Twilight Conference Recap August 4, 2009

I went to TwiCon in Dallas this past weekend. I spoke on a panel about the music of Twilight. Marah of Bloodshot Records organized our panel and, along with Angela at Wired and Genevive at The Onion, we planned for months what to talk about. Some of us were very nervous, which only increased when we saw the ballroom they put our panel in (photo at left), but luckily only about 3 dozen people actually showed up and all panic attacks abated. Canadian web channel Reelz taped it, but let me elaborate on my comparison of “Twilight,” “Valley Girl,” and Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet” with you.

I touched on other topics, but one of the most interesting was comparing these three teen movies. I selected “Valley Girl” and “Romeo + Juliet” specifically to compare musically to “Twilight” because all three are, at their core, in debt to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for their plot. Additionally all three have had wildly successful soundtracks that accompanied the very successful movies. So how does the “Twilight” soundtrack stack up to these other teen movie soundtracks? Personally, I think it is the weakest of the bunch.  “Valley Girl” shoved Modern English’s “I Melt With You” into the collective consciousness of the world. “Romeo + Juliet” made a hit of The Cardigans “Lovefool.” “Twilight” has yet to break a new artist like the other two movies. I do hold out hope it will move in that direction with the second Twilight movie “New Moon.” I’d like to see a song (or several) become inextricably associated with the Twilight series in the minds of the general public and not just TwiHards. To me that is the sign of a very powerful soundtrack that has been wisely chosen and marketed.

Also, in my own personal opinion, the songs on the “Twilight” soundtrack as a whole are not as compelling as the other two movies I compared it to. “Valley Girl” is very focused musically, enlisting L.A. bands and a few cool British bands of the time into a very specific music soundtrack. You get the sense that the people putting it together and selecting music for that film were consciously attempting to be cool and credible. “Romeo + Juliet” is less concerned with credibility, but also operates in a narrow parameter where pop music scores specific moments in the movie and everything is very, very current. “Twilight” seems to have a broader focus musically. The music in the film is largely hidden in the background and unrecognizable, even at pivotal moments. There is nothing wrong with that at all, but it lends itself to a soundtrack with somewhat improbable artists like Collective Soul (who we haven’t really heard from since the late ’90s), Perry Farrell (a panel favorite to pick on as the out of place track on this soundtrack) and Linkin Park (who especially strike me as an odd choice for such a female driven movie – why is there not an aggressive female voice here instead?).

At any rate, those are just my impressions and musings. If you’d like you can listen to the alternative TwiVerse soundtracks Marah, Angela and I created for “Twilight” on imeem.

Also, I have to talk a little about the Masquerade Ball that closed the conference. It got me thinking about a “Twilight and the Media” panel we’d attended the day before when someone brought up how mainstream media marginalizes things women fetishize, like Twilight, but will embrace boy fetishes like “Star Wars.” It is true, to a degree, that womens’ interest items like Twilight are treated as second class, but it’s also difficult not to laugh at the sort of cult behavior it inspires, like this masquerade ball. I mean, it was thousands of women dressed in ballgowns and masks with nary a man in sight. Ok, I saw 4 men. I found it amusing in the same way I’d find dudes dressed up like Star Wars characters and hanging out together funny. It is in no way a lesser funny.

If you think you are unable to appreciate the movie “Twilight” please allow me to point you to the Riff Tracks version. It is an additional commentary track in MP3 form written and performed by the people who brought you Mystery Science Theater 3000 and it makes the movie SO SO SO much more hilarious. I cannot recommend this enough, especially if you think you’d hate “Twilight” or if you watched it and thought it was an unintentionally hilarious B-movie.

Ryan Gosling Gets Cool Band, New Movies, Kind of Rules Right Now January 23, 2009

Cross posted on The Playlist.

Generally speaking, when actors decide to have music side projects there are no amount of snide remarks that adequately capture the stunning self-indulgent, needless stupidity and absolute terribleness of their musical results. In the case of Dead Man’s Bones, a new band featuring Ryan Gosling (“Half-Nelson” and “Lars and the Real Girl”) and his best friend/normal person Zach Shields the opposite seems to be true.

The music is, against almost all logical expectations of a music snob like myself, really good. In an interview with Pitchfork the guys explain that over the several years they’ve been working on this collaboration they worked with several different producers who tried to make them more contemporary (which we will take the liberty of assuming means “sucky”) and after hearing the results of these sessions opted to go for a more lo-fi and less professional sound themselves, with Tim Anderson of semi-credible L.A. band ImARobot producing. The project also enlists help from a choir of precocious kids from the Silverlake Conservatory of Music, a music education project founded by Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers – amazing live performance video below with the choir dressed in all manner of Halloween costumes that gives the whole affair a very creepy, dark Nick Cave visual by way of a much less polished Arcade Fire musical feel.

Kudos to Gosling for his integrity in his acting choices for the last few years and now his music career. In other good new for acting integrity, IMDB indicates that we’ll be seeing Gosling in two interesting looking features at some point in the near future: “Blue Valentine,” with Michelle Williams attached to co-star, which seems to be about time-traveling lovers and “The Dallas Buyer’s Club” about a man in the 1980s who is diagnosed with HIV and starts toying around with underground drugs not approved for use in the U.S. at the time (the latter sounds completely amazing and we cannot wait to hear more). Until then we can and will continue to pretend Ryan Gosling is our boyfriend on the Fuck Yeah! blog.

“The Day The Earth Stood Still” Is A Typical Summer Blockbuster Released in Dead of Winter December 12, 2008

[Cross posted on The Playlist]

There was very little chance that “The Day The Earth Stood Still” was going to be a good movie. We were, at best, hoping for something on par with “Independence Day” or “Armageddon” (or at least “Starship Troopers”). With Keanu Reeves apparently cast as an alien who feels no human emotions we were sure his wooden acting wouldn’t get in the way and, in a way, it didn’t – it was Jennifer Connelly’s constant and prolonged “omg!” face that was the real acting stand out. Frankly we were shocked she manged to out crap Reeves and Kathy Bates took her best shot at overacting everyone else. The only decent performance on the screen was Mad Men’s Jon Hamm as the scruffy scientist and so, of course, he was vastly under used.

The basic premise of the movie was greatly changed from the 1951 original. It needed a massive update to account for our growing knowledge of technology. The overall analogy is no longer one of Cold War invaders but now flatly laid out as environmental responsibility. It’s a noble message but given so obtusely that anyone actually effected by the message in the movie would have no idea how to do anything new to, er, reduce their carbon footprint or whatever. On the plus side the special effects were remarkable, even though the film constantly broke it’s own rules for what sort of damage the “monsters” could do causing numerous continuity problems.

The major flaw with this movie is its release date. It’s far too mindless and terrible overall to be a Christmas release. It’s also very dark with failed attempts at being heady that, when combined with being totally a brainless failure, make it feel terribly awkward as a holiday season release. If it were some mindless July blockbuster it wouldn’t feel out of place at all, but let’s just say that if the baby Jesus were to see this film he would weep and ask for his money back.

He’s Just Not That Into You – Now An (E)motion Pitcure July 29, 2008

Were you one of the millions of women who were swept up in the frenzy for “He’s Just Not That Into You”- the book? Did “Sex & The City” turn you on to it? Maybe it was Oprah? At any rate, you are probably one of the millions of (largely urban, I suspect) women who were somehow exposed to the “would you stop devaluing yourself in relationships” message of the book. What can we say, years of watching “Sex & The City” totally fucked a lot of women up and somewhere along the way a lot of us lost sight of what to expect in relationships. Especially those of us living in New York where there are something like 13 million times as many women as straight men.

When I heard that Drew Barrymore’s Flower Films had optioned a movie adaption of the self-help book I was intrigued. Obviously it’s going to be a chick flick. And then when they cast a group of what seems like dozens (including Barrymore, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck and more) of actors spread across their 20s and 30s it was clear that this would be one of those ensemble pieces a la Love Actually where every person’s story eventually intertwines.

All of the media mentioned above? Total guilty pleasures. Will this adaption be any good? It looks hit or miss. I predict Gennifer Goodwin’s desperate for love character will be the best thing about the movie. The Aniston/Affleck coupling will be the most boring part. The Jennifer Connolly/Bradley Cooper/ScarJo love triangle will be dramatically overacted. And the casting of Kevin Connolly and Justin Long will lead to much chin scratching.

This adaption is a very interesting idea, but I would have written it with one particular female hero at the center who fumbles her way through dating a la Lucille Ball in a chocolate factory. She can have a sidekick and it could be the chick flick equivalent of an action movie with a rotating group of pretty man faces to gaze upon.

Why Did I Start A Blog? July 25, 2008

For a long time now I’ve been very interested in these topics: psychology, neurology, feminism and terribly sappy movies. Actually, make that all forms of entertainment with absolutely no redemptive qualities that are aimed at women (sometimes even movies on Lifetime).

I regularly email stuff to a friend who has his own blog about movie music (although, come on, it’s clearly mostly a place for him to rant on the Internets) called The Playlist, but I can’t help noticing how very male centric both is point of view and, by extension, most of Hollywood are. I also spend quite a lot of time every day reading Jezebel and it’s become my primary source of news lately because they actually present items with a point of view attached. A female point of view.

So, I intend to blog about entertainment – movies, music, TV, video games, random online content, whatever is interesting and created by, for and/or marketed to women. Sometimes just to criticize and sometimes to just to laud but possibly just commentary in between the two as well.

I’ll end this first post with the trailer for the movie that finally inspired the launch of this blog: In Search of a Midnight Kiss. It’s an IFC film that looks sappy as hell and yet I cannot wait to go see it. Will it be as terrible as I’ve been told? Possibly. Will that stop me from watching it? Not in a million. Opening August 1 in independent theaters in the U.S. – or if your cable system has movies on demand you might also have the service that allows you to watch new IFC movies from home.