Twilight 5 (DEAR LORD AN OTHER ONE)

[doggans]

Huh, there you go. (For proper frame of reference, I DO have friends who watch many shows aimed at five year olds fairly religiously. But current Pokemon isn't among them as far as I've heard.)

[Doctor Who?]

Remember when everyone thought Pokemon was a fad?  Here we are 11 years latter and Pokemon is still pretty popular.

It is? I run in a pretty pop-culture-obsessed circle, and I only know two or three hardcore Pokemon fans, and even they only watch/play the older stuff.

Well the games and cards still sell very well and they are still making cartoons.  It may not be as popular as it once was but it hasn't gone the way of the dodo like people were predicting it would back when it first came out.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Remember when everyone thought Pokemon was a fad?  Here we are 11 years latter and Pokemon is still pretty popular.

It is? I run in a pretty pop-culture-obsessed circle, and I only know two or three hardcore Pokemon fans, and even they only watch/play the older stuff.

Well the games and cards still sell very well and they are still making cartoons.  It may not be as popular as it once was but it hasn't gone the way of the dodo like people were predicting it would back when it first came out.

The "pop culture obsessed circles" are exactly the ones who pick up new things and throw them away the minute something new catches their eye - the 95.5% I was talking about before.

There are still Pokeman fans just like there's still fans of D&D.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Interesting reading.....

The "it's just mindless entertainment" excuse.
By Vadim Rizov on 07/07/2010

It's been eight years since The Onion published "New Roommate Has Elaborate Theory About How Kenny Rogers Is A Genius," and it's still a painfully accurate skewering about how it's become increasingly acceptable for people to overthink pop culture. It's basically the birthright of anyone who came of age in the '80s or later.

As long as pop culture's the dominant texture of a lot of people's daily life, the tendency to overread it will be with us. Kudos, then, to The Playlist's Jessica Kiang for going off on the "Twilight" movies and their unique gender relations: "How long before a self-help book hits the shelves that encourages us to divide our menfolk cleanly into vampires or werewolves?" It's depressingly plausible.

Absolving teenagers (who never know any better) of blame, her ire is for the older women who come to see things they should've grown past:

The desire to be desired without reason; to have one's life made remarkable by the men who fight over you; to define yourself entirely in terms of someone else; all this may sound thrillingly romantic to some, but it's also just fucking stupid, and if you're over 15 and still buying this crap, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

But of course, there's always someone in the comments section to say "Women need their mindless entertainment too, and that's all this is and I think there's little to fret about in terms of social implications." This is true, but it's also an evasion. It dismisses the validity of a viscerally angry response, and it denies that something this freakishly profitable might tell us something about why people are watching it.

It's a symptomatic comment that comes up every time someone wants to read depth into material that doesn't overtly aim for it. It was hilarious that Jordan Hoffman offered up a reading of "Toy Story 3" as about the Holocaust (the three other readings of the film as existentialist, Marxist or panoply-of-religions should've been a tip-off) -- and it was even funnier that critic Marshall Fine couldn't tell he was joking, nor could a bunch of other people.

But it resonated with other writers, who expanded on it. A joke became a valid way for people to think about the movie, and that's a good thing: any kind of weird read you can make on a film is worthwhile.

Of course, that's not precisely what Kiang is doing when she's beating up "Twilight," but it starts from the same place: a response to mass culture that puts more thought into potential readings than those making it.

When you do that, you can begin to think about ways that "Twilight" might be socially important besides merely theorizing that girls think Robert Pattinson is hot and want to swoon.

Every Hollywood movie stars the ridiculously genetically lucky and panders to some kind of stupid emotional reflex. Overthinking these kinds of things may be the only way to really engage with them; otherwise, you just end up screaming defensively about how it's just harmless stupid fun with no resonance whatsoever, which is an awfully disingenuous way to discuss one of the weirdest, most profitable phenomena of the last few years.

Another quote from the Klang piece...

"Harry Potter" made everyone who touched it rich, but at least it's lesson is something about following your own path, accepting others for who they are, etc....... The 'Twilight' franchise, however, is a perfect storm of questionable morality, slapdash production values and cross-generational popularity, and by embracing it in an effort to relive the first blush of impossible love or somesuch claptrap, grown women in their droves are endorsing a moronic, creatively bankrupt series of films. In the reductive world of the Hollywood analyst that can only mean that female audiences don't care about the quality of the films they go to, and thus the cycle of contempt and lowered standards begins anew - only this time those of us who would champion a better class of female-aimed movie have that much less ground to stand on.

Apocalyptic? No. Depressing? Most definitely.

[Compound]

Remember when everyone thought Pokemon was a fad?  Here we are 11 years latter and Pokemon is still pretty popular.

It is? I run in a pretty pop-culture-obsessed circle, and I only know two or three hardcore Pokemon fans, and even they only watch/play the older stuff.

Well the games and cards still sell very well and they are still making cartoons.  It may not be as popular as it once was but it hasn't gone the way of the dodo like people were predicting it would back when it first came out.

Just to back Doc up here-
The latest Pokemon games (HeartGold & SoulSilver) came out in mid-March.
April Sales- Soulsilver - #2 in sales HeartGold #5 in US
May Sales- Pokemon SoulSilver -#9 selling title in US, Gold #13.

It looks like they've sold about 2.5- 3 million copies of Silver & Gold since March. In terms of videogame sales, it's selling OMG!-ly well.  2009's Pokemon Platinum was the #10 selling title for last year (#5 if you delete titles bundled with Wii Hardware). Is it as popular as when the card game came out? Probably not. But it's still an amazingly hot property, especially for one 10 years old.

[iv3rdawG]

Twilight fans rejoice! Your relationship with this franchise doesn't have to come to a close for another two years. Summit Entertainment announced today that the final movie in the epic saga will debut on Nov. 16, 2012, one year after Breaking Dawn Part One hits theaters on Nov. 18, 2011.

http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2010/08/03/twilight-saga-breaking-dawn-part-two-hits-november-2012/

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Twilight fans rejoice! Your relationship with this franchise doesn't have to come to a close for another two years. Summit Entertainment announced today that the final movie in the epic saga will debut on Nov. 16, 2012, one year after Breaking Dawn Part One hits theaters on Nov. 18, 2011.

http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2010/08/03/twilight-saga-breaking-dawn-part-two-hits-november-2012/

Hmmm....wonder how long it will take someone to leak part two onto the internet?   

[MSTJedi]

You really, really owe it to yourself to watch this review. And the movie itself, apparently. The Rifftrax is going to be epic.

Escape to the Movies: Breaking Dawn Part Two

[Bob]

That was good.

And the movie looks like dripping sack......oh boy, the Rifftrax will be good.

[Compound]

I'm sorry, but I must note this.

Henry? Another. One word. Not two.

[Darth Geek]

Good review. Yeah, the Rifftrax will be great. The Spoony vlog should be epic as well.

[Pak-Man]

This made me laugh:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-twilight-movies-according-to-someone-who-hasnt-seen-them/

[doggans]

On tonight's episode of "Robert Pattinson Hates Twilight"...

[Skeeve]

Of course Horse-Face is happy it's over...he's the only one likely to come out of this with his career intact.

Oh, and memo to Kristin "Plywood" Stewart: next time marry the director before you crawl in the sack with him. Worked for Geena Davis, Milla Jovovich and Helena Bonham Carter...c'mon honey, learn from your elders, that's what they're there for...

[Skeeve]

Oh, and I actually saw the thing this evening, at the Quito, Ecuador premiere (Yes, it's true! Twi-hards are everywhere).

Sadly, [SPOILER ALERT] it does not feature an axe-wielding Abe Lincoln (the only thing that could have redeemed it, in my opinion).