The Skin of a Killer...

Alternative title: Just Shoot Me In The Face To Save Some Time

It's been said before somewhere (I can't be bothered to look it up)... It's the "fashionable thing" to write a review on Twilight. Or it's an elaborate internet meme. Whatever it is, I read this thing and when I was done I took out my red pen and a highlighter and started correcting it. I agree with my dear Stephen King with the fact that Meyer is not quite up to par with my own personal standards when it comes to authors. Then again, I was reading The Wizards of Earthsea series and Piers Anthony (AKA: the Joy of Puns) books when I was nine. I was a bit advanced as a kid.

That, and I generally don't much care for books written in the first person point of view. If the author's "narrating" character isn't strong enough, the book falls apart for me.

Let's just put aside grammar/spelling errors and plot holes for a moment considering Twilight was written for young adults and not normal "I still read the paper for news in the mornings" adults. Mind you, the paper isn't Tolstoy—but at least the Times doesn't go around saying it's the best thing since Bram Stoker's Dracula. A couple words to the scary "Twi-Moms" out there?

"Calm down."

Oh, and:

"Go read some Jane Austen."

It gets my Chris Hansen senses tingling when 40 year old women are screaming over a 17 year old actor. That's just wrong, folks.

Here's a quick summary: New girl comes to Nowheresville and falls hopelessly in love with the gorgeous ("Adonis") loner guy who happens to be a vegetarian vampire that lives with six other vegetarian vampires. Peripherally, there are three nomad vampires killing people in Nowheresville. Also, vampires apparently sparkle in the sunlight instead of exploding into fireballs like they did in the Hammer Horror movies or the great novel by Bram Stoker.

Okay, I have to get this out of the way. Vampires are mythologically older than the written word. Psychologists put their existence up to man's lust and desire to "consume" his object of attraction.

Dracula 2000 put up an interesting case that the original "Count Dracula" (father to all vampires) was actually Judas Iscariot—and that was the reason why he couldn't stand the sight of the cross, why silver affected him, and why sunlight could kill him (Judas was apparently found hanged just before dawn).

ANYWAY, Twilight takes a look at the regular vampire mythos and says: "Nah, I'll make up my own monster," and comes up with something that's a teeny-tiny part vampire and a larger part diamond plated chupacabra. There, I said it. Edward Cullen is a sparkly chupacabra.

Okay, so Bella is supposedly not a Mary Sue character because she's clumsy, more responsible than her own mother, calls her dad "Charlie" instead of "Dad," and sucks at sports. But she is a Mary Sue in that all the boys immediately fall inexplicably head over heels for her and she smells like an extra yummy walking Happy Meal to Edward. And that little masochist hates himself so much ("THIS IS THE SKIN OF A KILLER, BELLA!") that he falls in love with his hamburger of fate.

Then he runs away from her and makes her miserable and the entire second book could have been solved with either a text message or, egads, a phone call saying: "Hey, Edward, I know you're off pretending you don't love me or whatever, but I'm totally not going to kill myself. Don't do anything stupid, like, munch on a tourist or go tanning at noon. XOXO Bella."

I have no clue what happened in the third book. Other than Mrs. Meyer also decided to change what makes a werewolf a lycanthrope in the first place. The full moon (and ONLY the full moon) controls the change, and when it happens the afflicted has no more say in what his transformed body does. See, werewolves are supposed to be the angsty, tormented, sad, adorable guys that you want to save but can't because:

A) There's no cure.

B) The dude already went on a tear the last full moon, you think the cops are gonna let him go just because he went all hairy and grrr?

C) IT IS MYTH LAW THAT HE WALLOW IN SORROW.

This is coming from the perspective of someone who grew up watching those Wolfman movies. Whatever, Underworld. My werewolves hate themselves. And keep their shirts on (it's really the shoes that suffer).

Twilight is touted as a "timeless romance novel" when the romance in it is about as hot and spicy as a bowl of chicken broth that's been left on the counter overnight. I've read text books that kept me more engrossed. The stupid thing is, I'm still sitting here typing stuff about it because the world has apparently gone insane for it. Here's a timeless romance novel: Sense & Sensibility.

Despite the fact that I'm not a huge fan of the change in what makes a vampire a vampire (or a werewolf a werewolf) in Meyer's books, I am a bit of a fan of the characters who never really get that much of a chance to talk at all—the "extra power"less couple of Emmett and Rosalie. While not discussed in Twilight, it is mentioned that Rosalie actually saved Emmett from dying a mortal death of a bear attack in another book(yes, this means I've read the entire series). My question is: How did Rosalie Hale end up falling in love with Emmett McCarty? That is an interesting plot—take a complicated character like Rose and dive into her emotional well instead of the shallow pool of Bella "Don't Call Me Isabella" Swan.

Oh man, this is making my brain hurt. I can't call this finished because I know I'll have more to rant about later on...

The Mind of a Killer...

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Dir: Jonathan Demme
Author: Thomas HarrisRated: R
At some point or another, we've all seen that clip of Anthony Hopkins in prison blues leaning up against a Plexiglas wall and informing a rather frightened-looking Jodie Foster what he did with a census taker's liver. But how many of us have sat through the entire movie? Read the book?

Quick fact: Tony's creepy little noise at the end of the liver, fava beans and chianti line was an ad-lib that he was sure Jonathan Demme would cut from the final film.

We're given an unconventional hero for us to follow on this dark and twisted journey (in the early 90s, that is). Heroine, to be more precise. Clarice Starling is still in the FBI Academy when the head of the Behavioral Sciences division pulls her out of class to go and chat with "Hannibal the Cannibal." She's the FBI's most promising student—high marks, better than anyone else on the gun range, smart as hell, and tough. Tough in a world where women aren't supposed to be tough and still very much a woman when men look at her (not a "fellow agent"). It's part of the reason why Jack Crawford sends her up to Baltimore to go and get Dr. Hannibal Lecter to fill out a profile in order to help get a better sense of the identity of another psychopathic killer.

That'd be Buffalo Bill.

For a moment, let's step away from the movie and turn to the book. Buffalo Bill, or Jame Gumb, is genuinely disturbed in the head. The character is sort of an amalgamation of Ed Gein, Ted Bundy and Gary Heidnik. I say "sort of" because Buffalo Bill does skin his victims, uses a fake wrist cast to knock them out, starves them, and leaves them in a pit... He is not using them sexually. He doesn't even see women any longer, he just sees "it." He's a shell of a man who lost his mother—he never knew his father and she wasn't the best parent... At one point it's revealed that she hated her son. She never even bothered to add the missing "s" to the end of his name on his birth certificate. The point is, Jame Gumb doesn't know who he is and after studying the Death's Head moths he raised, he decided to change himself. To put it more succinctly, Buffalo Bill is one messed up dude.

So Clarice is basically sent to Baltimore as eye candy bait ("Lecter hasn't even seen a woman in years...") has to put up with the crude Dr. Chilton who runs the asylum Lecter is held in, and meets possibly the most patient and understanding man on the planet in Barney (the orderly who takes care of all the creeps on Lecter's row). Chilton is sleazy and annoying and the sudden shock of seeing Dr. Lecter in comparison is like getting slapped. Clarice is not greeted by a slithering monster but a gentleman—standing in the center of his cell with impeccable posture with an almost warm smile and a charming greeting of: "Good morning."

Considered one of Film's "best entrances" and he's not even moving.

We're thrown for a loop. The entire first portion of the film and book goes into great detail on how despicable and depraved Hannibal Lecter is and here stands an affable man—trim, polite, well-spoken... Who the hell is this?

There is an air of oddness about him with the way he speaks—how he mocks Clarice's West Virginian accent and never blinks. Winking doesn't count as a blink, and that's the closest Lecter comes to ever closing his eyelids when he's around Clarice (that's disregarding the moment where he sniffs through the air holes in his Plexiglas cage). He initially doesn't agree to fill out the forms for her, tries to intimidate her by doing a cold-read profile on her as she sits outside his cell and even resorts to calling her "simple."

"Oh, Agent Starling, you think you can dissect me with this blunt little tool?"

On her way out she passes Lecter's neighbor, Multiple Miggs. Earlier he hissed something (I won't repeat on this blog) to her, but as she walks past his bars, he flings his semen at her face—which not only had Clarice wanting to get out of the place faster, but really pisses Dr. Lecter off. Enough to get him to called her back, tell her he'd fill out her papers, and to look up an old patient of his. During the night he convinces Miggs to swallow his own tongue for what he did to Clarice. We never know what he said, but even now I still morbidly want to know what anyone could say to make a man actually try to swallow his own tongue. Dr. Hannibal Lecter cannot allow the rude to live. Miggs was rude. As Clarice all but runs for the end of the hallway, Lecter calls her back and gives her the name Mofet and the strange order to "Look deep within your self."

It's a storage facility. That saves about nine pages and several minutes of film right there.

So Clarice starts finding all these clues to lead to Buffalo Bill and eventually learns that Dr. Lecter knows the man's name. She was warned at the beginning by Jack Crawford not to let Lecter know anything personal about her, but finds herself following the former psychiatrist's rules of quid pro quo when trying to fine tune the profile on Buffalo Bill. He learns about her father's death as she finds out how Buffalo Bill goes about picking his victims.

Meanwhile, Catherine Martin (daughter of Tennessee Senator Ruth Martin) is clubbed over the head with a cast and taken by Buffalo Bill. Now Clarice's mission has a focus: Save the girl.

Which is another film and literary oddity that I find refreshing. The damsel in distress doesn't just sit there whining about her problem—she antagonizes her captor and buys herself some time by kidnapping his dog with some McGuyver-like ingenuity. And our hero is not Dirty Harry. She's 5'3", quiet, and looks like a strong wind could blow her over. She's brainy. She's worked damn hard to get to where she is in the Academy.

This is how I feel when I get on an elevator...

When a ploy to get Lecter to expound on his profile of Buffalo Bill goes south (again, he's not an idiot), the Department of Justice steps in with Chilton's help and is, in my mind, directly responsible for Lecter's escape from custody. Under DA Paul Krendler's orders, Lecter is shipped off to Memphis to speak with Senator Martin face-to-mask in hopes of getting an actual name for Buffalo Bill and they stick him in a giant cage at town hall. He gives a fake name.

"Oh, and Senator, just one more thing. Love your suit."

Losing the Plexiglass was a huge mistake.

Sorta kinda suspended (she'd been removed from the case per Krendler's suggestion to the head of the FBI), Clarice "sneaks" in to speak with Dr. Lecter one last time. She even brings him his drawings.

"People will say we're in love..."

He finally gets the full truth out of her—why she ran away after her father's death... Her ill-attempt at trying to save one of the screaming spring lambs from being slaughtered (in the book she stole a horse—another of the farm animals meant to be slaughtered for meat—and tried to scare all the lambs out of their pen). Because she finally bares her soul to him, Clarice is given the means to find the real Jame Gumb. Just before Chilton can have her dragged out of the building, Lecter passes her the case file through the bars of his cage and runs his finger across her knuckle as she takes it from him.

It's his last brush of humanity before he slips back into the comfort of being a predator... He kills the two cops guarding him and escapes by using the face of one of them to get him into an ambulance.

Deleted scene from the final cut: Hannibal Lecter drives off in the ambulance.

Thanks to Lecter's notes written on the case file and the conversations he had with her, Clarice is able to find that the real Buffalo Bill is Jame Gumb—living in the home of the first victim's boss with the basement all dug out into a labyrinth of torturous horror. Upon finding Catherine in the pit, Clarice's first priority is to at least maim Gumb so she can get a proper call out, but Catherine has been stuck down there for so long she's had it. Instead of whining, she's shouting: "Get back here you bitch!"

In the end of it all, Clarice ends up killing Jame Gumb and getting reinstated to the FBI in time to complete all tests. The book allows Jame Gumb some dying words as Clarice sits across from him and acknowledges the fact that one of her shots deflated his lung.

"What's it feel like being beautiful?"

Unlike the book, the film doesn't end with Lecter sending Chilton a threatening letter and another strangely civil one sent to Clarice. Instead, he calls Clarice during the graduation party to say he's not going to come after her ("The world's far more interesting with you in it.") ask her to tell him when "the lambs stop screaming," and watches his former tormentor climb out of a plane in Jamaica.

"I'd love to stay and chat, but I'm having an old friend for dinner."

He hangs up the phone and slinks off after Chilton like a cat. The end.

This movie actually has no sex, less blood than most western films I've seen and two of the strongest characters in movie and literary history. One is a woman who is anything but a damsel in distress and the other is an incredibly intelligent man trapped in the body of a seriously violent and dangerous predator.

So watch it. Rent it, Netflix it, program it the next time you see it listed on AMC, buy it... Whatever. If you don't like scary movies, this isn't one of them. It's a psychological thriller, mystery, and drama. The book is absolutely worth reading because the way Thomas Harris writes dialogue and thought processing is so natural it feels like you are Clarice Starling thinking these things...

Lastly there's cake. Look at that cake. Don't you want some? I do.