Tag Archive: Twilight


TWILIGHT FOR GROWN-UPS

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June 23, 2014

ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE directed by Jim Jarmusch (UK / Germany, 2013)

The future's so dark you have to wear shades.

The future’s so dark you have to wear shades.

Adam and Eve (Tom Hiddleson & Tilda Swinton) must be the coolest vampires ever to haunt the big screen.

They look so perfect together – an Emo Goth and an ice maiden, black on white.

A still of them lying naked together is so faultless it looks suspiciously like it’s been photo-shopped but who cares?

As an ageless undead couple they are  resigned to living by night; wearing shades to protect their eyes from the glare of moonlight. Continue reading →

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WHAT ARE GENERATION Y READING?

Filed under: Books, Italy — 2 Comments
July 21, 2012

Last week I went into a  bookshop in Bologna which had a section labelled GENERATION Y.

This is the first time I’d seen such a demarcation and I was curious to see what reading was on offer.

I found it contained countless vampiresque titles including the Twilight series and other undead fantasies mostly written in the same vein.

According to some superficial internet ‘research’  Generation Y denotes millennium people who make up a demographic/consumer group of those under 30s (born between the 1980s and 1990s) for whom being tech-savvy is a given. They are otherwise commonly identified as achievement-orientated, attention-craving, independently minded, casually dressed globe-trotters who work to live rather than live to work.

They are often viewed as  impatient and opinionated types who ask ‘difficult’ questions to boring old farts like me and this gets them branded as part of the generation ‘why’.

These characteristics don’t entirely square with the reading options presented at the Italian bookstore.  I would have been more reassured by a higher percentage of countercultural works geared towards changing the world instead of being dominated by titles with a leaning towards fantasy and escapism. Or maybe this is just me staring at a generation gap and missing something!

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READ BANNED BOOKS

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October 1, 2011

I am only just in time to post during Banned Books Week (which ends today) but I applaud this initiative against blinkered individuals and groups who have sought and still seek to dictate what people should be allowed to read.

Recent challenges to popular teen fiction titles like the Hunger Games trilogy and the Twilight saga (for being sexually explicit and unsuited to the age group) indicate that this battle against bigotry and narrow-minded thinking is still raging.

What we are talking about here has nothing to do with simply outlawing books that are poorly written or manipulative (although they may include such titles).

According to the Office for Intellectual Freedom, at least 46 of the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century have been the target of ban attempts.

What often makes a book controversial is the fact that it challenges perceived norms and conventions. This is what makes them so valuable and so vulnerable.

There is no place for such censorship in any society that claims to stand for freedom of speech and to value democracy.

One of the key principles here can be summed up by the quote widely attributed to Voltaire: `I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”.

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THE HUNGER GAMES by a non-YA.

Filed under: Books, Fiction — 2 Comments
January 21, 2011

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The young adult (YA) Sci-Fi genre is not my normal choice of fiction but I got this novel for Christmas so it seemed ungrateful not to read it. Here’s what it’s about and what I thought about  it.

The novel  is set in the not too distant future in Panem which used to be  North America.  The mining District 12 used to be Appalachia. Society as we know and love it (!)  has collapsed and all the power is now centred on a shiny hi-tech city called simply the Capitol.

Since the quelling of  a peoples’ revolt , the twelve defeated districts have been ruled by The Treaty of Treason. Travel between the districts is forbidden except for officially sanctioned duties. As a further reminder of who’s in charge, the annual Hunger Games are held – a battle to the death engineered and manipulated by the Capitol’s gamemakers for the entertainment of the masses. The games’ rules are explained in the first chapter : Continue reading →

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LET THE RIGHT ONE IN

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November 2, 2010

Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) + Eli (Lina Leandersson)

A remake by Cloverfield director Matt Reeves  is coming soon but it’s hard to see how it can top the Swedish vampire movie ‘Let The Right One In‘  scripted by Ajvide Lindqvist from his own novel and  directed by Tomas Alfredson.

The setting in a modern yet drab snowbound suburb of Stockholm is perfect for the chilly atmosphere of the movie  and the two young performers as Oskar and Eli are quite  exceptional in the lead roles.

Oskar is pale and blonde, almost albino-like; the only child of separated parents and constantly picked on at school. He keeps a scrapbook of murder stories from newspapers and fantasizes about getting even with the bullies (we see him stabbing a tree,  saying “squeal like a pig”).

Eli is  girl who moves into the adjoining flat. She is 12 (“more or less”) and despite announcing that they cannot be friends they gradually bond as two children who don’t fit in.

Unlike the Twilight saga, there’s no glamorous side to the life of a young vampire. To get fresh blood she either has to find victims herself or find someone to do the killing for her.  Even after a ‘meal’, she looks tortured and forlorn.

What makes the movie work is the deliberately flat and unsentimental tone. There are no gratuitous close-ups and  splatter effects are kept to a minimum. It is more of a creepy modern-day fable  than a traditional horror with the theme of bullying being as central to the story as the life of the vampire.

Highly recommended and The Guardian have already placed it in the top ten of best ever horror movies, effectively making it the second best  vampire movie (after 1922’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror). Do you agree?

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