Valentine's Day (2010) - a lot like love, actually

directed by Garry Marshall / starring Ashton Kutcher, Jennifer Garner, Anne Hathaway, Shirley MacLaine, Jamie Foxx, Bradley Cooper, Julia Roberts, etc

Once again the power of low expectations has been proven great. Somehow I ended up enjoying the poor man's Love Actually.

Valentine's Day takes place in Los Angeles, descriping the lives of a bunch of people during one day. The day is, surprisingly, Valentine's day. People all over the city struggle to meet the expectations of the holiday. Love is in the air and no one can escape it.

 Everyone from Queen Latifah and Jessica Alba to Taylor Lautner and Doctors McDreamy & McSteamy is in this film. It's both funny and a bit pathetic how shamelessly Valentine's Day relies on its all-star cast. And people take their bait, of course. Guilty as charged, I only wached this because of all those famous faces. In addition to feeding on people's irrational fascination towards celebrities, Valentine's Day is just as shamelessly trying to do to Valentine's day what Love Actually did to Christmas. It has too many characters and too many little storylines, thus the characters lack depth, and the storylines don't have time to evolve into something original and truly touching. Sure, many of them are kind of connected to each other, but mostly just in boring ways. This won't become an annual tradition, like Love Actually is, for me.

And yet, as I mentioned, I actually enjoyed the movie. It was a fitting choice for my s l o o o o o w Sunday morning (although it wasn't techinically morning, I just woke up a bit, um, late. That Buzz Lightyear straw (and whatever I was drinking through it) sure took me a bit beyond infinity...). It didn't take much brain to follow the story, which was fine, and I even kind of liked some of the shallow, one-dimensional characters and their storylines, like Anne Hathaway's adult phone entertainer (cool euphemism) and Topher Grace and their budding relationship, Shirley MacLaine's marriage crisis, the cute little boy and his bouquet mission, and  Bradley Cooper and Julia Roberts in an airplane. (According to IMDb, Julia Roberts was paid 12 000 dollars for every 251 word she spoke in the film. Rocks to be a pretty woman.) Yeah, and Queen Latifah just is the queen, the end.

On the other hand, I could've happily left out some of the "love" stories, to make room for the better ones. The Taylor/Taylor horridness was almost painful to watch at times. Lautner was stiff and awkward and Swift plain annoying. (Though the only line in the movie that made me laugh out loud was in their story. See the quote at the end of the post.) Also the other high school romance story was quite boring, the whole oh-I-want-the-first-time-to-be-oh-so-special scenario is just kind of ancient history as a storyline. I didn't really feel the love in the Jessica Biel/Jamie Foxx thing, though there's nothing like a good old I Will Survive singalong. Ashton Kutcher and Jennifer Garner were supposed to be the central characters in the mess of love stories, but I didn't feel for them much.

So. Valentine's Day was a lot like Love Actually, but still clearly a poor man's version. And yet, some parts felt, for me, a lot like love, actually, and I have to admid I even shed one tiny teeny weeny tear at the end of the Julia Roberts story. (That was the only ending I didn't see coming. That, and the Bradley Cooper one. That was aww.) Also, it made me feel a bit love sick. Damn, they got me, those sneaky bastards! I feel a romcom phase coming on... Sigh.

"I don't feel comfortable taking my shirt off in public."

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse - a triumph of modern cinema!

After this morning's nostalgia trip to the golden 30s, I went to cinema to marvel how amazingly much the industry has gone forward since those days.

(Above you can see me quietly mocking the superficialized, struggling-with-inflation present day Hollywood movies (which I - in spite of all - unconditionally and irrevocably love). This might become a very sarcastic and mean post. Sorry. I don't mean it. Much.)

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)

Directed by David Slade. Starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattionson, Taylor Lautner.

Long story short: Bella has to choose between her super cool vampire BF* Edward and her super hot werewolf BFF** Jacob. OMG you'll never guess which one she chooses!!! (Okay, really, something else happens, too. But that's what they always come back to.)

So. I will probably sound quite insincere and hypocritical here, mocking the film and the series, and yet I went to see this a day after the premiere and will go see the last ones, too and I'm writing a post about it and it will probably be very long. But Twilight is easy and fun to mock, because the mayhem around is just ridiculous. I promise I'll say something nice in the end. First I'll jeer and make some stupid sarcastic comments. Then I'll be nice and reasonable.

I read the books a year or two back. I didn't love them, but of course I wanted to know how it would end. (It ended badly. Like in a worst way a book has ended, ever. I'll get back to that.) The films are alright entertainment, for the right mood, and yes, I have the first one on my shelf, but hey I only bought it at the airport because I had to use the rest of my pounds, and...! Well. Anyway. The books are quite badly written, which is why it makes me embarrasingly angry when people say Twilight is the new Harry Potter or something. Er? No they aren't. You're wrong. Shut up.

Okay, so there's still that certain appeal to these books and films. Appeal for the girls, mostly. Though there are these so called Twilight mums that creep me out a bit. This hysterical fan culture makes the girls go crazy and thus the guys go all pissed off, because they don't want their girlfriends to be fantasizing about sexy sparkling vampires. And hell, I get it. This is exactly the reason I dislike Megan Fox. Anyway. IMDb's user rating for Eclipse tells a lot: at the moment it's 3.6 - 31.9 % gave it a ten, 48.7 % gave it a one. Most of the raters surely haven't even seen the film. Along with the huge popularity always comes the counterreaction.

Okay, enough about the phenomenon, for now. Eclipse was unintendedly comical. That's a major reason for the entertainment value. The action part is alright, mostly. The romance and drama side of the film, then, is where the comicalness begins. And it can be very frustrating and annoying, too, if you take it too seriously. Bella is the worst heroine ever. Don't follow her lead, sweethearts! Edward is a crazy, possesive stalker. Jacob is kind of normal. That's why I'm Team Jacob all the way! Nah. I'm Team Jasper. Or Team Charlie. Or Team Anna Kendrick. I'm glad they gave her more lines this time. That Oscar nomination truly paid off, eh?

Um, I was talking about unintended comedy? The CGI, man, there was better CGI on the first Star Wars, and this is the 21st century for heaven's sake, and you'd think they have money to make wolves that don't look like soft toys, but apparently not. They had cool wolves in Narnia. They had one pretty authentic werewolf in The Prisoner of the Azkaban. Ask those guys to make you a wolf, so maybe next time a dramatic scene won't be spoiled because the audience is laughing at a toy wolf. And Victoria's dead double dead body... Ha ha. By the way this new Victoria was just lame. The previous Victoria was a real badass. And her hair didn't look so much like a wig

Um um. K-Stew is still a bit annoying. R-Patz is stiff and awkward but I'll get to him (too) later. I don't think they have a stupid nickname for Taylor Lautner so I'll just call him Taylor Lautner. Taylor Lautner is alright, he doesn't annoy me because I like Jacob. Jasper aka Jackson Rathbone is hot (even better as a non-vampire!). I like his backstory and Rosalie's, too. I liked that he spoke with a slight Southern accent. Though I don't think he spoke like that before. Not that he spoke very much before. Emmett is funny. The only things I laughed at (that I was SUPPOSED to be laughing at) were some comment of Emmett's and Charlie and Bella's sex conversation. The characters felt real for a moment and were interacting in a genuine way! Wow! No, but it was funny.

By the way, I'm afraid I have to plea guilty for being a bad cinema goer this time. I hope our entourage's gigling didn't spoil any other teenage girl's movie experience. Couldn't help it, though! We were getting restless, because the movie just went on and on, and my friend asked me how long till it ends and I said ten minutes, and almost at the same time on screen someone asked how long till the Volturi gets here and someone else answered that a few minutes, maybe ten. Sorry, but the situation was funny and we cracked up quite badly. Speaking of Volturi, Dakota Fanning was chillingly good! That girl will get an Oscar one day. Not for a Twilight film, though.

I think this is a good place to say those nice and reasonable things I made a promise about. (Insert a pause here.) ... (A long pause.) ... I guess it's an official truth that Twilight films aren't GOOD, in the most profound sense of the word. (You know, when you saw the title of this post, you knew I was kidding, and so on.) BUT I don't think you can say they are bad. I mean, they are, aren't they, but after all Eclipse grossed 70 million dollars on it's opening day. That means there are a lot of people around who like the series and want to pay for seeing them. Remembering the concept of target group is important here. Of course Eclipse is a terrible movie for a 34-year-old mechanic, who likes Rambo and beer. Or for a cultured film critic, who enjoys Polish art house films and the work of Lars von Trier. Twilight isn't meant for those people. It's for the girls, who have a need to drool over handsome young men and dream about that romance that makes you bite your pillow. (I just made a Breaking Dawn reference. Outch.) So let them have their fun. I had Elijah Wood, let them have R-Patz. I'm kind of talking straight at myself here. I'm not the one to judge, I've been as bad as they are. Almost as bad.

Okay, not as bad. Twilight fans are crazy. Seriously. Which brings me to the other matter I was meant to get back to. I really feel bad for Robert Pattinson. I just read an interview where he said that he can't wait for the whole Twilight thing to be over. Can't blame him. I can only imagine how crazy his life is. Poor guy! Half of the world scream and faint in front of him, the other half would punch him in the nose if they had a chance. Roughly saying. I have done my part in this - I had my counterreaction phase and I was very enthusiastically mocking Pattinson for having a bad personal hygiene, because I read somewhere that he doesn't shower often, or something. I'd like to take that back now, Rob. I'm sure you smell very good. And I hope you someday get rid of the Twilight stigma. I don't know about his acting, playing Edward Cullen clearly isn't the best chance to show one's talents. But... We'll see. And I have to admit, he is kind of good-looking. In other words, very handsome. Just no my type, exactly.

This is crazy. I shoudn't have this much to say about Twilight. I'm not sure if I've even said anything reasonable. But. One more thing, and then I'll stop. Breaking Dawn, the last book of the series, will come in two parts, in 3D. Which I don't get. Sure, I get that people like money, but what the hell are they going to do with the movies? Breaking Dawn is a terrible book. Personally I think they should just pretend it was never written. The book's quite disgusting, and it has scenes I definitely don't want to see on screen, not even on 2D. And I'm not even getting started about The Anticlimax of All Time. BUT, it's kind of interesting, too. By now they've managed to take three mediocre books and make them into three mediocre films. Now, with an Oscar winning director, can they make a terrible book into an okay film? (Maybe. If they totally change the ending. And many other things, too.)

There. I think I got it all out of my system now. I don't know if I had a point, and if I did, I don't know if I managed to put it in words. Sorry. Here's a brief summary: Eclipse certainly isn't 'a triumph of modern cinema', but okay entertainment for the target audience, when not taken too seriously. And let's be honest, don't we all go to the cinema and pay for the ticket jus to see Taylor Lautner take his shirt off?

"I'm hotter than you are."

* BF = boyfriend. ** BFF = best friends forever. Just in case you aren't familiar with the wonderful internet slang of today's youth.