Reviewing the Twilight Saga is not as easy as it sounds. It’s a complicated story exploring the progression of unrequited love among frustrated lives struggling to be normal while living under a cloudy sky and perpetual rain in Washington near the Canadian border. The tale is based on the four novels written by Stephenie Meyer and is being told in five movies that faithfully follows the books.

Bella Swan, portrayed by Kristen Stewart is an attractive seventeen year old girl of divorced parents who arrives in Forks, Washington in the first film, Twilight, released in 2008. Her self image expresses a wounded psyche, “I’m the kind of girl that suffers in silence” as she apologizes for her clumsiness rather than seeing the beauty others see in her.

The most outstanding thing about the film, directed by Cathrine Hardwicke with a screenplay by Melissa Rosenberg is the rain. When Edward played by Robert Pattinson and his family enter the lunchroom everything changes. Mysterious, he sulks as Bella gazes at him and their eyes lock. Later, in biology lab Edward appears as if he is going to vomit when he looks at her, storming out of the classroom leaving her feeling reviled. Finally, after some puzzling events, Bella googles, “the cold one’s,”  and discovers that the Cullen’s are vampires, and Edward has been seventeen for a long time, accumulating decades of teenage angst at the age of 109. He later reveals his attraction to Bella,”I’ve never craved anyone’s blood like I want yours.” She responds, “I trust you. ”

Bella’s relationship with her father from whom she has been estranged is awkward, adding to the alienation she already feels. Charlie, played by Billy Burke, is her young dad who is himself trapped in his own emotional withdrawal in a boring existence without any passion as the chief of police. Although the love and concern they have for each other is apparent, the conversations between them are strained as they have little to talk about.

The stakes are amplified as Bella is threatened by James, a powerful rogue vampire who almost kills her. He is eventually dismembered and burned to cinder by the Cullen clan, allowing Edward to take Bella to the prom night dance where she declares her love and expresses a desire to become a vampire and lurk the forest with him.

New Moon, released in 2009 was directed by Chris Weitz in a screenplay again written by Melissa Rosenberg picks up where the first film left off. Bella and Edward are now openly involved, but age is catching up with her as her eighteenth birthday approaches and she dreams of getting so old that Edward will no longer want her. A party is planned at the Cullen’s house and the event turns into a nightmare as she cuts her finger dripping blood on the carpet that turns Jasper, Edwards brother played by Jackson Rathbone into a carnivorous rage. Edward, realizing the danger decides to leave Bella for good, “you don’t belong in my world,” he says, asking her not to do anything reckless and in return promises, “this is the last time you will ever see me, and you can go on with your life without me.” The plot proceeds to develop the love triangle between Bella and Jacob Black, played by Taylor Lautner as the younger post pubescent member of the Quileute tribe who she seeks solace from as months of deep depression take its toll after Edward leaves.

Bella soon realizes that by taking risks, Edward comes to her as an apparition guiding her towards safety. She becomes intentionally self destructive and seeks to provoke his appearance, hoping he will come back. She uses Jacob to ease her pain as he begins to get feverish and discovers his werewolf nature, a genetic trait he inherited from his Native American heritage carried by his ancestors to protect the tribe and it’s land. Life gets even more problematic for Bella as Victoria, the vampire mate of James from the first movie stalks her to seek revenge for his death by the Cullen’s.

As Jacob and his pack protect Bella, Edward calls to see if she is well but is led to believe by Jacob who answers the phone that she is dead.  Overwhelmed by sadness, Edward decides to go to the Volturi, the vampire counterpart of the Vatican located somewhere in Italy to ask to be killed. The Volturi is the ruling body of vampire law with members who have special powers to maintain order. Distraught and intent on saving Edward, Bella flies to Italy to stop him from ending his life. Alice, his sister,  superbly played by Ashley Greene accompanies her. When Bella saves Edward, she also encounters the Volturi who intend to kill her, but agree to let her go with the provision that she be turned into a vampire.

Eclipse, the third installment of the saga, released on June 30, 2010 was directed by David Slade with the script (all five) written by Melissa Rosenberg. Now we have an army of newbie vampires, created and trained by Victoria to track Bella and destroy the Cullen clan who has formed an alliance with the wolves to protect her and Forks in a final confrontation.

The love story between Bella and Edward becomes more complicated as she is now approaching her nineteenth birthday, two years older than Edward in mortal reckoning. She is pressuring him to turn her before the age difference becomes more noticeable. He urges her to marry him first, but she is reluctant to tie the knot, “Its just a piece of paper,” she remarks. He reminds her, “I come from another era when courting, drinking iced tea on the porch and asking her father for her hand in marriage is the way it was done.” When Charlie expresses his discomfort with Edward, Bella proclaims, “Hey dad, I’m still a virgin.” Charlie responds, “well, I like that boy even more now.” But Edward still grapples with guilt over turning Bella because he feels it would be a selfish act and understands the consequences to her soul even if she doesn’t.

The action is predictable, a final battle between Victoria’s army and the alliance of the Cullen clan and Wolves end in success for the forces of good but not without some physical injuries to Jacob who also hurts when he hears that Bella has accepted Edwards proposal of marriage. She kisses Jacob but declares to Edward, “I love him, but I love you more.”

Despite the flaws in the script, the bad acting and the incessant rain, I liked all three installments. It’s a story narrated from Bella’s perspective about how everything that has happened has led her to make the decision to become a vampire.

At the end of the film she says to Edward. “This wasn’t a choice between you and Jacob, it was between who I should be and who I am. I’ve always felt out of step, literally stumbling through my life, I’ve never felt normal because I’m not normal. But now I know I don’t want to be. I’ve faced death and loss and pain in your world, but I’ve also never felt stronger, more real, more myself because its my world too. Its where I belong.”

The Chosen One – The Story Of Buffy’s Sacrifice And Unrequited Love

Chronic Dissatisfaction And The Strigoi Of Europe

Recently, when President Obama was asked about the Top Kill Project, the plan to plug the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico, he declared, “If it’s successful, and there are no guarantees, it should greatly reduce or eliminate the flow of oil streaming into the Gulf from the sea floor, but if it’s not, there are other approaches that may be viable.” Never-the-less, this situation has focused attention on the necessity for seeking alternative fuel sources even though it will cause a great deal of pain from the costly changes in lifestyle required to kick the dependence on oil.

One way to resolve the global reliance on fossil fuels was suggested in a popular 1951 novel by British writer John Wyndhum who was relatively unknown until The Day Of The Triffids catapulted him from literary obscurity and established him as a major fiction writer. The public saw the book as a science fiction post apocalyptic satire about cultural dependence on the products of the industrial revolution while others contended it to be a play about how karma unfolds for those who did not open there eyes to see what was approaching.

The Triffids, a fictional creation of Wyndhum are described as large venomous plants genetically manipulated by industry controlled farms as a substitute for petroleum. “They can communicate through sound and have three feet which allows them mobility with poisonous tentacles that kill their prey and consume its flesh.”

The pivotal event that occurs is a dazzling display of lights in the sky from a passing comet that destroys the optic nerve and renders anyone who views them blind. Only a few on the planet are unaffected as the horrific consequences lead to the escape and proliferation of the triffids that seek humans as a source of food and display a remarkable ability for enhancing their intelligence with each successive generation by sharpening their predatory nature as ruthless hunters.

The first film adaption of the novel was in 1963 and starred Howard Keel, most known as the lead actor in a long string of MGM musicals of the 1950′s including Showboat and Kiss Me Kate, and who went on to television notoriety playing the second husband of Miss Ellie, matriarch of the Ewing clan on Dallas. This version was considered more of a horror movie that brought the triffid spores to Earth from the meteor shower much like the pods in The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956). “Triffids are portrayed as aliens, and come from outer space, depicted as carnivorous monsters, evil in nature.” But few elements of the  original novel were in the script which had a happy ending when it was discovered that seawater turned the triffids into mush. The salvation of the human race presented in narrative form is similar to the microbes that miraculously ended The martian invasion in The War Of The Worlds (1953).

In December 2009 the BBC aired a made for TV miniseries which was never shown in the United States. This production  is  much more faithful to the 1951 book. It lays responsibility for the creation of the triffids on scientists and oil companies too quick to hail the discovery of triffid oil as the silver bullet to the crisis while doing nothing to change consumer consciousness except by transferring the dependence from fossil fuel to triffid oil, also regulated by the oil industry.

In this version as in the original novel, the plants did not come from outer space, nor are they monsters, but rather a species that comply  with the same biology that bacteria and virus’s have   evolved based on the scientific principle of adaptation. All this as a blind human race succumbs to the cattle call of their triffid predators reminiscent of the morlocks in H. G. Wells, The Time Machine.

The 2009 made for TV film stars two members of the Redgrave family, Jolie Richardson and her mother Vanessa Redgrave in a small but pivotal role as a mother superior who claims to hear the word of God and delivers blind people to the triffids as a human sacrifice to prevent the carnivores from overrunning the abbey she heads. Redgrave, considered by many as the foremost English speaking actress of the twentieth century is also well known for her controversial political and social activism which plays well in this role.

The breakdown of society, its moral foundations and the lines of good and evil are drawn differently in this intelligent production, with superb action and special effects, although the climax does not end as happily as it did for the 1961 film. The population of the planet is consumed and only a small community of sighted people survive on the Isle of White as reality deals a blow to those blinded by the consequences of corporate greed , cultural addiction and disregard for ecological balance.

“Even a man who is pure in heart

And says his prayers by night

May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms

And the autumn moon is bright”

Among Europe’s most popular legends are the Strigoi, known as the tortured souls that rise from the dead with the ability to transform themselves into animals, drain energy from their victims and make themselves invisible. Some scholars argue that they can be living beings with supernatural instincts instilled with the power to move objects, control the passage of time and possess special insight to foretell the future.

There are many stories about what lurks in the forests of Europe where the Strigoi dwell as human sized predatory creatures with unusual speed. A ripe subject for literature, cinema and television. They tell the common tale of chronic dissatisfaction with life, cursed while trapped within a fear of change. The only other way to attain immortality is by seeing though the illusion of life’s addiction and ascend, aware only of movement since direction is subjective. But even to do that, one still has to suffer as does the tortured souls most feared in myths in an ironic twist of fate.

Although he never refers to the undead, Woody Allen has included some witty dialogue about chronic dissatisfaction in his 2008 film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, “Life is short, life is dull and full of pain and this is a chance for something special.” Some of the directors words also seem to explain why love stories between humans and the Strigoi are so compelling, “Only unfulfilled love can be romantic,”  as images of Edward and Bella, Angel and Buffy are evoked.

Most of the claims about the Strigoi have been dismissed as hallucinations, fables usually attributed to a curse using breadcrumbs to lure an audience as a common ploy of witches who live in candy houses somewhere in the woods of the Carpathian mountains where beasts prey upon lost souls who only know what they don’t want, effectively becoming yet another victim of chronic dissatisfaction.

Sixty years earlier the film Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) took a comical look at the undead. A respected horror film that is considered by the American Film Institute (AFI) among the top 100 films of American cinema. The plot is set in Florida and surrounds four different kind of Strigoi as Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster are smuggled out of eastern Europe as wax dummies pursued by the man who turns into the werewolf while the invisible man makes a cameo appearance at the end of the film. Even though he cannot be seen a voice is heard, “allow me to introduce myself, I’m the invisible man.”

Although none of them appear in a Woody Allen film, all of them were effected by chronic dissatisfaction and madness.

During the Roman Empire, a group of large carp like fish known as genus Barbus were domesticated in marble tanks under the bed of guests invited to lavish Roman Orgies  signifying their fascination with underwater life that led to aquariums. But, it wasn’t known until much later that goldfish like others in the Carp family are social animals who frequently become bored with their environment when left alone without other fish to interact. For them, a stark, un-embellished bowl of water just wont do because their inclination when happy is to be curious. In fact this quality is believed to have encouraged the development of elaborate fish tank rock formations, miniature sunken ships and the R2 Fish Training Kit. which made Albert the goldfish pictured above a member of the Guinness Book Of Records as the fish with the largest repertoire of tricks of any aquatic vertebrate with scales.

According to historical records, The concept of fish school, not to be confused with a school of fish was first founded by Dean and Kyle Pomerleau in 2004. Kyle who was seven years old at the time won two common goldfish at a school fair spending hours watching them for several weeks. He suspected that there was more going on in their brains then most people were willing to give them credit for. On a whim, he and his father decided to see if it was possible to train fish to do tricks using techniques frequently associated with  training dogs, cats, and circus animals.

In an attempt to give fish their just due as responsive pets rather than some kind of decoration at risk for being flushed down the toilet or eaten by a house cat, their scientific investigation led to the Fish School Training Manual, initially written in French. The basic principles set forth in the pamphlet are positive reinforcement and shaping which uses the fish’s innate curiosity to encourage behavior modification. After all, Kyle  claimed,  “Fish have often been served in various cultures as religious symbols, deities and the subject of art, books and films such as The Incredible Mr. Limpit,” a 1964 live action/animated film by Warner Brothers about a human who mysteriously turns into a talking fish and helps the US Navy defeat the Nazis using his “thrum,” an intense  noise that disrupts underwater  instruments and weapons long before Finding Nemo won the Oscar as best animated feature in 2005.

In Hinduism, Avatar is a  Sanskrit word referring to the conscious descent of a deity from heaven to earth often translated into English as “incarnation,” but a  more appropriate term is “manifestation.” Its meaning is the basis of James Cameron’s visual epic that took fourteen years to complete depicting native life of Pandora, a planet that takes several years to reach in suspended animation. The film is an artistically stunning adventure in 3D worth seeing  even if the story, written in two weeks, is a bit derivative with a  screenplay that borrows heavily from some of the directors previous work and brings to mind too many similarities to Dances With Wolves.

The military look of the film is so reminiscent of  Aliens that it distracted me from  becoming immersed in the film. Aliens is the 1986 classic that Cameron directed about the bugs that gestate in the chest of its living host and have acid for blood. As in Aliens, the company or corporation features prominently as the prime antagonist of evil instigating  the invasion force that plans to drain Pandora’s natural resources for the benefit of Earth. Our planet is now an ecologically depleted waste land, a victim of economic greed that Weavers character, Dr. Grace Augustine, a Bio-Anthropologist opposes as passionately as she did as Ellen Ripley in Aliens.

The feel of the film’s technology including a cargo loader machine similar to the one Ripley uses to defeat the queen bug at the end of Aliens is featured in facsimile in a major battle scene at the end of Avatar. This similarity is an annoying element of this new film which was written, directed and produced by Cameron with a running time of 2 hours and 40 minutes.

Although the 3D nature of the films construction is groundbreaking, the plot is predictable and the characters are too two dimensional drawing  heavily from other science fiction/ fantasy films. The premise that all living things emanate a common energy also known as “the force”  fills everything in the universe is perhaps a reference to the  Star Wars universe , not that there is anything wrong with imitation, but even the forests of Pandora,  a magical place  with luminescent creatures and large revered trees  evokes the image of Lothlorien the mystical home  of the elves of Middle Earth. Add to all this the notion of cloning a personal avatar and a neural link, then  Alien Resurrection and The Matrix comes  to mind. But despite all its flaws, Avatar is worth seeing if only to make one realize that Star Trek (2009) is a much better film.