New Moon scenes were unveiled yesterday at Comic Con and the movie looks impressive! The clips seems to suggest that it is not diverting from the novel written by Stephanie Meyer. Check out the clips below. Beware of lots of screaming. What do you think?
Clip 1
Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) and Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) are bent over an antique light blue motorcycle. Jacob wears jeans, a brown t-shirt, and his hair is long. As Bella sits on the motorcycle, Jacob guides her hands (touching!) over the handles. “Brake. Clutch. Gas,” he reminds her. Bella revs the engine. “Slowly release the clutch,” says Jacob.
Suddenly, Bella sees the translucent apparition of Edward, a concerned look on his face, standing in front of her. We can see him, but also see through him. Bella takes off on the bike.
As she zooms down the road, Bella gains speed. She zooms by another apparition of Edward, standing in her path. She speeds by another. Losing focus, Bella swerves and falls from the bike, hitting her head on a rock.
Jacob speeds over to Bella on his own bike, coming to a stop with a flourish. He hops off the bike and rushes to Bella’s side. She is bewildered, and blood gushes from a gash on her forehead.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Jacob asks. Bella apologizes for the blood, but it doesn’t bother Jacob.
He takes a step back, the camera following his every move. Jacob strips off his shirt, revealing a six-pack, and bends down to dab Bella’s wound with it. Their faces come very close.
“You’re so beautiful,” she tells him. Emotion flashes across his face.
END SCENE. TWILIGHTERS SCREAM.
Unveiled at the close of the panel, Chris Weitz introduced the pivotal Volterra scene:
Clip 2
Alice and Bella are winding through the streets of Volterra, slowed by massive crowds of townspeople in red robes, celebrating the festival. Bella jumps out of the car.
“You’re the only one he can’t see. He’ll be under the clock tower. Go!” says Alice.
Bella races through the crowded city. We see her at times in slow motion.
She fights her way through the crowd, stopping at the fountain in the middle of the square. In slow motion, she looks up to see Edward, slowly unbuttoning his shirt just moments away from revealing himself in the sunlight. He opens his shirt to expose his pale chest. (And his abs. Very nice abs.)
Bella screams out to Edward. “Stop! Stop! No Edward, don’t!”
The big day is coming November 21st. Are you ready? Meet the cast and refresh your memory to get ready for the Twilight movie. Does the movie cast fit who you pictured when you were reading the book?
KRISTEN STEWART
Role Intuitive heroine Bella Swan
Where you’ve seen her Stewart’s built her résumé playing daughter to some of Hollywood’s biggest leading ladies, including Jodie Foster, in Panic Room, and Meg Ryan, in In the Land of Women. More recently she played singing teen Tracy Tatro, in Into the Wild.
For her part, Stewart was attracted to the role of Bella because of the gawky teen’s first brush with romance. ”What I love about the story,” Stewart says, ”is that it’s about a very logical, pragmatic girl who you think would never get swept into something that has this bizarre power.”
ROBERT PATTINSON Role Smoldering vamp Edward Cullen, who craves Bella’s body — and her blood Where you’ve seen him The brooding Brit is best known as doomed wizard Cedric Diggory, from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
At first, Pattinson was unsure how to play the most beautiful creature on Earth. ”Here’s this guy who seems to be the embodiment of every single perfect guy. Okay, I’m going to look like a complete idiot if I just try to do that — like give a half-Fonz, half-George Clooney impression,” Pattinson says. ”But then I did it with Kristen and it was completely different. We had this chemistry that just worked.”
TAYLOR LAUTNER Role Bella’s bud Jacob Black Where you’ve seen him Tweeners will remember Lautner as the titular superhero trained by great whites in Robert Rodriguez’s The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D. The 16-year-old also has a recurring role on the Christian Slater spy series My Own Worst Enemy. Though Lautner’s role in the first of the Twilight flicks is small, it is integral: He helps Bella uncover vampire Edward’s true identity.
PETER FACINELLI Role Dr. Carlisle Cullen, the patriarch of the vegetarian vampire coven Where you’ve seen him Facinelli broke Jennifer Love Hewitt’s heart as douchey jock Mike Dexter in the teen flick Can’t Hardly Wait.
ELIZABETH REASER Role Matriarch Esme Cullen Where you’ve seen her Reaser had multiple identities (Jane Doe! Ava! Rebecca!) on Grey’s Anatomy before dating multiple former flames on the recently canceled Ex List.
ASHLEY GREENE Role Pixieish prognosticating vamp Alice Cullen Where you’ve seen her Probably nowhere, unless you’re really looking. The 21-year-old has had a few TV guest spots on Crossing Jordan and Shark, and had a seven-episode run on MyNetworkTV’s Desire
JACKSON RATHBONE Role Alice’s significant other, mood-manipulating Jasper Hale Where you’ve seen him Rathbone’s had a slew of TV guest spots ranging from The O.C. to the short-lived Beautiful People.
KELLAN LUTZ Role Edward’s muscle-bound “brother” Emmett Cullen Where you’ve seen him Lutz saw combat as a soldier on the miniseries Generation Kill and has been hitting the books as a West Beverly student on 90210.
NIKKI REED Role Emmett’s mate and resident sourpuss Rosalie Hale Where you’ve seen her Reed first teamed up with Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke in 2003, co-writing the film Thirteen, which Hardwicke directed and Reed starred in. They met up again on 2005’s Lords of Dogtown before Reed moved to The O.C. to play one of Ryan’s love interests.
CAM GIGANDET Role Baddie bloodsucker James, who’s out for Bella’s neck Where you’ve seen him Kicking butt is nothing new for Gigandet who played a fighter in 2008’s Never Back Down and Marissa’s killer on The O.C..
RACHELLE LEFEVRE Role James’ fiery-haired mate Victoria Where you’ve seen her As husband-stealing Melinda on Swingtown and as Adam’s stripper wife, Heather, on What About Brian
EDI GATHEGI
Role The third member of James’ gang, Laurent Where you’ve seen him Gathegi played a Mormon geneticist dubbed “Big Love” on House.
BILLY BURKE Role Bella’s police-chief father, Charlie Swan Where you’ve seen him Burke’s no stranger to the badge, having played a detective in Untraceable and a police lieutenant in Fracture.
Those Very lovely publishers over at Hachette Group are giving my readers another chance to win a copy of Breaking Dawn! If you haven’t bought your copy yet, or even if you have and want to get an early start on your Christmas shopping, all you have to do is leave a comment here to enter to win! I would be thrilled and tickled if you posted about this contest anywhere, esp. Twilight or Teen Forums so those lovely teens can know about this contest. If you do so, please link it back here for an extra entry! You can read my review here. So sorry U.S. and Canada only and I will draw a winner on Sat. September 13th. Good luck and Miriam is the best!
I know, I know, more Breaking Dawn/Twilight news. Below is an amusing article from New York Magazine called “Did Breaking Dawn Ruin the Twilight Series. Out of 1.3 million copies sold, Barnes and Noble has had FIFTEEN copies returned. Ooh such a backlash! Did you know the Amazon reviews are up 1,522 after just four DAYS since the books release. To compare, The final Harry Potter book has 3,189 reviews since it’s release almost one YEAR ago. Warning this article Contains Spoilers!! (and bad language) Just a few days left to enter my contest to win a pile of fourteen books and a copy of Breaking Dawn! Click HERE to enter and make sure you enter the other giveaways for Tan Lines and Driving Sideways!!
All these posts have plenty of commenters debating the book’s merits; some love it, while some feel it completely ruined the series. The L.A. Times‘ Denise Martin didn’t like it and says that unlike J.K. Rowling in her series finale, “Meyers bunted.” But based on all the totally crazy shit that happens in the book, it doesn’t seem that way to us.
Thanks to the hugely entertaining live blogs of Breaking Dawn by LiveJournal blogger Cleolinda Jones — well worth a read even if you don’t know the books — we now know that the following insane things occur in the final volume of the Twilight series (spoilers ahoy!):
• Bella, the human, and Edward, the vampire, get married.
• Then they have rough sex that leaves her bruised and battered. (Also, he bites a pillow and covers her with feathers.)
• Then she gets totally pregnant with some kind of demon death baby who grows at a superhuman rate, can read thoughts in the womb, drinks blood in utero, and breaks Bella’s ribs, pelvis, and spine from the inside.
• Some werewolf stuff happens.
• The baby is delivered via Cesarean section, which is a polite way of saying that other characters rip Bella’s stomach open with their teeth. (“Seriously, they cannot make this into a movie. I cannot imagine for one second how they could make this into a movie appropriate for teenage girls and keep this part in it.”)
• Bella becomes a vampire and develops superpowers and has sex with Edward a lot of times.
• Everybody lives happily forever after.
Cleolinda’s No. 1 unanswered question is a good one, though: What’s it like doing it with the undead? “Was it like fucking a popsicle?” Alas, we’ll never know. Cleolinda’s review, though, really makes us want to buy the book, not return it:
I have to say, y’all, that what follows is possibly the most awesome crackfic of any of the series so far. I love it and kind of want to snuggle it a little. Seriously, I keep hearing about all the True Fans freaking out, and honestly? I don’t see anything in the new book that wasn’t in the previous three. As in, I don’t get why you’re offended now. I mean, yes, there’s sex (yes, sex) and gore, and the previous section made me want to curl up and die, but I have no problems with Breaking Dawn that I didn’t already have with the other three (frequently, vehemently, and at top volume), and Breaking Dawn is far better written on a purely stylistic level to boot. So.
(This is spoiler-heavy. Consider yourself warned.)
It’s virtually impossible not to draw parallels between “Breaking Dawn,” the concluding installment in the “Twilight” series, and the final “Harry Potter” book. Both involve revolve around mythic worlds and young, ill-prepared protagonists headed toward a supernatural showdown between good and evil.
The problem is Stephenie Meyer is no J.K. Rowling. We who’ve enjoyed the work of both authors have known this since we picked up “Twilight.” (I like Edward too, but there’s only so many times I can read how “beautiful,” “perfect” and “dazzling” he is.) But with these final chapters, in which both authors really swung for the epic, Meyer’s bunted.
Things looked promising at first. The pace is swift and the curve balls surprising and frequent: Bella and Edward finally get busy, we get inside Jacob’s head, Bella joins the Cullens in immortality, Jacob finds his mate.
But all the while, a larger story arc is missing. The love triangle is, sadly, summarily dealt with, and once the romance is over we’re left only with Edward and Bella’s child Renesmee — even the name, well, it’s no Hermione is it — and all the conflicts she so quickly and disappointingly resolves. Edward versus Jacob? Over and done with. Vampires versus werewolves? One big happy family. Bella being a ravenous newborn? She’s not going to eat her kid!
So what to when you’ve written yourself into a corner? Meyer is forced to more or less start over and she spends the second half of “Breaking Dawn” going for outright thriller. The second half of the book singularly involves the mystery of Renesmee and shielding her from the threat of the Volturi, an enemy initially so full of literary potential. Bella, Jacob, Edward and the rest of the “Twilight” characters become little more than Renesmee’s anxious protectors.
Bogged down in the new, too convenient mythology — Bella’s new power is the only one that will matter — the book winds up faltering under its own weighty aspirations. Bella’s covert operation, the additions to the Cullen camp, the unique powers of the new vampires are explained so thoroughly yet serve so little dramatic effect that “Breaking Dawn” could easily have trimmed off 200 pages and reached the same anticlimactic ending. What’s worse, the new guys are there merely to populate the side of good for a battle that — the big spoiler — never happens. That’s right. No blood shed. No deaths of loved ones to kill readers in the gripping way Rowling did in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”
At least when you get to page 735 — where you’ll find the resolution neatly tied up — it’s more a confirmation of what you saw coming rather than simply a letdown. And as for the final scene, Meyer writes this one like she’s already imagined it on the big screen, with the swelling of sappy love song and a fade to black.
We would have much preferred the whole thing to end in book three, “Eclipse,” with yes, some happiness for Bella, but also some angst, some heartbreak, and a dark, ominous future looming.
I feel dirty! I posted yesterday about all the Breaking Dawn bad reviews and went ahead and posted the spoilers since the book is already out. I debated doing it, but I did it for those who have read the book, I wanted to know their opinions and for those who haven’t read the book, I posted to not read ahead if they didn’t want to know the ending. Well, I had no idea that this little book blog would get so many views from that one post that I am embarrassed to say how many. I will say I have NEVER had so much traffic. Stephanie Meyer is brilliant, she has caused so much controversy that Breaking Dawn will go beyond sales anyone has ever seen. When I posted about the Amazon reviews yesterday there were already 97 reviews posted. Today when I just checked there are already 308 reviews posted and the book just came out on Saturday! So reading Breaking Dawn is on my agenda this week! Some other books I have just finished and are ready to go for reviews are Driving Sideways by Jess Riley ( I will be having a giveaway from the author on Wednesday!) and Queen of the Road by Doreen Orion ( she will be doing a guest post on Tuesday!) Both were FANTASIC books! Happy Reading!!
For those of us who have read the books and for those of you who “gasp” haven’t, here is a primer to get you ready for the big day! I found this on E.W. website. I love that site!
BELLA The Heroine
Told from the point of view of a smart, reserved 17-year-old rocked by giant love, the Twilight series is an antidote for a generation tired of back tattoos, belly piercings, and Paris Hilton. Some critics dismiss Bella as being just another damsel in distress. ”Just because she doesn’t do kung fu and she cooks for her father doesn’t make her worthy of that criticism,” defends Meyer.
FORKSThe Hometown
Bella moves to small-town Forks, a drizzly green hamlet in Washington, to live with her sheriff father Charlie and start her junior year in high school. It’s the opposite in every way from Phoenix, where Bella previously lived with her flighty Mom. (Incidentally, Meyer herself lives outside Phoenix but now summer vacations in a Pacific Northwest town a lot like Forks.)
THE CULLEN FAMILYThe Allies
Bella befriends a strange, beautiful family, led by calm town doctor Carlisle and his radiant wife, Esme. Turns out all of them — ”brothers and sisters” Edward, Rosalie, Emmett, Alice, and Jasper, too — crave blood, but they’ve weaned themselves off the human stuff. Meyer balked at an early Twilight script because the screenwriter had cut her beloved Cullens, save Edward, entirely from the film.
ROBERT PATTINSONEdward Incarnate
The actor, best known for playing Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, sent the Twilighter blogosphere into a jeering fit when it was announced he’d been cast as Edward. ”They freaked out,” sighed Meyer. ”And now all their taglines on their posts say ‘When God made Robert Pattinson he was just showing off.’ ” Teenage girls = fickle beasts.
TEAM EDWARDVampire Fans
”Oh my gosh, I want Edward’s body!” is a typical response from fans of the hairless, amber-eyed teenage vampire. ”If Bella decided to leave Edward I couldn’t forgive her,” said one ardent fan on Meyer’s recent book tour. Unconcerned about the heroine giving up her mortality in the name of love, the 19-year-old suggested that ”They can adopt little babies and make them vampires!” Cute. Creepy, but cute.
TEAM JACOBWolf Parade
Edward, desperate to protect Bella’s safety and salvation, vanishes in Book 2, leaving her broken. A passionate offshoot of fans fell for Bella’s younger buddy Jacob, cheery and reliable, and yes, part werewolf, after he reintroduced her to blue skies. Bella is hopelessly smitten with the sexy vampire, but Team Jacob cheered when she gave into a heady kiss at the end of Eclipse.
James The Evil Vampire One of the funnest things about this very fun film was getting to see Cam Gigandet, who stars as the villian, being all James-y. Most of you know that Cam will be playing James in the Twilight movie, and now I can vouch for the fact that he will be awwwwwwwwesome.
CONSUMMATIONThe Deed
Meyer revealed exclusively to EW.com that she had the pleasure in Book 4 of writing Edward and Bella’s wedding scene. (Don’t worry Team Jacob, your boy just hasn’t ”imprinted” yet with his true love!) Now fans, who might dig the action, but really come back for the romance, are free to fantasize just how far Meyer will take things on the honeymoon night.
MIDNIGHT SUNEdward’s Turn
Meyer has told her fans that Breaking Dawn will be the last book she writes from Bella’s point of view. (”The reason the books have gone on so long is I have a harder time giving up Bella’s humanity than she does,” says Meyer. ”She’s so quick to say ‘No, give it all away, I’m ready to die right now!”’) But the author already has half of Midnight Sun, Twilight as narrated by Edward, cooking on her computer.
Here is a wrap up of what happened today at Comic Con during the Twilight Movie session. I posted below a couple of interesting wrap ups I found. One is about the movie clip that was shown and the other is from an interview the reporter had with the Twilight cast, director and Stephanie. The best part for us Twilight fans is they both want to do New Moon! The second picture was taken from the panel discussion today and I must say Jacob looks cuter then Edward in this picture to me! What do you think? Team Edward or Team Jacob?
The clip was taken from near the end of the film. Bella (Stewart) opens up a door and sees a home video playing of her and her mother, taken years ago. Suddenly, James (Cam Gigandet) grabs her by the throat and slams her into the wall. He begins taunting her and takes out a camcorder to videotape the assault, presumably to give to Edward (Robert Pattinson). James starts roughing her up, throws her into a olumn, then appears to break her leg using only his super-powered hand. As his attack is just about to reach its peak intensity, Edward comes out of nowhere (the audience goes insane at this moment of the clip) and tackles James. The two have a fight that lasts a couple minutes, but a lot of it is spent throwing each other into things, while Bella is trying to stay out of the way. The clip ends.
My thoughts on this clip alone: A lot of hullabaloo was made during the roundtable and panel about how they used wirework for the action scenes, and no CGI. I can definitely testify that this is true; the action between the vampires is depicted using a combination of wirework, motion blur, and fast-forward cuts. The result seems like a fight scene that attempts to be a cross between The Matrix and the final fight scene from Blade 2…only made-for-TV. It’s possible that this clip (not to mention the film) will be refined between now and the film’s release, but at this point, I didn’t see anything that can allow me to recommend the movie to non-fans of the series. As for the acting, while Stewart is lovely and talented in whatever she does and Pattinson didn’t have much to do, I think even Cam Giganget himself would agree that he displays the same acting prowess he brought to Never Back Down. Make of this statement what you will.
An Interview with the Twilight Cast by Cole Abaius from filmschoolrejects.com
Despite the mob of “Twilight” fans attempting to give me presents and phone numbers (sorry, Gary, but I don’t think I’ll be calling you) and threatening vampire-themed violence toward fellow Reject, and known Twilight dissident, Rob Hunter, I managed to scrape my way to the second floor of Comic-Con to sit down with Stephanie Meyer, director Catherine Hardwicke, Robert Pattinson and several other casts members for a friendly round table discussion.
By the way, I really appreciate the presents (and the threats of violence toward Rob).
I got to ask Meyer and Hardwicke if they were interested in turning “New Moon” into a movie after Twilight. It’s no surprise that Meyer was interested – especially after saying her experience on Twilight has been so fantastic – but it was also good to hear that Hardwicke was enthusiastic about returning to the director’s spot if the film gets made and if she’s given the chance. Both said they “had their fingers crossed,” but hadn’t heard any official word on whether the studio was planning on it.
Hardwicke has a background with teenagers, directing Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown and Nativity Story. As for portraying teenage romance and sexuality, she hit the ground running with the controversial Thirteen, but she said she found the “Twilight” story fascinating because it’s “so sexy that [Edward and Bella] can’t get together.”
In fact, that’s what she considers, among other things, that sets Twilight apart from other vampire movies. “It’s so hot, sexy,” she said, going on to describe the world Meyer created as a place where every environment seems to spark teenage romance.
I think fans would agree that that’s a strong draw for the novels, and it’s good to see Hardwicke in tune with that sentiment while bringing the story to life on screen. Fans should rest easy – not only does Hardwicke “get” the “Twilight” universe, she’s passionate about it, getting visibly excited to talk about the details of the story and the filming. In fact, after reading the novel, she saw it as a better model for the movie than the original script treatment that got her interested in the project – so they reworked it.
Meyer herself claimed she was “immensely happy” with how Hardwicke and company were treating her work. That’s perhaps the best news of all for fans nervous about whether or not the movie will excite or disappoint. She’s seen about 15 minutes of footage (they’re still working on how to make Edward sparkle in the sun), but so far, she’s uninhibitedly excited about it.
Robert Pattinson, who’s already been part of a massive cultural phenomenon after appearing in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, seemed surprised when the vampire movie role he signed on for turned into something far larger. Citing the parallel timing of growing excitement for the books and the movie, he said he hadn’t planned on being front and center for another huge phenomenon, that it “came out of nowhere, suddenly exploded.”
Rachelle Lefevre, who plays Victoria and is breathtakingly stunning in person, echoed the sentiment by recalling a run in with an enthusiastic fan before any footage or pictures of the cast had been released. She also gave us some insight into playing pure evil by explaining she, and how awesome is this, “watched lion attacks on Youtube,” to prepare a bit for playing a vicious vamp.
In regards to playing Edward, Pattinson went into incredible depth about the nuance of bringing a seemingly nice guy with a lot of “resentfulness and anger” to life. “There’s a lot more pain,” he said, “because [The Cullens] are denying.” He went on to describe them as “pretending not to be vampires” in efforts to “not lose [their] soul.”
I have to admit, after getting a firm handle on Edward through reading the books, Pattinson impressed me with the subtleness of how he approached playing him – realizing that the character is a knight in sun-sparkling armor and a tormented creature that purposefully strives to fight against his own nature.
Pattinson also admitted (and appropriately bragged a bit) that he’s one of only a handful of people that has read Stephanie Meyer’s early drafts for her possible “Twilight” series that will come directly from Edward’s point of view. Whether that project will go through or not remains to be seen, but at this point, Meyer can do no wrong when it comes to publishing, and with a solid showing for Twilight at the box office, she may be on her way to doing-no-wrong on film.
Fans will also be glad to know that Taylor Lautner, who plays Jacob Black, is “just like any of those crazy girl fans out there,” when it comes to his enthusiasm for the book series. If that quote seems out of context, it probably, embarassingly is, but the bottom line seems to be that everyone working on the project has read the books, loves the books and wants to bring that world to life in the most accurate way possible. If I can make Taylor look a bit more manly after that quote, he also talked about how fun a challenge playing Jacob for a “New Moon” adaptation would be because of the ferociousness of the character. “Jacob becomes grumpy, fierce, hard to relate to [in 'New Moon'],” he said. He, too, was definitely interested in seeing the sequel become a reality, but for now he’s playing a Jacob who is a lot like Taylor himself – “outgoing and friendly”.
I also got to talk to Edi Gathegi, who plays Laurent. He reassured me and the rest of the roundtable that there’s going to be a lot of action, a lot of wire work, and little to no CGI. One of the cooler things he mentioned was his opportunity to use a machine that moves the actor 15 mph while the actor runs – giving the impression that the person is running at 30mph. The rig was used for the scenes where he was running through the forest, and I’ve decided I need one for my own personal use. Don’t judge me. It would be awesome.
So there you have it – excitement and enthusiasm all around from a cast, director, and creator that seem to all be on the same page about all things Twilight. I might get to sneak onto the main floor and catch some other Twilight news, so stay tuned for more. For now, it looks like rabid Twi-lighters everywhere should be really happy come December 12th.
Oh, and please go easy on fellow Reject Rob Hunter. I’m fairly certain he’s a closet-Twilight fan. Care to deny it, Hunter? Didn’t think so.
As a child, Kristen Stewart had starred as Jodie Foster’s daughter in Panic Room, but it wasn’t until last year, with Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, that she blossomed. ”Her mixture of innocence and longing just knocked me out,” Hardwicke says. Hoping she’d found her Bella, she took a red-eye flight to Pittsburgh — where Stewart, then 17, was shooting Greg Mottola’s Adventureland — and did an impromptu screen test with the actress. ”She’d been shooting all night, but she learned her lines on the spot,” Hardwicke says. ”She danced on the bed and chased pigeons in the park. I was captivated.” For Stewart, scoring the role was the easy part. She then needed to figure out how to play it. ”The only thing I could bring to Bella was to be myself,” Stewart says now. ”She’s an honest, up-front, seemingly logical girl. She’s alone but not lonely.”
As for the character of Edward, Meyer describes him as ”devastatingly inhumanly beautiful.” Not surprisingly, he has become a heartthrob to millions. ”Everybody has such an idealized vision of Edward,” Hardwicke says. ”They were rabid [about who I was going to cast]. Like, old ladies saying, ‘You better get it right.”’ She almost didn’t. Hardwicke had seen a picture of Robert Pattinson, a 22-year-old Brit best known as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but had been underwhelmed. So Pattinson flew to meet with Hardwicke at her home in Venice, Calif. His audition consisted of a love scene with Stewart on Hardwicke’s bed. ”It was electric,” Hardwicke says. ”The room shorted out, the sky opened up, and I was like, ‘This is going to be good.”’
Fans weren’t so sure at first, and some of the blogs were brutal. ”I stopped reading after I saw the signatures saying ‘Please, anyone else,”’ Pattinson says, laughing. To prepare for the role, the actor did more than just stay out of the sun. He wrote journal entries as Edward and shut himself off from his friends and family. ”I wanted to feel his isolation,” he says. Still, Pattinson didn’t transform into Edward in all ways. ”I was supposed to get a six-pack,” he says. ”But it didn’t really work out.”
No worries. Fans are already gushing about Twilight’s teaser trailer — surely a relief to Hardwicke. It was the fans who kept her motivated. On a single day, for instance, the filmmakers endured snow, rain, and hail. ”There were some days I cried,” she says. ”But then I would see these girls and moms who loved the book standing in the rain [watching], and I’d think, ‘I can’t have a pity party. I better stand up and make this scene great. I don’t care if it is hailing on me.”’ Or, heaven forbid, the sun is shining.
On a March day in Oregon, the sun’s as bright as a California morning. That’s great news for the locals, but it sucks if you’re a vampire. For two weeks, Twilight, the $37 million film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s best-selling novel, has been shooting outside Portland — a location chosen, in part, because the skies are often overcast. Vampires, in Meyer’s universe, can go out during the day but have to stay out of direct sunlight. Hence, today’s problem. Director Catherine Hardwicke (Lords of Dogtown) has had to scrap an exterior shoot, and, because tomorrow’s weather looks annoyingly cheery too, she’s been forced to rush into an intense romantic scene between her two young stars. ”We were building a bedroom in 24 hours,” Hardwicke says later. ”We were just sweating it.”
Fans have been sweating it too. Not since Harry Potter has a book-to-film journey inspired so much enthusiasm — or so much anxiety. The movie will follow the novel closely: Pretty but awkward 17-year-old Bella (Kristen Stewart) moves to a small town in the Pacific Northwest and falls in love with Edward (Robert Pattinson), a heartbreakingly beautiful vampire. Edward also falls for Bella, but his desire for her barely controls his instinct to devour her. It’s this combination of passion and danger, of course, that surrounds this teen romance with a halo of epic, doomed love. The girls who have gone crazy for the book have been vivisecting the film’s development online. Two girls from the Make-A-Wish Foundation even requested roles as extras. ”You can’t make this up,” Hardwicke says. With a fan base like that, all of Hollywood should have been jousting for the film rights. In fact, the movie almost didn’t happen.
In April 2004, Paramount’s MTV Films optioned Twilight, but then developed a script that bore little resemblance to it. (It featured night-vision goggles and transformed Bella into a hip track star.) ”They could have put that movie out, called it something else, and no one would have known it was Twilight,” Meyer says. Fortunately for devout fans of the book, Paramount put the project into turnaround. Then, in 2006, Erik Feig, president of production at Summit Entertainment, tried to make a deal with Meyer. The author had been burned before and resisted. Feig drew up a contract, guaranteeing the writer that the film would be true to her vision, including a promise that ”no vampire character will be depicted with canine or incisor teeth longer or more pronounced than may be found in human beings.” That did the trick.
Twilight, which will hit theaters on Dec. 12, is no garlic-and-fangs monster tale. It’s more Buffy than Nosferatu. Hardwicke, who made her directorial debut with the raw indie hit Thirteen, seemed an ideal match for the material. ”When I read the book, I could almost feel Bella breathing,” Hardwicke says. She hammered out a script with screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg (Step Up) in six weeks, then faced the daunting task of casting. The wrong choice would throw Twilighters into a tizzy. Hardwicke also wanted to cast an actual teenager to play Bella, which meant finding a teen who could convey Bella’s emotional depth and carry an entire film.
As a child, Kristen Stewart had starred as Jodie Foster’s daughter in Panic Room, but it wasn’t until last year, with Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, that she blossomed. ”Her mixture of innocence and longing just knocked me out,” Hardwicke says. Hoping she’d found her Bella, she took a red-eye flight to Pittsburgh — where Stewart, then 17, was shooting Greg Mottola’s Adventureland — and did an impromptu screen test with the actress. ”She’d been shooting all night, but she learned her lines on the spot,” Hardwicke says. ”She danced on the bed and chased pigeons in the park. I was captivated.” For Stewart, scoring the role was the easy part. She then needed to figure out how to play it. ”The only thing I could bring to Bella was to be myself,” Stewart says now. ”She’s an honest, up-front, seemingly logical girl. She’s alone but not lonely.”
As for the character of Edward, Meyer describes him as ”devastatingly inhumanly beautiful.” Not surprisingly, he has become a heartthrob to millions. ”Everybody has such an idealized vision of Edward,” Hardwicke says. ”They were rabid [about who I was going to cast]. Like, old ladies saying, ‘You better get it right.”’ She almost didn’t. Hardwicke had seen a picture of Robert Pattinson, a 22-year-old Brit best known as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but had been underwhelmed. So Pattinson flew to meet with Hardwicke at her home in Venice, Calif. His audition consisted of a love scene with Stewart on Hardwicke’s bed. ”It was electric,” Hardwicke says. ”The room shorted out, the sky opened up, and I was like, ‘This is going to be good.”’
Fans weren’t so sure at first, and some of the blogs were brutal. ”I stopped reading after I saw the signatures saying ‘Please, anyone else,”’ Pattinson says, laughing. To prepare for the role, the actor did more than just stay out of the sun. He wrote journal entries as Edward and shut himself off from his friends and family. ”I wanted to feel his isolation,” he says. Still, Pattinson didn’t transform into Edward in all ways. ”I was supposed to get a six-pack,” he says. ”But it didn’t really work out.”
No worries. Fans are already gushing about Twilight’s teaser trailer — surely a relief to Hardwicke. It was the fans who kept her motivated. On a single day, for instance, the filmmakers endured snow, rain, and hail. ”There were some days I cried,” she says. ”But then I would see these girls and moms who loved the book standing in the rain [watching], and I’d think, ‘I can’t have a pity party. I better stand up and make this scene great. I don’t care if it is hailing on me.”’ Or, heaven forbid, the sun is shining.
article written by Nicole Sperling for Entertainment Weekly Magazine
Breaking Dawn will be on sale August 2nd. Here is a sneak peek at chapter one. Don’t forget to enter my giveaway of The Host!
1. ENGAGED
NO ONE IS STARING AT YOU, I promised myself. No one is staring at you. No one is staring at you.
But, because I couldn’t lie convincingly even to myself, I had to check.
As I sat waiting for one of the three traffic lights in town to turn green, I peeked to the right — in her minivan, Mrs. Weber had turned her whole torso in my direction. Her eyes bored into mine, and I flinched back, wondering why she didn’t drop her gaze or look ashamed. It was still considered rude to stare at people, wasn’t it? Didn’t that apply to me anymore?
Then I remembered that these windows were so darkly tinted that she probably had no idea if it was even me in here, let alone that I’d caught her looking. I tried to take some comfort in the fact that she wasn’t really staring at me, just the car.
My car. Sigh.
I glanced to the left and groaned. Two pedestrians were frozen on the sidewalk, missing their chance to cross as they stared. Behind them, Mr. Marshall was gawking through the plate glass window of his little souvenir shop. At least he didn’t have his nose pressed up against the glass. Yet.
The light turned green and, in my hurry to escape, I stomped on the gas pedal without thinking — the normal way I would have punched it to get my ancient Chevy truck moving.
Engine snarling like a hunting panther, the car jolted forward so fast that my body slammed into the black leather seat and my stomach flattened against my spine.
”Arg!” I gasped as I fumbled for the brake. Keeping my head, I merely tapped the pedal. The car lurched to an absolute standstill anyway.
I couldn’t bear to look around at the reaction. If there had been any doubt as to who was driving this car before, it was gone now. With the toe of my shoe, I gently nudged the gas pedal down one half millimeter, and the car shot forward again.
I managed to reach my goal, the gas station. If I hadn’t been running on vapors, I wouldn’t have come into town at all. I was going without a lot of things these days, like Pop-Tarts and shoelaces, to avoid spending time in public.
Moving as if I were in a race, I got the hatch open, the cap off, the card scanned, and the nozzle in the tank within seconds. Of course, there was nothing I could do to make the numbers on the gauge pick up the pace. They ticked by sluggishly, almost as if they were doing it just to annoy me.
It wasn’t bright out — a typically drizzly day in Forks, Washington — but I still felt like a spotlight was trained on me, drawing attention to the delicate ring on my left hand. At times like this, sensing the eyes on my back, it felt as if the ring were pulsing like a neon sign: Look at me, look at me.
It was stupid to be so self-conscious, and I knew that. Besides my dad and mom, did it really matter what people were saying about my engagement? About my new car? About my mysterious acceptance into an Ivy League college? About the shiny black credit card that felt red-hot in my back pocket right now?
”Yeah, who cares what they think,” I muttered under my breath.
(c) 2008 by Stephenie Meyer, reprinted with permission from the Eclipse Special Edition published by Little, Brown and Company.
This drawing I am giving away a brand new copy of The Host by Stephanie Meyer and as a bonus a brand new copy of Mrs. Perfect by Jane Porter. Sign ups will be open until July 19th. The drawing will be held on July 20th. Thank you so much to Hachette book group for hosting this contest! Thanks so much for stopping by to enter! I appreciate you visiting my blog, keep coming back!
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Hi! I'm Tracy, and welcome to my Book Room. I am a stay at home wife and mom of three lovely boys. We are a Christian family and our favorite thing to do is to spend time together. We also love to do new product reviews and book reviews, and offer giveaways, and we would love to hear from you! Just click our media kit at the top of the blog or Email Me.
(This is spoiler-heavy. Consider yourself warned.)
BELLA The Heroine
FORKS The Hometown
THE CULLEN FAMILY The Allies
ROBERT PATTINSON Edward Incarnate
TEAM EDWARD Vampire Fans
James The Evil Vampire One of the funnest things about this very fun film was getting to see Cam Gigandet, who stars as the villian, being all James-y. Most of you know that Cam will be playing James in the Twilight movie, and now I can vouch for the fact that he will be awwwwwwwwesome.
CONSUMMATION The Deed
MIDNIGHT SUN Edward’s Turn 
