In Contention

Tag: Twilight

  • The kids are NOT all right (or alright, for that matter)

    This post is so unnecessary because it is an obvious lost cause. It really shouldn’t even be enough to get a rise, but in me, it just…does.

    You know, once upon a time the MTV Movie Awards (which are voted on publicly) actually seemed to reflect an edge in America’s youth. Think about it. “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” won the MTV award for Best Picture. “Menace II Society” won the MTV award for Best Picture. “Pulp Fiction,” “Seven,” “Scream,” “There’s Something About Mary,” “The Matrix,” “Napoleon Dynamite,” etc.  Room was even made here and there for prestige pics that tapped a pop culture vein.  “A Few Good Men,” for instance, or “Titanic,” “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and “Gladiator,” one of only two times the award matched the Academy’s choice.

    And in the last five years?  Scary.  “Wedding Crashers,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest,” “Transformers” and far and away the two worst films to win a popcorn statue: “Twilight” and “The Twilight Saga: New Moon.” (Why, Bill, why?)  What the hell happened to the MTV audience?  What happened to the kids’ edge?  Who are these people?

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  • Condon reaches out to ‘Twilight’ nation

    I didn’t expect back-to-back posts concerning Bill Condon today, but anyway, one of the more unexpected developments over the last few months was Condon signing on to direct “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn,” the final installment in the fan-heavy “Twilight” series.

    I thought it was totally left-field, given the direction his career has taken since the days of “Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh,” but with HBO’s Hollywood blogger send-up “Tilda” going into production any day, and the Marlon Wayons-starring biopic “Richard Pryor: Is It Something I Said?” still on deck, it’s rather clear Condon isn’t interested in pigeonholing himself or his career.

    Thinking of it in those terms, I’m game.  Maybe it’ll be the first film from the series I actually watch.

    Meanwhile, /Film (via Thompson on Hollywood) dug up an interesting nugget in all of this, being Condon’s open letter to TwiHards (or TwiTards, depending on your opinion of the series, I suppose).  Check out what the Oscar-winner had to say after the jump.

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  • BAFTA Rising Star nominees

    Tahar Rahim in A ProphetBAFTA has just revealed the five young actors in contention for this year’s Rising Star Award, the winner of which will be determined by a public vote. Previous winners include James McAvoy, Eva Green, Shia LaBeouf and Noel Clarke.

    The 12-member jury charged with deciding this year’s nominees was chaired by Oscar-winning producer David Parfitt (“Shakespeare in Love”), and I must say that — blinding snub for Katie Jarvis aside — they’ve chosen quite well.

    I’m surprised, though not unpleasantly so, that “Avatar” fever didn’t secure Sam Worthington a mention. Instead, Kristen Stewart gets the populist nod.

    Given that it’s a publicly voted award, Stewart is the one to beat, too — I highly doubt the fanbases of the other four can compete with the texting “Twilight” hordes, unless “A Single Man” star Nicholas Hoult’s popularity from TV’s “Skins” carries him over.

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  • FRIDAY FORECAST: Bad ‘Moon’ rising

    Taylor Lautner in The Twilight Saga: New Moon*All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.

    It’s Edward and Bella’s world and we’re just living in it. The film to beat for the Holiday season is “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” and fans finally got their chance to lay eyes on it tonight at midnight. Twi-hards have been lining up and breaking advance ticket sales records on Fandango so there’s no question that the film will be big. But how big?

    The original film opened just 52 weeks ago and earned a surprisingly huge $69.6 million. Prognosticators knew that the book had fans but there was little evidence to suggest a figure that size, particularly because new distribution outfit Summit Entertainment was the studio putting it out. The $36 million it took in on opening day was the 17th biggest Friday ever and represented more than half of the weekend take. If the fanboy rush was that big for the original, you can imagine how frontloaded the sequel is going to be.

    Some sort of record will probably be broken this weekend as the film unloads on a massive 4,024 screens nationwide with round-the-clock showtimes. “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” is the current November opening weekend champ at $115 million and that isn’t totally out of the question. Neither is the $67.2 million opening day record by “The Dark Knight” completely safe, although I’m not quite bold enough to predict that big a Friday for Chriz Weitz’s film.

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  • ‘New Moon’ director says he might hang it up

    Chris WeitzGeez, are the “Twilight” films really so bad that poor Chris Weitz would call it quits?

    Of course I’m being facetious.  The real reason Weitz is giving for “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” being his penultimate film, according to MovieMaker Magazine, is the heavy studio influence on “The Golden Compass,” a film the director says he wanted to be his masterpiece, during post-production.

    (P.S.: I loved that movie, Chris.)

    Anyway, MovieMaker has even sent out a “look what we have!” press release, turning idle conversation into cut-and-dry fact.  At the end of the day, maybe Weitz will keep chugging along.  Then again, it’s difficult to argue with what Weitz actually says about his next project, I guess.

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  • Scream Awards laud ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Up,’ ‘Let the Right One In’

    Let the Right One InI don’t follow the world of genre-specific awards ceremonies very closely, so I must admit I’d never heard of the Scream Awards before their recent slate of nominations was brought to my attention.

    No prizes for guessing from the name that it’s a horror-focused affair — with separate divisions for fantasy and sci-fi as well. Fan-voted and cheerfully silly, it looks at first glance to follow in the noble tradition of the MTV Movie Awards knockoff, with such prestigious categories as “Most Memorable Mutilation” and “Holy Shit! Scene of the Year.” (Meanwhile, one of the more serious categories is saddled with the moniker “Best Scream-Play.” That’s good stuff.)

    But get past such tongue-in-cheek frivolities — and the predictable spate of nominations for the likes of “Twilight” and “Transformers 2” — and there are some pretty cool selections scattered here and there. It’s heartening to see such a healthy showing for “Let the Right One In” in a people’s-choice institution like this — though not as surprising as the inclusion of Norwegian Nazi-zombie-comedy (there’s a mouthful) “Dead Snow.”

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  • Kevin Smith talks ‘Twilight’ at Comic-Con

    One of my favorite parts of Kevin Smith’s Saturday Comic-Con appearance was his take on the “Twilight” series, video of which Dennis over at Think Hero has dug up and passed along.  Great stuff (originally at ScreenCrave.com):

  • COMIC-CON: Wrapping it up

    2009 San Diego Comic-Con InternationalI wish I could tell you how awesome the “Iron Man 2” footage form yesterday’s Paramount panel was, but Hall H was packed to the gills and even us schmoes int he VIP line couldn’t get in because it was at capacity.  Without a doubt, the event was the most popular attraction at this year’s Comic-Con.

    It sounded good muffled through the walls.  That’s all I got.  Hoping for another screening in LA soon.

    By far the highlight for me was the Entertainment Weekly Visionaries panel with James Cameron and Peter Jackson.  It’s a pretty big leap from last year’s set of Zack Snyder, Frank Miller, Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow.  Let’s hope next year isn’t a step backwards at the crew responsible for this momentous occasion gets creative and puts a few equally brilliant minds together on that stage once again.

    Speaking of Jackson, “District 9” made a major splash here.  The screening was very well-received on Thursday and the Saturday panel got the crowd chomping at the bit.  In this community anyway, the film is sure to be a runaway hit.

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  • Greatest ‘Twilight’ photo ever

    Blade sees red

    (Courtesy: The Movie Blog)

  • ‘New Moon’ press conference at the Con

    The Twilight Saga: New MoonI skipped out on this morning’s “New Moon” press conference, despite the inevitable traffic spike attending would have given us.  Those bird’s-eye view photos of the masses, however, have been passed around over and over and over again just a few hours later.  Kinda crazy.

    Anyway, Jeff Wells, attending his first Comic-Con (which is its own delightful sit-com waiting to happen), was on hand and took the video below, but his matter-of-fact dismantling of the film’s stars and their attitude at the presser that is worth passing along:

    This morning’s New Moon/Comic-Con press conference began at 9:54 am — almost a half-hour late — inside a super-sized meeting hall within San Diego’s Bayfront Hilton. The film’s three stars — Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner — posed for photos and took questions from a throng of about 75 or 80 journalists…Lautner is clearly the most ambitiously press-friendly among the three. While Stewart and Pattinson did their usual usual — i.e., giving answers that suggested they’re a lot more complex and aloof and thoughtful than their participation in movies based on the Twilight series might suggest. It’s the age-old “I’ll do this but only if I can answer questions like Marlon Brando” routine. But Lautner, who has a bee-stung Beagle Boy nose , exhibited the personality of a publicist or a glad-hander. He clearly enjoys smiling and wants everyone to like him. He could be the next Regis Philbin if he wanted to go there.

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  • COMIC-CON: Bird’s eye view of ‘Twilight’ hordes

    Comic-Con crowd

    Comic-Con crowd

  • I don’t want my MTV

    Anne Hathaway in Bride WarsWhat do Paramore, The Rock and Kate Winslet have in common? Why, they’re all nominees for the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, of course. Like, duh.

    I have no idea what the MTV Movie Awards are for. Nobody knows or cares who wins them. (Who took Best Actor laurels last year? I doubt Will Smith could tell you — and he won, for Chrissake.)

    Subject to public vote, they serve largely as a popularity contest along the lines of People’s Choice honours — but then they taint the purity of such a credo by throwing in a mention for something incongruously credible like “Milk.” (In the prestigious Best Kiss category, to boot — how honoured Gus Van Sant must feel.)

    Anyway, this year’s nominees are a typically ill-thought and ill-fitting bunch. “Twilight” leads the race, closely followed by “Slumdog Millionaire,” which should tell you pretty much everything you need to know about the awards. They claim that the nominations were also determined by the public, though I have a hard time believing that the same people who decreed Vin Diesel a Best Actor contender for “Fast & Furious” also voted Kate Winslet in for “The Reader.”

    Speaking of which, there’s a delicious hint of Bizarro World in the Best Actress category, which finds Anne Hathaway repeating her nomination success at the Academy Awards — except, wait, it’s for “Bride Wars,” not “Rachel Getting Married.” Riiight. Angelina Jolie, meanwhile, finds herself in the race for “Wanted” rather than “Changeling” — though that’s a preference I heartily endorse.

    One thing is worth noting, however: even the bloody MTV Awards could be bothered to nominate Bruce Springsteen’s “The Wrestler” theme. The Academy will never live that one down. (Check out the MTV nods here, if you dare.)

  • Amen

    Robert Pattinson, star of “Twilight,” which is set to be released on Nov. 21, was just as clueless in his acceptance speech for the new Hollywood award.

    “I’m shocked and astonished that I’ve been given an award before my film’s come out. It’s all hype,” he candidly admitted before thanking festival founder Carlos de Abreu.

    From Pete Hammond’s recap of last night’s Hollywood Film Festival Awards

  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Visual Effects — Volume One

    Tech Support at In ContentionWhile cinematographers and film music composers may sometimes find themselves featured in the media more than many of their crafts artist colleagues, the one “tech” discipline awarded by the Academy that often brings people into the movie theaters on its own is visual effects.

    The category is whittled down to three nominees after the year’s content is narrowed to a list of seven “bake-off” contenders. The bake-off finalists consistently give insight into the branch’s thinking even if missing a prediction after their announcement isn’t unheard of. The makeup branch has a similar system.

    An expensive art form, which often involves hundreds of crew members working behind the scenes, the visual effects arena seems to be finding new ways to “wow” audiences every year. The Academy’s branch has tended in recent years to reward computer-generated imagery (CGI) as opposed to classic practical effects actually captured on camera. This category is also usually the home of blockbusters and moneymakers. “The Golden Compass,” last year’s surprising winner, was a very rare nominee considering its disappointing box office. For it to win was even rarer.

    I suspect that Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man” is leading the way this year. Immensely critically respected and with fantastic box office to back it up, I’d be quite surprised and taken aback if it failed to get a nomination here. The creation of the title character alone put it in contention. This is not to mention Jeff Bridges’s transformation and the war zone explosions.

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  • What the hell is ‘Twilight?’

    TwilightSeriously. Cover of Entertainment Weekly? Apparently breaking records in terms of trailer hits? What?

    I pride myself in being in the know with pop culture, but I’ve been oblivious to this series and soon-to-be adaptation until a few weeks ago. Is it really going to be the monster hit the rags are making it sound like?

    For once, I’m totally in the dark, dear readers. I’ll be picking up a copy from the local Burbank library this evening to see what all the fuss is about (naturally, the children’s bookstore I work in is sold out).

    I mostly just want to know if I should expect a return to form for Catherine Hardwicke, who I thought made a very promising debut with “Thirteen,” a very interesting follow-up with “Lords of Dogtown,” and then one of the worst movies I’ve ever had to sit through: “The Nativity Story”. She seems keen on telling stories about teens and their trials and tribulations, I’ll give her that.

    Anyone care to illuminate me? Is this really the next “Harry Potter?” Is Catherine Hardwicke going to live up to the promising start she had or continue to fizzle out in boring work-for-hire productions? Are the books even worth my time?

  • Miller on Comic-Con

    Variety’s Anne Thompson interviewed “Twilight” director Catherine Hardwicke and “The Spirit” helmer Frank Miller for her latest column in the build-up to this year’s San Diego Comic Convention.  But Miller pegged this overblown, over-infested blight when he offered:

    It’s now turned into Disneyland, a multimedia congress astonishing in its scale.

    No doubt.  And sad, too.