The trip to the theater was a promise to my kid sister.  She wanted to see it and the parents were working.  So I said sure thing.  I chose to forgo the experience of reading the book by Stephenie Meyer out of a snobbish literary zeal that abhors all things easy and pat e.g. Twilight, The DaVinci Code, or Odd Thomas.

Twilight opens with a pandering narration by the character Bella played by Kristen Stewart who you may remember from the film Into The Wild.  I became a little nauseous when it appeared they were going to run with the narration through the duration of the film.  Eventually it trailed off and the characters began to speak to each other. 

I've barely been able to escape the hype and buzz swirling before the release of this hurricane of promotional baggage.  Comparisons to Harry Potter, assertions that Ms. Meyer has taken the reigns of horror from the male writers made by folks who apparently forgot Frankenstein's mother/author or the massive commercial success of Ann Rice not so many years ago with her own vampire stories.  And the one big media buzz that the character Edward had to be so amazingly handsome and beautiful as to leave all other male leads in the dust was as easy to figure out as the ending.  They found a young actor so damn near in looks to James Dean that you'd think his undead corpse had wandered onto the set.  There were so many parallels astride Robert Pattinson's portrayal of Edward and Dean in Rebel Without A Cause that I couldn't remember what movie I was watching half the time.  I'm not saying it's a terrible thing.  I'm just saying it's nothing to get your media all worked up about.

As far as the movie goes, it is what it is; a teen suspense and romance flick.  Not quite a film and not entirely without virtue.  There were great little scenes packed into a larger generic cinematic experience.  There was a decent chase scene that kept my attention and woke me up when I began to nod off from all of the romantic build up.  The shooting locations were lush and vibrant and filtered so as to evoke a Tim Burton feel in relation to color and tone.  Even the Cullen family felt as though they might have been neighbors of Edward Scissorhands.

All in all sitting in the theater for Twilight was not a bad experience.  It certainly does not make me want to go out and read the book at all though and I've read my fair share of books.  I'm certain I could write Twilight the book after having seen the movie. 

In the opening credits for Casino Royale , the latest James Bond movie (and what stylish credits they are, the sort that Saul Bellow used to revel in creating), there's a listing for a Running Stunts. At least that was what I read at the cinema, although IMDB doesn't have such a listing among its stunt artists.

Never mind, it impressed me enough to look out for whatever a running stunt was, and man, is there a Running Stunt with Capital Letters in Casino Royale . It comes near the beginning, when Bond begins to chase Mollaka the Bomb-Maker, a black man with a badly scarred face. Mollaka is carrying a bomb in his back-pack, and though I'm not entirely clear what he was planning to do with it (presumably Bond knows, which is why he gives chase), he certainly isn't intending good.

Parkour

Mollaka is played by Sebastian Foucan, who has appeared a few times in movies before, as a stuntman rather than an actor, but whose main fame comes from his ability at the urban sport known as Parkour , in which people aim to run continually through an urban environment overcoming any obstacles in their path. Foucan is one of the main publicists of the sport – or is it an art? – and in this movie, even though he's playing a villain, he gives the sport huge publicity.

Bond, of course, is obliged to keep up with him in order to catch him, and between them they run through streets and markets, and even an office. (The only place missing is a disrupted kitchen, the joy of action-movie makers). But most of the action takes place on a building site – a widely-scattered building site, one that is close to a wonderfully wide blue sea.

These two runners sprint up and down ladders, jump into sand pits, leap over things, through things – there's one breathtaking moment when Foucan does an amazing feet-first leap through an opening almost above his head. Bond just breaks through the wall!

They eventually get themselves high up onto a crane, and have some fisticuffs, and do some of the usual swinging off the edge of it. But more interesting is the running along the top of the crane. That takes some nerve.

Eventually Foucan leaps off the crane – onto another! Totally impossible, but superb in execution. He bounds down, down, down over various levels until he reaches the ground again. (I can never understand quite why people in movie chases always want to go up things – it seems far more difficult than just running along the flat!)

I won't tell you how the run finishes, because it would spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen the movie.

But I can't wait for the DVD to come out, so I can watch this run over again. It's a highlight of recent filmmaking.

Another Classic Chase

Which reminds me: in The Fugitive there was a marvellous scene where several prisoners were trapped on a bus that veered off the road into the path of an oncoming train. It's an action-packed sequence, and survives repeated viewings. The most wonderful moment is when Harrison Ford, having managed to get off the bus just before the train crashes into it, tries to outrun the now-derailed train - still shackled. This huge, spectral machine looms up behind him, like a dragon about to eat him alive. I've watched it over and over, and never quite get over the almost childlike joy of a different kind of chase. Voila the movies!

You can find more about Parkour on the Wikipedia site, at this address: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkour