• Tag Archives vampires

  • So. You’re Undead. Now What?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                   New (Artemis) Moon

    What is it with all the vampire stuff around right now?  Those terrible Twilight movies.  The much better Vampire Diaries and the Gates on TV.  The Passage, which I just finished, written by a “literary” novelist.  Not to mention the background of Anne Rice and all those undead erotica books, I don’t recall what they’re called.  Is it about the outs and the ins?  Is it about the saved and the damned?  Is it about the need for mystery and wonder in an increasingly secular age?  There’s even a BBC series called Being Human.

    I’ve not read or seen a really good vampire story, I mean really good, since Hammer Films “Horror of Dracula” with the exception of True Blood and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I enjoyed the Anne Rice material, her stuff about the Mayfair witches, too.  I also liked Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot.  True Blood, the HBO series is among the best ever in my opinion, right up there with Buffy.  I’m not sure what it says, either, that the ones I enjoy most are on TV.  I’m a literary and movie guy at heart, but the small screen does allow for character development and multiple story lines.

    There’s a lot of media studies and cultural studies ink that has been spilled about the fascination with vampires.  I’m sure many of you who read this find them quite beside the point.  My guess is that they give us a way of exploring the notion of an afterlife without having to get to close to it.  The evil nature of the vampire prevents idolization, though much of contemporary vampire fiction plays with this received wisdom.

    Even so, we wonder, what would I do if I had all the time I wanted?  What would I do?  What would I become?  If the only answer is, feed blood lust, well, that turns out to not be very interesting after a few dead bodies, but the question of love between an immortal and a mortal, that’s juicy.  What about power?  Would you seek wealth and control if you had eternal life on this earth?  What might you do if you loathed the thing being a vampire made you?  Self-loathing is a favorite distraction among teens and adults alike.  This question drives a lot of today’s Dracula derivative stories.

    Whatever it is, and it’s probably each of these and more, there seems to be plenty of energy and money for turning out vampire stories.  Even bad ones.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Cinema and Television Commentary on Religion Dreams Humanities 📎and tagged

  • Leafy Streets, Expensive Cars

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                                      Waning Grandchildren Moon

    Kate and I drove 20+ miles to the Edina part of Hopkins, directly across from Blake school’s driveway.  This is the home of former State Senator Steve Kelley, also a former candidate for governor.  This was a Sierra Club fund-raiser.  We listened to speeches, talked to friends, ducked out and then drove past her old home on Highwood Drive in Edina.  This part of Edina has lots of mature trees, leafy and atmospheric, homes with long driveways and expensive cars, landscaping that looks natural, yet manicured.  Her old home had received a new story, slightly curving windows and wooden garage doors.  It was strange to think of her living there, it seems so far from our life here in Andover.

    We enjoyed being out together on a fine summer evening.  Cirrus clouds curled and twisted into mare’s tails as the sun set over South Dakota.  We crossed the Mississippi on highway 610 and we were back in the northern ‘burbs.

    When I asked Kate why you would send a kid to Blake instead of Breck, she said, “Legacy, maybe.”  I thought, demographics and met geography.  She added, “Some people get their undies in a bunch if you send your kid to the wrong private school.”  It’s hard to be upper class.  So many rules.

    Since I have Netflix and it doesn’t cost more to get anything, I watched the first Twilight movie.  The guy looks like a schlub to me, shows you what I know it comes to pretty boys.  The girl, Kristen Stewart, has charm, but is unconventional in her attractiveness.  The plot line weaves teen angst into a bit of supernatural and the favorite theme about vampires since Anne Rice:  the misunderstood, empathic vampire.  True Blood, the Vampire Diaries, Twilight and even the Gates have the vampire who wants to fit in and be friends with their food.  I’m sure ‘ol Vlad is spinning on his home turf inside the coffin.

    The movie as a whole is weak, but since my standards for supernatural fare have a lot of flex, I watched it to the end.  Not worth it.


    📂This entry was posted in Cinema and Television Family Politics 📎and tagged

  • Quieter Dogs

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer                        Waxing Green Corn Moon

    Kate’s plane is in the air, but 30 minutes or so late.  I’ll leave in a bit to pick her up.  It’s a long hike to the airport from here.

    The dogs have not been noisy today.  Daddy was home.

    Yesterday, via Netflix, I finished the first season of TrueBlood.  My fascination with horror, monsters and science fiction has been lifelong and I imagine it will be with me when I head out on my 49 day journey to the next adventure.  As an HBO program, TrueBlood takes full advantage of a sub-genre of horror, the vampire romance.   There is sex, betrayal, monsters and demons of the night and a lot of Cajun country atomspherics.  The one  true Cajun speaker in the first year turned out to be a fake, however, and a murderer.  There was an audio tape, Cajun dialect for Actors, in his affects.


    📂This entry was posted in Dogs Myth and Story 📎and tagged

  • Let The Right One In

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring          Waxing Seed Moon

    Took mulch off this afternoon, off all the beds except the shade bed where some tender mosses lie.   Mulch taken off at this time of year has to remain close to the beds in case it has to go back on due to cold nights.  There are green shoots all round tulips, daylilies, daffodils.  Not much, just above the soil surface, but they are on their way.

    A movie Saturday, too.  Last night and this afternoon I watched Let the Right One In, the Swedish vampire movie.  It differs from most vampire movies in its neo-realist style, careful cinematography yet natural compositions.  There is little vampire lore here and what there is seems to run against the grain of the traditional.  Eli, the vampire who is no longer a girl (her pubis has closed, whether sewed or fused is not clear) has remained 12, as she says, “a long time.”  Yet the movie presents her as a twelve year old girl emotionally, not the precocious maturity of young vampires as in Anne Rice’s work.  She has also gathered little in the way of riches or success from her state.

    She and Oskar, the lead and also a 12 year old, become friends in an awkward courting ritual that has familiar missteps.  In the end Eli protects Oskar, then Oskar protects her.  A touching story in a gory, blood-dripping way.


    📂This entry was posted in Cinema and Television Garden 📎and tagged