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

"Well, you built up a world of magic," Hayley Williams taunts, halfway though the Paramore track "Brick By Boring Brick", "because your real life is tragic." If it's a dig at fans of Stephenie Meyer 's supernatural romance saga, Twilight , it's a particularly snide one - as Paramore contributed two tracks to the movie soundtrack. But it hits hard and hurts, like a bitchy heel-stamp, because it fits the stereotype.The Twilight fan of popular caricature has graduated from Harry Potter's Hogwarts only to mope around magic college, mooning over pale vampires and buff werewolves. The Twilight franchise is the cultural equivalent of an emo teenager's bedroom, with all its melancholy self-indulgence and its unattainable pin-ups. More specifically, it's a teenage girl's bedroom. Twilight 's protagonist, Bella Swan, is effectively a blank, a screen for the viewer to protect herself onto and into, and be faced with the ...

Eclipse , the third film in the Twilight franchise, based on the Mormon-authored teen-celibate-vampires-&-werewolves-saga, has been getting a mauling at the hands of some British critics in today's FT and Guardian that would make Jacob's doggy fury seem like wee batsqueak.  This one is better than the second, which was dire - slow, and often terribly flat. The first film is a classic of high school longing and angst, and by far the coolest and funniest.  However, this one, though also flat in places, is never dull for long.  Instead, the B-plot, a growing army of newborn Seattle-based grungy vampires planning to come and massacre Bella and by extension Forks, is constantly intercut, to only slightly jarring effect, with the soapy romantic (and bizarre) love triangle between the undead Edward, and the incredibly buff Jacob. This is the part I enjoyed.  The romance - easily as emotive and moving as anything in a James Dean film, or any equivalent coming of a...

The BAFTA awards are getting big time. The new president is balding Prince William . Long-jawed Tarantino was in the audience. Deeply sincere Dustin Hoffman gave an award. And, best of all (other than a woman director getting the nod, as rarely happens) twitchy pale teen ingenue Kristen Stewart of Twilight fame won the Orange Rising Star mask. Rumours of split with her vampire-friend, and most-desired male colleague, may explain her befuddled 'tude in this clip . Still, bravo to Bella, belle of the ball!