Spiderman Couldn't Save Twilight Or OSI
In Books:
Bleeding Out, by Jes Battis: So, I have really loved these books and was sad to read that this one would be the last. I understand that Battis has another career and other projects. However, I am very disappointed in this narrative, and I don't really feel like it was a fitting end for any of the characters, except one, and she was not the main one. For one thing, the writing in this installment was exceedingly odd. There would be paragraphs that consisted of only simple sentences, and as I say to my students and myself when I write, it's OK to do that for emphasis sparingly, but when you repeat yourself like that, you're forcing your ideas. But then there would be pages and pages of stream-of-consciousness narrative, which was incredibly hard to follow and necessitated a lot of suspension of disbelief.
The other thing that really disappointed me in this book was the way the plot was executed. I could see that Battis was trying to let ALL of the other shoes he'd raised in the other books fall at once, and this should have been a really exciting and high-stakes plot. But instead, it was convoluted and messy, and meant that a lot of side characters got shoved aside in order to make room for the Big Bad and Tess' confrontation with him. And... again, OK, fine: these are books about her, and she should get the spotlight. But Tess wandered through so much of the plot in a haze, and the revelations about her background were so strange that it didn't seem like a true confrontation so much as, "Oh yeah, and all this happened, too."
I also find it very hard to take, as a reader who pays fairly close attention, when a major character announces that her absence in the book has been because there was an interesting TV series that took up her time. SERIOUSLY?
Anyway, the failings of one volume don't mean that the rest are bad, and I don't want to steer anyone away from these books. I would say that the first half of the series is excellent, and well worth your time. The second half, and particularly this last book, is really for die-hard completists and masochists like myself.
At the Movies/On DVD:
Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 1: I have tried to keep my opinions largely to myself on this whole thing because, as the internet advises us in one of its few wise moments, it's OK to not like things, but don't be a dick about the things you don't like. However, the Twilight movies are utterly bewildering to me, and they are not improved with alcohol and good snarkery from witty friends. I really don't understand the popularity of these things when they are so poorly paced, written, and acted. OK, yes, in theory, I can see the viewership squeeing over RPatz and TLaut (who really is fairly easy on the eyes, I will admit), and I suppose that with a lot of squinting and excuse-making, the Bella/Edward love affair could be a kind of crazy-stupid that people wax all gooey-eyed about. But this movie...! It was dull beyond my wildest dreams. Even when there was action, it was poorly edited and I couldn't see what was happening. It should be exciting! Vampires v. werewolves! Except... well, the fight scenes were done as though a group of teenagers with no real-world fighting experience was RPing the whole thing, and pausing to argue about the rules along the way.
Even more annoying to me was the fact that the ONE female character who is any kind of interesting or cool, Alice the psychic vampire, is reduced to wedding planner/bad suitcase packer/Basil Exposition by the script, which is too bad, since she used to have the best lines and attitude. And the final annoying straw was that the much rumored horrific birth scene was TAME. TAME TAME TAME. I was expecting something like the French film Inside (which I have never been able to bring myself to watch--just reading the IMDB synopsis by itself has been enough to horrify me for days), and instead it was Prometheus: the Slightly Less Scary Retread. And it's kind of odd that here I am complaining that something scary wasn't scary enough... but it says a lot about this film that I was looking forward to seeing something scary happen. Hell, I was just looking forward to seeing anything happen. Somewhere in this movie, there's an interesting feminist reading about women's agency in childbearing viewed through the Mormon abstinence!porn lens, but I just don't have the energy to do it anymore. This is the least dickish way I can express that idea.
The Amazing Spiderman: This was surprisingly entertaining. Sure, there were pacing problems here, too, but the acting was so good that I didn't care. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone have real chemistry together, and Martin Sheen and Sally Field class up the whole experience something fierce, which is ironic since Martin Sheen works to class himself down, mostly succeeding. Stan Lee has the funniest cameo he's ever had in a Marvel movie. There are all these wonderful little details in it, like the perfect set dressing of Peter's room and the awkward poses of the high school photos he takes. Hell, even his camera is perfect. I enjoyed this so much more than most of the other superhero films I've seen recently.
Bleeding Out, by Jes Battis: So, I have really loved these books and was sad to read that this one would be the last. I understand that Battis has another career and other projects. However, I am very disappointed in this narrative, and I don't really feel like it was a fitting end for any of the characters, except one, and she was not the main one. For one thing, the writing in this installment was exceedingly odd. There would be paragraphs that consisted of only simple sentences, and as I say to my students and myself when I write, it's OK to do that for emphasis sparingly, but when you repeat yourself like that, you're forcing your ideas. But then there would be pages and pages of stream-of-consciousness narrative, which was incredibly hard to follow and necessitated a lot of suspension of disbelief.
The other thing that really disappointed me in this book was the way the plot was executed. I could see that Battis was trying to let ALL of the other shoes he'd raised in the other books fall at once, and this should have been a really exciting and high-stakes plot. But instead, it was convoluted and messy, and meant that a lot of side characters got shoved aside in order to make room for the Big Bad and Tess' confrontation with him. And... again, OK, fine: these are books about her, and she should get the spotlight. But Tess wandered through so much of the plot in a haze, and the revelations about her background were so strange that it didn't seem like a true confrontation so much as, "Oh yeah, and all this happened, too."
I also find it very hard to take, as a reader who pays fairly close attention, when a major character announces that her absence in the book has been because there was an interesting TV series that took up her time. SERIOUSLY?
Anyway, the failings of one volume don't mean that the rest are bad, and I don't want to steer anyone away from these books. I would say that the first half of the series is excellent, and well worth your time. The second half, and particularly this last book, is really for die-hard completists and masochists like myself.
At the Movies/On DVD:
Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 1: I have tried to keep my opinions largely to myself on this whole thing because, as the internet advises us in one of its few wise moments, it's OK to not like things, but don't be a dick about the things you don't like. However, the Twilight movies are utterly bewildering to me, and they are not improved with alcohol and good snarkery from witty friends. I really don't understand the popularity of these things when they are so poorly paced, written, and acted. OK, yes, in theory, I can see the viewership squeeing over RPatz and TLaut (who really is fairly easy on the eyes, I will admit), and I suppose that with a lot of squinting and excuse-making, the Bella/Edward love affair could be a kind of crazy-stupid that people wax all gooey-eyed about. But this movie...! It was dull beyond my wildest dreams. Even when there was action, it was poorly edited and I couldn't see what was happening. It should be exciting! Vampires v. werewolves! Except... well, the fight scenes were done as though a group of teenagers with no real-world fighting experience was RPing the whole thing, and pausing to argue about the rules along the way.
Even more annoying to me was the fact that the ONE female character who is any kind of interesting or cool, Alice the psychic vampire, is reduced to wedding planner/bad suitcase packer/Basil Exposition by the script, which is too bad, since she used to have the best lines and attitude. And the final annoying straw was that the much rumored horrific birth scene was TAME. TAME TAME TAME. I was expecting something like the French film Inside (which I have never been able to bring myself to watch--just reading the IMDB synopsis by itself has been enough to horrify me for days), and instead it was Prometheus: the Slightly Less Scary Retread. And it's kind of odd that here I am complaining that something scary wasn't scary enough... but it says a lot about this film that I was looking forward to seeing something scary happen. Hell, I was just looking forward to seeing anything happen. Somewhere in this movie, there's an interesting feminist reading about women's agency in childbearing viewed through the Mormon abstinence!porn lens, but I just don't have the energy to do it anymore. This is the least dickish way I can express that idea.
The Amazing Spiderman: This was surprisingly entertaining. Sure, there were pacing problems here, too, but the acting was so good that I didn't care. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone have real chemistry together, and Martin Sheen and Sally Field class up the whole experience something fierce, which is ironic since Martin Sheen works to class himself down, mostly succeeding. Stan Lee has the funniest cameo he's ever had in a Marvel movie. There are all these wonderful little details in it, like the perfect set dressing of Peter's room and the awkward poses of the high school photos he takes. Hell, even his camera is perfect. I enjoyed this so much more than most of the other superhero films I've seen recently.