New Moon: Or, when puberty attacks...

Oh, God. Occasional Professor Tom was right.

Any full-grown man who makes the decision to watch Twilight sequel New Moon should know this beforehand: You are legally required to surrender your testicles as a result.

For a start, I was the only man in the audience (and Mummy Militant and I were the only people over the age of 17.) That made me feel deeply uncomfortable.

This feeling wasn't helped by the lower half of the auditorium simultaneously hitting puberty at the exact point teen heartthrob Taylor Lautner removed his shirt.

The collective moan of "Whoooo!" was almost drowned out by the sound of sixty pairs of knicker elastic all snapping at one.

Nevertheless, Mummy Militant and I bravely ploughed our way through two hours of vampy melodrama last night and the verdict was ultimately:

Meh.

To give director Chris Weitz the benefit of the doubt, New Moon was a visually stunning film. In fact, if you'd have ditched moping vampire Edward entirely and given whiny leading lady Bella a sound spanking beforehand ("Act like a flipping grown up, you silly twit") there were the workings of a pretty entertaining werewolf love story mixed up in there.

Washington? Beautiful. Old cars? Awesome. Animated werewolves? Brilliant.

But the problem was the script; tied slavishly to Stephanie Meyer's original novel. It just bogged the entire movie down throughout - and no amount of beautifully animated werewolves or gorgeous redheaded vampires could make up for the wilted romantic tosh.

The plot of New Moon sees beautiful Bella (a neatly anonymous stand-in for every single teenage girl to imagine herself in the place of) coming to terms with the fact that it's not easy dating a hundred-year-old vampire - especially not when his family try to eat you if you get so much as a paper-cut in front of them.

After a disturbing scene at Bella's eighteenth birthday party - when Edward bravely 'defends' her from his bloodthirsty brother by hurling her across the room and through a plate glass cabinet - he and his vampire brethren decide to ditch town to prevent any more 'accidents' like that one.

Giving Bella the old: "I don't want to be with you - but secretly I do, sniff sniff" farewell speech, Edward and his menacingly Aryan family depart and the entire movie becomes 200% better as a result.

But when Edward leaves, you have to start wondering what kind of message a movie like New Moon gives to its teenage audience. As far as she's concerned, Bella's life 'ends' when Edward leaves.

First, she curls up in a ball in the middle of the forest and is so incapacitated by grief that local Native American Sam Uley has to scoop her up and bring her home. Then, she sits in her room in an almost catatonic state for three months, only taking time out to mope her way to school or wake up the middle of the night, screaming.

Her dad, a local cop, has to rush in to her bedroom to brush her hair out of her eyes and utter soothing platitudes like 'there, there, Bella.'

(Seriously, after a week of that shit, I'd have smothered her with a pillow before the neighbours could call in a sound complaint.)

This pathetic behaviour is just the tip of the iceberg, though - because when Bella accidentally discovers that she can 'see' hallucinations of Edward when she's in physical peril, she starts to become something of an Adrenalin junkie - doing whatever it takes to 'bliss out' to images of her departed boyfriend.

This includes ditching a friend in the middle of town to take a ride on the back of some sleazy guy's motorcycle (the same sleazy guy who tried to rape her in the previous movie.)

This was the point when I realised that the script left Bella as a totally self-obsessed narcissist - and a pretty lousy friend to boot. Suggesting to teenage girls that it's in any way acceptable to leave your friend alone and vulnerable in a dangerous part of town is just offensive.

(Also, riding on the back of the motorcycle of a guy who previously tried to rape you is not smart.)

However, as is appropriate for a movie that's little more than teenage wish-fulfillment, there are no consequences for Bella's disgustingly selfish behavior. Instead, she follows it up by buying a couple of motorbikes - and flutters her eyelashes at doting friend Jacob (the doe-eyed Taylor Lautner) so he'll fix them up for her.

Another important message for teenage girls; it's entirely acceptable to manipulate the feelings of lovesick boys as long as you get something out of it. In Bella's defense, she pretty much admits to Jacob that she only sees him as 'a friend' - yet continues to give him just enough 'sugar' (and free pizza) to get what she wants out of the bargain.

(Just for the record, I'm not saying that boys should 'expect' anything from girls when they do stuff for them. I'm just saying that if you're motivation is unrequited love, then the girl who's plucking at your heartstrings is a pretty shitty friend. But since she also ditches her gal pals in a rough part of town to take a spin on the back of a rapist's motorcycle, the 'shitty friend' part has already been firmly established.)

There are further parts I have problems with - like how Sam 'wolfed out' and mutilated his fiancee, which serves as a rather blunt metaphor for abusive relationships (and how the mixed up 'moral' of the story is that it's okay to stay with a dangerous partner, just don't get him angry.) I also groaned when Jacob asked what possible motivation evil vampire Victoria might have for returning to Forks:

"She's after me," Bella breathily reveals.

I yelled out in the theater - and got some teeny-bopper death glares as a result: "For Christ's sake, it's not always about you, Bella!"

And finally, the bit that almost made me throw up in my mouth a little was the ending, in which Edward triumphantly returns and promises to 'turn' Bella - transform her into a vampire like himself. He'll only do it on one condition: "Marry me."

Stephanie Meyer might as well have painted 'abstinence until marriage' on a wooden board and clocked us around the face with it. It's not that I object to blatant moralising in movies - it's just that this abstinence message seems so out-of-place in a movie that spends two hours condoning every kind of self-obsessed, self-destructive, abusive and manipulative behavior teenagers might be prone to.

In real life, Bella's stupid behavior would have ended up with her committed, drowned, murdered, run over or eaten by vampires. All of those risks were worthwhile, though (according to the script, at least) as long as she didn't make the worst mistake of all: Open her legs.

Sheesh!

Why I think New Moon will suck (but I'm still going to see it anyway.)

Ever since I first dissected the Twilight saga, I've found myself roped into the whole melodramatic mess in a way that I'm not entirely comfortable with. In fact, this Sunday I'm actually going to see the sequel movie New Moon.

Mood: Brooding, with a slight chance of angst

Now, you all know my objections to Twilight:

• It's melodramatic
• The vampires don't abide by the accepted rules of vamparism
• It's romanticizing a clearly abusive and co-dependent relationship between Edward and Bella
• It's teenage wish fulfillment (new girl meets boy who literally wants to devour her)
• It's materialistic (Edward's pretty cars)
  
• It's focused on looks (everybody's beautiful.)
• The author might have plagiarized the whole saga
• The author wants to ban gay marriage

But my main reason for hating it, of course, is that Stephanie Meyer casually wrote Twilight over the course of three months, got a $750,000 advance and now has millions of adoring fans making her wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice (or Militant Ginger.) And she's not even half the writer I am. Bitch.

Anyway. Before I go and see the new movie, I wanted to explain why I hate that too - even though I'm secretly excited about sitting down with a bowl of popcorn this Sunday.

It's got a new director:

Even now, Hollywood's not exactly packed with female film directors - so when Catherine Hardwicke took the helm of the original Twilight, it was a thumbs up to women's lib and all that liberal nonsense.

Hardwicke did a bloody good job, too. Twilight wound up being a pretty good film (even by my standards) and Hardwicke coolly earned the distinction of having the best opening weekend of any female film director in history.

Hence why I was astonished when Summit Entertainment dropped her from directing the sequel, New Moon, without as much as a by-your-leave.

Like benching your quarterback when he's just scored a touchdown, Summit sacked their star performer and replaced her with a guy.

Not that New Moon director Chris Weitz is exactly a nobody - he was nominated for an academy award in 2002. It's just I don't the reason for ditching a successful director - especially not when her vision of the original book was so spot-on.

They ditched the ginger:

Rachelle Lefevre, the Canadian actress who portrayed sexy vamp Victoria in Twilight, will be back for New Moon - and up to her old tricks again. Yet Summit Entertainment, clearly establishing a pattern against well-performing female team members, canned her toned little tush for the third film in the series, Eclipse.

Lefevre as Victoria: She can bite me anytime.

"I was stunned by the decision," Lefevre admitted, "and greatly saddened not to continue my portrayal of Victoria." Legions of fans appealed to Summit to 'bring back Rachelle' but their plea landed on deaf ears. In Eclipse, Victoria will now be played by Terminator: Salvation's Bryce Dallas Howard.

It's fan service.

So one of the things I liked about the original Twilight movie was that it stuck pretty closely to the book - but improved upon it.

There was no real sense of danger in the original Twilight, as the 'bad guy' was a single rogue vampire and Bella had a whole house full of sycophantic Aryan bloodsuckers to protect her. In Hardwicke's movie adaptation, she at least upped the ante and made Bella genuinely appear to be in danger.

But in New Moon? No difference at all.

Literally, no differences at all. In fact, if you look up 'differences between the book and movie' on the Twilight wiki (Warning: This is the very heart of the Twilight fan consciousness - those who visit might not escape alive) you will see the differences are reduced to:

• Bella wears a green dress to her birthday party, instead of a blue shirt.
• The Volturi wear red cloaks instead of black ones.
• At Bella's party, the birthday cake is green instead of pink.

That's it? That's it?

Come off it! Here you are, transferring a story from one medium (print) to an entirely new exciting, immersive medium (celluloid) and the only way you can think to improve and expand upon it is to do a wardrobe change?

Suddenly the reason they canned the original director, Catherine Hardwicke, becomes obvious. She must have had some wild and crazy 'vision' for the movie that was considered too outlandish to pass muster with the fans. Perhaps it involved making a totally disruptive change to the story - like having paper napkins in the scene at Bella's birthday party, instead of cloth ones.

Listen, I'm all for consistency - but when you fire the director and one of the stars (the ginger one, no less) of the original movie, I think you're then permitted to take a few further risks with the script at well.

Okay, so maybe I'm ranting a little - but these reasons are why I'm dubious of New Moon. Perhaps my arguments would be a little more convincing it I wasn't (in a manly, totally non-squealing teenage girl way) still a little excited to see it.

Militant Ginger's Weekly Roundup

Today, I'm just going to take a quick whizz through some of the headlines and stories that have sparked my interest this week.

New ancient crocodile species fossils found: Full story here.

Paleontology is not normally my thing - apart from using it to point out how idiotic those creationist lunatics are. However, this caught my attention:

"A 20-foot-long crocodile with three sets of fangs — like wild boar tusks — roamed parts of northern Africa millions of years."

National Geographic's Paul Sereno: "Damn, that's a big crocodile."

Right, I'm immediately shelving plans to build a time machine. I'm no fan of crocodiles at the best of times - but one that's as long as my Lincoln Town Car? And has three sets of fangs? I mean, how many sets of fangs does one twenty-foot long killing machine really need?

If this monstrous reptile was created by an 'Intelligent Designer' than that designer clearly had the mentality of an eight-year-old boy. "You know what this croc needs? More fangs!"

White House at odds with bishops over abortion: Full story here.

"The White House is on a collision course with Catholic bishops in an intractable dispute over abortion."

Oh no! If only we had some kind of immutable precedent separating Church and State! Then perhaps this wouldn't be an issue! Oh, wait, we do. It's called the First Amendment.

The Pope shoes President Obama knick-knacks from his days as a member of the Hitler Youth (I wish I was joking about that one...)

Seriously, I'm actually understanding of the position conservatives are taking - the ones who want to put rules into place with government-funded health care to ensure that tax-payer money doesn't go towards funding abortions. I don't personally think banning abortion in America is sensible or practical, but it's one of the few right-wing positions that I can at least sympathize with.

While I don't think the right wing can argue that 'all life is sacred' when they support Capital Punishment in the US, torture detainees, bomb civilians abroad and send under-equipped soldiers to their deaths in (arguably) pointless foreign wars, anybody with a brain can see that there are deep ethical implications connected to abortion. I can understand how some Americans are wildly upset to think they'd be indirectly paying for them.

My problem? That bishops are getting involved. So maybe they're more 'community leaders' than 'messengers from God' - but I'm an old school, Revolutionary-mindset American and I think the Catholic Church has no business meddling in the affairs of state.

Kate Moss Slammed for Skinny Comments: Full story here.

"Groups representing the anti-eating-disorder movement in the U.K. are blasting supermodel Kate Moss for a seemingly offhand remark she made in a recent interview with the fashion website WWD: 'Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.' "

I think Kate Moss is a vacuous idiot, who's far too skinny, has terrible teeth and makes an awful role-model by hanging around sleazy, heroin-addicted enfant terrible Pete Docherty.

Kate Moss - singlehandedly perpetuating the stereotype of all Brits having bad teeth since 1994

Yet as somebody whose just lost 30lbs on a diet, what she said totally speaks to me. When I'm salivating over the thought of a slice of pizza (Dominos, thin crust, pepperoni, Italian sausage, onions and bacon) all I have to do is remember that eating right has helped me get into the same size jeans I wore when I was 18 - and I don't want to throw away all that progress for a slice of pie (even delicious, tangy, spicy pizza pie.)

[And prize for most metrosexual comment of the day goes to... Militant Ginger! Congratulations! Come down and accept your gift vouchers for a free manicure and copy of Woman's Weekly - Editorial Bear]

Don't get me wrong. I love women with a few curves. These skinny size-zero models are simply disgusting to me (believe me, you should meet them in the flesh - what little of it there is.)

I think they're a terrible role model for kids, too. Yet there's nothing wrong with wanting to be a reasonable weight and in a country in which 66% of us are officially 'chubby' I don't think it's any bad thing to find personal motivation not to gorge.

Because eating too much is entirely natural. We're evolved from cavemen, who were programmed to scrounge constantly for food and eat as much of it as they could. This is why the human body finds 'moderation' a pretty tricky concept.

If we need a little intellectual motivation every now and again - to do something unnatural, and not stuff our faces - remembering how feeling of being a healthy weight lasts longer than the delicious sensation of a slice of pizza is a perfect place to start.

Oprah Winfrey Ending Talk Show Run On Network TV: Full story here.

"Oprah Winfrey will announce on Friday that her popular daytime talk show, "The Oprah Winfrey Show," will end its run in 2011."

Oprah Winfrey's story is pretty amazing. The poor daughter of a single mum in Mississippi, she overcame hardship and poverty to become the richest African American of the 20th Century. She was the world's first black billionaire, one of America's richest women and, arguably, the most influential woman on the planet. She took the concepts of 'white/male privilege' and the so-called 'glass ceiling' and showed the world that those rules didn't apply to her.

Oprah is an inspiration to everybody - proof that you make your own destiny, no matter what hand fate dealt you in the very beginning.

For twenty-five years, the flagship of Oprah's empire (which encompasses terrestrial and satellite radio, the Internet and print media) has been 'The Oprah Winfrey Show', broadcast from her home city of Chicago on ABC.

Today, it's ending - and the focus of Oprah's television dynasty will move to her cable-only channel The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN.)

It's a pretty startling move, as the Oprah Winfrey Show is one of the most popular TV shows in America. I personally wonder if she's making a similar move to the one Howard Stern made in 2005: After decades as America's most popular radio personality, Howard Stern basically 'made' the Satellite Radio industry by forcing his legions of fans to switch to SIRIUS.

If Oprah Winfrey decides to relaunch the Oprah Winfrey Show on OWN, when it hits the air in 2011, her millions of fans will face the same dilemma. The only way to get the Oprah Winfrey Network will be to choose a cable or satellite TV provider like Direct TV - you won't get OWN on regular cable.

Because of the proliferation of cable and Direct Satellite TV, over 70 million views will already be able to get OWN as soon as it goes live - simply by keeping their subscription to Satellite Directv.

However, just how many new Oprah fans will decide to switch their cable provider simply to get her show?

It stands to be an incredible coup for the companies lucky enough to have already made contracts with OWN.

Up

If you were going to design a perfect movie for me, it would almost certainly include zeppelins, biplanes, talking dogs and flying goggles. That doesn't mean it would be any good (I'm looking at you, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.)

But with Up, the computer-animated adventure from Disney/Pixar, they've managed to get the mixture right.

At first glance, you'd think Up was just another animated kid's flick in the mold of Cars, Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. Except it's not.

Not by a long shot.

From the moment Up opens, you realize all your expectations have been thrown out of the window.

The movie starts off telling the story of Carl Fredickson and his wife Ellie - and when I say 'story' I mean the whole story.

From meeting to marrying and spending a lifetime together. Pixar manage to cram an entire movie into fifteen minutes of dialogue-free footage - and when that segment ends, anybody who says they don't have tears in their eyes is lying.


And that's just the start of the movie. Up opens where other stories end. After a live well lived, widower Carl has gone from bright-eyed boy to curmudgeonly geriatric. His life is one of loneliness and guilt - distraught that he and his wife never took the adventure to South America they'd dreamed of their whole lives.


So when fate takes a final swing at old Carl, he does what any self-respecting balloon-salesman would do. He inflates twenty-thousand helium balloons and sets his home of sixty years soaring high into the sky - to finally make that voyage he and his late wife had been talking about all their lives.


Up is very nearly a perfect movie. It hits you hard in the solar plexus on a variety of levels. It's a rip-roaring adventure, a timeless love story and a not-so-subtle metaphor for the burdens we carry living in sophomoric suburbia. What could be a clearer message about not clinging to material things than a grumpy old man, who can't rescue his friends or save the day because he's got everything he owns - quite literally, in the form of a floating house - strapped to his back?


If Up has one shortcoming, it's that it's not a movie for kids. Although marketed as such, the sad and slow first fifteen minutes (which give more than a few nods to the finest of French cinema) won't hook short attention spans for long. But I suspect the writers of Up never intended it to be a kid's movie in the first place. It's something more - and I love it for that fact.

Up is available on DVD now for $18.99