Earlier today the official Twilight Saga movie Twitter revealed that the New Moon trailer was the most viral video of 2009. Here’s coverage of the top three.
Felony Dismissed Against Chicago Area Woman Caught Taping New Moon
December 11, 2009
Early this week we brought to your attention the case of Samantha Tumpach who was caught taping approximately 3 minutes of New Moon footage in a Chicago area movie theater. What came to light was that she wasn’t actually intending to tape the movie, but rather people in her group who were there to celebrate a birthday party, and the movie was basically background footage.
She spent two days in jail, for the crime when the movie theater alerted local police. Apparently, the crime, though inadvertent, was a felony. Personally we thought jail time was a little harsh. We could understand a fine, community service, something like that. It wasn’t as if the woman was taping in order to distribute. Now granted, pulling out a video camera in the middle of a movie is ( as many of our blog commenters pointed out) distracting, bad manners, and really an amazing display of questionable judgment, but it didn’t seem jail time was warranted. Chris Weitz also agreed given the specific allegations.
Now the Sun Times is reporting that, “A Chicago woman arrested for illegally videotaping the movie “Twilight: New Moon” got a happy ending to her story Friday when Cook County prosecutors abruptly dropped the felony charge filed against her.
Samantha Tumpach would have faced up to three years in prison if she had been convicted of copying three minutes of the film during a Nov. 28 trip to the Muvico Theater in Rosemont.”
EDITED: Summit Entertainment has now issued a statement regarding the incident: “In regards to the situation with Samantha Tumpach, we applaud Muvico for upholding the zero tolerance policy on piracy when the incident occurred at their theater in Rosemont, IL. The pirating of films is a very serious issue and we all need to remain vigilant to protect the art of film and the myriad of businesses that the film industry supports. We believe that the attention that this incident has drawn, has served as a reminder to us all that any form of film piracy, or perceived piracy, will be treated with the utmost seriousness. Summit is pleased that all charges against Ms. Tumpach have been dropped and appreciate the efforts of the police and the prosecutors in this outcome.”
New York Times: Women in Hollywood
December 10, 2009
The New York Times has a great piece on how women in Holly wood are underrepresented in a myriad of categories, and how hopefully films like New Moon and The Blind Side are a wake-up call.
“New Moon” and “The Blind Side” might not make a lot of critics’ Top 10 lists, but their popularity with audiences is good for women in film — and might be too great for even Hollywood to ignore. For years the received wisdom, both in the industry and the press that covers it, has been that women don’t go to the movies and can’t open movies. Although recent hits like “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Sex and the City” and “Mamma Mia!” have helped put a dent in that thinking, it will take more than millions of teenage girls (and their moms) squealing in delight at sparkly vampires and hairy beasties with swollen deltoids before real change will come to American movie screens. Women need to develop their own muscles.
I’m not talking about those buff babes who pop up in adolescent fantasies, licking their lips as they lock and load; I’m talking about movies made for and with women. I’m also talking about movies directed by women. Here’s a little history: Only three women have been nominated as directors by the academy in 81 years: Lina Wertmüller for “Seven Beauties” in 1976; Jane Campion for “The Piano” in 1993; and Sofia Coppola for “Lost in Translation” in 2003. None won. At a glance this year looks promising, with high-profile titles like Kathryn Bigelow’s “Hurt Locker,” Nora Ephron’s “Julie & Julia,” Lone Scherfig’s “Education” and Ms. Campion’s “Bright Star,” all of which have been too successful, critically and commercially, to dismiss.”
Mark Kermode of BBC Radio Review: OMG Someone Gets It!
December 5, 2009
Finally, finally someone gets that the abstinence thing in the greater context of vamp literature. TY to Tess for the heads up!
Recording New Moon Means Jail Time in Chicago
December 4, 2009
Pretty hefty penalty (apparently a felony, who knew?) for 3 minutes.
FearNet: What New Moon Means For Hollywood
December 2, 2009
Jen Yamato over at FearNet explores what New Moon may mean for Hollywood movies. Unlike other reporters, Jen knows a lot about the series and because of that here analysis makes sense because she truly understands the product in more than just a cursory way.
“The Twilight Saga: New Moon opened with $142M its first weekend, earned over $230M in less than two weeks ($473M, if you count the global box office), and broke records previously held by male-oriented tent pole releases like The Dark Knight (in Single Day Sales). So now that other studios have taken note of the vampire saga as a legit and bankable franchise and not a one-off fluke, how could New Moon change Hollywood?
That’s a question pundits have been asking since New Moon’s numbers started rolling in two weekends ago, indicating that the sequel had bigger potential than anticipated. By opening day, it had already topped the entire opening weekend take of the first film ($72M over $69.6M a year ago). By yesterday, the LA Times had deemed success a “problem” for Summit Entertainment, a studio whose stock has risen as fast as the quickening pulses of a theater full of tweeners and Twilight Moms watching Taylor Lautner take off his shirt.
So how could the increasing successes of Twilight and New Moon affect how movies are made and sold? We consider what New Moon’s popularity could mean for Hollywood.”
New Moon About to Eclipse Twilight Total
November 27, 2009
According to Hit Fix New Moon brought in over $14 million dollars on Wednesday.
“”The Twilight Saga: New Moon” go? After making another $14.3 million on Wednesday for a new U.S. total of $179 million, the question isn’t whether it will hit the $250 million mark it’s whether it can hit $300 million. Considering the first “Twilight” made only $192 million a year ago that would be a stunning achievement.”
According to Gossip Cop the Thursday total is $9 million
That would but New Moon’s total domestic earning at approximately $188.4 million dollars. Twilight earned $192.7 million in it’s teatrical run that lasted from November 21, 208-April 2, 2009. In other words, what it took Twilight a little over four months to earn, New moon will earn in a week. Without question New Moon will pull in at least 4 million this Friday which will have it jump the Twilight total. In fact it will probably surpass the coveted $200 million mark by the end of the weekend.
All of this will have New Moon land in the number 6 position right behind Star Trek starting next week. Where it goes from there is anyone’s guess.
EW is celebrating the success with this article
“The ascendance of the Twilight saga represents an essential paradigm shift in youth-gender control of the pop marketplace. For the better part of two decades, teenage boys, and overgrown teenage boys, have essentially held sway over Hollywood, dictating, to a gargantuan degree, the varieties of movies that get made. Explosive truck-smashing action and grisly machete-wielding horror, inflated superhero fantasy and knockabout road-trip comedy: It has been, at heart, a boys’ pig-out, a playpen of testosterone at the megaplex. Sure, we have “chick flicks,” but that (demeaning) term implies that they’re an exception, a side course in the great popcorn smorgasboard.
No more. With New Moon, the Twilight series is now officially as sweeping a juggernaut on the big screen as it ever was between book covers. And that gives the core audience it represents — teenage girls — a new power and prevalence. Inevitably, such evolutions in clout are accompanied by a resentful counter-reaction. For if power is gained, then somewhere else (hello, young men!) it must be lost. ..The key to New Moon’s appeal, of course, is that a lack of consummation is built into the movie’s very premise, and so the sexiness, as it was in the ’50s, has to emerge almost entirely from the atmosphere, and from the interplay of those faces. And that, more than anything, is what makes this a picture dominated, in spirit, by a new kind of girl power. Mock me all you want (and from the haters, I expect nothing less), but the reason I believe that the big-screen success of the Twilight saga bodes well for the future of Hollywood movies is that the teenage girls who are lining up to see New Moon are asserting, in an almost innocent way, their allegiance to a much older form of pop moviemaking: the narcotic potency of mood, story, and romantic suggestion over the constant visual wham-pow! of action, effects, and packaged sensation. It’s not that New Moon has none of that stuff. It’s that the movie uses fantasy to liberate, rather than to steamroll, its emotions. That’s what makes it a new-style, feminine-driven brand of popcorn, one that’s more than welcome at a moment when the other kind — the boys’ kind — has grown more than a bit stale.”
FearNet: 20 Differences Between New Moon the novel and the movie
November 22, 2009
Jen Yamato, one of the most Twilight savvy reporters out there, has a comparison of New Moon the movie vs. the book and how “changes” in her opinion work.
“If you’re a diehard Twilighter, you might wonder just how different New Moon the film is from the book. Below, we name 20 ways the movie deviates from Meyer’s tome – and works all the better for it.
Twilight scribe Melissa Rosenberg faced an enormous challenge adapting Stephenie Meyer’s 500+ page novel for the screen, but it’s clear that the filmmakers chose to remain steadfastly faithful to Meyer’s book. (Perhaps to a fault, considering the reviews.) Still, for fans, New Moon should feel just authentic enough to drive it toward an enormous opening weekend. So how do Rosenberg’s additions, changes, and omissions from the text affect New Moon on film, and which ones work the best?”
See Jen Yamato’s analysis on Fearnet.
Here’s Melissa Rosenberg on the red carpet talking with us about one such change.
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