Latest 'Twilight' flick is twisted but well-made

As vampire-human weddings go, Bella's is a success.
First off, none of the guests is eaten, so that's a plus.
Sure, there's some tension between the werewolves and the bloodsuckers, but what wedding doesn't have that?

Like most brides-to-be, Bella has some jitters. The night before the big event, she has a nightmare about mutilated corpses piled before the altar. Par for the course.

Well, par for the course for a "Twilight" movie. The whole vampire thing has been around so long now this stuff is starting to seem normal.

There are a few reasons "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1" is probably the best of the "Twilight" films. First off, something happens, and that helps.

The first two films in the series moved like sludge, just like the source material. The last, "Eclipse," picked up the pace. This one does as well. It's not just a lot of mooning and swooning about with vamps and dog-people and unrequited love.

Love gets requited this time. And then things get pretty grimly unquiet.
Another reason "Part 1" works is that prestige director Bill Condon ("Dreamgirls," "Kinsey," "Gods and Monsters") has been brought in to finish off the series. Condon isn't a horror guy, or a 'tween guy, or even a romance guy.

He's a movie guy, and he streamlines and sanitizes the first half of Stephanie Meyer's final vamp novel to good effect. This film may be the most gruesome of the series, but it could have been a lot worse.

We start off with the wedding of Bella (Kristen Stewart) to Edward (Robert Pattinson) and it's to Condon's great credit that he doesn't drag this flowery occasion on too long.

There's a big cake, some new vampire cousins get introduced (see you next movie), and Bella's teen friends get to cameo (you can almost see the relief on "Up in the Air" Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick's face as she near fulfills her contract in a minor role).

Then it's off to a romantic honeymoon. On a private island off the coast of Rio, of course. Vampires spare no expense.

It is here that the deed alluded to, worried over, whispered about and teased at for three movies (that have earned more than $1.5 billion) is finally done, albeit with much breaking of furniture.

And even though there are approximately 500 gazillion copies of "Breaking Dawn" in print, that is where this plot summary must conclude. Suffice to say that Bella pays a price for daring to engage in carnal pleasure. Remember that, 'tweensters: Romance good, sex bad.

That somewhat twisted perspective made "Breaking Dawn" the most controversial of the "Twilight" books. It's a bit hard and somewhat scary to try to figure out what Meyer was trying to say with all this. And the pointedly creepy turn here may keep "Breaking Dawn" from breaking quite as big commercially.

It must be stated that all of this is a lot incongruous nonsense. What happens to the clothes werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) keeps bursting out of, and how does he find new clothes so easily? How come there are all these super-strong vampire-werewolf rumbles but nobody ever gets hurt? And don't vampires ever change hairstyles?

None of that matters. It's a "Twilight" movie. Romance, blood, battles and demons obviously trump common sense any day. Fans, enjoy. Newbies, beware.

Movies, Opera Reveal The Strength Of Intuition

Every time I drive past the marquee at the Lark Theater, I’m tickled by the lineup for this weekend. Brad Pitt as Billy Beane; George Clooney as a presidential contender; plus a special appearance by Gandhi. It’s very guy-centric, this lineup, but still … sports, politics and money, with music for one of the 20th century’s most renowned figures by today’s most famous composer—what a mix!


Moneyball, of course, stars Pitt as Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, who, using computer analysis to draft players, put together a team of contenders in 2002. Rene Rodriguez of the Miami Herald calls it a “triumph of culturally relevant filmmaking.” Roger Ebert says the film is about “the war between intuition and statistics.”

That phrase certainly applies to The Ides of March, in which Ryan Gosling’s idealistic staffer gets a crash course in yucky real-life politics while on the campaign trail.

But who would have thought the term would suit the latest offering in the Live at the Met series as well? Satyagraya — the name alone informs you this isn’t an opera by Handel or Verdi. Nope, it’s by Philip Glass, arguably the only living composer the general audience has heard of (for, say, the soundtrack for Mishima or Koyaanisqatsi, or maybe for Glass’s first opera, Einstein at the Beach. This one, which premiered in 1980, is his second). As usual, Glass makes heavy use of arpeggios and repetition to create a hallucinatory spell, and much of the music is gorgeous. 


There’s no straightforward plot or chronology here; we’re shown episodes from Gandhi’s years in South Africa, when he was a young lawyer protesting British injustice, as moments in time. Unlike traditional opera, this is sung in Sanskrit — the language of the Bhagavad Gita, on which the text is based — and instead of supertitles, isolated words and lines are projected onto the set or props. And the staging is wonderful. The set is a semicircular wall covered in what looks like corrugated metal, in front of which we see oversized puppets and fanciful props, aerialists and stilt walkers, in addition to the well-reviewed singers. 


The opera portrays the passing of the legacy of nonviolence from Tolstoy through Gandhi to Martin Luther King, Jr. — a topic discussed as recently as today at the Occupy sites. We’d all like to see a better means of achieving political ends — surely we all feel there must be a better way. With its message of pacifism, you might call Satyagraya the triumph of intuition over statistics.


IF YOU GO: Nov. 19 and 20, Satyagraha; through Nov. 22, Moneyball and The Ides of March, Lark Theater, 549 Magnolia Ave., Larkspur, 924-5111; larktheater.net.

Blu-ray Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2

We are most definitely a Harry Potter family. My children have literally grown up on the books and the movies, and a new release has always been an event in our household. Even with my kids packed away at university, opening weekend of the latest Harry Potter movie has meant a trek down the road to the local IMAX to see the movie as it’s meant to be seen—big and dynamic.

Warner Home Video has now released on Blu-ray, the final installment of the Harry Potter Series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2. Spoiled as I am, having seen most of the series in IMAX, I hoped to be wowed by the Blu-ray release, and I was not disappointed. The film looks gorgeous in Blu-ray, a feast for the eyes and ears, with special features galore. It is, as Ron Weasley might say, “Simply brilliant!” But be sure to pick it up before December 29, when all Harry Potter movies now in Blu-ray or DVD release come off the shelf and go into moratorium for an undisclosed time period.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 literally picks up where Part 1 left off. There’s no recap, no flashbacks; it just starts. When I saw the movie in its theatrical release, it had been a couple of months since I'd seen Part 1, and it took a few minutes (well, more than a few) to adjust my brain for context and settle into the Part 2 (after all, it had been a months-long intermission). Anyway, my advice is to watch Part 1 before watching Part 2.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 finds Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint), and Hermione (Emma Watson) preparing to finally confront Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) and defeat him. The trio must locate and destroy all seven of Voldemort's Horcruxes, which contain pieces of his soul. That is the only way to destroy him for eternity, and unless they destroy all seven, Voldemort will continue to be invicible. It is a suicide mission, says Dumbledore’s brother tells the three friends. But when has that ever stopped Harry, Hermione and Ron?

Hugo: Film Review

A passionate brief for film preservation wrapped in a fanciful tale of childhood intrigue and adventure, Hugo dazzlingly conjoins the earliest days of cinema with the very latest big-screen technology. At once Martin Scorsese's least characteristic film and his most deeply felt, this opulent adaptation of Brian Selznick's extensively illustrated novel is ostensibly a children's and family film, albeit one that will play best to sophisticated kids and culturally inclined adults. Paramount has no choice but to go for broke by selling this most ingenious of 3D movies to the widest possible public, hoping that critical acclaim and novelty value will pique the curiosity of all audiences. All the same, it remains something of a tricky proposition commercially.

Like so many of the most popular and enduring fictions centered on children, from Dickens to Harry Potter, this one is about orphans and castoffs, kids who must scheme, fight and resist authority to make their way in life. With exceptional imagination, first Selznick and now Scorsese and scenaristJohn Logan have found a way to connect their resourceful leading characters with one of the great early figures of cinema, Georges Melies, most famous as the originator of the science fiction film with his 1902 A Trip to the Moon and, perhaps more significantly, the first man to recognize the connection between the cinema and dreams.

In an incidental moment that alone justifies the entire recent resurgence of 3D, Scorsese recreates the legendary presentation of the Lumiere brothers' 1897 Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, at which audiences flinched in horror as a train filmed coming into a station appeared to be headed right at them, in a way that astonishingly captures the reaction the brief clip was described as having created. For anyone remotely interested in film history, Hugo must be seen in 3D if only for this interlude, which the director and cinematographer Robert Richardson have pulled off through an impeccably precise combination of framing and timing.

The richness of detail and evident care that has been extended to all aspects of the production are of a sort possible only when a top director has a free hand to do everything he or she feels is necessary to entirely fulfill a project's ambitions. As has been seen all too many times, this sort of carte blanche has its pitfalls in indulgence, extravagance and waste. In this case, however, the obvious expenditures of time, care and money would seem to have been devoted to matters directly connected to Scorsese's overriding obsessions with film — the particulars of its creation, manner of presentation, the nature of the people who make it, its importance to the inner lives of those who love it and preservation both of film itself and the reputations of its practitioners.

Melissa Rosenberg Talks The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1

The wait is finally over for those fans dying to see the latest romantic entanglements between Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), her vampire fiance Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), and third wheel out, werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 hits theaters this Friday, November 18th.

To celebrate this release, we caught up with screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg, who has penned all five of the Twilight movies for the big scren. She takes us behind-the-scenes, and offers a look at the process behind bringing Stephenie Meyer's popular novel series to life.

Here is our conversation.
What sort of challenges did you face in adapting this particular chapter of the Twilight Saga? It contains some pretty crazy stuff...Or did you just leave all of that in there, and let director Bill Condon sort it out?
Melissa Rosenberg: The crazy stuff wasn't the hard part. This is a very different story than the first three. This is a very grown up story. It is dealing with very complex emotions and themes. You really have to dig deeper when you are dealing with that particular world. The crazy stuff came as a relief. I was like, "Oh, good! Now I get to do some whacked out birthing scene!" It's the human part, the character part, that I worked really hard on. How I approach it was...How I approach every action scene, or wild scene like the birth...Once you get to actually shooting it, they are going to be relying on the stunt coordinator and the EFX team. All of that. What was important to me, and why I will choreograph certain things on the page...I understand specific choreography won't wind up on film...Probably not...The reason I do that is so that the story of the action is clear. What the character action of the drama is supposed to be. The action of the scene. In this particular case, let's say, with the birth...I approached that the way the book does. From Bella's point of view. Then, from there, it is up to Bill Condon to deliver that scene on screen. He, of course, was involved in every aspect of everything. He has to deliver on what is in the script. "Here you go, Bill! Go have fun!"

As a forty year old man, I'm not going to yell in the isles the moment Jacob rips off his shirt. But I might shout a quiet "Yah!" When Charlie pops the top on one of those tasty Rainier beers. That is perfect casting. And Rainier has been there since day one. It's survived so many directorial changes as this franchise has gone on. Was Rainier written into the script? Or was that just good casting on Catherine Hardwicke's part?
Melissa Rosenberg: In the book, Charlie is quite the beer drinker. That element goes way back. But the Rainier is a direct production choice. And that probably came from Billy Burke saying, "Hey, I need a beer, here!" I didn't write that into the script.

Going back to Jacob ripping off his shirt. In the theater, this one scene is deafening. How choreographed are those moments. How calculated is that moment where one of the characters goes topless, eliciting this loud response from, not just the young women in the audience, but also the moms and the gay men?

Melissa Rosenberg: The shirt removal is something that I do write into the script. A steamy look from Edward? Not necessarily. For me, it's not about playing to the audience. It's about bringing the characters to a certain apex. It's about following the emotional journey. Its not, to me, about these moments where the audience is going to scream. I know they're going to scream. But it's not about achieving that reaction. It's about the feelings this story is delivering.

Was it more or less challenging for you to take this one book and turn it into two movies, as to what you've previously done in making just one movie per book?

Melissa Rosenberg: Definitely more challenging. Particularly with this first movie. Part 1. It is such a small movie. It is more akin to the first Twilight, than the other two. The second half has a lot more action. There is a lot more going on. This one posed a challenge in that it's about the internal workings of a marriage, really. It becomes, very much, a character drama that turns into a horror story. That was definitely a challenge.

How did you find the break in the two movies?

Melissa Rosenberg: It was a natural, organic break, that cam mid-section. When you read the book, it seems natural. The first part being where she's a newlywed, and we deal with the pregnancy. The second part is about her being a vampire and a parent. This is a natural breaking point, really. When you first read the book, you hit upon that. You can see that. I think we all felt that way. We played with it a little bit, we tried pushing it into the first act of the second movie. We wanted to see if that played. Ultimately, we didn't like it. So we did what we did.

As you wrote each new screenplay for the five films, did you take into consideration that the audience is growing up along with these characters?

Melissa Rosenberg: Honestly, I don't write to an audience. I have never tried that. The minute you write to an audience, you've lost them. Its as though you are pandering to them. Thinking that you are speaking to them. On all of these, for me, it has been about the characters and telling an authentic story. It is about a vampire. But it resonates, and it's a compelling story. I think that starts with Stephenie Meyer. She has hit a chord with people. Then we follow that. The books have been doing this long before there was a film audience. We have to follow that, too, you know what I mean?

When you sit down to write a Twilight screenplay, do you need to be in the rainy, cold mindset of the North West? To get in the mood? Or is it all sunshine and beaches as to where you actually sit down and write these movies?

Melissa Rosenberg: (Laughs) Hardly. I have a very strict regiment of showing up at my desk at a certain hour with my cup of green tea. It is very quite. I don't like having a lot of atmosphere around. But what I get into rather than the environment that the characters are in, is...I get into the character's minds. That is as easily as intense, to get into this mindsets, as well as this setting...