of fan fiction? Isn't that an interesting way to see how people absorb and reflect media? Why shouldn't one then extend one's study into the strange, choose-your-own-reality realm of celebrity gossip? Doesn't that have value as a kind of funhouse mirror version of our current political environment?

Almost anything can be studied and many such endeavors prove worthy of one's time. But there's at least one act that is worthy of no one's time: watching the movie Butter. It is a piece of cultural detritus entirely without merit. I watched it today, and I am sorry that I did.

Here's what happens (spoiler alert for the next three paragraphs, so skip them if you hate yourself and plan on watching this movie even though I am explicitly telling you not to):

The story's about Laura Pickler (Jennifer Garner), wife of a beloved butter carver who takes up her husband's (Ty Burrell) hobby after he is forced out of the county competition after 15 years at the top. Her husband cheats on her with a stripper (Olivia Wilde) and has a daughter from a previous marriage (Ashley Greene) but nearly every suggestion of an actual plot line involving him vanishes into the ether immediately. Laura becomes an expert butter carver after one scene where she practices a little, and then it's time for the competition. Meanwhile Rob Corddry and Alicia Silverstone play foster parents with a little black girl named Destiny (and also another foster child who appears and disappears like a shadow) who turns out to be pretty talented at butter carving too. Oh, and also Olivia Wilde is trying to extort money from pretty much any or every member of the Pickler family, and no one seems to care, not even her.

After Destiny beats Laura at the county competition and Laura makes several racist and classist speeches that seem uncomfortably positioned such that viewers can either laugh at her evil or applaud her straight talk, Laura fucks her old flame Hugh Jackman (who has never seemed gayer than during his monologue praising the tightness of Laura's pussy) and persuades him to claim that he helped Destiny with her carving. Despite the fact that his claim is laughable on its face (there were literally a hundred people in the room watching the entire time Destiny created her sculpture), Destiny agrees to a rematch. Then, Olivia Wilde shows up in Ashley Greene's bedroom and performs oral sex on her in an entirely pointless and not even gratuitous scene. (That this movie seems to think two girls kissing is radical is a whole other thing.)

Then the butter carving happens again. Destiny recreates the one picture she has of herself with her birth mother and Laura does a car or something. The night before the judges are to view the new sculptures, Hugh Jackman (who we last saw outraged at Laura for making him malign a ten-year-old and realizing he'd been used) breaks in and partially melts Destiny's sculture with a blowtorch. But the judges love it, mistaking the vandalism for an intentional commentary on parental abandonment, and Destiny wins again. She and Laura share a hug in which Laura appears to realize how awful she's been and Destiny appears to forgive her, but after that neither thing seems to have happened. Rob Corddry adopts Destiny and Laura goes into politics. Nothing else happens to anyone. The end.

Longtime readers of this blog will recall Butter's troubled history. Initially positioned as a parody of the 2008 election, it was shelved and retooled and positioned for release a second time with the operative political female changing, in press releases and sound bites, from Hilary Clinton to Sarah Palin. For whatever reason, that plan fell through as well (there are interviews over the space of several years with Ashley Greene that describe the release of the film as imminent). After a third, furtive round of press that positioned Laura as more of a Michele Bachmann type, the Weinstein Company kicked it out a back door last summer.

The endless retooling shows HARD. This movie is such a hack job, you can practically see the jagged scissor marks on the sides of the screen. Huge portions of dialog and exposition come in the form of voice-over--from multiple characters and perspectives, no less! (Sometimes it's past tense, all-knowing shit, other times it is present-tense internal monologue, and toward the end it is almost entirely PRAYER. Like honestly this movie has more in common than Tree Of Life than you'd think.)

Ashley Greene and Ty Burrell's characters seem like they might have had, at one time, significant enough backstories to explain their erratic behavior, but they don't anymore. Hugh Jackman changes motivations and accents a startling number of times, which is especially notable since he has a cumulative five minutes of screen time (a healthy share of the voice-over, though!). The end of the movie is downright sociopathic, failing to understand human emotion on multiple levels.

Rob Corddry is fine, but his loving, adoptive father character is pretty deeply undermined by a bizarre and seemingly truncated speech in which he tells his foster child Destiny that he and his wife could adopt a baby if they want one but are just too scared. Cool story, dad! And Olivia Wilde seems like she could be funny and/or sexy if she had a better script and editor and director and producers. But she doesn't.

The Oscars are tonight, and the fact that the Weinsteins talked this movie up as a potential awards candidate is a million times funnier than the funniest joke in this movie (which involves Kristin Schaal running and talking at the same time and isn't even that great). Less funny is the fact that I watched this fucking thing instead of Life or Pi or Beasts Of The Southern Wild, the two best picture nominees I missed. Don't watch Butter. It's terrible and unworthy of your time. Trust me.

Butter is available on Netflix Instant Watch. I'd provide you with a direct link, but no. I refuse.

My Latest Venture

Hi folks! Since the (beginning of the gradual) dissolution of this blog, I've worked on many different projects. I've blogged Game Of Thrones. I created a video series called The Sunday Shoutouts that was enthusiastically received (if crushingly unpopular). I did a nine-month science experiment (no, that is not a euphemism for "had a baby"). And I've written on various topics on my Tumblr. I've also like, had a job and spent time with my friends.

SO: What's next? Well, give me a couple weeks. I'm working on some shit. But in the meantime, I'm pretty happy about a Tumblr I started today: Esquire Poems. It's a collection of poems, by me, that are created entirely using lines from Esquire's vapid, insane celebrity profiles. I think it says, in a much more concise way, a lot of the shit I've been trying to say about Esquire here and elsewhere.

ALSO: friend of the blog Kira is blogging THE ENTIRE Harry Potter series at MOBFD. Go get started reading it, because, I mean, can you even IMAGINE how long it will be by the end?

Wrapping Up Skins (I Think That Counts As A Pun In England)

SKINS S2E6: Tony

Skins has played around with reality plenty by now, but here's our first journey into pure abstraction. The bulk of this one consists of Tony seeming to visit a college, but in the end almost everyone he interacts with almost certainly isn't real. Chief among them is actress and noted Ashley Greene doppelganger Janet Montogomery, who appears from nowhere, leads Tony on manic pixie adventures, antagonizes him into fucking the shit out of her, and then turns out to be a figment of his imagination (probably). It is, notably, the first even remotely graphic sex scene on a show that has always had a reputation for being nothing but graphic sex scenes. Ironic then, that the only real one is, in fact, not real. Still, good show, Janet Montgomery.

Fun fact: Janet Montgomery, back when she had a Twitter, once RT'd me telling someone else she'd get really famous because she looked like Ashley Greene "without the meth nose" and took her clothes off more frequently. Sorry about the stuff I say, everyone!

Ashley Greene Or Janet Montgomery? I'm honestly not even sure!

Generally people like Aaron Sorkin and Charlie Kaufman's fake brother Donald have ruined the "psyche made manifest" character for me, but I enjoyed this episode. There are lots of strange pretentious fragments and flourishes throughout, like Effy reading Tony a story, and the encounter with the burned man on the train. When an angry professor tells Tony that he's nothing but "A little fucked-up jumble of misdirected immature polysexuality and pure, arrogant, impotent rage," the show seems to have cued up a simple rejoinder in our minds: "Yeah, so? What's wrong with being just that, for a while?"

SKINS S2E7: Effy

When DC Comics killed off Superman, they introduced a half-dozen or so new Supermen to take this place. There was a tacit admission, therefore, that one guy wasn't going to fill the gap, and the new Supermen individually only reflected portions of what made Superman who he was. The same thing is happening with Tony (who isn't dead but nonetheless sapped of his powers), and you can see how, in different, individual ways, Effy and Cassie have stepped into his vacuum. Cassie in the way she deals, stone-faced, with Sid, and Effy in the way she has an almost omnipotent presence in the lives of her friends and the exigent members of the Skins gang appearing in this episode. She is the all-seeing, all-destroying whore of Babylon, and she's been my favorite part of this entire second season. (Somewhat uncomfortably, Kaya Scodelario was only sixteen when this episode was filmed. The more you know.) Especially since it looks like Sid is back with Cassie now and Tony with Michelle. The old kids are so boring, with their coupling and their drama, right? I just want to run around setting fire to shit with Effy for a while.

SKINS S2E8: Jal

One assumes that the idea of replacing the Skins cast every two years was a planned notion. And yet, this episode feels a lot like the writers were suddenly told they had to wrap up all plot points in the space of three episodes. Thus Jal's hidden pregnancy rushes to the forefront, and Chris is stricken with a mystery illness that was only foreshadowed the tiniest little bit. One can justifiably be a little offended at this turn of events. Still, there are small delights to be had: Jal's brothers, Cassie, the Spanish-speaking motif. But I'm worried about Chris, you guys.

SKINS S2E9: Cassie

You'd expect the spiritual sequel to the first season's "Cassie" episode to be a great one, and this doesn't disappoint. For the first time really ever, we stay with Cassie's fixed perspective for the full hour, which gives us a kind of tourist status in the lives of everybody else. Standing a few feet out of the circle ends up rendering everything all the more devastating: Chris's death (RIP!!!!!) is harder to take without the catharsis of seeing everyone react (at least not yet). And Cassie's abrupt appearance in the US is strange and wonderful, if implausible (post 9/11, nobody's letting Cassie in an international flight). Also notable for the more enthusiastic Sid/Cassie shippers is a fairly explicit sex scene between the two. Tony fucking his superego was apparently the beginning of a trend. RIP Chris, again. If I'd watched this show straight through instead of taking a six month break in the middle of S2, this would have ripped me to my core. But at least we still have Gendry in Game of Thrones, and Joe Dempsie's amazing Twitter account.

SKINS S2E10: Final Goodbyes

The frustrating thing about this episode is how much time it spends on people we don't care about. Chris's dad and his friend. Sketch. And giving the biggest speech to Jal even feels a little weird. Sorry Jal! But at the end it gets good. Maybe not end of Season 1 good, but still. The most emotionally cathartic moment maybe EVER comes when Tony says goodbye to Sid at the airport. Which is weird because like, they'll probably see each other again! And Chris fucking DIED! And yet I'm more moved by the totality of their friendship really dawning on Tony, and his heartbroken expression when Sid finally goes. Nicholas Hoult is really a wonderful actor. And ending with Effy's malevolent smile kind of hooked me for the next series. But as far as BLOGGING SKINS goes, the airport door is swinging around finally empty. We were good when we were good. But now it's over. Thanks for reading. 

Separation Anxiety: The Breaking Dawn pt. 2 Movie Club

SPOILER ALERT. BUT FOR REAL--IF YOU ARE A TWILIGHT PERSON WHO SOMEHOW STILL HASN'T SEEN BD2, SEE IT BEFORE YOU READ THIS. HOW OFTEN DO YOU GET TO SAY THAT ABOUT A BOOK ADAPTATION? SHOULD YOU EVER BE ABLE TO?

From Zac
To Rosanne

There are five or six lines in this movie that I saw as direct reubukes to the source text, though I am having difficulty recalling them all right now. Edward and Carlisle's talk away from the campfire, in which Carlisle gives the other clans a reasonable justification for being there (to Edward, who asks whether it is right to be doing all of this--something I asked when reading it). Jacob bringing up the obvious fact that just because the nomads are hunting outside of Forks doesn't mean they're not killing people. But what ends up being the weirdest result of the movie's push and pull with its source material is that somehow we ended up with the most rushed Twilight movie ever, based on the most leisurely, wandering (part of a) book ever. This was basically a big montage; it felt like we were flying over the movie and never given a chance to land. Except, ironically, during The Thing That Happens Differently.

Before I get to that: CGI Baby: so terrible. Alice's flash-foreward at the end: BARF. (And somehow all human incarnations of Rensemee are ALSO uncanny valleian, right?) Bella and Edward's hunt: looked like it cost about five bucks to do those effects. That said, Bella crawling around like an animal was pretty OK. Oh, but how come there was no sex in this movie? Or almost none? Where's the whole-family fuck-montage I was promised? OK, maybe I wasn't promised it.

OK. So. THE FIGHT. Seperating it out from the context, there was SO MUCH to enjoy in that scene. The hyper-morbid death of Carlisle. Alice chasing down Jane. Seth & Leah Clearwater (the Lupin and Tonks of this movie). The wide shots of total fucking vampire-on-vampire carnage.

But I could only enjoy it all on one level of thought, because of the thunder storm of cognitive dissonance in my brain. How could this be happening? Were they really doing it? If not, how could this NOT be happening? When it is resolved and we see that it was all in Aro and Alice's head, I had been trying to think about the ways it might not be real for so long (and that fight goes on FOREVER) that I was actually wildly impressed. It's a brilliant way out of the problem. But is it a problem the filmmakers needed to create for themselves? I guess it is. What else could have happened? This is the only thing that could have happened. Right?

From Rosanne
To Zac 

That baby was the worst! They spent all that time and money and technology to emaciate KStew, how could they make Renesmee so unbelievably bad? Was that the trade off?

The fight, holy shit! My mouth was literally agape. LITERALLY! AGAPE! I had the same reaction--how can they account for this? I wondered if the Amazons were making people see it.

From Zac
To Rosanne

The Amazons! I hadn't considered that. I don't know what I thought was happening. I thought the level was just going to restart like at the end of Scott Pilgrim and we were going to have to watch the whole conversation AGAIN.

ALICE DID NOT DANCE INTO THE FIELD, SHE JUST TRUDGED. That was the biggest betrayal.

From Zac
To Jon 

So are you someone who read the books or didn't? What did you think of the fight and subsequent takeback? I think I liked it a lot, but was a little too distracted, knowing it didn't happen in the books, to be fully taken by it. I immediately started trying to figure out ways in which it could be a feint.

If you'd told me that Skyfall was going to be The Dark Knight by way of Home Alone and that Breaking Dawn 2 was going to be Deathly Hallows 2 by way of Funny Games, I'd never have believed you.

That said, when it turned out to be a feint, I didn't feel cheated. I felt happy to have been able to see that possible outcome, which is so wished for and abstained from (like everything else) in the books. Plus, again, as someone who read the books, they picked EXACTLY the right people to kill. It was just the right amount of conceivable and meanspirited. And as far as action scenes go, it was super fun. If cheap-looking, like everything else.

From Jon
To Zac 

Devin Faraci went way too far by stating it's essentially one of the best fight sequences he's ever seen in his life. He even thinks Condon should direct Justice League based on that sequence, which, no. It's done well, and I like how the wolves and vamps are tossed into a magma canyon, but it's also very repetitive. There are only so many beheadings I can take before I'm ready for something new. That they retconned the way vampires are killed really bothered me as well. In earlier movies they shattered like stone statues but there was none of that here. What gives? Yet another example of lazy decision making.

"Lazy" is the key word when describing this last movie, I think. No one seems to be having any fun at all, except for maybe the actor you highlighted on Twitter. Though he barely gets to say or do anything, so maybe that's why he's a bit more energetic. I love when he started controlling the elements and someone had to say "He can control the elements." Yes, we can see that, thank you. All the vampires are X-Men mutants. Noted!

Is it weird to say that of all the entries New Moon seems to be the least horrible in my mind? I feel like the cinematography was just so much better when compared to the others, like the overall production team hadn't given up just yet. BD2 felt like it was shot on a FlipCam and edited with iMovie.

From Zac 
To Jon 

I am WITH YOU on New Moon. Ah, the wonderful days when Ashley Greene had hair and killing a vampire wasn't like uncorking a bottle of wine. I think it is the second best of the series, and Breaking Dawn 1 is the third best. The original Twilight is still the most original and fun and weird. BD2 and Eclipse are both pretty terrible, which is funny because they are the ones with the most notable action scenes.

That's crazy that Faraci would say that--maybe just trolling all of this "sparkly vamps are gay" type readers? Though I will say it does a remarkably good job of keeping time/space coherent for an INCREDIBLY long stretch. I mean, we're cutting around from character to character for what, ten minutes? And it never feels like we lose track of the principal vamps. The only people who seem to be standing still between closeups are a couple of Volturi, and that seems consistent with their style (OK, one of the super old dudes just saying "finally!" or whatever and peacefully accepting his violent death? How was THAT in a Twilight movie!?!) anyway.

Jacob, Bella, Edward, and even the lesser Cullens are all mentally accounted for the whole time, which is a directing FEAT like no other. You can't even say the same, really, for the impossibly grand-scale fight at the end of The Avengers. Plus, my heart was totally pounding for that whole fight scene, EVEN THOUGH part of me was pretty sure it wasn't even happening. So, uh, maybe Faraci is right?

To Zac 
From Rosanne

I think [the fight] was the only time in the whole franchise that I have been shocked and kudos to them for that. I think they needed to do something, ANYTHING, to make the movie worthwhile. Seriously, when you said on twitter that it was optional, it absolutely was. I have watched these movies repeatedly with no qualms, but I really can't see myself enjoying this one with the same relish. I admit, I do get separation anxiety when it comes to endings--I often stop movies before they're over because I don't want to deal with the downfall portion of it. When I realized that Nahuel played Gwen Araujo in a Lifetime movie, I found the movie on Lifetime but stopped before she was murdered (spoiler alert).

I got a bit misty when they went through everyone in the series at the end before the credits. There were some nice flourishes, like the way Edward used Bella as a battering ram to kill Aro. I did like when Edward told Bella that he had a bad habit of underestimating her. But I think I saw the pointlessness of this whole venture more in the movie than I ever did in the book.

Peter Facinelli's hair was all over the place in this movie, too. Why has it been so horrible this whole series? He is a good looking guy, how could they never EVER get his hair right? There was one scene where I thought it looked okay, I remember thinking at the time that it must have been a reshoot, because it didn't match any other scene. Maybe when he opened the door to Charlie?

For all the book's faults, there was a lot of potential in there to make it good. The Jenks subplot could have been great, the nomads could have been developed (like AT ALL). They were barely developed in the book, but as we both saw, there was a lot of talent to take advantage of and everybody loves to see cool powers. The Denali were so bad, though. Were they even auditioned? Or hired on looks alone?

From Zac
To Rosanne

Agree that the Denali were terrible, and they even dragged poor Garrett down with them. I read today that Garrett's "Give me vampire liberty or give me decapitation!" speech WAS actually, INEXPLICABLY, filmed, but then left on the cutting room floor. Can you imagine if that had been there?

YES, I forgot about Edward's underestimation speech. That was wonderful. BD1 and BD2 actually make him seem like a good dude and make their relationship seem healthy, which NEVER happens in the books.

I want to see this again at some point just to watch that fight without the distraction of wondering what the hell is happening. But after that, yeah, I can't see this as something I'd watch again. Much like Harry Potter 8, which I only saw the one time and probably won't want to deal with again for a few years. Is that what the trend of these Final Book pt. 2 movies is going to be? The last one is just a big battle? You could certainly see Hunger Games being broken up that way. (Did you get that Hunger Games non-teaser in front of your screening of BD2 as well? I don't even think that counts as a tease. It was a sext.)

To Zac 
From Jon

I kind of loved the "Finally" moment because it was just so goddamn ridiculous. Who is that guy? Why is he getting this silly character moment? This wasn't nearly as funny as Michael Sheen's asinine giggle upon meeting Renesme. That man did not give a FUCK and it's never more clear than in that choice. But anyway, the fight sequence is good, I'll give it that, but "the best super-powered mass fight I’ve ever seen on film" (Faraci) seems juuust a bit much. Not a fan of hyperbole and that kind of screams it.

The sequence in New Moon where they rotate around Bella and the seasons change has actually stuck in my head. It's effectively melodramatic and I don't think they ever achieved that in the films that followed.

From Zac
To Jon

I just read an interview Jen Yamato did with Bill Condon, and apparently it is suggested that Edward and Bella DO die. That right at the end of Aro's vision, the baddies are closing in on them. That interview is also notable because she gets two little digs in at him: observing that the CGI baby is "pretty uncanny" and then noting that the emotional resonance of the wolf-deaths is only effective if you can recognize which people they're supposed to be. I mean, she said that stuff to his face! The interview also discusses the giggle. Apparently that was the LESS over-the-top take. That guy is great.

AND WE NEVER EVEN GOT TO TALKING ABOUT BELLA'S ORGASM! SO WHAT DID Y'ALL THINK?