Twilight: The Ultimate Movie Marathon

Alright, I’ll be the first to say it: this was a dumbass idea team!  And I can’t even blame the team for this; this was entirely my own idea. Against my own better judgement, the combined better judgement of Tropical Mary, Stygian Mole and the Occult Specialist, and against any common sense whatsoever I insisted that we watch these movies as part of an Ultimate Movie Marathon. The thought behind it was that if we could make it through them all (even if it meant Debbie Gibsoning the hell out of ourselves), we would be some of the most hardcore movie watchers out there. It wasn’t a good thought. These movies stole my smart, they stole my will to live, and my friends want to burn me as a witch for what I did to them.

It started out like any other UMM day, with all the snacks and coke and cigarettes at the ready, but we knew that this wasn’t going to be easy. We also knew that, since this ‘saga’ is aimed at teenagers, we wouldn’t be able to do our regular breast-to-death ratio since there would be minimal death and nary a breast in sight. Instead, we decided to go with something more practical: stares (sorry Stygian Mole!) to men’s nipples (OK, watching the Occult Specialist handle this was kinda fun). Now, since most people are well aware of what these stupid movies entail, I’m gonna give you a brief summary of each one before plowing into the stream of consciousness to show you what we went through, all in the name of b-horror blogging.

TWILIGHT

You can either be vampires, or you can be the Pussycat Dolls, but you can’t be both.

Year of Release: 2008
Genre: Drama / Fantasy
IMDB Rating: 5.2 / 10
Level of Awful: High

You know what, I’m not going to be entirely unfair and start this off on a bad note. Yes, this movie was absolutely rubbish and is most likely partly responsible for how stupid some kids are becoming these days, but so far as the Twilight Saga has to offer, this is about as good as it gets. It teaches young girls the importance of going to ludicrous extremes to date MUCH older men and then to cling on desperately no matter what the consequences. I’m really trying to find nice things to say about this movie but they really aren’t coming, so I’ll have a look at what we were thinking as we watched:

• Fuck you Summit Entertainment!
• Who needs dialogue when you have a crappy soundtrack?
• Mouth-breathing really abounds in this little town.
• There’s nothing more important than having a good work lamp.
• It’s hard to look good in a wheelchair.
• When he changes into a werewolf do you think it’s like those dogs who have no back legs and have to go around on wheels?
• Who needs to look at their timetable in slow mo?
• Why is everyone laughing?
• What the hell’s an Olympic sized penis?
• Inability to pour ketchup. Just wow.
• And angsty Enya plays on…
• No normal human being needs to breathe as much as Bella does.
• That stare will destroy the universe.
• If Edward kills her now we might just get out of this…
• Edward suffers from severe bipolar disorder.
• Apple Cheese. That is all.
• Let the useless dialogue never abate!
• Hair prosthetics for the win!
• How come Edward did all the running but Bella’s out of breath?
• Bella = battered woman’s syndrome + Stockholm syndrome.
• Behold the lesser spotted squatting vampire.
• Meanwhile, at IKEA headquarters…
• Sleep isn’t that fascinating. Really.
• Quickly, back to the travelator!
• She just got thrown against a pillar AND STILL Bella’s face will not move.
• Throw in one last squint stare for good measure and… The End.

Dear God no, looking at one of them is bad enough.

TWILIGHT: NEW MOON

Year of Release: 2009
Genre: Drama / Fantasy
IMDB Rating: 4.5 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy

If Twilight taught us the importance of going to outlandish extremes to keep our man, then New Moon teaches us the fundamental importance of self-destructive behaviour when that relationship burns itself out spectacularly. This was also the movie that introduced werewolves into the ‘storyline’.

The werewolves, and particularly Bella and Jacob’s relationship, did get me thinking though. Maybe things are different in small town America, or maybe it’s just cynicism that comes with being in my mid-20s, but if a girl came up to me and told me that she had met this amazing guy with long, luscious hair and a ripped body who liked to run around the woods shirtless and in short shorts with a bunch of other guys in similar attire, I would caution her against such a relationship. Not because there’s anything wrong with it, but just because that kind of relationship doesn’t tend to go very far. But anyways…

• Fuck you Summit Entertainment!
• No one suspects the Inquisition!
• Here, have a shitty onion ring weaver bird nest dream catcher.
• I found it while I was rummaging through your private stuff.
• Damned – like in Hell.
• Come on, let’s go for YET ANOTHER walk.
• If this is about my soul, then you can just bloody well take the damn thing.
• It’s not the best colour on her, but desperation is the only colour Bella owns.
• The Return of Angsty Enya.
• By the sounds of things, someone’s murdering swine.
• Self-destructive lunacy is the best kind of lunacy.
• Hallucinations can be problematic.
• Bitch, have you seen these guns?
• Twilight: New Moon presents: RuPaul’s Drag Wolves.
• What the hell is she screaming about now?
• It’s not gay if it’s in a 3-way.
• Jorts for Jesus!
• Mouth-breathing in the rain.
• I will kill you fastly!
• They transformed into guinea pig wolves.
• The wolf’s out of the bag, so to speak.
• Don’t fill up on bread!
• He has the capacity to brutally kill me – I must have him.
• Even MORE life-threatening behaviour.
• He’s like his own sun, in that it hurts to look at him.
• Come over here while I firmly friend zone you.
• Oh, it’s a beautiful day for some recreational suicide.
• The most uneventful reunion EVER.
• It’s like watching a gay vampiric version of X-Men.
• Have twitchy dreams and crazy eyes!
• Let me just friend zone you one more time and… The End.

TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE

DO IT!!!

Year of Release: 2010
Genre: Drama / Fantasy
IMDB Rating: 4.8 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy

Now, here’s the other thing that pisses me off about the Twilight movies: they’re brilliant at taking good, solid concepts of vampiric lore and turning them into absolute crap. I present, for your consideration, Eclipse‘s rogue vampire, Victoria, starting a whole new brood of vampires that she will lead as an army. Sounds pretty cool, right?

Well, it isn’t. Victoria’s raising said army to go after Bella because her boyfriend and Edward got into a little scrap back in the first movie and her boyfriend ended up as a pile of dust. Pretty lame, right? Well, add this to it: according to these movies, vampires are at their very strongest just after they have turned, and vampires effectively become weaker as they age. Then what the hell’s the point? And then there’s all the usual self-destructive behaviour and the banal love triangle of Bella, Jacob and Edward to enjoy for two hours. Joy.

• Fuck you Summit Entertainment!
• The flowers are blossoming like her womanhood.
• Getting tired of these pseudo-visions.
• Behold the world’s most epic quilt!
• Cue a pseudo-Metallica quote.
• Bella’s kind of like Switzerland but without the fun.
• Dull history lesson is exceptionally dull.
• Pretending to act.
• Those mountains have definitely been green screened.
• You can still see the green screen around her hair.
• Lamest movie yet.
• Misdirected youth for the win!
• EVEN MORE STARES!
• Them Sireens did this to me!
• She pulled the strings and he danced.
• Bring on the awkward sex scene!
• No sex scene.
• He’s 109 years old and needs her father’s permission. Because he’s old school like that.
• I’ll secure the area! But not tonight…
• Edward suffers from chronic constipation.
• I have no body heat – I feel so inadequate.
• Are those polystyrene rocks?
• Fangs? Fangs now? Fangs never…
• A three-movie long vendetta? LAME!
• Heat apparently burns morphine.
• Bella literally stumbles through her life.
• She wants to do it right.
• She gets given a costume jewellery ring.
• Fuck you Stefenie Meyer!
• The End.

You know you need a tan when you’re more see through than water.

TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN PART 1

Year of Release: 2011
Genre: Drama / Fantasy
IMDB Rating: 4.8 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy

You know, these movies make very little sense at the best of times, but this one really did take the biscuit. You’re young, you’re in love, and you’ve been saving yourself for just the right guy before you decide that he’s the one who’s going to make you a woman – I can totally respect that. But of all the reasons in the world to wait until you’re wedding day, you hold off because he just might fuck you to death? If someone could ACTUALLY do that, I’d be all over them like it was no one’s business.

That aside, this is when the movies start getting ‘serious’ – Bella EVENTUALLY marries Edward, they screw like awkward bunnies and break several beds, she can somehow still walk, and then she falls pregnant with a child that slowly consumes her. Had this been any other movie this plot might actually have stood a chance of being interesting, but it’s Twilight so it really wasn’t.

• Fuck you Summit Entertainment!
• Yet more terrible green screen.
• Dat angst is back with an almighty vengeance.
• Surely movie 4 is a bit late to do full disclosure?
• Every one keeps telling Bella she’s beautiful. STOP LYING TO THE GIRL! She needs to face reality.
• It’s a slut-back wedding dress.
• Jacob calls no take backsies!
• Shittest. Speeches. Ever.
• Yet another Volvo rolls onto the scene.
• The Volvo just out acted the entire cast.
• Rio – a city built on whoredom.
• Even sex has to be angsty.
• “I promise I’ll try” – try what?
• Chess is so much more fun when you play it on honeymoon.
• Mmm… delicious, uncooked chicken.
• Angsty Enya’s still hanging in there.
• There’s nothing more romantic than delicate stomach caresses.
• A phone doesn’t need a dial tone to make a call.
• Suddenly, a very pregnant Bella appears.
• The love triangle is only justified if she lives.
• Talking wolves = cheese.
• Welcome to IKEA Headquarters Remastered.
• I feel an unepic showdown on the horizon.
• Bella’s not really close to death, she just doesn’t have makeup on.
• Everything’s fun when you soft science with a bendy straw.
• His ‘venom’? Sure, if that’s what you wanna call it…
• Bella as a corpse is better acting than Bella alive.
• Werewolves – foiled by tree climbing.
• Werewolf laws are very convenient.
• Epic montage is unepic!
• Fuck you Bill Condon!
• The End.

TWILIGHT: BREAKING DAWN PART 2

Amazonian vampires? Should’ve been cool. Wasn’t.

Year of Release: 2012
Genre: Drama / Fantasy
IMDB Rating: 5.7 / 10
Level of Awful: Requires Post-Film Lobotomy

Now, after just over 8 hours of pain, we arrived at the final chapter of the Twilight ‘saga’. While all of the movies raised a few questions, this one just baffled me. So, Bella gives birth. Question: Edward’s 110-years-old, has no blood, no pulse, he doesn’t breathe, and he doesn’t blink, but somehow he has viable sperm. Really? Secondly, Jacob finally learns why he hasn’t been able to imprint on anyone (i.e. pick his mate) – he was waiting for Bella and Edward’s baby, Renesmee (which, to be honest, is a shit name for a child) so that he could imprint on her. Now, where I come from, that kinda thing is illegal and may well get you lynched.

The saddest thing about this movie, though, is that it was about as close to being epic as this series was ever going to get. It had one whelming battle scene that turned out to be nothing more than a pseudo-vision, and a variety of vampires that should have been awesome but really weren’t. In short, this franchise closes on a decidedly ugh note.

• Fuck you Summit Entertainment!
• Selective sparkling is selective.
• Bella’s back, and she’s in the mood for some violent PG 13 fondling.
• Oh little deer, you are fucked.
• Cougars just became slightly more endangered.
• Barely inferred nipples.
• Bella’s an even bigger bitch now that she’s dead.
• What an impish looking child.
• Suddenly, maternal instincts.
• Loch Ness Monster = bad nickname.
• He fell in love with a single ovum.
• Here, we built and decorated a home in a single day for you.
• I love our generic house from the Home Whore collection.
• Breaking (nipple) Dawn.
• Oh right, I still have a family.
• Shirts for dresses = easy, whorish access.
• Amazonian Vampires, now available with Naomi Campbell hair.
• Amazonian Vampires, now available with LSD powers.
• Tropical Mary’s elbow is a more amazing woman than anyone in this group.
• Smell and taste can never be taken away from you!
• Mentally, Bella has no mental.
• Essentially Edward’s just telling her that she’s a shitty stripper.
• Book burnings save the lives of vampires.
• If it has a hydrangea on the table, you know it’s a classy restaurant.
• Parental angst kicking in!
• Bella just got out acted by a child.
• The Gregorian Masters of Chant are invading!
• We pitched a battle, and then didn’t have a battle.
• This isn’t even remotely close to Sparta.
• MOTHER FUCKING COP OUT!!
• Just wasted 30 minutes of this movie’s runtime for an outcome of nothing.
• Screw your future predictions.
• FUCK ALL THESE FUCKING MOVIES!!
• The End.

FINAL THOUGHTS

So, after over 10 hours of movie, many threats against my life, the Occult Specialist in visible pain and Tropical Mary eating her hair, we finally arrived at the end of the 5 Twilight movies. Now, I’m going to be fair – on a technical, academic level, I can totally see why this franchise is so popular amongst teenagers, especially quite young ones. The movies are just naughty enough without ever really exposing the viewer to anything that may be considered risqué.

Then there’s the angry side of me that sat through all these movies that has an entirely different perspective. But even putting anger and 10 wasted hours aside, these movies are just weak. Nothing in them is an inherently bad (or, to be honest, new) concept, but the execution is abysmal. None of the three primary characters are particularly strong actors, the romance is both strained and very unhealthy, the epic scenes are entirely unepic, vampire lore has been thrown out the window in favour of a glitter gun and the idea that the older a vampire gets, the more useless it becomes. Oh, and for the purposes of these movies, vampires don’t have fangs. I honestly cannot find a single redeeming feature about this franchise at all, and Lord knows I’ve really tried. As an  advocate for reading, I couldn’t even commend the series for getting kids to read again. Illiteracy would be a better option.

But enough of my complaining. Ultimate Movie Marathons are about two things: the prestige of saying that we watched an entire franchise in a single sitting, and some very scientific calculations about the content of the franchise. As I said earlier, breast and death counts would have been pointless in these movies, so we instead went for stares and men’s nipples. In total, over 5 movies with an approximate run time of 10 hours, different characters stared at one another 1517 times. That equates to roughly 2.5 stares for every minute of film. Equally, over the same amount of time, you will be exposed to 161 shots of nipples. That gives us a final stare-to-nipple ratio of 9.4:1.

In closing, I would like to take this opportunity to once again offer my sincerest apologies to my team. I am an educated man, and I should have known better than to think that this was a good idea. Nevertheless, a very big thanks to all of them for sticking by me through this little experiment, and I absolutely promise that I will have no say in the movies for the next UMM.

Another very big thank you to everyone who kept us going through the live tweeting madness, and to all of you who just read everything I wrote. It is much appreciated. Until next time! 🙂

HONEST TRAILER: TWILIGHT

HONEST TRAILER: NEW MOON

HONEST TRAILER: ECLIPSE

HONEST TRAILER: BREAKING DAWN

BUY THE TWILIGHT SAGA AT AMAZON.COM

Countdown To The Twilight / Final Destination UMM

It’s that time again boys and girls!

It’s been a while since we did our last Ultimate Movie Marathon, but I’ve assembled my elite crack squad of movie watchers for our most epic undertaking yet!

Not content to take on the franchises that actually matter, me, Tropical Mary, Stygian Mole and the Occult Specialist have set our sights on possibly the worst movie franchise ever created: Twilight.

To balance out the sheer pain and torture the five Twilight movies will subject us to, we are also going to knock another franchise out of the park on the same day: Final Destination.

As always myself and Tropical Mary will be live tweeting the whole event, so do pop onto our Twitter feeds and share in our pain and insanity. It’ll be nice to know that there’s another world out there while we subject ourselves to all of this.

The Twilight / Final Destination UMM is happening on Friday the 29th of March.

Arctic Blast

Year of Release: 2010
Genre: Sci-Fi / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 3.7 / 10
Level of Awful: Low
Breast-O-Meter: 0 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Movies like this irritate me. So far as unheard of end of the world movies go, this really wasn’t a bad watch and there are far worse ways for you to spend your time. It’s main problem is that it dragged, but not in the usual way that makes you feel bored to tears. Rather it has a lot happen in a relatively short space of time so when you feel that Earth is pretty much on her knees and a resolution to the problem is about to be discovered you realise that you’ve only been watching for half an hour and that there’s still an hour to go. There are some glaringly obvious factual issues floating around but on the whole the acting is quite decent and the special effects are of a reasonable quality. That said, the title of the movie is completely misleading: nothing gets blasted and the arctic is in no way involved in the problem.

The frightening effects of over air-conditioning.

Poor little humans, we’re in for another round of ‘let’s meet our maker.’ It was a beautiful day when the people of Australia were watching a total solar eclipse (of the heart) and, much to the joy of health officials everywhere, nobody burned their retinas out. As happens from time to time the solar eclipse has a slightly greater effect on the planet than would normally be desirable. Somehow the combination of the moon passing in front of the sun and our recent tendency to pump our atmosphere full of pollution leads to the ozone layer springing a leak just off the coast of Tasmania. This rather sizeable hole (which is apparently visible from space) is allowing super cooled air from the mesosphere to filter down to the surface. This results in a cold front that begins sweeping its way across the sea towards Tasmania and the rest of Australia.

Honey! The planet's blown a puncture!

Now understandably nobody really wants to be caught in a fast-approaching cold front where the temperatures drop to -80 degrees fahrenheit (-62 centigrade for those who, like myself, find degrees fahrenheit confusing). Unfortunately for those people living in the line of fire the government isn’t really prepared to believe that the planet’s ozone layer is ruptured and freezing people in a split second, so a few people have to turn into frozen lollies before anyone actually sits up and pays attention. This is an end of the world movie so of course we have a rogue scientist in the form of Jack Tate to help us overcome this minor issue. As with many rogue scientists Jack’s family is in a state of turmoil and he’s in the process of divorcing his wife and losing the trust of his teenage daughter. Could this crisis possibly bring this family back together again?

Dress warm, it’s a bit chilly outside!

So now what is the government going to do about this little problem? Well they’re certainly not going to listen to Jack, the one man who might just have all the answers. While the government twiddles its thumbs Jack tries to get his family to safety and sticks his wife with the in-laws and takes his daughter back to his lab. While in the lab he will try to come up with the best solution to Earth’s current situation and possibly fix the screw up of a plan the Australian government has come up with on its own. The situation will become slightly more complicated by the fact that the ozone hole above Australia in some way sent ripples out across the planet and opened holes above other major cities in Europe, Asia and North America. The race is on to find a way to plug the holes before all of Earth gets turned into a giant ice palace.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• If meteorologists get drunk enough they could easily solve all the world’s problems.
• Divorce lawyers are quite happy to be called blood-sucking parasites.
• Fireworks and chinese take aways will not buy you your daughter’s loyalty.
• For some people a ship full of condensation is the craziest thing they’ve ever heard of.
• A hairdryer will fix the most waterlogged of hard drives.
• Diabetic meteorologists need excessive amounts of chocolate to do their work.
• Any fool who bangs on his keyboard hard enough will eventually hack into an American military satellite.
• A true gentleman will gladly offer to do a little insulin shopping in -50 degree weather.

ARCTIC BLAST TRAILER

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