Let's take a deeper look at the movie.  Twilight has earned it's fanatic following.  What better way for a film to be loved then to portray an impossible relationship between two teenagers?  Romeo and Juliet set the standard, and I'm sure Stephanie Meyer is up on her Shakespeare.  Adding a sense of the gothic with Vampires, Werewolves and ancient Indian legends only makes it more accessible to today's youths.  Look at the popularity of Anne Rice novels if you don't believe me.

I make the argument that the relationship between Edward Cullen (played by Robert Pattinson)  and Bella Swan (played by Kristen Stewart) is far less interesting than the family dynamic of the Cullens.  Here is a "family" of vampires that co-exist with the living.  There's a doctor and his wife along with what appears to be four teenage children, but the children are really far older than they seem.  Some of these "kids" are over 100 years old.  On top of that, of the five Cullen siblings, four are dating each other.  Poor Edward is the only one without a mate at the beginning of the movie.

I could watch an entire movie, or television series (hint, hint) of that wacky family.  My guess is, with the popularity of reality tv, memoirs, biographies and our general need to know about people's lives, this would be a huge hit.   Imagine Robert Pattinson in full Marylin Manson make-up trying to pretend to go through puberty?  Move over Two and a Half Men.

In Twilight, Edward Cullen and his clan have to constantly fight their urge to dine on the blood of humans.  It's like a bunch of addicts being surrounded by their favorite drugs.   Instant dramatic tension meets instant conflict.  Perfect for a story in any medium.

For their own protection, the Cullens family have to remain emotionally cut off from the humans they live with every day.   What kind of pressure cooker would that cause when you're stuck with the same people year after year after year?  See what I mean, endless source of drama.

So come on Stephanie Meyer, make a girl happy and give me a novel based on the family.  Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, think about the TV show.  The Office can't last much longer and I need a weekly addiction.  At the very least, a new Twilight film based only on the Cullens.  Work with me Hollywood.

It was an unpredictable year of surprise box office hits and flops. Perhaps the biggest surprise was Mamma Mia. In a year when even Star Wars flopped, Mamma Mia destroyed box office records in the United Kingdom, surpassing even Titanic in box office receipts and DVD sales. As silly as it undoubtedly was and featuring a cast of non-singers, Mamma Mia nevertheless managed to garner a massive, mostly-female, audience through the magic of positive word-of-mouth and crowd-appeasing Abba songs.

It was also a year for big-screen reunions. Mulder and Scully graced our movie screens for the first time in ten years, the Sex and the City girls finally made their big screen debut, and we had the not-so-triumphant return of one of cinema's greatest heroes, Indiana Jones.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was for many, one of the biggest disappointments of the year. Lame CGI gophers and monkeys aside, it was an enjoyable pop-corn flick, but it was far from the lofty heights of the other films in the franchise.

Ironically, the Dark Night shone the brightest in 2008, becoming one of the highest grossing movies of all time while simultaneously winning praise from most critics. The film managed to walk the line between comic book super-heroics and serious, multi-layered drama, tragedy, and thriller. Heath Ledger's chilling portrayal of The Joker not only entered pop-culture, but joined the pantheon of classic movie villains, alongside the likes of Hannibal Lector and Darth Vader.

It was a great year for children's films too, of course, with Wall E garnering huge critical applause. Madagascar 2, Hannah Montana, and Kung Fu Panda were popular with the kiddies, while the High School Musical phenomenon continued. Tween vampire romance Twilight also graced our screens in 2008, and is already being talked about as being the next Harry Potter franchise.

It was a great year for Robert Downey Jr. too, who perfectly embodied billionaire playboy Tony Stark in Iron Man, and despite the controversy, was the real star of Tropic Thunder, playing a black man. Another bad boy, Mickey Rourke, came back swinging in 2008 with The Wrestler, a movie he was born to star in.

Genre-wise, it was a good but not great year for comedy. We had more of the same from the likes of Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler, but Judd Apatow and his merry men (Seth Rogen, Jason Segel et al.) continued to deliver laughs and push the envelope somewhat. It was an average year for horror, and a particularly average year for science fiction, although with Star Trek coming out in 2009, this could be a great year for sc-fi fans.

The past has shown us that cinema is cyclic, and with an array of highly anticipated movies slated for release this year, 2009 will (hopefully) be a great year for movies.

I believe that these films and books they're coming out are just a phase. The books are not bad but you don't add a love story to vampires and the movie was not good at all. The film was laid out poorly and missed many vital parts of the book.

Mr. Better Taste

I think the movie was terrible. The dialogue in both the book and the movie were *expletive* and I think people have lost their taste for a good read and good movies. In the film, I feel that pauses were where they should not be, the silences were too awkward (even though they were supposed to be somewhat awkward in the book). Also, the actress (K. Stewart) looked like she was always having an orgasm with her facial expressions. What it needed was better, more sophisticated dialogue and more in-depth background on the whole mythology behind this story. It was just too focused on the love.

Mr. Old Fashioned Vampire

This poorly written book only sold because of a newly emerged 'heart throb'. Most people forget (Robert) has acted in other movies I found pretty bad before such as harry potter. Did anyone really find him that great as Cedric Diggory? I may not have read the actual Twilight book but I feel I can tell a good author of vampire novels from a bad one as I've read a lot in the genre involving vampires. This one was just too overhyped by young girls for my taste.

Mr. Neutral

Twilight would definetly be one of my top ten movies of 2008. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I felt that Twilight could be an all-ages film as adults are able to enjoy it as well. The acting was not half bad and I enjoyed the concept of a vampire love story. However, if I were involved, I would have improved the quality of some scenes. Sometimes it felt like they were rushed but that was not so bad considering it is a movie. The actors were young too but I still liked it since i have been out of high school for three years now. I look forward to New Moon.

To Be Continued...

Acting: 4.5/5
Scenes: 4.9/5
Choice of Actors: 4/5
Emotion: 5/5
Length: 4/5
Fighting Scenes: 4/5
Alice: 29309492352384728937489243/5
Overall Rating: 4.5/5

Obviously, I was interested, as any Twilight fan would be that the movie was finally drawing near. In fact, it seems that to most people, the movie was the reason they decided to read the series. (This was not my reason, however – I had begun reading Twilight a few years back, but didn’t ever have time to really get into it, and then my friend persuaded me to finally go back to it.) Kristen Stewart was a nice choice for Bella, I thought, but I wasn’t so sure about Robert Pattinson. Although many others thought he was perfect - as we all saw on the news – I didn’t think he matched the Edward in my head – or even came close to matching him. Nonetheless, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, and I went to see the movie.

I was highly disappointed with what I saw.

Not only does Robert Pattinson not compare to the Edward Cullen in my own image of him, but the whole movie seemed so…botched. It had its own added scenes, and hardly any of the real ones that I loved so much in the book. And of course it was all so highly exaggerated and just plain wrong. I felt like it happened too fast. One moment, Bella doesn’t even know who this Edward Cullen is. Then all of a sudden, his vampire-ness is out, and they are in love. It skipped tons of scenes that should have happened in between that time, scenes that are very important in understanding and identifying with the concept of Edward and Bella’s love for each other. If you are a fan of the Twilight series, maybe you understand what I mean. But for those who haven’t, I don’t want to give anything away. But I would like to end this with this message: If you see the movie, and you like it…please, do read the books. I guarantee you will love it so much more. And if you haven’t seen the movie but have read the books…try to keep an open mind, because you will probably need it.

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. 

She arrives in the middle of the school year so although it should be hard to make friends (and it’s implied), she manages to connect with a group of kids who are far more welcoming than she is ready to be welcomed. They give her the scoop on who’s who and they soon point out the Cullens, an odd assortment of very pale-skinned guys and gals. To make things weirder, they are apparently foster brothers/sisters yet they are “couples.” They’ve been taken in by the local Dr. Cullen and his wife.

One of the group is of course, Edward (Robert Pattinson). His story is that “no girl is good enough for him.” Of course Bella is immediately fixated on him, although the feeling is apparently very much not mutual. As a matter of fact when she is assigned to be his lab partner, he seems to be repulsed by her.

Edward leaves for a few days, and when he returns his mood towards Bella has changed considerably. He’s now polite and at least feigns interest. She (mostly) gets over being offended and tries to get to know him although he still doesn’t want to get close to her. Almost immediately he saves her from being killed in a car accident in a scene that’s been shown in the trailer. She’s no dummy and doesn’t miss the fact that he was across the parking lot, got over to her in a flash and was able to keep a van from smashing into her (to the point that he left a dent in the door with his hand). [Note slight sarcasm there, folks]

Anyway, we soon meet Dr. Cullen (Peter Facinelli) at the hospital, whose makeup job is so incredibly white that he looks like the Cesar Romero version of the Joker. He is none to pleased about Edward (I guess I can’t call him “Ed,” huh?) possibly exposing who he really is to save Bella’s life.

One thing leads to another and the burgeoning romance is on its way, with a side trip to a confrontation with the “bad” vampires who actually kill humans to feed (go figure). You see the Cullens only drink the blood of animals. The bad guys have been responsible for a number of gruesome murders in town recently. One of them decides to target Bella and thus we get the final confrontation which finally brings us some decent action.

So what’s good?

I thought that the stars and supporting cast actually did a really great job. Bella’s friends were engaging, funny and they played their roles very naturally. Billy Burke was low key and very good as Bella’s father, Kristen Stewart did a decent job, and I have to say that despite his severely sculpted eyebrows and uber-funky hair that I liked Rob Pattinson’s portrayal of Edward Cullen. I don’t know how closely the way he played the character matched the version in the book, but I thought that his uncertainty and awkwardness in light of how powerful he really was made him quite charming.

There were quite a few moments of unexpected humor in the film that I enjoyed. Nothing huge or slapsticky, but just little things that were enough to actually make me laugh out loud (which some comedies this year didn’t manage to make me do). Really the performances made this worthwhile for me.

So what wasn’t so good?

For a non-fan, it was really a pretty bland film. It seemed very slow-moving at times, and let’s face it - it’s a pretty “stock” teen romance movie. There wasn’t anything really special here outside of the fact that it had, you know… vampires.

Nothing really eye-catching as far as cinematography or interesting shots, and one think that really struck me as bad were the visual effects. When the film had its first “super-speed” effect, where the bad vampires corner one of the locals, it was so poorly done that I think I actually gasped out loud. I mean there was this incredibly cheesy blur that I can’t really describe except to say that anything you see on an average episode of Smallville is done far better.

Imagine my shock at the end of the film when in the credits I saw Industrial Light & Magic listed among the visual effects companies. I can only guess that they were responsible for some other effect and not the one I just mentioned (which was terrible throughout the film).

Towards the end the teen-romance-cheese-factor pegged the needle in the aftermath of the big battle in a scene between Edward and Bella. That was about the hardest scene in the movie to sit through, and pretty much from there until the end it was quite sappy and reminded me of a typical teen TV series on the CW.

The audience full of Twilight fans seemed to enjoy it a lot and gave it a thumbs up, so I guess it’s achieved its goal. I’m curious to see if it does well enough at the box office to generate a sequel (which I’m thinking would actually be better than this film).

So take all that for what it’s worth - I’ll leave the decision of whether to see it or not up to you.

Oh, and yes (for the fans), Edward does “sparkle” in the film and Bella is clumsy.