Pop Culture Reviews

Kate Beckinsale returns as Selene in Underworld: Awakening. The poster is OK but not sure about how the movie will be. Here are my thoughts on the trailer.

The Vampire Diaries

Character Profile Four: Katherine Pierce

Lucky girl Nina Dobrev getting to play not one, but two characters in the same show! Talk about stretching the acting muscles. And she does so well, I might add. While Elena seems a little meek and mild and in the background somehow, Katherine is anything but and again, is as opposite to Elena as Damon is to Stefan.

Katherine is an exciting character and again, adds fuel to the slow-burning fire surrounding the mysterious and supernatural history of Mystic Falls. She’s mean, but not in an obviously crass way. We learn that she’s a vampire, and the reason for both Stefan and Damon turning into vampires and both falling in love with her.

She’s an articulate manipulator of the highest calibre, masterful at playing the game to win, no matter what the odds. As long as she is in control of the situation, all is well. For Katherine, it’s always about control. And she’s a survivor. In some ways, I do see this one similarity in Elena as well. Strong and willful, it’s just that Katherine shows it openly and doesn’t care about hurting people. I guess when you’ve been a vampire for hundreds of years, caring about humans and feelings doesn’t really come into the equation any more. Good stuff! Another juicy character to get our hands dirty with.

You’ll love to hate Katherine and Nina Dobrev does an excellent job of portraying her. And if you thought the love triangle in Twilight was complicated, you ain’t seen nothing yet boys and girls!

The Vampire Diaries

Character Profile Three: Damon Salvatore

So with Elena and Stefan developing their relationship, it would seem a little like bad timing for the evil and morally-challenged brother Damon to appear on the scene for Stefan, but it couldn’t be more perfect for us viewers.

Say goodbye to the boring and hello to things getting more interesting in Mystic Falls. Damon Salvatore’s arrival brings a welcome reprieve. The budding romance between Elena and Stefan is all well and good in doses but seriously, I think most of us have had enough of the lovey-dovey Twilight-like crap for now, we want something bad, nasty and juicy to happen with these characters.

Damon is the polar opposite in many ways to goody-good Stefan and this is obvious from the beginning. The more we learn about the brothers and their mysterious past (and how this will ultimately affect and impact Elena’s future), the more we begin to see that not all is as it seems.

This is, of course, a good thing for us because it means a lot of ups and downs in terms of where the story is going. Straight lines are always boring and we don’t want that. We want intrigue, excitement and blood and we want it in copious amounts.

Damon promises all of this and more, his mischievous grin (sprinkled with just a touch of malice) tells us so!

Hooray for Damon, and more of him I say!

The Vampire Diaries

Character Profile Two: Stefan Salvatore

Ah Stefan. Are you more than just a pretty face? Well, for the most part, not really. In fact, you kind of match your pretty little girlfriend Elena in that respect because you’re both matches made in heaven for who can be the most boring teenager in Mystic Falls.

Ya’ know for a place that has vampires running around and a really creepy history about it, Mystic Falls is really just kinda full of fail. You’d expect it to be a whole lot more interesting than it is.

So vamp meets girl who looks exactly like girl from his past, falls obsessively in love with her, but then plans are thwarted (THANK GOD) by mean and nasty-hot vamp brother who arrives on the scene (FINALLY - some GOOD shit is about to happen!)

Yay for Damon (who we shall be paying a visit to shortly), but poor Stefan. He seems like such a nice little vamp. If only nice little vamps would show their bad sides every now and then… like they’re supposed to.

Afterall, vampires ARE technically demons, right? Well, I suppose that depends on who you’re talking to and what vampire lore you believe but yeah…

Now onto Damon Salvatore!

The Vampire Diaries

Character Profile One: Elena Gilbert

At first, I really liked Elena. But as time passed, I started to think she was a tad annoying, she was also kinda dull and really pretty boring. Apart from being gorgeous to look at (as are most of the cast), there was nothing really going on with her.

The diary entries eventually became a little lacklustre. I felt that she was definitely suffering the loss of her parents a little too much which thankfully, kinda ended after she met Stefan Salvatore.

As far as characters go (in the bigger picture), Elena is about as dull as you can get. While I understand that she is kind of the “gel” that keeps the group of “friends” together through all the hard times that befall them living in Mystic Falls, that’s really nothing to write home about.

Elena, I’m sorry, but your doppleganger Katherine is way more interesting. And we’ll leave it at that.

Really, really nice hair though…

The Vampire Diaries

Television Show

IMDB Link

Three Seasons (to date in the U.S.A)

Instead of giving a blow-by-blow account of everything that I’ve been able to see (living in NZ) of The Vampire Diaries, I thought I’d look at some of the characters that make up the show so far and discuss them instead. This might also include tidbits about why they make the show interesting, entertaining and/or fun to watch.

But to start, I think it’s a good idea to briefly intro the show, how I got interested in it, what kind of show it is and then get into the character profiles.

To be clear, again, like Twilight, I was initially uninterested in TVD until a friend of mine put me onto the show (a male friend who insisted it was better than Twilight). I decided to give the show a go and must admit, it did take a while to grow on me. I didn’t think much of it after having read the first book from the author L.J Smith (which is VERY different in almost every way to the television show).

They’ve done good things with TVD and it’s become a “tween” success. But I have to say, the storyline in places is a bit dull and it’s the characters that are interesting so I’ll focus on the major characters rather than the story for now.

In order:

Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev)

Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley)

Damon Salvatore (Ian Somerhalder)

Katherine Pierce (Nina Dobrev)

Rosa is KICK ass. Check out the trailer if you haven’t seen it already! It is absolutely phenomenal!

If you’re a fan of anime/animated movies with a sci-fi/futuristic/horror feel, you’ll love Rosa.

Do it, do it NOW ;)

MOVIE REVIEW

Title: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One

Year: 2011

Genre: Drama, Romance, Adventure, Fantasy

IMDB Link

WARNING: May Contain Spoilers!

So we are now coming to the end of the Twilight Saga (some may be happy to hear that) but there are many, many fans who will be very sad (no, really) to see the end of Bella, Edward and Jacob’s twisting love-triangle.

I won’t go over the last few movies because quite frankly, if you haven’t kept up with twi-fever, where the hell have you been the last few years? But understood if you’d rather die a hundred horrible deaths than see a Twilight film. Not everyone is a fan.

Breaking Dawn is the most overly romantic movie of the lot. So if you’re really not into the mushy stuff, best avoid this one because for the first hour or so, it’s full of it and I do mean FULL of it. And I was quite surprised to see almost full nudity taken on by Kristen Stewart’s Bella in one particular scene (surprised but in a good way). The books (if you’ve read them you’d understand why I’m making this point), really don’t talk about the sex in a raunchy way and to see Kristen Stewart completely naked brings the character of Bella a lot more to life than the book ever could.

Of course, the nudity is extremely tastefully done; you don’t see full frontals, you see a bit of boob and no butt. So in that respect, it does keep in tone with the books’ rather modest (and overly romantic) undertones. Which, given the target audience, is probably a good thing.

So the remainder of the film after the hoopla of the wedding and the sex scene focuses on Bella’s upcoming expectancy (yes, she gets pregnant) and this was probably the highlight of the movie for me. All of the scenes relating to Bella’s struggle with the half-vampire, half-human “demon” inside of her are really incredibly well-done.

The special effects used to make Bella appear painfully emaciated were incredible and I was really surprised by how great the “delivery” scene was portrayed from book to screen. It isn’t the easiest thing getting the words of a writer into a script and into the minds of movie-goers but the scriptwriters did a damn fine job of Breaking Dawn.

In fact, almost the entire Twilight series was exceptionally well-done in terms of keeping to the content of the books. I don’t know if that was because of Stephanie Meyer’s direct input or because of the great writing team hired to do the work but either way, I was and am impressed.

But I actually found the lovey dovey stuff was really drawn out and for a midnight viewing, unless you are a TRUE twifan (which I am not), you’d be struggling to be entertained. You might ask why I was attending a midnight screening if I wasn’t really a fan? Well, I like to get the jump on movies if I don’t get to attend the previews so I can review them as early as possible :) Simple as that, really.

I am looking forward to the final movie if only to see how they capture on film what I consider to be the best part of the books. If they screw up the last part of this, I swear, I might actually cry. No, really.

So, to summarise, Breaking Dawn Part One really isn’t a movie for anyone else other than fans of the books/movies/Twilight in general really. It’ll make anyone else probably cringe or cry or yell or scream in agony (yes, it can be considered that bad in parts). But as mentioned above, there are some great redeeming qualities in this movie, you’d have to have read the books to see what those are though. The movies alone really don’t do the story justice, and that has always been my stance on it.

PCR Rating: 6/10

Image via IMPAwards.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One

I’ve seen all the movies, I’ve read all the books but I’m not really your typical Twifan. I’m going to see this in a few hours (because I live in New Zealand, lucky me!) and I’ll be reviewing it when I can tomorrow.

The books were a lot better than the movies, especially the last two. If you’ve avoided the movies, I’d recommend the books (but not before you’ve read Game of Thrones first!)

By the way, this poster is shite (the image, not the quality lol!)

Thanks to the awesome team at IMPawards (again) serving up the coolest database of Movie Posters around :)

So… whatever happened to?

“V”

This show came out in 2009. I still don’t know why it died the horrible death that it did. I absolutely loved this show and was hooked completely until they cruelly took my drug of choice away and I was forced to go cold turkey.

I mean come on, it had Morena Baccarin in it, the hottest alien in AGES! I guess even that wasn’t enough to save it.

Le sigh. There really hasn’t been anything good in the sci-fi arena since BSG, and I doubt there will be anything that good again.

Or will there?

Homeland. Claire Danes, Damian Lewis, Morena Baccarin - great cast. Although this hasn’t come to New Zealand shores yet, it’s been getting great reviews in the States and it looks exactly like the type of show I’d really enjoy.

For those of you who don’t know what Homeland is about, Damian Lewis plays the role of Nicholas Brody who was captured in Iraq, tortured almost to death for eight years and who finally returns home to a changed world. He returns to his family who are happy to have him home and to a country who he thinks (for the most part) worship him as a hero but little does he know, not everyone is convinced of his story.

Claire Danes plays the part of CIA agent Carrie Anderson who becomes somewhat obsessed with finding out the truth about Brody, no matter what the cost.

Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games. I took a look at the trailer and here’s what I thought about it.

I’m thinking about getting the book, what do ya’ll think? Yay or nay on the book?

If you have a fav movie poster you’d like to see, feel free to make a request and I’ll see what I can do about finding it on the net :) Even if it’s an old one, just msg me and I’ll see what I can do!

Speaking of older movies, THE LOST BOYS is one of my favs and continues to be one of my all-time fav movies EVER.

Why? BECAUSE it’s so kick-ass good! If you haven’t seen it, you really, really should.

That is all.

I’m loving this poster for Anonymous. The very idea that Shakespeare could have been a fraud is extremely controversial and great movie-going subject matter!