Twilight: Fanatics and Fangs. Minus the Fangs.

On Monday, I received an email from a desperate friend who, after seeing Twilight opening weekend, was already suffering serious Robert Pattinson-related withdrawal symptoms and the desperate need to see the film again ... 24 hours later.

I wasn't actually planning on seeing the movie. Well, that's not true. I had decided if the Rottentomatoes critics rated the film very highly (> 70%), I would dish out the $12 to see it. And if the RT critics rated it very poorly, then I would see it - drunk. But with Twilight's middling 43% rating, solidly rotten, but not quite in the "so bad it's good" territory, I wasn't going to waste my time.

And yet, I empathized with my friend's inner 12 year-old, and I was willing to suffer the film for her sake. I too had once obsessed over a tween-heartthrob (Leo DiCaprio, anyone?), fanatically seeing Titanic in theaters 4 times before I was satiated. Of course, I was actually 12 at the time.

Once again, low expectations paid off. Not only was I not disappointed, I was pleasantly surprised.

I haven't read any of Stephenie Meyer's bestselling novels. As a young adult/fantasy series aficionado, I'm embarrassed to say that I hadn't even heard of Twilight until Entertainment Weekly began writing a series of articles on the series and author this summer, around the time Breaking Dawn was published. I am not particularly fond of melodramatic romances, vampire stories, or bad writing, so I don't expect to enjoy the series, but I did buy a used paperback edition of Twilight at Strand last month. If I'm ever going to write for young adults, the least I can do is read what's already out there.

Back to the film.

"Better than it had to be" would be the six-word review. With a modest $37 million budget, a cast light on the A-listers, and with a target audience in the 12-17 year old range, it could have been a lot worse. Despite an uneven plot (jumpy in the climatic chase/final battle, while plodding in other parts), some of the scenes were downright stylish, including the vampires-playing-baseball bit, which, despite the inherent silliness, was actually a lot of fun to watch.

I found Meyer's twists on the vampire archetype interesting. Along with their love of America's favorite past time and their clear lack of fangs, vampires also come in pairs (they're like together together), and they're super sparkly in the daylight.

For me, the most unlikeable scenes were the same ones that had my friend's inner 12 year old swooning in her seat.

As deliciously swoon-worthy 12 year old girls may find Bella + Edward, their "forbidden romance" is simply in no way up to par with Buffy and Angel's from Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

While I thought Kristen Stewart did a fine job as Bella, Robert Pattinson, as Edward, was a disappointment. Pattinson's performance was very one-note; he could make broody faces, but he did little else. I wasn't convinced of his affection for Bella. Obsession, sure, but there was no real romance in his performance or his character's actions.

Thanks in large part to Stewart's appropriately understated performance (up until the end when she really started to get whiny), the romance scenes were tolerable. Edward stared, Bella sighed wistfully, and that was that. I didn't buy that the two were destined for each other and I didn't buy that their "love" was anything more than a trumped-up, melodramatic high school infatuation, just one fantastical step away from disturbing, abusive, and controlling.

When Buffy and Angel learn the hard way that their relationship is toxic (and doomed), as much as it breaks their hearts, they stay away from each other. Bella and Edward, self-absorbed and living-in-the-now, just don't have the maturity and self-respect to make that choice. And thus, their love story will always fall short.

Edit: I just found this great article by Sarah Selltzer at the Huffington Post that sums up concerns about the undercurrents of the Bella + Edward relationship.

*6/10*

Buffy the Vampire Miis, Part Two

Having previously created half a dozen Miis based on popular Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters, it didn't seem right to stop there. What about the rest of the cast? Cordelia? Tara? Even annoying little Dawn? It's only fair that they become Miis too. And thus, I present Buffy the Vampire Miis - Part Two.

In this entry: Willow, Oz, Cordelia, Faith, Dawn, Tara, and Principal Wood. Notice the similarities?

Buffy the Vampire Miis

A friend and I had a bit too much 2 o'clock in the morning fun a few months back, creating these Buffy the Vampire Slayer inspired Miis ... We'll have to finish the rest of the cast eventually, but in the meantime, enjoy!

In this entry: Buffy, Angel, Xander, Dark Willow, Giles, Spike, Anya, Drusilla, and Joss, the man himself. Notice the similarities?









And the man who inspired it all ...

Veronica Mars: Vixen, Cynic, Sleuth

Television has gotten good in the past few years - so good that many original network and cable series are, on average, significantly better fare than the middling drivel Hollywood has produced lately (Meet the Spartans, Fools Gold, Prom Night, the list goes on).

The best thing about television being so good these days is that now there's more outlets available to watch the shows you miss first time around:

• DVRs allow for record now: watch later while almost every series can be found on DVD mere months after the most recent season wraps.
  
• Network series are regularly rebroadcast days later on cable channels owned by the same parent company (new episodes of NBC's House and Law and Order: SVU also air on the USA channel)
• Most networks and the network-approved Hulu.com feature a back-log of recently aired episodes and older series to catch-up on with modest 30 second commercial breaks. Available episodes range from a handful of recent broadcasts to entire seasons' worth.

Because of all of the above (and also the less legitimized Bittorrent), I have been able to keep up with favorite series and watch, marathon-style, the series I missed in primetime.



Enter Veronica Mars and a two-week, 64 episode marathon.

The relatively short-lived UPN/CW mystery series was a critical darling and obsessive fan-favorite, but abysmal ratings (seriously low, low, ratings - the nadir of the networks) couldn't keep the series alive.

I'll admit that I heard about the series when it was still in production and the fans were trying desperately to keep it alive, but I ignored it. I ignored it because everyone was calling it the new Buffy and I wasn't looking for a new Buffy - I was perfectly content with the one I already had and my shiny 144-episode box set. When I finally did sit down with the series, the similarities are there, but they're mostly superficial:

• Heroine is a petite, blonde highschooler (later college chic), formerly of the popular crowd but now an outcast.
• Heroine combines forces with other misfits to form "Scooby Gang" (only instead witches and chipped vampires it's computer geeks and biker gang leaders).
  
• Heroine helps people (slaying vs. solving crimes), including schoolmates who come to her for help despite her unsavory reputation.
• Series includes episode-contained plots (monster of the day vs mystery of the week), as well as overarching story lines.
• The teenage characters are far more witty and pop-culture savvy than actual people tend to be.

From the first episode, the trajectory of season one is clearly set. High school junior Veronica Mars has a few problems. Her best friend Lilly Kane was murdered (and the wrong guy went to jail for it), her boyfriend unceremoniously dumped her, her mom skipped town, her father lost his job and the town's respect, her social standing has been obliterated, and to top it all off, she was roofie'd and raped at a party but doesn't know who did it. Fortunately for Veronica, she's no damsel in distress. Relentless and often bitchy to hide her vulnerable seventeen year-old self, Veronica is a smart, head-strong private investigator with a knack for solving mysteries, even as she tends to dig herself deeper into trouble. By the time the mysteries of season one are wrapping up, the more convoluted - and superior, IMO - season two is already underway.

What is apparent is the reason why the series is so beloved and why comparisons to Buffy the Vampire Slayer are more than fair. Veronica Mars features a masterful combination of clever writing, teenage angst, unexpected twists, relevant themes, identifiable characters, humor, drama, and tragedy, all wrapped up in a slick, attractive 42-minute package. Joss Whedon may be the show's unabashed #1 fan, but I'm a happy new recruit, grateful both for quality television and the means by which I am able to watch 14 episodes in 12 hours, if the mood strikes.

Why Buffy Matters

I recently finished reading Why Buffy Matters: The Art of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a collection of critical essays on Joss Whedon's hit television series, written by Buffy scholar Rhonda Wilcox. In what was the most entertaining, consistent, and accessible Buffy essay collection I've read so far, Wilcox focuses on the psychology of the series (perhaps overreaching a bit with all of the so-called Freudian phallic representations) and on the show's various cycles through the Campbellian hero myth paradigm. But what I found most interesting about Wilcox's approach to the series was the time spent on the "art" part - from analyzing the lighting to the diegetic and non-diegetic sound cues, to the many other artistic nuances that Joss Whedon's creative team brought to the series, making it more than just a run-of-the-mill cult phenomenon.

Along with dissecting the "broad patterns" in the series, Wilcox spends six chapters on seven of the episodes that most completely represent the artistic, emotional, and thematic merit of the series - season two's "Surprise/Innocence" (love and loss), season three's "The Zeppo" (comedy), season four's "Hush" (fear - the only Emmy-nominated episode) and "Restless" (poetry), season five's "The Body" (death), and season six's "Once More, With Feeling" (song - the famed musical episode). These episodes are widely considered the best of the series and were amply dissected by Wilcox, though she made it clear that there was much more that could be said about the episodes, and as a reader hungry for more Buffy (can one ever be truly satiated?), I would have been happy to read another hundred pages on the subject.

Why DOES Buffy Matter?

I was a fan of Buffy from the very first episode which I watched at the age of eleven in March of 1997. A month later, after experiencing a personal tragedy , I felt terribly guilty as I tuned into season one's "The Pack"; I knew that watching Buffy would make me happy, and I wasn't sure that I was allowed to feel that way.

For seven years I was moved, excited, and inspired by the series, although it wasn't until college, a full year after the series ended, that I fully embraced my fandom when I discovered that thousands of grownups, scholars, and college students like me loved Buffy too - and that was okay. There hasn't been another series before or since that I have fallen in love with so thoroughly, and at least part of the reason is that I only had one childhood, and that childhood was dedicated to Buffy, a kick-ass heroine, and the gal every girl secretly wishes she could be, assuming that imminent death and the complex business of being responsible for the fate of the world were not always getting in the way.

Long before I began listening to the director's commentaries and reading essays on the greatness of Buffy, I had my own list of episodes that moved me the most (to laughter or to tears), and along with the seven Wilcox discussed, these are the episodes that I eagerly awaited to see in syndication during the series' run and the episodes that I watched the most frequently in my Buffy DVD series box set.

• Welcome to the Hellmouth / The Harvest - I was hooked from the beginning. When Buffy outsmarts the Vessel to save the day, it just sets the pace for all of the sassy quips and near-apocalypses to follow.

• The Witch - Buffy may have super strength, but she's vulnerable too, and this is the first episode where we really see that her friends, the "normal" folk, are invaluable sidekicks in the Slayer's mission.

• Nightmares - As if living on the Hellmouth wasn't bad enough, imagine how terrifying it is when your personal nightmares are roaming free. What is it that frightens a slayer the most? Becoming the very evil that she is charged with exterminating.
  

• Prophecy Girl - Buffy is sympathetic and vulnerable again when she learns that, at sixteen years old, she is destined to die. But only Buffy could turn the tables to make a prophecy where she dies work in her favor.

• Halloween - Okay, so I was a fan of the vulnerable Buffy episodes. But how great was it seeing Xander taking command, Willow walking with confidence, and Buffy slipping free of her wig and kicking Spike's ass?

• What's My Line, Part One and Two - The cliffhanger ending of Part One reveals that there is another slayer (wtf?!!), inspiring every girl between the ages of 9 and 19 to spend hours daydreaming about becoming the next chosen one - until Part Two aired and we discovered it was just a fluke. And oh yeah, Xander and Cordelia hook up!
  

• Passion - Joss Whedon likes to kill off beloved characters, right when things are starting to look up for them. Low blow, Joss. Low blow.

• Becoming, Part One and Two - Packing the most emotional punch of any of the episodes prior to the major deaths in season five, Buffy sacrifices her lover to save the world, and this second season finale is still the best of them all.

• Homecoming - Buffy and Cordelia battle it out, but it is Cordelia that emerges the victor, in true slayerette fashion.
  

• Lovers Walk - Can no relationship work out in this series? Why do you torment us so?

• The Wish - What if Buffy never came to Sunnydale? This alternate reality is truly horrifying, giving the Gentlemen in "Hush"a run for their money.

• Enemies - Angel pretending to lose is soul is just as traumatizing as Angel really losing his soul. It's in this episode that we realize to our great dismay that there's too much standing in the way of Buffy and Angel's happily ever after.

• The Harsh Light of Day - Mega baddie Spike is back with a vengeance and, fortunately, he's here to stay.

• Who Are You - Faith switches bodies with Buffy and has more fun pretending to be the "good" slayer than Buffy seems to have most of the time.

• Fool For Love - Spike's past as a serial slayer killer is intriguing, and he adds another piece to the puzzle that is the Slayer. Along with "haven't even begun" to knowing who she is, apparently Buffy also has a "death wish".

• The Gift - Another great season finale where Buffy must make a truly difficult choice, the consequences of which last longer (in days) than her previous finale sacrifices.

• Bargaining, Part One and Two - Who would have thought bringing a slayer back to life would have so many severe consequences for all involved? Especially the cute forest critters.
  

• Life Serial - As wacky as their torture-Buffy inventions are, the Trio just aren't as intimidating as the big-bads of the past.

• Tabula Rasa - A hilarious episode with bizarre shark-headed loan sharks, forgotten identities, and the most powerful musical performance to not be included on a Buffy soundtrack (Michelle Branch's "Goodbye to You" - the Willow/Tara breakup song).

• Normal Again - Are Buffy's adventures in Sunnydale really just one epic hallucination of a mentally-ill young woman in an institution? This episode aired four months after the Charmed episode with a suspiciously similar plotline (Buffy's was better).

• Seeing Red - Seriously, Whedon? You set us up for yet another happy ending and then rip our still-beating hearts from our bodies as tragedy ensues?

• Selfless - Anya's 1000 year-old past is revealed and we are treated to yet another wonderful song from the "Once More, With Feeling" era. If only it made it on to the soundtrack.

• Conversations With Dead People - Dawn is terrorized in her home by an unseen force, Willow turns on the waterworks, and Buffy is psycho-analyzed by a vampire who tells her that she has an inferiority complex about her superiority complex. Reminds me of my own self-diagnosed procrastinating perfectionism.

• Potential - Dawn's not a potential slayer! And the world rejoices. Although most of the potentials were unlovable whiners, the potential plotline was full of exciting possibilities that reminded me of my favorite Buffy book - Spike and Dru: Pretty Maids All in a Row by Christopher Golden.

• Chosen - Despite a rocky seventh season, the finale was a satisfying conclusion to the series and a welcome addition to the Buffyverse mythology. And Whedon, bless his heart, set it up so the show could live on through more than just our memories, as the eighth season is now in comic form.

7 + 29. Am I allowed to have 36 favorite episodes?

Ode to the Buffy Musical

Last summer, I began watching the sitcom Scrubs in syndication, catching as many as four episodes per day in no particular order - season one, season four, season two, they were all funny. The series is brilliant, featuring an outstanding ensemble cast, ridiculous daydream vignettes courtesy of narrator John Dorian, and a musical episode aptly named "My Musical".

In the Scrubs musical episode, a patient at Sacred Heart hallucinates that everyone is singing and dancing around her, as though they are performing in a musical. Is she crazy or genuinely ill? Who cares! We are in for a musical treat, and the particularly ridiculous song about stool samples is bound to get stuck in your head at the most inopportune of times.

You see....
Everything comes down to poo!
From the top of your head, to the sole of your shoe
We can figure out what's wrong with you by lookin' at your poo!

As fun as "My Musical" is, it just can't compare to the ultimate televised musical spectacle, the quintessential Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, "Once More, With Feeling".

Why is "Once More, With Feeling" so bloody brilliant? Let me count the ways (with bullet points!):

• The episode was written and directed by Joss Whedon. Enough said.

• Wait, there's more - Joss wrote the music and lyrics too!

• Pop culture (and Broadway!) references galore.

• There are no dubs here - the whole cast is really singing, inspiring countless fans to sing along.

• Anya rocks out in a solo about why bunnies should be feared. (and for good reason too)

• Buffyverse logic: singing + dancing = spontaneous combustion!

Mostly though, "Once More, With Feeling" is brilliant because it not only seamlessly weaves the reasoning behind the singing into the plot (a new demon is in town wreaking havoc, duh!), it also packs a major story arc punch with more character and plot development in 50 minutes than most series feature in entire seasons.


When the characters are forced to reveal their inner most thoughts through song, this is what we - and they - discover:

• Buffy feels detached and discontent. Ever since coming back from the dead, she has failed to feel really alive ("Going Through the Motions").

Still I always feel
This strange estrangement
Nothing here is real
Nothing here is right

• Anya fears bunnies - okay, not a big secret ("I've Got a Theory/Bunnies").

Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes
They got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses
And what's with all the carrots
What do they need such good eyesight for anyway

• In her love song, Tara boldly announces that she is under Willow's spell, not realizing that it's the literal truth as well as the figurative ("Under Your Spell").

I'm under your spell
How else could it be
Anyone would notice me?

• Soon-to-be-married Anya and Xander reveal that they are full of insecurities, and like any couple, they bother the heck out of each other, foreshadowing a tragically doomed marriage attempt ("I'll Never Tell").

I lied
I said it's easy
I've tried
But there's these fears I can't quell

• Spike's obsession with Buffy continues to grow as he encourages her to reciprocate his love, insisting he is the only one who understands her dark side ("Rest in Peace").

You're scared
Ashamed of what you feel
And you can't tell the ones you love
You know they couldn't deal

• Dawn's excuse for becoming a klepto is that she feels ignored by the Scooby Gang, but can you really blame them? ("Dawn's Lament").

Does anybody even notice?
Does anybody even care?

• Giles believes that he is standing in the way of Buffy's potential to fulfill her adult responsibilities, and the only way she can fully come into her own is if he skips town for good ("Standing").

The cries around you,
You don't hear at all
'Cause you know I'm here
To take that call

• Tara discovers that Willow has used a spell to make her forget an earlier fight. Tara, already convinced that Willow is using too much magic, is heartbroken ("Under Your Spell/Standing Reprise").

Wish I could trust
That it was just this once
But I must do what I must

• Buffy reveals that her failure to readjust/be happy is because when she was resurrected, she was ripped out of a heavenly dimension, and compared to that, living sucks ("Life's a Show").

Life's a song
You don't get to rehearse
And every single verse
Can make it that much worse

• After the semi-successful "defeat" of the demon Sweet, the Scooby Gang feels lost and unsure, overwhelmed by all of the revelations of the episode - who wouldn't be? Meanwhile, Buffy concedes to a relationship with Spike, believing that she doesn't deserve any better ("Where Do We Go From Here").

Where do we go from here?
Why is the path unclear?
When we know home is near
Understand
We'll go hand in hand
But we'll walk alone in fear

Buffy the Vampire Slayer the Complete Sixth Season - $48.99

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Collector's Series - $164.99

Attending a theatrical screening of "Once More With Feeling" (ala Rocky Horror) and getting to sing along with fellow Buffy fans and Whedonites - PRICELESS.