Review: Twilight on DVD

I finally saw Twilight - and haven't read the novels. Let me wear my heart on my sleeve - I loved it. Most reviews patronise "the girls" in the audience who swoon. However, I feel everyone deserves a slice of the Teen Gothic Sublime, and rarely has a film delivered so well on the genre (Titanic perhaps). There are dozens of art-house reasons to sneer at this sort of sentimental portentous product - and one to cheer: because they did it without irony.

Irony, the bane of modernism (and its spice) has rendered many a Hollywood project DOA - so this one's undead and undying romanticism was blessedly true to the material, and the vein being mined. No one tried to be hip or knowing. They just played it straight. Star-crossed lovers, vampires, deep woods that David Lynch could sink his teeth into, and high school hormones and angst, even baseball - what more could a North American kid marooned in London want? Well, one thing - a Carter Burwell score, his best since Fargo.

I look forward to the sequel, which I see Chris Weitz is helming - which is fine, since he was good for The Golden Compass - though I thought Hardwicke did a great job first time around.

Comments

Sidhe said…

I read the books, and made my husband swear an oath that he'd NEVER TELL EVER that loved the series. Then, the movie came out and I had to make him swear again. It cost me, let me tell you.

:)

Wed Apr 08, 05:12:00 pm 2009

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se. What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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