The Quickening- VAMPIRES SUCK

UPDATE: You can read my more discursive and rational review of this film on Den of Geek.

Masters of un-funny Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg set their sights on Twilight with Vampires Suck, their latest so-called comedy. Becca Crane moves to the sleepy town of Sporks and finds herself torn between two men- sparkling vampire Edward, whose commitment issues stem from his bloodsucking family trying to eat his prospective girlfriends, and his dogged rival for her affections, Jacob. Hilarity ensues on a rollercoaster through pop-culture and teenage vampire relationships.

Oh, I should probably mention at this point in the review that Vampires Suck is utter dog shit. Surprise!

In all honesty, there's a more full review that I wrote for Den of Geek coming online in the next few days. I'll link to that review then, because there's no different way to phrase how crap this film is. Here are some pictures, with a brief explanation of my position. It's a piss-take of this...

... from the guys who gave you this...

... and this...

... and it looks like this.

Does any of that look or sound appealing to you? It's the film that finally made me abandon my work ethic with reviews and go for picture-based lols over actual analysis and opinion. Why? Because they didn't bother to make any effort making this distended YouTube video that's somehow making it into cinemas come Friday. Why the Mormon-bashing fuck would I bother to write a thousand words telling you why it's comfortably the worst film of 2010? It's such a ringer for that position that it's not even worth the cyberspace this post is taking up. Friedberg and Seltzer have somehow made a spoof that's less funny than actually watching Twilight or New Moon. Jings!

It's a film that almost defies reasonable analysis, like monkeys throwing their faeces at psychologists trying to find Rorschach patterns in the splatter. Once again, for the cheap seats, DO NOT GO AND SEE VAMPIRES SUCK. For the love of sweet Buddy Christ, enough is enough. If you do see Vampires Suck, don't bother coming and telling me, because this is what you'll get...

2007- I just saw Epic Movie. Yes, that is blood.

For Den of Geek, I'll force myself to be reasonable. For my own blog, where I'm allowed to vent about shit that made me physically sick, this is what you get. Fuck this movie.

Vampires Suck is infecting cinemas from Friday. Don't you dare go and see it.

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If you've seen Vampires Suck, I refer you to the previous graphic. Don't worry- tomorrow we'll have a totally rational review of one of the five best films of 2010 so far. I just need to calm down.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Don't Look Directly At It- ECLIPSE Review

As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. While I won't be going out of my way to spoil deliberately, there will be more SPOILERS herein than usual. it's only minor stuff, but if you don't want to see the film without knowing anything about it, don't read this review until after you've seen it. You have been warned.

If you're not caught up with the Twilight series at this stage, or my thoughts on it, you might like to go back and read my reviews of Twilight and New Moon. If you're still with me, you probably know where we stand with Eclipse. As graduation approaches for Bella Swan, she sets a date for her vampiric beau Edward to turn her into a vampire. But as a bunch of serial killings by newborn vampires reveal a sinister plot, an old enemy threatens to tear Bella and Edward's family apart.

You're here for one thing if you know my previous form on this series, and that's to see me take the piss out of this film. There are certain expectations of my reviews that are all too easy to meet in a series like this. For starters, if Bella was a codependent mess in New Moon, she's a manipulative attention whore in this one. The love triangle from New Moon, seemingly resolved when she chose Edward the vampire's sparkling over Jacob the werewolf's robust and puppy-like devotion, spills over here simply by her prolonging it.

You can bandy around epithets like "prick-tease" and sound like you hate women, but it's just a matter of hating Bella. Moreover, she's still so selfish and introspective that she can't account for any of her more normal loved ones beyond saying "I'll think of something" when asked how they'll deal with her new lifestyle. There's a scene when one of her fellow students gives a speech about kids being asked what they want to be when they grow up and saying things like "rock-star" or "princess".

Bella sits uncomfortably in that scene because it's like everyone knows that the character has just graduated from high school but she's still jumping up and down, clapping her hands and going "I wanna be a vampire and get married!" over and over. To Kristen Stewart's credit, she still hasn't been sunk by this dead weight character, but she's still slumming it in this role. Leave scripts like these to Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, who can't really make characters sympathetic either.

If this is Eclipse's biggest problem, then it doesn't bring the film down nearly as much as it did in the previous instalments. This is clearly down to a handover in direction to horror director David Slade, who ramps up the horrific elements as much as he can within the strictures of capturing the teen audience who lap this shit up. There's a palpable tension that was missing in either one of the previous Twilight films, and he finally makes a couple of moments that are dreamy rather than dreary. Hats off also to cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe, for making everything look wonderful from rain-soaked city streets to snow-capped mountains, via a lot of sunlit meadows.

That last bit almost sounded positive, so I think the game is up. Bottom line is, I didn't like Eclipse, but I did think it was a much better film than I or anyone else of a sound mind had expected. It never bored me like Twilight did, and it never made me despair for humanity like New Moon. At its heart, there's still a bad story by a worse author, but Slade salvages everything he can from it to make it a more entertaining prospect than Summit has given us in the last three years. He brings tertiary characters to the fore with some interesting flashbacks that less enterprising directors might have traded up for multiple lascivious shots of Taylor Lautner's torso, and finally overcomes the hilariously bad speedy-vampire effects with a much more sensible model.

Sadly, for all of his good work, it's all too easy to believe the rumours that he was locked out of the editing suite late in production. For me, this is most obvious from the soundtrack. Record companies shift huge numbers of the soundtrack album CD and download just by virtue of the Twilight brand, but more than ever before, the selected songs are totally discordant with the action. This would benefit massively from a proper score, by a composer- you don't need John Williams, just something more tailored to the action than Florence + The Machine or Muse. The effect here is like Spielberg signing over Schindler's List to the Village People for the final sound mix.

Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner are still piss-poor actors, and the real talent like Anna Kendrick and Billy Burke are still in thankless roles, but the thrust of Eclipse is very much towards something different. The message-driven plotting of the series isn't ever going to allow sex scenes, even though fellow Kevin Smith fans would probably agree that the Chasing Amy solution would solve everyone's problems in that tent scene with the three leads. And even with Melissa Rosenberg, a scribe who actually does emoticons in her scripts, still on writing duties, the work put into this one is evident.

Is it still giving a damaging message to young women? Probably, but there's at least less of Bella being subservient to a guy who could go nuts and kill her, that unintended domestic abuse parallel that made New Moon so fucking interminable. What does get ramped up is Edward and Jacob being over-protective of Bella, at which point many of the females in the audience need to wake up and think about this. Without any allegations of being shallow, if you ever encountered this level of interference from any boyfriend in real life, you'd want to get the fuck out of that relationship. It only further reinforces Bella as a blank surrogate for female readers or viewers rather than a likable character.

Chiefly, I think I took to Eclipse because it feels like an ending. With red-headed Victoria seemingly having ran so much that she morphed into Bryce Dallas Howard, that subplot is finally brought to a conclusion. I don't need to see some of the frankly bat-shit insane stuff that happens in Stephanie Meyer's final book, and I wish they'd ended on a relative high with this one. Instead, they're proving that anything Harry Potter can do, Twilight can do worse, by splitting Breaking Dawn into two films instead of taking the chance to cut some of the crazier shit out of the 800-page book.

The problems with the so-called Twilight saga are on-going, but Eclipse manages to leave its predecessors in the shade as a much more bearable adaptation than you'd expect. If Summit had given Slade free rein and adapted the source material a little more radically, this might have been the Prisoner of Azkaban moment of the series. They didn't, so it's difficult to know who to recommend it to. It's not good enough to get skeptics to go back and endure the first two, and the fans will be going to see this one anyway. For what it is, it's a lot more ambitious than it needs to be, and there's little doubt in my mind that this will be seen as the best of the series when it finally ends.

Eclipse is showing in cinemas nationwide from July 9th.
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If and when you see Eclipse, why not share your comments on the film and/or my review below? If you think a semi-positive review is justification to go back and check out the first two films, it's really not.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

The Zero Room #3- The Vampires of Venice and Amy's Choice

We've now passed the midpoint of the fifth series, and it looks to be doing pretty well. This post covers The Vampires of Venice and Amy's Choice.

Reviews will contain spoilers, so if you haven't seen the episode yet, toddle over to the iPlayer, or watch BBC Three at some point in the next century's worth of repeats.
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Following a come-on from Amy at the end of the previous episode, The Vampires of Venice opens innocuously enough, with the Doctor bursting out of a cake at Rory's stag night, in place of a lovely girl in a bikini. The Doctor's decided that the husband and wife to-be need to reaffirm their relationship, and offers them a date in 16th century Venice. There they find the city has been closed down for fear of plague, and the students of Rosanna Calvierri's school for girls stalk the city for new recruits. More than that, they're vampires, or at least masquerading as vampires, and they have plans for the impossible city. Ah, Venice...

After the new direction of the previous five weeks, writer Toby Whithouse revisits an old favourite of the series, the pseudo-historical. Notably, it's the first historical since 2005 to go back to before the 20th century without implementing a "historical celebrity", like Shakespeare or Queen Victoria. The Vampires of Venice comes along nicely without that baggage, and it's very nicely done by the Being Human scribe. It's not going to be anyone's favourite episode of the current run, but it's certainly decent.

For starters, it looks gorgeous, with the production team having found a marvellous double for historical Venice in Croatia, a location they're going to revisit later in the series to use as Paris. It's a versatile location that works beautifully here. Those disappointed by Amy's lack of wonderment thus far won't like how Karen Gillan once again plays it pragmatic, but might instead enjoy Arthur Darvill's return as Rory. He's got a great sense of comic timing that he didn't get to show off as much in the series opener, and he's simultaneously both reminiscent of and distinct to the show's previous tin dog, Mickey Smith.


Once again, Matt Smith shines in the lead role, here given a lot of material up against Helen McCrory as Rosanna, queen of the "vampires". There's a little of the last of the Time Lords angst that came to characterise the previous two Doctors, but his quiet and righteous fury continues to be one of the most compelling parts of his portrayal. McCrory holds her own to make a meal of a less than memorable villainness, and the vampires in general are tackled inventively. That's an achievement for an idea that's not only been done at least three times in Doctor Who before now, but is also being violated by Stephanie Meyer and any number of clingers-on to the current vampiric vogue.

As I mentioned, no-one is going to declare this the best of the series by the time it's over, and that's largely because the plot goes through the motions. In a Doctor Who drinking game, you'd be fairly sozzled if you had to take a shot every time the Doctor climbed a perilously tall tower in order to save the day, and the reliable supporting character efforts come to the fore once again with concerned father Guido and his daughter Isabella both sacrificing themselves. The lack of consequence doesn't ring true here, even for a story where the hero is in a different place each week. Instead, we get another hook for the series finale, the momentum for which seems to be really building up now.

The Vampires of Venice is a romp, through and through. Romping isn't synonymous with being average, but I'd have preferred a throwbak to Doctor Who's earliest historicals like The Romans rather than something that feels spiritually closest to The Shakespeare Code. It's good all the same, with some great shooting, cracking one-liners and wonderful acting, but it wouldn't be unbelievable if it left you cold. Especially if the prolific success of Edward Cullen and his ilk is doing your nut.
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A week later in Amy's Choice, we find Rory has finally got Amy to settle down in Leadworth, and five years on from their travels with the Doctor, she's about to have their first child. The Doctor still comes to visit every now and again, but just when he does, birdsong fills the air. The next minute, they all wake up inside the TARDIS, having all just had the same dream. There's more birdsong, and they're back in Leadworth. A dangerous foe has ensured that they face a deadly threat in both world, but only one world is real. If they die in the dream, they wake up in reality, but which reality is which? And if Amy has to pick, which of the men in her life will she choose?

First and foremost, this is obviously the "cheap" episode of the run, largely constrained to a small village and the TARDIS. Therefore it's an even more impressive feat that this is my favourite episode of the run so far. Its circumvention of the low budget is nothing short of genius, taking the opportunity to go for some real drama and character development over monsters and spectacle. Of all things, it's most surprising that it's written by Simon Nye, creator of Men Behaving Badly, who shows a great capacity for both drama and comedy in his first episode for the series.

It has a terrific villain at its heart in the form of the marvellous Toby Jones. His self-styled Dream Lord is enigmatic and incredibly vindictive towards the Doctor, and Jones knocks it out of the park completely. He's one of the most memorable villains I can think of in the new series, and as I noted over on Den of Geek, he bears more than a few similarities to a certain enemy from the past. The closing moments seem to suggest he'll be back in the future, and I really hope that pans out.


The regulars are great too, with Matt Smith taking a comparative backseat to allow Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill to shine. Amy's name is in the title and it's really a turning point in the series for her- after the end of the Angels two-parter, she's made to realise how much she cares for Rory, to the stage where she's prepared to die for him. Darvill also steps up his game dramatically, still finding time for some brilliant physical comedy involving beating up old ladies. Smith's presence is still felt throughout, especially with the revelation that the Dream Lord is made of the Doctor's darkness. The entire episode is creepier in retrospect for that revelation.

The episode that Amy's Choice bears the closest resemblance to is Midnight, and although this isn't as good, it's economic with its budget and endlessly inventive and memorable. It's also better as a piece of drama than as an episode of Doctor Who, but it certainly won't alienate any younger fans. Other shows have trotted out dream sequences in the past, and this seems almost like a massive "oh yeah?!" to Russell T. Davies' previous assertion that nothing of dramatic value can happen in dream sequences. He'd usually be right, but almost all of this one takes place in one dream or the other, and it's brilliant.

With a fantastic villain and some wonderful turns in the plot, Amy's Choice is the highlight of the fifth series thus far, although it's good for entirely different reasons to the Angels two-parter. It's not the most fun, most re-watchable episode ever, but it is very well put together and doesn't dispense with the sense of humour you've come to expect from Nye and from showrunner Steven Moffat. Urgent, satisfying and downright superb.
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I'll be back in a fortnight with reviews of the Silurians' return in The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood and the poorly titled Richard Curtis-penned Van Gogh episode, Vincent and the Doctor. Until then, why not share your comments below?

The next episode of Doctor Who, The Hungry Earth, airs on BBC One and BBC HD on Saturday 22nd May at 6.15pm.

Suck Harder

It's an unavoidable fact of blogging on the latest cinema releases that I will spend a lot of time talking about vampires. The beginning of 2010 throws up two more vampire films for me to have a look at in cinemas- the big-budget Spierig Brothers action-thriller, Daybreakers, and last year's highly acclaimed Korean horror, Thirst. Different in tone, sure, but still propagating one thing- film-goers fucking love those pasty-faced bastards.

As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.

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Daybreakers inhabits the far-off futuristic world of er, nine years from now, when 95% of the Earth's population has been converted into a bloodsucker after the outbreak of a vampiric epidemic. The shortfall of this is that the other 5% is a bit difficult to hunt down, and blood supplies are dwindling fast. Haemotologist Edward Dalton is looking for a blood substitute when his path intersects with Audrey and Elvis, two humans who offer something even better. Elvis used to be a vampire, but not any more, and that suggests only one thing- a cure to vampirism.

The high concept of Daybreakers is a breath of fresh air following more staid and unoriginal interpretations of the vampire legend. This year will see the release of another Twilight film, and doubtless holds a number of other lower profile vampire films I haven't heard of yet. So it's nice to kick the year off with something that's actually trying. The trouble I found with the film is that it's taken that idea and made another Underworld film with it. This doesn't occupy the same universe as Underworld, but it is very difficult to distinguish much between the way they look. That's not to say there isn't a lot of thought put into other aspects of the film, especially in the implications of a world that is almost entirely vampiric.

Coffee stands sell beverages that are four parts coffee and one part blood, news reports make mention of forest fires being started by infected animals who go out in the daylight and a "subwalk" system runs beneath the streets so vampires can go out and about in the daytime. All of these details embellish a scenario that has clearly been well thought out by the Spierig brothers. I'm not familiar with their work, but apparently they're bright young things in the horror genre. Their first mainstream feature musters a number of reliable actors, with Willem Dafoe continuing to be memorable just by being Willem Dafoe, Sam Neill making an all-too seldom appearance and Ethan Hawke doing that relative naivete/reluctant saviour thing that has especially prolific in most films like this since The Matrix. Also of note is Isabel Lucas, not for her acting because that's still rubbish, but because while she's still not that hot, she at least looks like a human being without scary levels of tan and pouting.

Beyond what you've probably already seen in the trailers, Daybreakers doesn't bring an awful lot of originality to the table. Its high concept and attention to detail make it mercifully closer to The Twilight Zone than to Twilight, but the plot deals in a number of slightly tired devices and goofy twists rather than sustaining the promise of the original concept. If you love vampire films, you may well love this. Personally being a bit tired of them at the moment, I don't think there's much to remark upon in this reasonable but familiar piece.


Elsewhere, world cinema is once again proving there's life in the idea yet. Thirst is the latest horror film from director Chan-wook Park, and follows Father Sang-hyeon, a Catholic priest who volunteers at a local hospital, as he attempts to cure an incredibly debilitating virus. In the process of his research, he contracts the virus and dies on the operating table. However, the doctors unwittingly provide him with transfusions of vampire blood, and he's resurrected. The virus will keep returning unless he drinks the blood of other humans, and the man of faith finds himself on a course to self-destruction as long suppressed desires reawaken.

The very title should give you some idea of the film's central theme. Sang-hyeon is as pious as they come, and he's put in a position where he thirsts after human blood without wanting to kill anyone. The priest's desperation is palpable in the excellent performance by Kang-ho Song, who undergoes a transformation from looking a bit like Harry Potter to being a cool, confident creature of the night. Song's performance really stands out amongst an excellent cast, with Ha-kyun Shin, as a childhood friend of the priest who irritatingly parades around with his snuffy nose and wearing a green onesie like a giant baby. His wife Tae-ju, played by Ok-bin Kim, is driven away by his behaviour, and into the arms of the sexually-awakened Sang-hyeon. Their relationship dominates much of the film, and their dynamic is what makes it distinct from other vampire films.


Some will compare this to the other vampire film that came out of world cinema last year, the excellent Let The Right One In. The major difference is that Tomas Alfredson's film is just about the only vampire film ever that isn't about sex on some level, instead centring on two young children. Thirst is very much about sex. Chan-wook Park knows better than to glamorise vampires, or to sanitise them for a teenage audience. Make no mistake- this is an absolutely brutal film, but it's the sense of right and wrong that distances it from mere smut. There are some incredibly grisly bits in this film that aren't related to sex, and though I'm not one to swoon over a bit of fake blood, some bits of this one had me looking away involuntarily. There's a story beneath the horror though, and a very compelling one at that. One of the few drawbacks is that Park is quite breviloquent in his pacing, which paradoxically makes the film drag a little bit. It feels a fair whack longer than it actually is, and I wonder if it might have left more of an impression on me if it were even ten minutes shorter.

For the most part though, Thirst boasts a very interesting and innovative application of the vampire archetype. Kang-ho Song gives one of the best performances of the last year, brilliantly evoking the sense of repressed power that Park's screenplay demands. The idea of Catholic ideology clashing with vampiric necessity is arguably a much more intriguing idea than Daybreakers has to offer, and it's handled more competently too. This was my first experience of Chan-wook Park's work, with other reviewers applauding this for being more restrained than his previous works, like Oldboy or Lady Vengeance. I remain very interested in catching up with those, because Thirst exhibits his original sensibility for horror. More than that, it's a film that compounds the emergent truth about vampires on film- world cinema has superseded Hollywood in the sub-genre.

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Another month, another coupla vampire films. On the plus side, I heartily recommend Being Human, the second series of which starts on BBC Three tomorrow evening at 9pm. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts and most importantly, brilliant writers and actors, if the first series is anything to go by. You can probably count on a review of The Road later this week, but in the meantime, why not add to the raging torrent of vampire discussion on the internet by commenting below? Preferably about the films at hand, not who would win in a fight between Lestat and Edward Cullen.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Bored Shirtless

There isn't an awful lot of commenting going on on this blog anyway, but in advance, here are some popular rebuttals I won't be accepting about today's post.

1. You're not the target audience.
2. By slating a film I and millions of others like, you're stifling my individuality.
3. You're jealous of the manly abs on show.

Point 3 is particularly amusing- like saying I must hate the Super Mario Brothers because they can jump higher than I can. But as you may have garnered, I've been to see New Moon, the second film in the apparent "Twilight Saga". As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion on here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.


So this film being everywhere at the moment, you probably know the story. Bella Swan is a high-school girl who's dating the practically-neutered vampire, Edward Cullen. At the beginning of New Moon, an altercation with Edward's brother falling off the wagon leaves Edward fearing he can't protect Bella from his blood-sucking brethren anymore. He subsequently leaves Bella in a prolific sulk and he and his family move on. Enter the newly... how do you describe someone becoming more wild? Oh, that's a good word- enter the newly bewildered Jacob Black, Bella's best friend, who's gained a supernatural hang-up of his own since becoming more integrated with his Quileute tribe of Native American werewolves. That the film takes about an hour and a half to get to this most elementary level of plot may lead you to suspect that the film ain't that great.

The truth is, I can't hate the films just because of the hype. Twilight was nowhere near as bad as the worst films of last year and New Moon isn't nearly as bad as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It's curious that it's so easy to make that comparison, given how this series has proportionately the same effect on the female filmgoer as Transformers has on the male filmgoer, and both are really nothing to write home about. And thus it would be easier to magnify the flaws of this film just to rail against it. While I'm not entirely willing to take that route, it is fairly clear that this is not the film that its more militant fans are claiming. The Mormon agenda of sexual abstinence remains at the fore throughout the film, but this is not a film that sends a good message to young women. The aforementioned sulk comes out of Bella feeling that she is worthless without a supernatural beau. Although she attends high school, she has no clear plans for the future except for going where her bloke goes. I'm no manner of feminist but that, to me, seems pretty bad.


So the next thing Bella does is go out and become an adrenaline junkie, undertaking reckless activities because they give her hallucinations of her departed ex, staring blankly and warning her to stop. I'm not a doctor either, but that also seems bad. I'm actually pretty sure that counts as some kind of schizophrenia. In the course of that, she grows closer to Jacob, which I presume has nothing to do with the fact that Taylor Lautner has spent most of his time since the last film in the gym, and not enough learning to act. While Kristen Stewart is a very capable actress with limited material, Lautner's idea of intensity, coupled with his canine nature, put me in mind of Dug the talking dog from Up. He could feasibly have pounced Bella at any moment and said "I have just met you, and I love you!" Even more goofy is the necessary adoption of Stephanie Meyer's self-masturbatory notion that these buff young men must wander around shirtless and wearing jean-shorts, making the tribe look like a werewolf boy-band. I hear they do a mean cover of "Bad Moon Rising".

With all this shirtless nonsense going on, there's little screentime for the female audience's pale and wooden idol Robert Pattinson. Edward's going-away is the impetus for the whole plot, so we're mercifully spared most of the Hayden Christensen School of Acting. He was an unproven actor before this, and he remains unproven. And worse, he occasionally does this tic when he's acting like he's in pain that's more akin to someone spontaneously ejaculating- where was Andy Samberg in this film? That's not to drub all of the cast- as I've said many times, Kristen Stewart is a remarkable actress who makes the best of what paltry amount of character development she's given. She's more watchable than any character as two-dimensional as Bella has any real right to be, carrying the film through much of its stultifying running time. Things only really kick into gear in the last half an hour, much like the first film, but with much more promising results.


For the last half hour is when the Volturi show up. The Volturi are vampire royalty based in Italy, and they're headed by Michael Sheen! Michael Sheen! Brilliant actor, and utterly brilliant in this as Aro, a kind of vampiric Tony Blair with no regard for human life. And he's in the film for... all of ten minutes. That, for me, was New Moon's biggest crime. For all of the angst and aimless wandering, there was nothing worse than seeing this character and this performance wasted in the way it was. Similarly, Dakota Fanning turns in her only performance to date that didn't make me cringe as a young but scarily powerful vampire charged with enforcing the family's will. The worst thing about their negligible screentime is that I'll actually look forward to more Volturi in the two films that are left to go, and I suspect they'll receive little prominence. Still, you can't judge these things sight unseen, and that was enough to get me in the cinema to see New Moon.

I've already said I didn't hate the film, but neither is it very good. While its predecessor was an indie film, Twilight also paid for most of Summit Entertainment's output for the next two years, and the glossy blockbuster look and marketing campaign for New Moon jars slightly. It's not an action film, nor should it be. Director Chris Weitz does bring more CGI eye-candy to proceedings than Catherine Hardwicke did, and the fight scenes that are included are a marked improvement upon what has come before. But that can't justify the film as what it seems to have become. It's a fantasy romance and it didn't seem comfortable as a low-budget indie film, nor does it entirely fit into the blockbuster mould. David Slade is taking the helm for the next film, due out in July, and with his credits I can imagine the film changing again, taking more of a horror slant. This kind of inconsistency can't really be good for a series that has weak source material to begin with, especially as screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg has resolutely plowed through two helm changes without changing her approach by one iota- "I'm not some car you can fix up, I'm never gonna run right" sounds more like a bad song lyric than a credible piece of dialogue.


The acting is largely wooden, the writing is vanilla and uninspired, and they still haven't got the tone down, but New Moon isn't any worse than its predecessor. It's definitely not going to convert anyone who doesn't like the series, to whom this will still be the film about the werewolf boy-band and their mortal enemies, the sparkly vampires. But I can honestly say I was expecting a lot worse. The fans of the books seem to enjoy the films, and fair play to them, but they could really hope for something better. The film's ending best summarises the polarising nature of this series- it's a cliffhanger that made several people in the cinema squeal in delight and everyone else rush for the exit. It's not out-and-out bad, but we're halfway through the planned four films and it looks doubtful this series will leave any lasting impression after it's over.

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I certainly feel I've given much harsher reviews than that, but the day the Twilight series really gets me to sit up and pay attention will be the day it takes the central love affair a lot less seriously. I wish half the people who go to see New Moon would go to see An Education, a film that deals with the intensity of first love, and the loss of that love, with much more aptitude than Stephanie Meyer could ever muster. Still, if you've seen the film, and want to share your thoughts without telling me I'm out-and-out wrong, why not comment below?

Next up, it's coming up to Christmas, so I'll finally be taking a look at Robert Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol and giving that a critique, as well as talking about various other festive films.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Squanderland

University and employment suck a little, not unlike the only two new films I've had time to see since the last post. On the plus side, I now have the new computer sorted, pending a couple of minor technical bugbears, so can now blog a bit more regularly again. As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion on here- others are available. So here goes with Couples Retreat and Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.
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Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant is about an average teen called Darren Shan, whose life changes after he and his best friend Steve go to a freak show and run afoul of Crepsley, a performer who is also a vampire. Crepsley's spider bites Steve, forcing Darren to make a deal with Crepsley to save his friend's life. Thus Darren becomes a vampire and joins the Cirque du Freak, incurring the wrath of an opposing caste who are looking to end a hundred-year truce and start a war between vampires. Yep, it's yet another vampire film and that's where it falls down.

The film centres on Darren, Crepsley and their conflict with the Vampanese, the type of vampire that kills their prey rather than just taking whatever non-life-threatening amount of blood they need to survive. But elsewhere in the film, there's a creepy gangster with the power to resurrect dead people, a bloke with two stomachs, and a bearded lady played by Salma Hayek. All of these are more interesting ideas than the umpteenth reinvention of vampires, and it's lost in the pea soup that is Cirque du Freak. John C. Reilly plays Crepsley, and he's reliable enough as an actor that he carries every scene he's in. The trouble is that our intrepid hero is played by newcomer Chris Massoglia, an actor so leaden that he brings everything else down. It's not entirely his bad- the film's pretty terribly edited, and given the timing of its release, you have to wonder if it was rushed out in time for Halloween. It takes ages to get going, and then once it does, approximately not much happens. The last minute appendage of the Vampire's Assistant subtitle suggests they're planning sequels, but that most likely won't happen now that the film has bombed on its opening weekend at the American box office.

The film is being marketed and reviewed as "Twilight for teenage boys", and whatever my feelings on That Franchise, it's a shame that the potential for this has been squandered in order to appeal to an apparently ready-made audience. I didn't hate the film, it just massively disappointed me. Reilly makes a valiant effort and there is one really good joke in the middle of it, but the poor pacing and Disney-brand moral message at the end make the film thoroughly unremarkable. Cirque du Freak doesn't suck, but it lacks bite, and that's as much wordplay as I can be bothered to think up for a film so forgettable.

On the other hand, we have Couples Retreat, a comedy largely aimed at people who've ever wanted to watch Vince Vaughn present Wish You Were Here. Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell are considering divorce because of their seeming inability to conceive. They decide to book a couples' skill-building holiday at a tropical paradise called Eden. They drag three other couples along with them, promising that they can enjoy the sun and surf instead of the rigorous couples therapy. Instead, they're told by an officious Peter Serafinowicz that all eight of them have to partake in the whole programme as well as all the fun activities. Hilarious romantic hijinks ensue. And yes, Bateman and Bell's characters do have names, as do Vince Vaughn, Jon Favreau and Kristin Davis, but that doesn't really matter, seeing as how plot is secondary to these actors going off and filming on an island somewhere in the Mediterranean.

See, the film I just described would seem to be about couples realising they have issues in their relationships and having to work hard to sort those out. The couples bicker and fight, contrary to their idyllic surroundings. And yet the only picture I could find to illustrate this was the above holiday snap of a publicity picture. That's what it is- Vince Vaughn decided to go on holiday with some other actors, and now you're paying for it in multiplexes. The script is utterly devoid of laughs, so I urge you not to go and finance their holiday. It's a real shame to see the likes of Jason Bateman, Kristen Bell and Jon Favreau in this though- all three are decent comedy actors, and should really have known better. All acquit themselves rather well, but I still don't like Vince Vaughn, I'm afraid. There's really little more to say except that the amount of product placement in this is distractingly huge. Everyone make sure they go to Appleby's after the film, and then write about it on Facebook on your Apple Mac before you go and play Guitar Hero. Powerpoint. Will anyone be watching this in just twenty years time? It's going to be hideously dated in about two years.

Couples Retreat has about as much entertainment value as a tourist brochure, and it's a shameful exercise for certain comedy actors who really should've put their artistic integrity before the temptation of being paid to spend time on an island paradise. I don't begrudge anyone who has the money to go and do that, just please don't give the world your holiday videos to sit through afterwards. Probably the worst thing any of the main cast (except Vince Vaughn) has ever been in.
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I'm off to see Fish Tank shortly, and I hear that's a really good film, so looking forward to that. Other than that, still need to see Fantastic Mr. Fox, 9 and Saw VI. Expect any one of those four in the next few weeks. In the meantime, if you've seen either Couples Retreat or Cirque du Freak, please comment on this post and let me know what you thought- always like a bit of discussion and feedback.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Vampires- Why Do They Suck Lately?

Let's for the sake of an intro assume that you have never heard of a vampire. A vampire is an undead being who survives by drinking the blood of the living. They're imbued with natural charm and good looks so as to lure in their victims, they're generally pale and have sharp fangs. Vulnerable to religiously symbolic items, sunlight, stakes through the heart, and for some reason, garlic.

Apparently, the most elaborate way of identifying them in the olden days was by sending a virgin boy riding on a virgin horse through a graveyard and watch the horse throw up when it trots by the grave. Not a genius ritual, and given the mess of horse vomit to clean up thereafter, I'd suggest looking for the other symptoms I listed instead. The modern vampire myth was born generally of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula, and there have been countless films, television series and books featuring these creatures of the night ever since.

HOW CAN YOU GO WRONG WITH A PREMISE LIKE THAT?!

I'll tell you how! By generally beating the shit out of the idea over the course of so many years that vampires just aren't cool anymore. Most of these producers that claim to have a visionary new outlook on the vampire myth are talking out of their arse. What's prompted this rant is the particularly frequent shitting upon the idea from a great height recently, and also the over-powering urge to have a rant about one of the biggest afflictions upon teenage culture in the 21st century.

Yes, of course, I refer to Twilight. Or The Twilight Saga, as the probably-not-very-popular-when-she-was-at-high-school Stephanie Meyer and the profiteering Summit Entertainment would have it. Again, for those unfamiliar, here is Bullshit 101. Twilight is the story of a vampire's relationship with a human girl in a small town in America. Said vampire, Edward Cullen, is... well, he's supposed to be a perfect character. Converted at the age of 17, he's going through high school over and over again for no real reason other than to be admired by the female populace from afar, given how he's decided to abstain from drinking human blood. The latter is used as a metaphor for sexual abstinence, which brings some tension to the relationship he starts with Bella Swan (the biggest Mary-Sue in recorded history), who has all the charisma and sympathy value of a baked potato.

There have been four books to date, the first of which, if the film is anything to go by, centres largely around Edward and Bella getting together. Indeed, besides a few mentions of how repressed and lonely Edward's been until he decided he liked the smell of Bella, (not a joke, this is really why he likes her) they don't really play on the vampire angle until the end of the film when some obligatory baddies come in, apparently from nowhere. And teenage girls love this shit. They lap it up.

So yeah, that's a quick summation of my thoughts on the story and general approach, but let's have a look at how Stephanie Meyer has fucked up vampires. First and foremost, vampires stay out of the sunlight for a different reason in this story. Rather than being scorched alive because the sun is emblematic of holiness or whatever, a scene midway through Twilight reveals that the skin of vampires apparently sparkles when exposed to sunlight. Wait, WHAT? That's the lamest thing I've ever heard, and I've heard some DOOZIES in my time. Secondly, Edward is apparently more human on the virtue of his being a "vegetarian". Oh, he and his family still drink blood, but only from animals. Sorry, but that still makes you an undead parasite. Very anthropocentric- I'm at least reassured that the "I'm a vegan and if you're ok with that, I'll argue with you anyway" caste of teenage girls probably don't like that about this series, even though they seem to make up the target audience.

Finally, with Bella being as apparently perfect as Edward- see how she's instantly loved by everyone at her new school, contravening every social convention in existence- I'm still halfway convinced that vampires were just shoehorned into Meyer's masturbatory sub-Mills and Boon story just to make it interesting. Instead, it just made vampires boring. The success of Twilight means it's likely we'll see vampires being characterised the same in future films, because it's a formula that's proven to make big bucks at the box office. And sadly the sequel is due in November this year, and the third in July 2010, having hastily had a "The Twilight Saga" label slapped on as a prefix to their titles to cash in. The cash cow will hopefully be put down in a few years, or perhaps "sucked dry" would be a more appropriate metaphor, because this series does suck.

As much as I've laboured to make a point about the contradictory nature of Edward as a vampire who doesn't feast on humans, it brings me nicely to Being Human, an absolutely brilliant series aired by BBC Three earlier this year about the lives of three housemates in Bristol- a werewolf who's actually quite nerdy and mild-mannered for 27 days of the month, a ghost who's pining after her still-living fiancee and perhaps most importantly to this post, a vampire who's abstaining from blood-drinking. All blood-drinking.

Yes, it wears him down to the level where he's perhaps not as able to do all the usual things that come with super-vampire powers, but he's fine with that. And more importantly, the show always portrays vampires, even our protagonist Mitchell, as parasites. Although Mitchell is possessed of the natural charm and good looks that enable vampires to capture their prey, the weaning off blood is very much a parallel with trying to get off drugs. It's odd how Mitchell's sex life being strangulated due to his fear of relapsing is a far more accurate representation of how a teenager would feel about such abstinence than Edward Cullen is, given how the latter is in fact, teenaged.

Elsewhere, the head of the vampires is Herrick, a pudgy-looking and, on the surface, quite friendly police officer. The first episode finds him doing magic tricks for elderly hospital patients, of all things. But underneath all that, he has that really creepy lord of all darkness thing going on. It's a wonderful use of the mundane being made scary, and that's what makes Herrick so effective as a character- the contrast between someone like that being head vampire, and between someone like Bill Nighy's Victor in the Underworld films. The first series' arc saw Herrick co-ordinating a world vampire revolution, from Bristol of all places, and trying to bring Mitchell back over to the side he's been on for about 90 years. Herrick makes one of the most menacing and brilliant villains on telly in a long time, and he dominates every scene he's in.

I do feel bad for covering Being Human in an blog about vampires because it means I'm naturally going to neglect the representation of werewolves and ghosts, both of which are also done splendidly by writer Toby Whithouse. But if you feel I haven't quite explained what's so good about it, just go and watch it on DVD or Blu-ray! Thank me later! The series is one I would recommend to absolutely any vampire fan seeking an antidote to Twilight, but just to sweeten the deal, there's one other recent film I saw after I had the idea for this blog, but a film that is absolutely essential to mention now that I have seen it.

I refer of course to the Swedish vampire film, Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In). You can forget your Twilight, your Underworld and your Count von Count. This film has one of the best screen vampires I've ever seen and she's a twelve year old girl. This is Eli, the new next door neighbour of a bullied and subdued young boy called Oskar. He's oddly enamoured of this peculiar young girl who he only sees at night, in the play area outside their housing estate, and it's through her that he finds revenge on his tormentors. Behind closed doors however, Håkan, the man who everyone believes to be Eli's father, is actually her very own Renfield- he protects Eli's secret by going out and murdering young men. Draining them of their blood for Eli to drink, he facilitates her survival out of utter devotion to her.

THE NEXT PARAGRAPH FEATURES MAJOR SPOILERS FOR LET THE RIGHT ONE IN.

What makes Eli so creepy is not the transformation of the mundane into something more sinister a la Herrick in Being Human, but something far more subliminal. Håkan botches one attempt to gather blood for Eli near the start of the film, and in her subsequent hunger, she goes out hunting herself and kills a local man. Håkan is both worried that she'll be caught and jealous of her burgeoning friendship with Oskar, and so tries again. This time, he's caught in the act, but pours acid on his face- he can't be identified, and thus Eli stays safe.

The most chilling scene of the film soon follows, as Eli scales the wall of the hospital that Håkan is taken to, and he opens the window to let her drink him dry. She then lets him fall to his death, and never so much as mentions him again. What's disturbing is that while the very end of the film has a positive spin, with Oskar and Eli on a train, living free and together, the audience may find it difficult to shake the feeling that Håkan was once like Oskar, aging while the object of his devotion remained young. And thus as much as it's a love story between two young souls (or at least one young soul), Eli remains a parasite, and one of the creepiest order.

END SPOILERS

Creepiness aside, Let the Right One In is in equal measures creepy and thought-provoking, and the prospect of an upcoming Hollywood remake fills me with dread. Not to say that Hollywood is always in the wrong, but I can't imagine it retaining even a trace of the subtlety that Tomas Alfredson's film is so rife with. The idea of a post-Twilight US version of Let the Right One In seems like the stuff of cinematic nightmares, but as far as that goes, whatever happens, happens. The simple fact is that Let the Right One In does vampiric adolescents with a beauty and, though I shudder to use the word, magic that Stephanie Meyer and Summit Entertainment could only dream of matching in Twilight. While Being Human offers both a comedic and dramatic take on these creatures, Let the Right One In does it seriously but without the po-faced nature of Twilight.

Had enough of my Twilight bashing? Well, tough, because incongruous with the title of this blog entry and with my thoughts at the outset of writing, vampires don't suck lately- they're just utilised by sucky writers sometimes. Vampires haven't become any less inherently creepy or frightening through the romanticisation that some films and books have put them through. They're just fine when used right. Though with so much use in the media today, I suspect that they just need to be rested a little. Take them out of the spotlight, because the light will disintegrate them. Not make them fucking sparkle.

Until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch,
Mark