On Movie Nudity In General & Kristen Stewart Specifically (NSFW)

Previously established and lamented gender disparities and pervasive sexism in American culture aside, I like naked women. Who doesn't? They're great. And the other big problem with America is that we're ultraviolent and we are perfectly fine with ultraviolence in our movies, the movies we show to kids, even, so long as nobody fucks someone else violently (and I refer to violent sex in a good, consensual way). That's why I'm perfectly happy with nudity in movies--movies for adults--in fact there ought to be a lot more of it. Because in the first place it does a lot to correct our weird media morality and in the second place it's fun to see famous people naked.

As I grow older and respect human life more and more, I find violence in movies increasingly disturbing. I watched Zombieland again a few weeks ago and in the first few minutes of that film, a woman is thrown from her car, through the windshield, only to roughly collide with the pavement. Even in the context of a movie as lighthearted and inconsequential as Zombieland (the crash in question is played as a joke), I really couldn't get over that image; it still sort of haunts me today. This is coming from someone who used to delight in my high number of tallied "head-shots" when I played Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64. I've changed, and I have changed for the better, and what I am saying is I will take Kristen Stewart's tits in a car (as the above stills photograph depict, it is a scene from the upcoming On The Road) over someone crashing a car any day of the week.

UPDATE 6/22: Now there's blurry video.

Who Is The Fairest Of Them All?

Snow White Wars! As previously established, Hollywood has a thing for twins like your creepy uncle who has that VHS tape full of Doublemint commercials in his sock drawer. And like your other uncle with the creepy dungeon setup in his basement, it's a proclivity that probably does them more harm than good.

Relativity Media and Universal Studios have both been crafting their own retelling of the Snow White fairy tale; the former cast Lily Collins and Julia Roberts, the latter got Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron. Stewart-centered news sites erupted with fury last week when Relativity announced that they were putting a rush on their film and releasing it in March 2012, a full three months before K. Stew's flick. GASP!

But, the plot thickens! It turns out Snow White And The Huntsman, Stewart's version, was originally scheduled for December 2012. Once the cast was solidified and other moving parts came together, Universal fired the first shot, moving theirs to where it is now, June 2012... where Relativity's version already was. So their move, seen as such a slight by the army of Krisbians and Kristerosexuals out there, was kind of defensive.

And it turns out it was kind of a stupid defensive move, too! For one thing, March 2012 already has a big tentpole release, The Hunger Games. It's also got a bunch of thematically similar releases, as /Film points out: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (which sounds like a joke but apparently isn't) and an untitled John Cusack movie about Edgar Allen Poe. Those two come out in the weeks before Snow White, with The Hunger Games right after. That is not a bed I would jump into if I was hoping for a lot of attention.

What's also weird is that Relativity Media had, in the past, a pretty cooperative deal with Universal. According to /Film, they've doubled down on this fued, moving a few more of their movies into direct competition with Universal's releases on the 2012 calendar. Over at Collider there is a pretty great article about game theory and how it applies to this slapfight. Not that I understood much of it.

Via IndieWire, /Film, KStewart News, RobstenLust

GUEST POST: Twilight Movie Marathon, by Rosanne

[Hey so I have already invited a few of you to write something for this blog, but I totally want more of you to do it! We're a community, let's act like one! If you have an idea for something you'd like to talk about, let me know on Twitter! I reserve the right to edit for clarity/ grammar, not that I needed to this time. Here, Rosanne re-watches all of the Twilight films and reports back on her experiences. -ZL]

So, last night I watched all three Twilight movies in a row. Including the middle hour of New Moon (which I NEVER watch and really don’t counsel anyone to watch, ever.) You may have guessed that I have seen them all more than once already. Shocker, I know. And we have discussed them before, but I kind of felt like watching them all in one go, and our fearless leader, Zac, thought it might be interesting to see how one fares after watching 6+ hours of the Twilight saga. Well, I am of hardy superfan stock and made it through just fine, if a bit bleary-eyed by the end of Eclipse.

Important Question About Chris Carrabba

When homeboy is singing songs like "The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most" is he singing about an ex or himself? Because if he's NOT singing about himself, he's making some serious accusations about the mental health of someone else. Which struck me as intense and dramatic in high school but now strikes me as really petty. Like, "Girl, you broke up with me because you have seriously debilitating mental issues." And also, I mean, if you look at the rest of the record, he's still mad at her? Girl is either unfit to stand trial or she isn't, Carrabba.

And this is sort of unrelated but I was Facebook singing with my friend Josh the other day, as adult male college graduates are wont to do, and I was thinking about the now defunct band Something Corporate. In their song "Punk Rock Princess," Andrew McMahon--who is a cool dude, I mean he survived cancer and once signed a dollar bill for me which I'm pretty sure is against the law--sings "If you could be my punk rock princess/ I would be your garage band king." If you could be a princess, I would be a king. I would be your dad. What is that about? Then again, I kind of want to give that song a pass because the next line is delivered earnestly, and it's "You could tell me how you just don't fit in/ and how you're gonna be something," which is wonderfully celebrates and mocks the way teenage punk kids like me think in equal measure, if only accident. But still, I mean, I know that Americans don't have a firm grasp of how the monarchy works but that one is pretty easy.

I Found The Best Thing Ever (Slightly NSFW)

BLOGGING BREAKING DAWN, pt. 40: The Fellowship Of The Promise Ring

WOW, guess what? This is the fucking worst chapter in the series. It's got some shameful moral shit, followed by some super-boring plot machination, and then at the end it just stops making sense altogether. It's the S. Meyer hat trick!

Previously: The Slow Death Of Skateland

Skateland's Theatrical Release Pretty Much Over Before It Began

The always-valuable 247Greene pointed out yesterday that the release schedule advertised on Skateland's Facebook page has changed drastically. Between now and June 17th, it is opening in only nine more theaters across the United States. That doesn't sound good.

Ticket sales probably have something to do with this; according to Box Office Mojo, Skateland's to-date domestic total is $16,391. Its per-theater average--a metric that maybe* makes it easier to compare to others--on it's opening weekend was $2,627. Contrast that with say, Bridesmaids, which pulled in $8,995 per theater (and to date has grossed 64 million domestic, YAY KRISTEN WIIG).

(*Thing is, Skateland's number is based on two theaters, which is a less-than-ideal N size. So you could say their opening isn't so bad, especially if you look at Robert Pattinson's Remember Me, which did $3,657 worth of business per theater opening weekend, or Shiloh Fernandez's Red Riding Hood, which did $4,622. But the former opened in over 2,000 theaters and the latter opened in 3,000. Skateland is currently in 11 theaters, and I'm no math whiz, but divide 16,391 by eleven and you get $1,490.09. So I'm saying that opening weekend number is slightly inflated due to small sample size.)

Maybe the most damning statistic is looking at Skateland vs. a recently released indie horror flick called Stake Land. During its opening weekend, in one theater, Stake Land pulled in $7,258. To date, (it's been in theaters for roughly the same amount of time) the horror flick has turned in $22,970 in half the number of theaters (5) as Skateland.

And maybe the middling ticket sales are because of the middling reviews. The Hollywood Reporter praises pieces of it but overall calls it "thoroughly conventional." The great Alison Wilmore, writing at the AV Club, says Skateland "recalls enough better and more distinctive movies that it shoots itself in the foot (or should that be the roller skate?) before it can get very far."

"[B]oy is this an impressive collection of wildly ugly hairstyles, moustaches, clothing and 'earth tone' furniture from 1983," raves The New York Post. Chron.com weirdly complains that the movie, "fails to acknowledge the lingering and pervasive angst that shaped anyone growing up in the late Cold War." (Jeez, it sounds like you have some personal stuff to work out, Chron.com!) And Cole Smithey, self proclaimed "smartest film critic in the world" says that when it comes to "bland melodramas," Skateland "manages to stare up at the bottom rung." Ouch.

AMNY gives it a rare positive review, calling Burns's direction "atmospheric" and calling Ashley Greene "beautiful." In fact, it warrants mentioning that even in the negative reviews of Skateland, no one has anything negative to say about AG. So get up off the mat, sister. This is a tough (if totally expected) beat, but you'll live to fight another day.

“Culture War”/”Speaking In Tongues”

So there are two new Arcade Fire tracks out—you can stream them here and buy them on iTunes or whatever—and I really like them! I have only listened to them a few times each, but I think they both introduce something new to the Arcade Fire sound: In “Culture War” it's a distorted guitar riff that, you know, resembles an actual distorted guitar, which is ordinarily rather ordinary but is not in Arcade Fire's case (lyrically it's also kind of, uh, Oberstian? "Southern Strategy" and all that); in “Speaking In Tongues” it's mostly the vocal part that Talking Heads frontman David Byrne brings to the table at the end. That shit is TIGHT.

I'm glad they were released and I am also glad they were released separately from The Suburbs, sort of in the same way Radiohead put out “Supercollider” and “The Butcher” after people had some time to digest The King of Limbs. This is a nice little dessert. This is fucking audio gelato.(Also, I mean, The Suburbs was pretty god damn long already, and I don't think you can get away with one song on an album called “Suburban War” and another called “Culture War,” that's just against the law or something.)

The other thing I wanted to note, just because I am one of those people who notices these things, is that there's a quick reference to T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land in “Speaking In Tongues.” The first verse starts: “Hypocrite reader, my double, my brother,” which is a rough translation of a line from part one of The Waste Land ("The Burial Of The Dead"):

'You! Hypocrite lecteur! - mon semblable, - mon frère!' (Line 76)

Cool right? As a Waste Land geek and an Arcade Fire geek, this realization pretty much made my day. Thematically, a Waste Land reference serves these and the Suburbs songs well. The album and Eliot's poem cover similar topics: spiritual and cultural decay, communication fault lines, maybe even a growing loathing for one's own audience. (And it wouldn't even be the only recent Eliot allusion Win Butler has made; that "like a patient on a table" line from "We Used To Wait" is from The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock. Though that one sort of comes out of nowhere.)

Breaking Dawn Poster Accurately Captures The Atmosphere Of Breaking Dawn

REALLY BEAKING DAWN TEASER POSTER? REALLY. It's clear how much you take your audience for granted with this. "Yeah, just take the words off of that motivational office poster and slap that shit on Facebook, the kids will eat it up." Really guys? REALLY. "Is that a sunset or a sunrise?" "Who cares? Twilight, Dawn, we have our bases covered." "What should we use for a tagline? How about 'Teamwork Brings The Team To Work'?" "David, you just read the slogan from the motivational poster." "Hey, it kinda works!" "No it doesn't. No tagline. Put the damn website on there and let's go home. I need a drink." "Mark, it's 9 in the morning." "Oh, sorry David, I forgot you were MY MOTHER. Fuck yourself."

This looks like Ansel Adams accidentally hit the shutter one last time while he was walking away from the mountain. This looks like a water color I would have made in 3rd grade art, and I failed 3rd grade art! This looks like a birthday card from your aunt and when you see it you just know there's a bible verse inside instead of a check. REALLY?

I gotta hand it to you, though, Summit. This does really capture the spirit of the book. Nothing happens, and everything is red around the edges because of how pissed off you are the whole time you read it. REALLY.

Twilight Twitter Update

Last week Jackson Rathbone's band (why did I almost put "band" in quotation marks? I'm a jerk. We should all be so lucky as to do what we love, which is apparently in this case "endlessly hawk band-related merchandise from something called The Monkey Mart," right? Right) 100 Monkeys played at the El Rey theater in LA, and guess who showed up? No, not Dominique Strauss-Kahn! It was Ashley Greene!

Uh, you really think heaven is the El Rey Theater in LA, lady? I'd say you're getting closer to the kind of afterlife Sartre was talking about (Harold Camping's plays are way better, though). Anyway, AG was nice enough to pose for photos with a bunch of fans (though are we sure it wasn't a wax statue of Ashley Greene in attendance instead? Compare this to this). And then the next day, the rumor mills started grinding, sort of like how AG and Rathbone were GRINDING ALL OVER EACH OTHER AS IN HAVING SEX:

AHHHHHHHHHH NOOOO WAYYYYY OKAY MAYBE. Ashbone could be legit! It seems like the Leo thing isn't true, since he is crashing the Titanic into Blake Lively's icebergs and all. Sorry, Leonardo Dicaprio sex jokes are hard. Let me try again: Who's eating Gilbert's grapes? Blake Lively! Let me try again:

"We need to go deeper!"-Blake Lively

Career wise, uh, it sounds like Greene is going to be a flower girl at a wedding soon? And Rathbone is shooting a movie called "Cowgirls and Angels." So yeah, they seem to be doing well. At least they (apparently) have each other.

Meanwhile, Robert Pattinson is possibly starting work on David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, but that is based on Twitter speculation based on a now-deleted photo of a limo outside of a soundstage in Hollywood. I mean, all of Cosmopolis takes place in a limo, right? And there is LITERALLY no other reason a limo would be in Hollywood, right? I think the logic is pretty sound here.

Regarding Bridesmaids

Hey so I finally saw Bridesmaids, I know, I know, but it has been sold out in Boston every weekend; literal scalpers are terrorizing the AMC, and if you've heard about this 3D Lens controversy you know that's the least of Boston movie theaters' problems. But anyway I'm still in NH, and I saw it here, and yeah, it was great, so funny, go see it!

So after the movie we picked up my mother-in-law at work and one of her coworkers asked what we saw. "Ugh," she said when we told her. "My daughter said it was like they were ripping off The Hangover. Like The Hangover with women."

(And she said "women" with such contempt! It was bewildering.)

First of all who shits on a movie someone JUST SAW, second of all no, third of all Bridesmaids was way better than The Hangover because The Hangover isn't very good, sorry. But I just smiled with my teeth and said nothing.

It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The End Of Times

I just wanted to note that The New Republic has a nice and only-a-little-smug post up about the "sadness" we should feel (as opposed to the schadenfreude) about those among us who think the world is going to end in just under two hours (or an hour ago for my West Coast readers). TNR's Tiffany Stanley mentions the NYT article I wrote about yesterday and includes a quote I sort of purposely avoided:

Ashley Parker of The New York Times writes about a mom who stopped working, and stopped saving for college for her three teenaged children. One of the kids admitted, “I don’t really have motivation to try to figure out what I want to do anymore because my main support line, my parents, don’t care.”

That's Joseph Haddad, 14. I didn't want to distract from the strength of Parker's article before, but doesn't that sound like a line that was fed to the kid? ("Do you have motivation to do well in school when your main support line, your parents, don't care about you?") It's almost too perfect. Anyway, TNR's thing is brief and worth a read. Meanwhile, here's my artistic depiction of what I think Family Radio leader Harold Camping is doing right about now.

Ashley Greene's Been Auditionin' Yo

Former Twilight actress and noted Biblical scholar Ashley Greene has been photographed out and about in LA recently, and according to various gossip sites she's been at auditions. Above, she's leaving one for The Gangster Squad, which is (according to IMDb) A chronicle of the LAPD's fight to keep East Coast Mafia types out of Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s. Cool! Ryan Gosling is attached to star and hopefully have an explicit sex scene with Ashley Greene; that way everybody wins! But anyway, good on you for going out and trying to get work, AG.

Ashley Greene Renders Verdict On The Apocalypse

Well, there you have it. Except I looked this up and it doesn't really make any sense. Like, it's about how God will probably send people bearing false information to fuck with you in order to judge who bought into it. And these people will say He is coming again, and that's how you'll know they're lying. (But the Bible says that too, right? That Jesus is coming again? Are parts of the Bible just fakeouts to test you? Is that why science has disproven so much of it? Did Ashley Greene just find the Bible's disclaimer?)

Anyway, the story of today is: the end of the world has brought out an uncharacteristically cold and hostile tweet from Ashley Greene! Cool! The sexiness of the aforementioned hostility is sort of cancelled out by the fact that she cites a Bible verse, though. Man, I look for weird stuff in women.

Previously: What To Expect When You're Expecting The Rapture

What To Expect When You're Expecting The Rapture

In yesterday's New York Times there's an exploration of the impact the Family Radio May 21st movement has had on families; I don't think I've ever loved my parents more.

The Haddad children of Middletown, Md., have a lot on their minds: school projects, SATs, weekend parties. And parents who believe the earth will begin to self-destruct on Saturday.

When I think about Doomsday crazies I think about the raggedy-voiced half-homeless dudes with the placards who stand in public places here in Boston; I remember seeing a guy propping his "You're Going To Hell" sign up on his knees and eating lunch on it in Quincy Market one time. It had sort of escaped my notice, therefore, that a lot of these people might be parents. So, well, yikes.

R.E.M. "It's The End Of The World As We Know It"

Mother Haddad quit her job to spread the word of god "nearly two years ago," at which point she and her husband "stopped working on the house and saving for college."

“My mom has told me directly that I’m not going to get into heaven,” Grace Haddad, 16, said. “At first it was really upsetting, but it’s what she honestly believes.”

It was revealed this week that the whole Botox Mom thing was a hoax. Kerry Campbell, real name Sheena Upton, was put up to the "Good Morning America-baiting scandal" by a British tabloid, and pretended to inject her infant child with Botox. Point well made, Britain. Y'all are tongue-in-cheek exploitive, we're just exploitive. The whole thing ended up being a free PR boost for Child Protective Services, who stepped in swiftly and investigated.

I understand that having parents who believe the world is going to end tomorrow is not damaging in the physical sense like a needle to the forehead, but what kind of psychological trauma have the Haddad kids been getting for the last two years? And what's going to happen next, when there isn't a massive earthquake tomorrow and Mr. and Mrs. Haddad don't leave their teenagers and wardrobes behind to perish in hellfire?

The Cure, "The End Of The World"

Kino Douglas, a 31 year old with a believer for a sister, is quoted rather gleefully in the article when he details his plans for May 22nd.

“I’m going to show up at her house so we can have that conversation that’s been years in coming.”

There's a part of me that feels this way too, a part of me that wants to laugh in these people's faces. Harold Camping, the "biblical scholar" who started this nonsense, originally predicted the world would end in 1994. When that didn't happen, he realized he didn't carry the one or something and actually it was 2011. David Cross used to joke about how the bible is full of numbers like "seventy times seven" because the people who wrote the Bible were so dumb that it was the biggest number they could think of. Part of me wants to point stuff like that out.

The Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter"

But a better part of me knows that it would be no use in the second place, and in the first place I'm just filled with sympathy for the poor Haddad kids and others like them, whose parents are selfishly abdicating their responsibilities and effectively surrendering parental authority forever--how do you take your mother seriously on May 22nd, as a sixteen year old girl? Who could blame you if you don't? And of course, the representatives of the ironically named Family Radio support this kind of behavior.

Kevin Brown, a Family Radio representative, said conflict with other family members was part of the test of whether a person truly believed. “They’re going through the fiery trial each day,” he said.

Right. Amazingly, Grace and Joseph Haddad, the 16 and 14 year olds profiled in the piece, seem like (in the few words we get from them) extraordinarily level-headed kids. "[Grace] and her twin, Faith, have a friend’s birthday party Saturday night, around the time their parents believe the rapture will occur," the article states.

“So if the world doesn’t end, I’d really like to attend,” Grace said before adding, “Though I don’t know how emotionally able my family will be at that time.”

God go with you, Grace Haddad. This is the kind of miracle I can believe in.

Dirty Projectors, "When The World Comes To An End"

[via Ashley Parker, The New York Times]

This Week's Videos

Watch my hair evolve (in reverse, I guess) over the course of a week!

Taylor Lautner To Pay More Visibly For Jacob's Sins In Breaking Dawn pt. 2

So Taylor Lautner seems to suggest--in a chat with MTV News--that the blissful, truncated scene in Breaking Dawn in which Bella freaks out at Jacob post-imprint will be more violent than the book version. Good!

"We did a scene in the backyard of the Cullen house where Bella (Stewart) gets mad at me," Lautner revealed. "She just learned that I imprinted on her daughter, and she is literally throwing me around the backyard. So it was pretty fun to see Kristen try and act all tough. She's a vampire; she's chucking me across the yard into trees and stuff. It was funny."

It might be funny to YOU, Taylor, but for some of us it will be fucking CATHARTIC.

BLOGGING BREAKING DAWN, pt. 39: Superbad

A man wants to build a shed and he needs 99 bricks. He goes to Home Depot and they tell him they only sell bricks in quantities of 100. “Why should I pay for 100 bricks when I only need 99?” the man asks. “Sorry buddy, you gotta buy them like this,” he is told. So the man buys 100 bricks, builds his shed, and in the end he's standing in his backyard, holding this extra brick. With nothing else to do with it, he throws it into the air.

What's New With Kristen Stewart?

I realized, in a conversation I was having with someone or other a few weeks ago, that here on this blog I have not made clear enough my general affection for Kristen Stewart. I think Kristen Stewart is the best, and I am not being ironic at all. I think of all the Twilight cast members she is making the best career decisions,* I think she seems like a genuine and genuinely interesting person, and I think she's wildly attractive. I have literally nothing but kind words for Kristen Stewart. But since this blog is usually about things we love with plenty of misgivings, we talk about Ashley Greene a lot more. But anyway, what's new with Kristen Stewart?

What's New With Robert Pattinson?

Much like Ashley Greene, new interviews with Robert Pattinson are plentiful these days. If you want to hear about how great elephants and/or Reese Witherspoon are/is along with the pretty standard boilerplate about the perils of Twilight fandom, you can go here or there or hear from Daniel Radcliffe about it for some reason.

What's New With Ashley Greene?

The Skateland "premiere" (sure) was a few nights ago, and Ashley Greene showed up looking half-checked-out in a Polyphonic Spree-inspired pink dress. It's okay, AG. You'll be free of this movie soon. Except not really: here's a release date calendar for Skateland, which by May 27th will be in about 30 theaters total (none in Boston, SIGH). If you get a chance to check it out, let me know. We'll be doing a round-up of the critical responses later this week.

BLOGGING BREAKING DAWN, pt. 38: The Kids Don't Stand A Chance

Exclusive Interview With World's Last Typewriter Manufacturer

Earlier this week the last typewriter factory in the world, Godrej and Boyce, finally closed its doors. Curious as to how such a factory managed to exist this long in this world economy, I attempted to contact Mr. Boyce for an interview (Mr. Godrej has been dead for several decades, forgotten by most). Doing so proved rather difficult. I paged Boyce several times to no avail. My faxes went unanswered. My calls to him, which were made on a tin can attached to a string (they have one at my Kinko’s, luckily), were answered by a rather surly secretary. Repeated inquiries sent to Boyce’s Excite.com email account (listed on his now-archived Geocities page) were returned as undeliverable. Here, therefore, rather than the interview I hoped to conduct, is how I imagine the interview would have proceeded.

Happy Birthday, Robert Pattinson

And We're Back

So okay, Blogger has been having some trouble for the last few days, which is why I haven't been posting. And Blogging Breaking Dawn 38 (which I posted on Wednesday) is still MIA, lost in the tubes of the internet somewhere. It will hopefully appear below this post sooner or later. The most important thing I can tell you right now is that longtime commenter extraordinary and plenipotentiary Kira is guest blogging at Videogum today, and you should go read her posts!

The second most important thing I can tell you is that there are rumors out there that Ashley Greene is having sex with Leonardo Dicaprio. What? Am I dreaming? Where's the kick? Inception jokes still work, right? Or should we do Gatsby jokes instead?

"Where's the kick?"-Gatsby, in the pool

Anywhere, more on that soon. In the meantime, above is a picture of Kristen Stewart with her doppelganger Jena Malone. What would happen if the two of them and Kat Dennings were in the same room? Is that what's going to happen on May 21st? ANYWAY, what do you think Malone is thinking right there? What is happening with that face?

What On Earth: The Studio 60 Twitter Accounts

I can deal with most of the horrors the Internet has to offer; all those trampoline videos have steeled me well. On Sunday the great @PartyPooped was cataloging the endless mother's day human misery available on Twitter and I was laughing right along. But some stuff is beyond the pale even for me, the guy who read Twilight for basically two whole years. Get it? Pale? Because of the vampires? Anyway, I'm talking about the Studio 60 Twitter accounts. They are terrifying.

Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip, as you may recall, was a show in which Josh Lyman and Chandler Bing were the greatest comedy producer and writer (and cocaine-doer and pill-popper) team of all time. One could make the argument that comedy has IRL changed the world in the past, but this show didn't wait for someone to say it; they said it. All the time. They changed the world every week, through a very shitty sketch show on Friday nights (because sure, people watch TV on Fridays). When they weren't busy single-highhandedly writing amazing, world-altering sketches like “Pimp My Trike,” they were having the world's longest, most boring conversation about the separation of church and state. And Josh Lyman was flirting with Amanda Peet like nonstop. Relax, Josh Lyman.

As a big Aaron Sorkin fan, I watched the entire run of Studio 60 and hated every second of it. For a while it was a drama, then it was a romantic comedy, then for at least one episode it was a Coen Brothers movie (complete with John Goodman for some reason), and then at the end there was like a six episode clusterfuck about Iraq and childbirth and I don't even know what else. It was awful, and it was canceled, and everybody was happy. Until now.

Someone, or several people, is running dozens of twitter accounts, pretending that Studio 60 was not an atonal one-season misfire, but rather that the characters exist in this universe. ALL of the characters are here, and they talk to each other, all the time. They also interact with celebrities! AHHHHH!
I read an article about these accounts in which the author seemed to think it was an experiment in fictional Twitter narrative with an expiration date. He relates the plot action that happened between the accounts last week, and then claims that the accounts lie dormant now. But, uh, they are still going! And what I can't figure out is whether these people are criticizing Studio 60 or accidentally lionizing what made it terrible (the pretentiousness, the lack of understanding of what is funny, the pretentiousness):
It could go either way! Whenever I look at these accounts, I feel deeply unsettled, and I'm not sure why. I tend to admire misdirected creative energy (since it's pretty much my wheelhouse, see this blog and my YouTube channel) most of the time, and this is a crazy amount of misdirected creative energy. Like, too much. What it reminds me of more than anything is Christwire.org, a prank website so big and sprawling and occasionally believable that the direction of the parody is usually impenetrable. They'll write a joke article so convincing that Rachel Maddow will cite it as an example of Right-wing bigotry—is that part of the joke or what?

So this is either a bizarre esoteric joke, or the terrifyingly too-public manifestation of a Studio 60 superfan's passion. Both possibilities make me indescribably anxious. And if it's the second thing, dude, there are way better TV shows out there.

Thoughts From Slutty Places

BLOGGING BREAKING DAWN, pt. 37: While You Wait For The Others

As I write this, there's a huge garbage truck outside my window trying to turn around on my rather narrow street. They are not having a lot of success. It's appropriate that it would happen as I sit down to write about chapter 31, in which the coming conflict with the Volturi is re-framed and re-framed and re-framed. Vague suspicions about what the Volturi are up to get replaced by only slightly firmer suspicions. Vague expectations about Bella's vampire power become different vague expectations. And that's more or less it; here's a plot synopsis: Edward, Bella, Eleazar (Cutty), Tanya, Kate, and Carmen talk. The end.

Chapter 31: Talented

Cutty mumbles about what a talented family Edward has. “A mind reader for a father, a shield for a mother,” he says. Edward's like “WHAT DID YOU CALL MY WIFE, MOTHERFUCKER?” and Cutty is like, “Oh, I think she's a shield.” Edward seems to not know what a shield is (“'A shield?' Edward repeated, bewildered.”) but then like ten seconds later he knows EXACTLY what it is (“'A shield!' Edward said, deep satisfaction saturating his tone.”) and he even remembers a Volturi who is sort of one. Aro has a bodyguard (who is, notably, a woman) who mentally diverts his attackers. “There's a force around her that repels, though it's almost unnoticeable,” Cutty explains. “You simply find yourself going a different direction than you planned.” So in her human life, this chick was just really socially repellent?

Bella's power is different (Cutty tells us that no one's power is the same because no one thinks in precisely the same way. Our brains are snowflakes). She has an impenetrable brain (no one wanted to penetrate her during her human life, so...) but it is suggested she could possibly “project” her power outward, to protect other people. Still, it's pretty lame that Bella's power is so passive; Cutty observes that it's “purely defensive.” Is S. Meyer TRYING to give her critics more ammo?

Especially since Bella immediately thinks about how to use it to protect her husband and child; her power, really, is Super Motherhood. For two vampires and a hybrid, these guys have a pretty conventional family dynamic. (Really, it's conventional to the point of implausibility, right? It's 2011, not 1951!)

It felt like I had never wanted anything so badly before this: to be able to protect what I love.

You sure you didn't want like, the ability to shoot lasers out of your eyes? Flight? Invisibility? Kate is the one who suggests that Bella's power might be mobile, and when Bella considers the possibilities, she begs Kate to teach her to “project.” Kate is like, “one does not simply project into Mordor,” but doesn't say no. Her power, by the way, is that she can stun other vampires with her touch—knocking them to the ground like they've been Tasered. Finally, a cool power! We've been waiting for something like this since New Moon! And she can project the “current” over the surface of her whole body, which is very X-Men-like (and also suggestive of the fact that she never gets laid). I'm a Kate fan already. Maybe she and Bella will start spending time alone for training, and then Bella will be frustrated by her inability to project, and Kate will be like “You need to get to know your body better,” and one thing will lead to another...

While Bella and Kate flirt, Edward and Cutty are talking about the Volturi. Edward's suspicions of their motives set off seemingly latent suspicions in Cutty, who then has a minor existential crisis about the work he did for the Volturi earlier in his life. Right there in the Cullen living room, dude? You've never thought about this before? Cutty talks about a pattern he's just now noticed: every hundred years or so, Aro would identify a vampire out in the world whose power he admired. Soon, that vampire's coven would get busted for something, but then Aro would always find a reason to pardon the one vampire he wanted for his team. Again: you just noticed this now?

“Come to think of it, Hitler seemed to pick on Jews, gays and gypsies more than other groups.”- Dr. Joseph Mengele

The other problem with this abrupt revelation is that it seems to presume the Volturi has done exactly what they're planning to do to the Cullens to other families. But we've always been lead to believe that the Cullens are the only other family, that other vampires travel in packs of two or three, that the size of the Cullen clan is part of the reason for the attack. None of that seems to be true anymore. “Once the coven was all but destroyed,” Edward says, “Aro would grant a pardon to one member.” When you read that, does it suggest to you that a coven being all but destroyed would mean “once they'd killed the other two vampires”?

Then there's this: Cutty mentions a vampire named Chelsea, who works for Aro and has the ability to break up and re-arrange the emotional bonds between vampires. That could lead to some sexy fun! (“Okay now Edward, you blow Jasper. Emmett, you just watch.”-Chelsea) But anyway, what she does is break the emotional bonds between the vampire Aro wants and his former family, and bond him to the Volturi instead. Hey, uh, can we call this Chelsea lady in to treat Jacob, maybe? But then Cutty clarifies that the sort of bonds the Cullens have formed are probably unbreakable—Chelsea wasn't able to break his bond with Carmen (though it's unclear whether or not she tried), and probably won't be able to break the Cullen's bond either.

So maybe you're asking: why are we even talking about Chelsea, then? She is brought up and then made irrelevant in the space of two pages. The reason is the explanation for why the Cullens' bonds are so strong. Are you ready for this? This is Cutty speaking:

"Abstaining from human blood makes us more civilized—lets us form true bonds of love."

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. There's a lot of noise in that sentence, but let's break it down to its core elements:

Abstaining lets us form true bonds of love.

DOES IT NOW? Message received, Stephenie. Kristen Stewart says Twilight doesn't force messages down its readers' throats. She's right; it just subliminally slips them in wherever it can. Yikes.

So anyway, who is Aro after? Edward thinks it's Alice, and they realize that is probably why she bailed. (Oh please tell me he caught up to her! How cool would it be if Alice was in the Volturi?) Cutty warns Edward that Aro probably wants him too, but Edward says he'd be too uncooperative and Aro knows it. But Cutty's like “What if they had Bella? Or what if it's Bella they want?” and then Edward is suddenly less cocky. “Was death the lesser concern?” Bella wonders. “Was it really capture we should fear?” I don't know, ask Osama Bin Laden am I right? USA USA USA! Sorry. (They're building a new health center on Maverick Square near where I live and on one of the I-beams right now someone wrote “Good Ridens Osama Bin Laden.”)

Finally, on the last page or so of this chapter, we start to see a way in which this plot line could be sort of interesting. “If the Volturi are abusing the trust all immortals have placed in them...” Carmen starts to say. “Does it matter?” Cutty says. “Who would believe it?” See? Now the Cullens are the One Guy Who Knows The Truth, that aliens have taken over the bodies of his neighbors, that an asteroid is going to hit earth, that a giant glacier is going to melt and destroy the Titanic II. They've got a government conspiracy they need to reveal, against all odds!

But I'm psyching myself up for one paragraph in a chapter that presents 20 different roads stretching out before us. At the end of this chapter, we have no more firm an idea of where we are going from here than we did before, it's just that our vague ideas are different ones. And the fact of the matter is, we're probably not going to go down any of those paths. We're going to hang out at Chez Cullen and wait for more vampires to show up. So uh, look forward to that?

True Love Waits

I've written a new post at the revamped MOBFD.

Talking Points 05/05/11

1. So, OK, the idea of a 100 Hottest Women list is fundamentally a little offensive, I know. Hollywood standards of beauty are ridiculous, and the damage caused by lionizing someone like Rose Huntington Whiteley can't really be overstated, I mean she's a fucking blond-haired blue-eyed perfect Aryan. And FHM doesn't stand for "For Hitler Monthly," but that's a pretty good joke people should make more often.

But at the same time, Osama Bin Laden is dead, and celebrating sexuality in a healthy way is a great way to bury his legacy at sea too. And also, even though I feel politically guilty about it, it's not like I don't like looking at attractive women, at the end of the day. You like it too, it's OK. We're OK.

So For Hitler Monthly has released their list of the 100 Sexiest Women. Kristen Stewart is at #13, Ashley Greene is at #17. GASP! Kind of shocking, right? Or is it?

2. The Internet is talking about the recently-released baby name data; Jacob and Isabella are up at the top. Renesmee hasn't cracked the top 100, but give it a year. (Shiver.) I hear that Jacob is a perennial favorite though, and is probably not Twilight-related. Would you ever name your baby after a Twilight character? If so, please give your baby to someone else, OK?

3. Twilight's Twitter account has been posting a lot of promotional stills lately, which has been a lot of fun. But the folks at RobstenLust raise an issue: Bella doesn't seem to have any bruises. Is it possible that part has been omitted for being, you know, horrifying and bleak? If so, is that better or worse than what S. Meyer did? Is it morally wrong to gloss over the evil of Twilight in the film adaptation? Or is it a moral imperative?

BLOGGING BREAKING DAWN, pt. 36: The Pain From An Old Wound

At the end of the last chapter, Jacob sat with RNSM and answered her questions about what was happening at Chez Cullen these days, about Carlisle's vampire friends coming around and all that. Bella watched, annoyed. “Renesmee already understood only too clearly what was going on,” she complained. “Wasn't shielding her more important than answering her questions?” Twilight: answering the important questions about child-rearing since 2008!

Here's the other thing: much as I want to believe that Alice has bailed for totally selfish reasons (since that would be interesting and complicated), I'm already thinking that won't be the case. Here's what happens after Bella assures RNSM that whatever Alice is doing, it's the right thing:

The right thing for Alice anyway. I hated thinking of her that way, but how else could the situation be understood?

Right, because that is definitely something you say when you see only one way to understand a given situation. Hahahaha. “It's not as though Alice could have possibly been up to something else entirely that I just didn't see yet but would probably understand eventually!” Jesus.

Chapter 30: Irresistible

Bella, Edward, and RNSM return to the cottage that night, even though they have every flat surface in Chez Cullen available to them at the moment—what a waste. Bella's head is swimming with questions for Edward, but once they put the kid to bed he flies into full-on fuck mode (where has all your propriety gone, dear Edward?) which is how they spend the duration of the evening. It still pisses me off that a sentence like this

I didn't think of my questions for the rest of that night.

are what passes for erotic around here, but what can you do? Leave it to Bella, by the way, to be anal-(wait for it)-retentive about sexual desire: “I'd been planning on needing years to somewhat organize the overwhelming passion I felt for him physically,” she says. What, was she going to make a spreadsheet? But anyway, now she's realizing that all of this might end, so the suggestion is that she's just like “Put it in my ass! Put it in my ear!” and the two of them are just like, to the WINDOWWWW to the WALL, till venom drip down Edward's balls, etc.

Next day they get ready for the arrival of the Denali gang, wondering how they'll get the news about RNSM to them without causing a freakout. You know you've done a bad job writing a convincing novel when YOUR CHARACTERS wonder aloud how to make their lives seem plausible. Bella then asks Edward for fight training, which leads to a discussion of what the Volturi's strategic advantages are.

“Damn, I'm missing out on this conversation?”-Jasper Whitlock

We learn that Jane's brother Alec has an even scarier power than hers: he can cause “total sensory deprivation” on not one but dozens of vampires at a time. “You are utterly alone in the blackness,” Edward says. “You don't even feel it when they burn you.” Heavy. Bella realizes she's probably immune to that scary-ass shit though, and starts to plot how she could take little Alec out, if things come to blows. Oh god, now I hope there's a fight, just so in the movie I can see Kristen Stewart kick the head off a little kid—boot that thing into the trees like she's kicking a field goal, you know? If a book with a bunch of uncomfortable pro-life symbols (no matter what Stewart says) ends with the brutal murder of a 9-year old vampire (a fiftieth-trimester abortion, basically), that'll be enough of a wash for me. It's notable that Bella can talk about killing Alec and Jane without any hesitation, especially given something that comes up later, which we should maybe start calling the Volturi Question.

Are the Volturi evil or not? Evidence is mixed. They sure SEEMED scary the first time Bella encountered them, but in the end Aro was actually kind of friendly! When a few of the Volturi returned in Eclipse, they just kind of came off as assholes. And coming off as an asshole isn't a murder-worthy offense, is it? Now, sometimes it seems like S. Meyer is treating this ambiguity as, you know, ambiguous. When Bella finds out that Denali vamp Eleazar used to be a member of the Volturi she is shocked, but Edward rhetorically treats it as like, a stint in the army. The Volturi are “only alleged to be heinous and evil by the criminals,” he reminds her. But of course, he reminds her with a “twisted” smile on his face. Am I the only person who has difficulty sussing out how I'm supposed to feel about this?

So yeah, Alice apparently urged the family to talk to Eleazar because of his Volturi knowledge. Bella wonders how he ever got out of that gig, and Edward tells her that technically the Volturi is an all-volunteer army. “He wasn't one of their warriors,” he says.”He had a gift they found convenient.” Let me guess: really good accounting skills. No, actually Eleazar can apparently sense what other vampire powers are. Hey, that's nice, given that we still don't know what Bella's power is! Will he also be able to determine the make and model of her new car? Because that's another one we've left dangling! Eleazar met Carmen, who was a similarly compassionate vampire, and he went to Aro and was like “The game ain't in me no more. None of it.” And Aro was like, “Okay Eleazar, here's some money to start a gym.”

Edward decides to greet their visitors alone first, so as not to overwhelm them; Bella, RNSM, and Jacob wait at the dining room table around the corner. Sure, because that isn't weird. RNSM actually speaks a few words at the table, and doesn't even use her whole mind-meld thing at the table, and does all the dishes on a whole other level. What's weird about RNSM actually bothering to talk now is it's actually kind of affecting? She snuggles into Bella's neck and says “What if they don't like me?” and I was like awwwwww. And then she says “This is my fault,” and I was like DAWWWWWWWW!

Then the new folks show up, and this is where started to wonder if it's going to matter if I keep track of all these people. There's Tanya, Eleazar ("Cutty" from here on out, I'm sick of writing Eleazar out already), Carmen, and Kate. Kate and Tanya, remember, were the ones making all of those awkward spinster jokes at Bella's wedding. Nice ladies! Cutty's got it made though, right? Living in Alaska with three women, two of whom are desperately lonely? If he doesn't get a little four-way action, he at least gets to watch some stuff, I bet.

Anyway, Edward is really good at making his guests feel at ease. NOT!

“Is Carlisle all right?” a male voice asked anxiously. Eleazar.
“None of us is all right, Eleazar,” Edward said, and then he patted something, maybe Eleazar's shoulder. “But physically, Carlisle is fine.”
“Physically?” Tanya asked sharply. “What to you mean?”

JUST SPIT IT OUT EDWARD! T-T-T-T-TODAY JUNIOR! So Edward urges them to reserve judgment, then brings Bella and RNSM out, and all of them are like “REALLY!? REALLY!? REALLY!!!” and Edward is like “I told you to fucking wait.” Carmen is the first one to stop freaking out, and she ends up allowing RNSM to project some images into her head. It wins her over.

Renesmee grinned, clearly delighted with Carmen's acceptance, and touched Eleazar lightly on the forehead.
“Ay caray!” he spit, and jerked away from her.

Good instinct, Cutty. Eventually everybody takes a turn, and RNSM's little show easily gets everyone on her side. So it's this, basically:

Watch on YouTube

Edward then explains the bizarre stakes of the rest of this book to them; when they realize that Irina caused all of it, they're overwhelmed with guilt and pledge to help fight and die if necessary. It's weird to me that RNSM can inspire such dedication in everyone. I mean, her? There's a moment that is supposed to be sort of like that “I serve at the pleasure of the President” scene from The West Wing when everybody says they're joining the Cullen's mission.

Kate flashed a grin back and then shrugged nonchalantly. “I'm in.”
“I, too, will do whatever I can to protect the child,” Carmen agreed. Then, as if she couldn't resist, she held her arms out toward Renesmee. “May I hold you, bebe linda?”

I'm trying to figure out why this is happening. I mean, can you think of another time just seeing a baby inspired so much from so many people?
Oh fuck.

This Week's Videos

CATCHING UP: Red Carpet Edition

So Osama Bin Laden is dead. Elsewhere, a bunch of celebrities went to some kind of fashion thing at the MET. Kristen Stewart and Ashley Greene were in town for it, and were even spotted dining together a few nights ago. What they obviously did back at Ashley Greene's apartment afterward doesn't even need to be said, but if they did it again after the MET Gala it was totally a hatefuck, because AG has got to be pissed KStew is showing her up at her own game: looking good on a red carpet. Check out this best-dressed poll from The Fab Life:

Holy shit! And it's well deserved: WHAT UP, KRISTEN:

(A whole bunch of other pictures are here.) Which isn't to say AG didn't bring it, too:

(Lots of her here.) But the critical consensus is shock and surprise at how good KStew looked. Do you agree? Disagree? The problem with killing it every single time is people stop being impressed. Pro tip, Ashley: show up to your next red carpet in sweatpants! Keep 'em guessing! Links, etc.:

• Who Said It: Ashley Greene Or David Foster Wallace?
• Blogging Breaking Dawn: Seacrest Out
• New Meme: Ashley Greene's Next Tweet (Speaking of which, I have a new favorite)
• We Have To Talk About This
• Stevie Nicks, Barack Obama, and Twilight
• Blogging Breaking Dawn: How Do You Solve A Problem Like Irina?

Lastly, here's a kind of interesting interview with Ashley Greene, conducted by Michael Sheen (who plays Aro). It's accompanied by some bondage-y, nipple-y photos of AG, so uh, get ready for that.

Who Said It: Ashley Greene Or David Foster Wallace?

A. "I think that we've all gone through having to make the transition from adolescence to adulthood and we've all kind of gone through loss and love and hurt and kind of having to grow up and let go of the past and adapt to the future."

B. "And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self."

C. "I actually really appreciated that because we'd butt heads and then we'd come to an understanding and go from there. I think that we actually learned some things about ourselves and our characters in the process, but he's still a very close friend of mine and it was a really positive thing."

D. "One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism."

E. "But for some reason I didn't feel like I needed to watch those films to kind of grasp the things that we were trying to capture with the film because I think the themes are so universal and I think the themes are something that are undying and everyone is always going to go through for the rest of time. So I didn't really think that I had to do so much research to kind of capture those things."

F. "I think TV promulgates the idea that good art is just art which makes people like and depend on the vehicle that brings them the art."

G. "We're all—especially those of us who are educated and have read a lot and have watched TV critically—in a very self-conscious and sort of worldly and sophisticated time, but also a time when we seem terribly afraid of other people's reactions to us and very desperate to control how people interpret us. Everyone is extremely conscious of manipulating how they come off in the media; they want to structure what they say so that the reader or audience will interpret it in the way that is most favorable to them."

H. "There's always going to be anti in this industry. There will always be people who love me or hate me. That’s why I try to focus on the positive."

I. "I think you definitely had a sense of a little bit of a depression. We actually didn't really address the subject a lot and talk about it a lot, but you definitely see it I think in the Wheeler family and with Skateland closing. But, yeah, it really wasn't something that we touched on."

J. "The depressed person was in terrible and unceasing emotional pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror."

K. "I think I've learned that I will always continue to keep learning about myself and everyone is always changing. It's so funny, I still have the same morals and values and I think foundation of who I was growing up, when I was in Jacksonville, Florida, but it's just so funny to me that I'm such a different person than I was from seventeen to twenty one and from twenty one to twenty four. And I'm sure from twenty four to twenty nine I'll be completely different because you live and you learn and experiences affect you. I think you kind of grow as a person."

L. "If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down."

M. "I don't know that I'll go to a campus. I could take online courses, but I think that I'm never going to want to stop learning and growing. The funny thing about this profession is that virtually anything you learn and any experience that you go through you can use in this profession. So I was very interested in law and I was very interested in psychology when I was in school. I actually had a magnet program high school for that. So I think that psychology is still something that I'm very interested in learning about."

N. "And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out."

O. "When I see the merchandise, it’s exciting. To be able to say I have a doll is pretty amazing. I have an action figure. That’s awesome!"

P. "An ad that pretends to be art is -- at absolute best -- like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair."

Q. "It’s a very American illness, the idea of giving yourself away entirely to the idea of working in order to achieve some sort of brass ring that usually involves people feeling some way about you – I mean, people wonder why we walk around feeling alienated and lonely and stressed out."

R. "I'm a workaholic. When I feel like I’m not doing something, it drives me insane."

S. "There are things that can be learned, it is a craft. You have to have some talent and be a certain type of person to deal with it, but it takes a certain type of personality. You gotta love it, dealing with being bashed in the public and not having a private life, it’s not worth the trade if you don’t love it. If you do love it, it’s totally worth it."

T. "What the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves, they've got their own vision, they have their own way of fracturing reality, and if it's authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings."

U. "Of course you're a fraud, of course what people see is never you. And of course you know this, and of course you try to manage what part they see if you know it's only a part. Who wouldn't? It's called free will, Sherlock. But at the same time it's why it feels so good to break down and cry in front of others, or to laugh, or speak in tongues, or chant in Bengali--it's not English anymore, it's not getting squeezed through any hole. So cry all you want, I won't tell anybody."

V. "Yes. Oh, yes. Fans shake and cry. You kind of don’t know what to do. I give them a hug or whatever. People ask if I get annoyed, but you can’t really get annoyed at something like that."

W. "I think probably through the chaos of it all is you really have to stay grounded and remember who you are and where you came from, because that’s a really big thing."

X. "The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."

Y. "I will look at it the way that I want to, even if it’s not true. I’m an actor."

Z. "And Lo, for the Earth was empty of Form, and void. And Darkness was all over the Face of the Deep. And We said: 'Look at that fucker Dance.'"