stephenie meyer Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Did you even know that Stephenie Meyer has another series that does not deal with sparkly vampires? It's called The Host, and sadly no, it's not about large, killer tadpoles that have to be brought down by a weird and dysfunctional family. Instead, it's about an alien race whose souls have taken over the planet, inserting themselves into their human hosts by erasing their minds and taking over. But there's a girl named Melanie Stryder who is not so willing to let the aliens take over her mind, and this Wanderer starts feeling what Melanie does, and wants "to locate the last pocket of surviving humans on Earth." Oh yeah -- and it's an adult novel.

Variety reports that producers Nick Wechsler, plus Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz, ponied up their own money to grab the screen rights to Meyer's novel, and have tapped Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, The Truman Show) to write the script and direct the feature. Turns out, Meyer had been refusing bids for The Host, but was charmed by "a significant offer, a strong vision for the project, and a collaborative spirit." It helped that Niccol was involved. It seems two of her top 5 sci-fi films are Truman and Gattaca.

Get prepared, Con geeks. If this does even half as well as Twilight, you can bet your bottom dollar that her presence at ComicCons will continue to grow. I mean, she's got vampires and aliens -- she's just one technopunk or wizard away from full-on geek love.

Think The Host will have the same impact as Bella and her supernatural creatures of the night?

...And I kind of liked it.

The first time I saw it was at an all-media screening full of women and the lucky teenage girls who knew them – daughters, nieces, friends' daughters, you get the idea.

(Pet peeve: They took away every. Single. Person's. Cellphone. And made us check them like coats at the most insanely tween club ever. I wanted to die. I understand the need to stop rude movie-goers from texting or Twittering during a movie, especially teen girls typing, "OMG RPattz sparkles!" But still, it only encourages me to hide my iPhone in an orifice next time I go to an all-media. Hopefully, it won't come down to full body searches, though.)

And even though a few girls did scream when Robert Pattinson's name came onscreen, and when he appeared onscreen, and when he took his shirt off onscreen, there was some giggling too. They knew it was silly, but the overwhelming crushed-out feeling took over – you know it from when you plastered posters on your wall, and yes, for the most part, those people were just as silly. (Except me, 'cause I had a Death poster from the Sandman comics. That's just how I rolled.)

It was like I could hear – no, feel – them blossoming into womanhood when he appeared onscreen. Creepy.

I'm about to make a very unpopular comparison, one that surely will have some fans trying to revoke my own Whedon fandom: Bella, Buffy, and the bloodsuckers from Twilight and Buffy aren't all that different.

I say this as someone who only left her house once during the seven seasons of Buffy night, who watched each episode countless times, and amassed a huge pile of memorabilia. I say this as someone who has read Stephenie Meyers' series and enjoyed it for the ways it reflected and improved on my own fluffy YA reading (The Vampire Diaries), and knocked it for the Mormon-esque message underneath.

I haven't ignored my fandom; I just can't help but see the myriad of similarities between the two characters, ones that make Buffy owning Edward seem quite hypocritical. The power behind the slayer comes from Joss Whedon and the themes explored throughout her story -- not from the character herself. Strip away the story arcs and implied messages, and you've got a troubled woman who is no better off than Bella.

As much as we might like to poke fun at Twilight now and again, there's no denying it's a multimedia juggernaut. Besides the books, you can read about the stars in their off-hours in celeb gossip mags, listen to Twilight-inspired bands like The Bella Cullen Project, read Twilght fan fiction, peep fan art, buy all the Twilight tchotchkes your heart could desire over at Hot Topic or Amazon (like this jewelry box!) and, yes, get inked with Twilight-inspired tattoos.

But unless Stephenie Meyer starts cranking out some more books about Bella and Edward, the four Twilight tomes are going to be the end of Bella and Edward on the big screen... right?

Not necessarily, according to Twilight's producers, who were caught on video by the folks over at RadarOnline.com at the 36th Annual Vision Awards this past weekend. RadarOnline's intrepid reporter tracked down Wyck Godfrey and Greg Mooradian at one of the awards parties and asked them about the possibility of a spin-off about the Volturi family.

For those not in the know -- myself included -- the Volturi family is the big daddy coven of vamps, the "de facto royal family" according to the extensive Twilight wiki. The cast list for New Moon's Volturi clan stands out because it includes Michael Sheen, star of Frost/Nixon, The Queen and Tim Burton's highly anticipated remake of Alice in Wonderland, and future Runaway Dakota Fanning.

While Greg Mooradian played coy, he left the door open for spin-offs depending on how well the saga does in theaters and "[where] the audience demands us to go from there."

Don't worry: this post is perfectly safe to read. The link included, perhaps a little less so.

This might prove to be most amusing to those few souls who bothered to see this Twilight flick over the weekend -- since they've presumably already torn through the three books that follow -- but for everyone else, here's a word of warning: the image included after this link is one of a Queens subway poster for the film on which some considerate individual has succinctly written key spoilers from the remainder of the series.

(Also, he/she drew a penis on Edward's cheek. For dramatic effect, I suppose.)

Some of the remarks shared, I must admit to having skimmed over, and with any luck, they'll be lost to either apathy or amnesia once the other films come around (I can already feel the former kicking in). Only the first sequel, New Moon, has formally been announced, but come on: most people don't hesitate to print money once they're given a license to.

Look, I know the drill. If any element of the Twilight movie varies even slightly from the way you pictured it in your head, then it is the worst film ever made and you hate it and Catherine Hardwicke has ruined your childhood. Or, alternatively, you've built up so much anticipation for the movie that you're going to love love LOVE it no matter what, even if it's bad, you don't care, you refuse to listen to any criticisms LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU. I know how it goes.

The book's most devoted fans are seeing the film anyway, so I guess I'm talking to everyone else -- those who haven't read the book, or who (like me) read it, mostly enjoyed it, then didn't give it another thought. Is the Twilight movie of any use to those people? Or, as a friend asked me, does it work purely as a vampire movie?

Oh, heavens, no. Noooooo. This is not a vampire movie. This is a somber teen romance that happens to have some vampires in it. Little attempt is made to establish the mythology of the bloodsuckers, and the supernatural elements are downplayed -- a wise move, since the special effects, when they are necessary, are at about the level you'd expect from a movie that is more focused on romance than sci-fi action.

All of which is in keeping with the tone of Stephenie Meyer's book, which is eight parts romance and two parts action/fantasy. That's why it's been such a phenomenal success with women, and why the male-dominated geek industry -- the Nerderati, if you will -- has been so skeptical of that success. "What?" they scoff. "A super-popular vampire book that we, as men, AREN'T interested in? Inconceivable! It must be terrible, and its popularity is probably being over-reported!"

Remarkably faithful to the spirit of its source material, the film version of Twilight crams most of the key episodes from Stephenie Meyer's novel into its breathless, 122-minute running time. Under the direction of Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), Twilight gallops along handsomely, showcasing the cloudy, misty beauty of its gorgeous Pacific Northwest forest locations; you can practically smell the pine trees and feel the crunch of fallen leaves beneath your feet. Using voice-over narration sparingly, screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg trots out all the major (and most of the minor) characters from the book, recounting the story in abbreviated fashion while demonstrating respect for Meyer's novel and its huge, faithful audience.

Twilight may not add up to much more than the sum of its parts, but those parts can be mighty entertaining, especially when handsome Edward (Robert Pattinson, oozing uncertain charm) is whooshing through the woods with plucky Bella (Kristen Stewart, self-assured and determined) on his back. Still, the romance at the heart of the book has been shorn of some of its heart in the translation to the big screen, sacrificed on the altar of a broader demographic. Readers of the book could feel somewhat shortchanged by the relentless emphasis on forward momentum rather than romantic fantasy; the flip side is that newcomers can enjoy the whirlwind pace and the brooding, ominous atmosphere, and everyone can revel in the spectacle of flying vampires playing a pinball version of sandlot baseball.

At the end of a long day of interviews promoting Twilight, it might be exhaustion -- or high spirits -- that makes Kristen Stewart so blunt; asked if she's thought about walking away from the series just to mess with people's heads, she laughs: " Oh, God, yeah. I've totally had the thought; it would be so easy for me to send so many hundreds of girls into such a frenzy. It took a long time for me to admit that I was too bogged down by the first book, to admit to these girls that I wasn't as ... I'm just as obsessed as they are; I read it from an entirely different perspective and had to live it for three months. I can't start the next book unless I have the job to do, or I'm just gonna drive myself insane -- and even this, they don't get that. They're like "What? How could you not read the book ...?" Yeah, I have thought, many times. "What could I do?" It'd be so easy. ..."

Stewart spoke about coming to grips with a dedicated group of fans, getting into character, changing Bella's wardrobe, how she kept the natural in Twilight's supernatural story and much more in Los Angeles.

Cinematical: There's this great moment in Twilight where Bella's driving by the diner as her friends are walking out, and she's running for her life from vampires, and her friends are happy and she's sad ... Was it hard building a naturalistic character in this film, or was it a good place to retreat to, from all the special effects and supernatural stuff?

Kristen Stewart: It's funny; when we were doing the film, it didn't feel like a big effects movie. They were never around; we didn't have the money to pull it off; everything was in-camera. It always felt like a character-driven movie; it always felt like I may as well just be doing an indie, except there's like fifteen thousand more people sitting behind the monitor with opinions. In this case it was ... I feel like it's a very real world; the only little minor detail is that (Edward's) a vampire. And that could be very representative of any problem that a guy you're with may have, any sort of hang-up he may have; this is just a really sort of glorified extreme version of that. So, it was always so rooted in reality that no, that doesn't really apply.

Asked what she would tell theatergoers who have no interest in vampires that might make them want to see Twilight, her new film adapting Stephenie Meyers' best-selling story of immortal longings and teen love, director Catherine Hardwicke laughs: "I would say that when you come out of the theater you might be in danger of whoever went with you ... just grab(bing) you and start making out with you. ..." The director of gritty urban fare like Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown, Hardwicke also explained how she truly identified with Twilight's teen heroine and got into the supernatural series: "When I read the book, I just got drawn in, and ... as I read the book I just started becoming Bella, and just breathing and hyperventilating, like her, and getting mezmerized by the whole experience. ..." Hardwicke spoke about undead romance, adapting a much-loved book, the classic vampire visions she avoided, and much more with Cinematical in Los Angeles. You can listen to the podcast here at Cinematical by clicking below:

You can also download the interview in full right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

The craziness about the romance between a high school girl and a beautiful vampire has stretched across the Atlantic into some very strange territory. Blogging for The Guardian UK, Lisa Marks claims that Twilight has spawned a "rather interesting hybrid demographic who are getting their knickers in a twist" about the film's upcoming release (November 21 in the US, December 19 in the UK).

She defines the demographic as "teenage girls, young female adults and their mums" and says the demographic needs a name. She prefers "Twums," though she also suggests "Vampults," "Fantaseenagers," and "Mothersuckers." I finally made time to read the first novel in the Twilight series this summer, though I haven't delved into the many fan sites that have blossomed since the book's publication. But if you need a name to refer to Twilight fans -- besides, I don't know, "Twilight fans" -- what's wrong with "Twilighters"?

The larger question, though, and one that might have broader implications, is whether this "hybrid demographic" is actually new and will support films other than Twilight. Odd designations aside, that's the claim of Marks' blog post, but she doesn't point to any other possibilities down the road.

What other movies could spark interest among teenage girls, young female adults, and slightly older women (a press release from Fandango claims 42% of respondents to their online survey about Twilight are 25 or older) to this degree? The Guardian thinks romance is the driving force behind the "new" demographic, but doesn't the book (and series) tap into a wider array of issues, beyond the love story, that makes it appealing to so many people?