The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Podcast about Eclipse:




Who's In It: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Peter Facinelli, Bryce Dallas Howard, Xavier Samuel, Elisabeth Reaser, Nikki Reed, Kellan Lutz, Jackson Rathbone, Ashley Greene, Billy Burke, Sarah Clarke, Julia Jones, Chaske Spencer, Alex Meraz, Bronson Pelletier, Kiowa Gordon, Booboo Stewart, Christian Serratos, Michael Welch, Justin Chon, Anna Kendrick, Dakota Fanning

The Basics: High school senior Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), newly reunited with her sparkly vampire boyfriend, is now struggling with the decisions that every teenage girl must face: Have sex or stay chaste? Go to college or go undead? Team Edward (Robert Pattinson) or Team Jacob (Taylor Lautner)? Giving Bella's life even more of a sense of urgency is a new threat by the vampire Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her army of zombie-like "newborns," who wreak havoc across Seattle before heading straight for Forks, WA with one objective: kill Bella Swan. Will Bella quit making out with both of her supernatural beaus long enough to let them protect her? Will male audiences dig the violence enough to forget the super-talky relationship convos and the bland emo-rock soundtrack? And if a Twi-hard squeals in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does she really make a sound?

What's The Deal: As with the previous two Twilight films, one's enjoyment is directly proportionate to one's familiarity with and love for Stephenie Meyer's source novels. Fans with dog-eared copies of Eclipse should be delighted with screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg's faithfulness to the book, allowing for slight changes that up the cinematic ante as needed -- and they'll certainly shriek over the numerous makeout scenes that Rosenberg has generously sprinkled throughout. (ZOMG!) But while director David Slade (30 Days of Night) does an admirable job of keeping Meyer's sprawling story on pace and gives handsome visual life to Eclipse with the help of returning DP Javier Aguirresarobe, the script spends too much time on long stretches of plot-building dialogue and torrid, tortured conversations to really captivate the uninitiated. Granted, that fidelity is essential if you want to please the hardcore. But Meyer's third book had the potential to be adapted into the kind of truly dark and action-packed third film that could bring new viewers to the franchise, and even as the most balanced of the three Twilight films thus far, Eclipse is not quite the departure from formula that it promised to be.

Full review in http://www.movies.com/movie-reviews/the-twilight-saga-eclipse-review/jen-yamato/m60142