Review Zingers! Twilight Editition

Apparently Twilight is a muse...

But if you're not a die-hard "Twilight" fan you'll have no clue who's who or who does what. Just know, goth-like vampires are probably bad; hipsters in hoodies are good. Bruce Miller (journal.com) - Breaking Dawn- Part 2
ht-Catherine Serio

That it has taken 5 instalments to tell a story that probably warranted 2, at the very most, matters little. Most Twilight tragics would have happily sat through 10 movies to keep the phenomenon going.-Leigh Paatsch
ht-Hanna Netisingha


Heads pop like Champagne corks in “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2,” the final chapter in the megamillion-dollar series about love, war and franchise immortality. And why not? -Dargis
ht- Alondra Garcia

I have now seen something like 10 hours about these vampires as they progress through immortality, and I'd rather see either version of "Nosferatu" that many times.-Roger Ebert
ht-Abby Ripoli

As Aro, the leader of the Volturi, Michael Sheen is a rare delight, smiling malevolently-- and at one point issuing an insane cackle that's worth the price of admission...It ain't much, but it passes for drama--if by 'drama' you mean a climatic showdown between the powerful, berobed Voturi on the one side, and a ragtag band of the 'good' vampires, now in league with Jacob and his pack of giant CGI werewolves, on the other.-Michael O'Sullivan
ht- Austin Kordik

Endless minutes are devoted to colored contact lenses (to mask her red eyes), an arm-wrestling contest with her vampire brother-in-law (Kellan Lutz), and scenes of Edward and Bella running through the picturesque Pacific Northwest woods on her first hunt, which culminates in an al fresco picnic dinner of venison tartare.-Michael O'Sulliva
ht-Sonya Olsen

From the start, the Twilight film series has struggled with the dearth of external conflict presented in its source material. This isn’t a problem for fans of Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling book series, who can recall every thought and emotion behind the many, many protracted stares exchanged between characters, while those not indoctrinated into Meyer’s world are left to wonder why everyone in the film appears to be in constant gastrointestinal distress- The AV Club
ht-Ali Chica

Watching the Cullens pose and smile in their modernist digs, gathered around the piano with frozen aristocratic languor, grows tedious. But, much like the scene of Jacob (Taylor Lautner), the franchise’s favorite pinup, strolling into the story with visibly erect nipples, this family album serves a conspicuous purpose. It quickly becomes evident that Part 2 is primarily an extended final bow — part victory lap, part farewell tour. Drawing out the inevitable gives fans the chance to linger in a world that has become a passionately beloved cult complete with its own conventions, Web sites (and their inverse, hate shrines, dedicated to loathing the series) and academic tomes (“Interdisciplinary Approaches to Twilight: Studies in Fiction, Media and a Contemporary Cultural Experience”). It’s a fan base that has again also proven the might of the female movie audience.- M Dargis
ht- Sean Young

Cool Reads this Week- Double Edition

Obama is not impressed

Twain letter rips apart salesman

The Expendables- Cool article ...

The Hard Life of an N.F.L. Long Shot

Scientists See Promise in Deep-Learning Programs

Has the Apocalypse gone way of the vampires?

The Hazards of Growing Up Painlessly 

In the Early Admissions Waiting Room, Fighting Off Jitters - Cool series from NYT about seniors waiting for their admission letters.

The New Algorithm of Web Marketing- They will find you-


Back When a Chocolate Puck Tasted, Guiltily, Like America
Goodbye to My Twinkie Days

Critical Reading Journal + Review Zingers!

Here is our triumphant return to the Critical Reading Journal.  Don't forget the requirements for this assignment!

1.  Prior to reading your exerpt of literary criticism, describe how you interpret the end of the novel.  Why do you think so many people are upset by the behavior of Huck in the presence of Tom Sawyer?

2.  Read your article, and the following excerpt from a Jane Smiley article from Harper's (cited from the Chicago Reader here).  How would you challenge, defend, or qualify these ideas regarding the conclusion of the novel? 

As with all bad endings, the problem really lies at the beginning, and at the beginning of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, neither Huck nor Twain takes Jim’s desire for freedom at all seriously, that is, they do not accord it the respect that a man’s passion deserves. The sign of this is that not only do the two never cross the Mississippi to Illinois, a free state, but the Jackson’s Island scenes show that such a crossing, even in secret, is both possible and routine, and even though it would present legal difficulties for an escaped slave , these would certainly pose no more hardship than locating the mouth of the Ohio and then finding passage up it. It is true that there could have been slave catchers in pursuit (though the novel ostensibly take place in the 1840’s and the Fugitive Slave Act was not passed until 1850), but Twain’s moral failure, once Huck and Jim link up, is never even to account for their choice to go down the river rather than across it. What this reveals is that for all his lip service to real attachment between white boy and black man, Twain really saw Jim as no more than Huck’s sidekick, homoerotic or otherwise. All the claims that are routinely made for the book’s humanitarian power are, in the end, simply absurd. Jim is never autonomous, never has a vote, always find his purposed subordinate to Huck’s and , like every good sidekick, he never minds. He grows every more passive and also more affectionate as Huck and the Duke and the Dauphin and Tom (and Twain) make ever more use of him for their own purposes. But this use they make of him is not supplementary; it is integral to Twain’s whole conception of the novel. Twain thinks that Huck’s affection is good enough reward for Jim.

3.  After viewing the 60 Minutes piece,the teacher letter from English Journal, and reading one of these editorial articles from NYT ,  where do you fall in the debate about the novel?  Be sure to draw from these sources in your response.

Finish by November 28, 2012- in your Critical Reading Journal Notebook
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For Class participation during break- From New York Times-

Read a review from music, film, food, video games, etc.  Find a zinger and share it with me in the form below.  Does it have snark, sharp diction, humor, or complex syntax?  Send it along...here.

Here are some of my favorite reviewers of film:
A.O. Scott       Manohla Dargis       

Roger Ebert- Suntimes          AV Club

Tribune Critics are pay-walled- meh but you can access them through Proquest- ha HA!


from a review by Manohla Dargis-The Man With the Iron Fists

This is a movie as drenched in genre love as it is in the arterial spray from its hordes of sliced and diced characters.

from A.O Scott's review of Lincoln-

The smaller, plainer America of the mid-19th century is evoked by the brownish chiaroscuro of Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography, by the mud, brick and wood of Rick Carter’s production design and by enough important facial hair to make the young beard farmers of 21st-century Brooklyn weep tears of envy.

Cool Reads and Pinker Lecture on Language

A song for Huck

same song by Italians on Ukes
A song for Sophie and Harney

 Romney Advance Team Works Every Angle in Pursuit of Visual Perfection
On Point, in Their Jeans and Sneakers (Jookin')
Technology Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say (For those reading The Shallows)
The Great Escape From Slavery of Ellen and William Craft
Book Review- The Fractalist- for my Math Peeps
Just how Private is your Facebook?  Play this Game

This Week in Cray (as the kids say...)
Mexican Cartels Enslave Engineers to Build Radio Network