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Twilight Superfans BlogMONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2009  Salon.com has an insightful piece exploring the "Twilight" phenomenon's appeal to adult women. This should be required reading for most of the media outlets covering the opening of "New Moon" these last two weeks--most still speak of the "Twilight" series as something only teenage girls go ga-ga for. Maddening, because on the "Twilight" fansite forums, at the lines of fans camped out for the premiere, and at the theatres I saw "New Moon" at, the 21-and-over populace significantly outnumbered the teens. Here is an excerpt: Last summer, it seemed as though every 30-something female I knew was reading "Twilight." And these were not literary middlebrows who consider Dan Brown the Shakespeare of our time. A 33-year-old magazine editor and frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review lent me her copy. "You'll read it in a night," she said, plopping the massive 500-page tome in my hand. A 37-year-old Ph.D. candidate I know read the book after her dissertation chair recommended it. I saw it on the subway and on airplanes, on the bookshelves and desks of women my age, women just like me. But there is something particularly profound about women long past their teen years bitten by "Twilight." The relationship can be intense. One acquaintance went so far as to say the book "made her believe in love again." "This is what I call 'true love-ism,'" Laura Miller told me. "True love-ism is the secular religion of America, one that all of us can believe in. What's appealing about Edward is his certainty. He craves Bella monogamously. The book feeds the delusion that an erotic god could love you, and that he'd also be faithful." Miller sees the books as straight-ahead romance novels. In her 2008 review, she wrote, "Despite their gothic trappings [they] represent a resurrection of the most old-fashioned incarnation of the genre. They summon a world in which love is passionate, yet (relatively) chaste, girls need be nothing more than fetchingly vulnerable, and masterful men can be depended upon to protect and worship them for it." Funny enough, none of the dozen or so women I spoke to for this story self-identified as a fan of romance novels (a genre that is, indisputably, associated with women in their 30s, 40s and 50s). Kirsten Starkweather came to "Twilight" through a different obsession entirely -- a friend in her "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" fan group insisted she read it. Starkweather is a 40-year-old mother and wife who works part-time doing medical billing for a physical rehab agency from her home in the Fresno suburb of Clovis, Calif. -- "not the most exciting place to live," she admits. She bought "Twilight" reluctantly and let it linger on her shelf for months. But when she finally cracked it open, she describes the same magical time-loss as Charlotte. "I think I put it down when I finished it at 4 a.m.," she says. "By the time I had finished two chapters, I had ordered the next two books." Read the entire article here. And follow me @TwiSuperfan! LAST UPDATE BY DAZZLEDBYTWILIGHT AT 11/23/2009 10:30:47 AM MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2009  MTV gives a rundown of five things you may have missed during "your first (or ninth) viewing." From Edward's new Mom mobile, to a more visible Victoria, to the nifty new ending. Here's a snippet: Grandma Is a Bloodsucker As die-hard Twi-hards know, Chris Weitz's grandmother was an actress in one of the first "Dracula" films and is still going strong at age 99; his mother acted for two decades and was nominated for an Oscar in 1960. Since the movie opens with Bella seeing her own grandmother, why didn't Weitz offer one of his own family members the chance to act again? "How kind," he said at the thought. "But I think it would have been difficult for me to say, 'Mom, we would like you to play a woman who is so old that she horrifies Bella when she recognizes herself in the mirror' — I think [my Mom] has put movies behind her for good. And now, she just raises me and my brother." Read the rest here. Follow @TwiSuperfan! Source: Bella and Edward LAST UPDATE BY DAZZLEDBYTWILIGHT AT 11/23/2009 9:53:39 AM MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2009 Cute interview with our favorite vampire and werewolf on the BBC's "The 5:19 Show." She asks them some fun questions. See if you can guess what Rob and Taylor wear to sleep, birthday suit or pajamas? LAST UPDATE BY DAZZLEDBYTWILIGHT AT 11/23/2009 9:47:09 AM SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2009 Nikki Reed and Kellan Lutz paid a visit to the Today Show on Friday morning. They reveal some cool deets on themselves--Nikki is directing a music video, and Kellan was a Chemical Engineering major, but really would love to be an action man in the movies, ala Jason Bourne! Follow me @TwiSuperfan! Source: Twilighters Anonymous LAST UPDATE BY DAZZLEDBYTWILIGHT AT 11/22/2009 11:33:20 PM SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2009  My friend Jen Yamato has an excellent piece on FEARnet pointing out 20 key differences between "New Moon" the book vs. "New Moon" the movie. Here's a bit: [*Spoiler* warning!] Way more shirtless boys! We all hoped to get a glimpse of Edward's alabaster chest in Volterra, but who knew we'd get to see so much hot werewolf skin? Thankfully, the Wolf Pack run such high temperatures and explode away their clothes so frequently that cut-off jeans and no shirt are their shared ensemble of choice. We get more fights, including an awesome Volturi throw down. New Moon the book is infamous for its slow pacing, thanks to Bella's crippling depression (see below). So it's a good thing that the film throws in fistfights, wolf skirmishes, and chase scenes to liven things up a bit more. Our favorite: watching Volturi guard Felix put the smack down on our precious Edward, a scene crafted for the film. Instead of talking to herself, Bella sends emails to Alice. New Moon, like all of the Twilight books, makes frequent use of Bella's internal voice-overs to tell us what's going on in that angsty head of hers. In New Moon, Bella writes emails to her lost BFF, Alice, to work through her issues. We still get the voice-overs, but they're cleverly disguised as Bella's messages to Alice, and therefore much less "Vampire Diaries." (Also, creating a movie email address for Alice was a clever way to sneak in product placement for Apple's MobileMe email application.) Read the rest here. Follow her @jenyamato, and follow me @TwiSuperfan! LAST UPDATE BY DAZZLEDBYTWILIGHT AT 11/22/2009 3:13:16 PM SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2009 Ok, be truthful now. "Twilight" was all about Edward, but you've got to admit that "New Moon" is way more about Jacob and all the possibilities he holds for Bella. Seeing Taylor Lautner's nekkid upper body for two hours may or may not have influenced your stance on this. Although Edward does have his own time in the shirtless spotlight during the Volturi scenes... Still, let's remember how Edward left Bella. "You're no good for me, Bella." Ouch. And how Jacob became her sun, basically saving her from herself. All so she could go and save Edward from his suicide-by-Volturi plan. And even then he still won't agree to change her. Controlling much? Take the poll and share some deets on your team selection! Follow me on Twitter @TwiSuperfan! LAST UPDATE BY DAZZLEDBYTWILIGHT AT 11/23/2009 12:37:30 AM SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2009 Great video with Rob, Taylor, and Chris Weitz from MovieFone's Unscripted. I like the format, with these guys asking each other questions sent in by fans. See more at MovieFone. Follow @TwiSuperfan! LAST UPDATE BY DAZZLEDBYTWILIGHT AT 11/22/2009 12:23:44 PM SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2009  TIME magazine has an article on the phenomenon that is "Twilight," from the now legendary story of Stephenie Meyer's dream of a vampire boy and a human girl in a meadow, to the staggering statistics the books and movies have achieved. An excerpt: The woman who would publish meyer, Megan Tingley, was handed the manuscript in November 2003, right before she got on a cross-country flight to California. She wasn't expecting great things. She'd never heard of Meyer. Nobody had. She wasn't a vampire fan either. But she spent the entire flight riveted by that 600-page bundle of paper. "I kept thinking, Well, she can't possibly sustain this," Tingley remembers. "The whole book is going to fall apart. She's a first-time writer. I was with a colleague, and he was trying to sleep, and I kept pulling him awake and reading passages to him." Even though it was an early draft — back then Bella and her undead boyfriend Edward actually got married at the end — by the time she got off the plane, Tingley was desperate to buy it. But it was a Friday, and everyone was gone for the day. "So I just left a bunch of insane messages back at Little, Brown and with the agent and said, 'Call me Monday. We have to talk!'" she says. "I pre-empted it on Monday from a street in San Francisco on my cell phone." Once Tingley bought the book, she had to figure out what to do with it. For example, she had to give it a cover. "Should it be horror?" she asked herself. "Or should we play up the romance? But if we play up the romance, we lose the boys. A lot of the female readers found it very erotic, but it's a YA book, and it's very chaste. It's about yearning. How do you capture that?" One day the art director suggested hands. Just hands — you could show the veins, which would be nice and vampy — and they could be holding something. Something that would suggest yearning. Temptation. An apple. Bingo. Read the whole article here.  Follow @TwiSuperfan! Source: His Golden Eyes LAST UPDATE BY DAZZLEDBYTWILIGHT AT 11/22/2009 3:20:44 PM SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2009 I *heart* Ellen, so Robert Pattinson as a guest on her show is like an extra awesome present. Love how his whole family is in a little special section. If you missed the show, see it here (in three parts): Follow @TwiSuperfan! LAST UPDATE BY DAZZLEDBYTWILIGHT AT 11/22/2009 3:21:28 PM SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2009 Sooo...what did you think? Take the poll and let us know. And don't hesitate to share your thoughts in the Comments! Please follow me on Twitter @TwiSuperfan! LAST UPDATE BY 9PIN AT 11/23/2009 9:28:32 AM |  ABOUT THE SUPERFANMyriam Gabriel-Pollock When I was a kid my favorite movies were Star Wars, The Sound of Music, and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. I like to think that my tastes have grown more sophisticated by now, but I may be delusional. I do see movies and read books in a wide range of genres, and I enjoy them immensely. But when it comes down to it, I love the escapism and otherworldliness that fantasy brings me. I can't yet discuss The Deathly Hallows without choking up. I've watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy so many times that the DVDs might actually be wearing down. I get a wistful look in my eye when I think about the Arthurian legends. And when I watch Twilight, I actually giggle like a schoolgirl when Edward first walks into the cafeteria. Hey I'm not a nerd, I'm a geek. Huge difference, right? So I love geeky games and gadgets. But I am also very social, I love clothes and makeup, I can sing and dance, I like the outdoors, and I enjoy my drink. I guess that makes me...a well-rounded geek? WYSIWYG. More about me. Follow me on Twitter!
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