enough with the vampires for a bit
But I love him so much that I can't act.
Opinionated Bella
Megan is going to drink your blood.
Wasn't there some nice interpretation about when each monster comes to the fore? Vampires are in the public psyche because we have sensed that we're (as the middle and lower classes) are being preyed upon by parasites (corporations) that suck our life-force away? And then, something something, other monsters are appealing at other times? I don't know where I read that.
Also, I've resisted Twilight as much as a person can, but sadly, still know enough about the story to understand this nicely done piece contrasting Edward and Jacob.
NOT UNTIL MY SPECIAL VAMPIRE HAS FOUND ME!
I'm not the Unfogged enforcer. People have to be answerable to their own sense of subtlety and sophisticated conversation.
Twilight impact on marriages . Creepy.
Vampires are in the public psyche because we have sensed that we're (as the middle and lower classes) are being preyed upon by parasites (corporations) that suck our life-force away?
oh, please. That's like saying porn is popular because men are worried the consumer economy is causing them to spend their vital juices. Someone just made the connection between dashing omnipotent serial killers and adolescent female fantasies, and the rest is history.
I think I've mentioned this here before, but I have a friend who played a big part in making (and whose single biggest credit is for) Bubba Ho-Tep. He no longer works in the movie industry, but the film lives on.
We won't have enough of the vampires until vampire-themed entertainment starts losing money, probably by late next year. I had lunch last week with someone who briefly had an option on the film rights to Twi/ghlight, before selling it for a relative pittance. Ooops.
Oh, and I like the expansive "opinionated" usage. Comment 1 was funny.
And then, something something, other monsters are appealing at other times?
Once hurricane season drives oil all up into the wetlands, the Swamp Thing/Creature from the Black Lagoon fad will commence.
Comment 1 was pretty funny.
How did the "opinionated" part make it funnier than if regular Bella showed up to say the same thing?
Creature from the Black Lagoon
More of a chocolate-mousse color, from the photos I've seen.
I did comment 1. I've usually stopped with the 'opinionated' but "Bella" did not seem unique enough to ensure that I was not stepping on somebody's pseud. I didn't want to google Bella's last name because then I might remember it.
I kind of like this version of Vampire Elvis.
In theory, I mean. I haven't read the books. Yet.
Fat suits and other full body prosthetics have to be among the worst jobs an actor can do. Campbell is older and I think bigger, and may not feel in physical shape for such demands. One comment there says Bruce needs writer Londdale on the set. Whatever.
Giamatti looks like a nice guy and funny, and I love him for the indies and small movies he makes, but seems just a little intense, just a little tightly wound.
Campbell and Raimi are from Michigan. Ossie Davis from Georgia. Director of Bubba Ho-tep a backpacking Californian.
Perlman and Giamatti are both New Yorkers.
Shouldn't Anne Rice be blamed for all of this modern vampire stuff? Personally I thought having a real vampire playing a vampire was a clever plot point for a movie
Zombie movie are about the terror of Republicans, especially Teabaggers, en masse.
Vampires are about the terror of Republicans on a personal level, in your home, your parents or spouse.
These subgenres will be around a while, sad to say.
How did the "opinionated" part make it funnier than if regular Bella showed up to say the same thing?
I don't know why, but it is funnier. In this case.
Cool. Then Moby's sense of what is funny is a good guide.
14:Interview 1976
Salem's Lot 1975
This is just about the time of the birth of modern horror, preceded by the reprints of Lovecraft and Howard and other 30s 40s stuff in the 60s.
I don't think these are particularly related or influences on each other, except to whatever degree the change in zeitgeist was shared.
I should get back to my extreme academic book on zombies, which uses colonialism theory etc.
Campbell and Raimi are from Michigan. Ossie Davis from Georgia. Director of Bubba Ho-tep a backpacking Californian.
Perlman and Giamatti are both New Yorkers.
Was there some hidden geographical meaning here, bob, or what?
Twilight is obviously from the vampire/occult/fantasy romance crossover subgenre, sub-sub-genre Harlequin derivatives. I won't knock it much, partly because I know little about it, partly because there is huge variety within. But I am sick of power fantasy/superhero stuff, and these fantasies of being the object of passion for a superhero (sensitive, with a past and problems!) really bother me.
The trick is to try substitutions. Could the books/movies work with Seals/CIA agents/competing Mafia families/cattle barons/medieval lords instead of vampires and wolfs?
The trick is to try substitutions.
Could the books/movies work with Seals/CIA agents/competing Mafia families/cattle barons/medieval lords instead of vampires and wolfs?
Put Kate Beckinsale in tight enough clothes, pretty much anything less stupid than Van Helsing will work.
19:Watched a movie last week where protagonist walked down a Manhattan sidewalk during the day.
People four wide to the street, about one foot apart, all walking with eyes averted, he was bumped and touched five times every three feet.
One of my recurring moods. I'll get over it.
I would totally watch a horror/romance series in which teenage girls sorted through complicated attraction/revulsion to seals. Preferably harbor seals or maybe sea lions.
A friend of mine whose wife is a librarian says that werewolves are cresting and vampires are on the downswing. I'm reading a rather entertaining werewolf noir right now. The writing is at best serviceable, but the conceit of non-werewolf status as a birth defect that subjects you to being drafted into full-moon-night labor and the consequent social divisions is fairly interesting.
Wasn't there some nice interpretation about when each monster comes to the fore?
This? I still think that thread should have been more interesting than it was.
I read this oddity, which is a book-length epic poem describing gangs of werewolves (really, were-dogs; they're basically big packs of feral dogs) wandering around East LA.
Truth be told, the poetry wasn't very good.
Seelkies! With those really big knives that SO types pick their teeth with.
24: Probably not what you had in mind -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111112/
I endorse all of the following:
Shadow of the Vampire
Bubba Ho-Tep
Dracula: Pages from the Virgin's Diary
In non-vampire news, Bart Giamatti, Paul's father, was a friend of my paterfamilias at both Andover and Yale. Maybe Paul should be zombie Bart and unfuck the All Star selection process.
D:PftVD is far and away the definitive balletic, vaseline-smeared filmic interpretation of Dracula, surpassing all other such attempts.
Doesn't Elvis die at the end of Bubba Ho-Tep? How could they make a sequel?
33: I was wondering the same thing. Maybe he's a zombie?
Or maybe this time it's the real Sebastian Haff, the guy Elvis had subbed out with in the first film, which would also neatly explain away the different-actor thing.
I thought that the Twilight books had long since been cut out from the herd of vampire pop culture and assigned to the gross category of "Everyone Loves [Girl]"-themed entertainment. (The feminine counterpart to the "Farmboy to Warlord" stuff that we I one devoured by the ream, as a lad.)
Surely vampires will stick around, if only because they're so much less expensive to film than werewolves, zombies, skeletons, etc.
I liked Vampire in Brooklyn much more than I should have. Though I doubt I was even puberted when I saw it.
Vampires are about the terror of Republicans on a personal level, in your home, your parents or spouse.
but vampires aren't terrifying any more, they're attractive. No one is bothering to fake it any more -- a compulsion to eat your neighbor is a small and worthwhile price to pay for being omnipotent and immortal.
I guess that would be the capitalism connection, huh?
33: And isn't the guy who played JFK dead as well?
Speaking of Elvis, I am surprised that no Believer-approved Brooklyn/Berkeley scribbler (cough Chabon cough Franzen cough some other Jonathan cough) has attempted a recapitulation of the twentieth century through a fictionalized biography of Jesse Garon Presley, the King's stillborn twin (and, literarily, his secret sharer). I mean, Elvis was born with a caul, for God's sake.
42: It's like you think Forrest Gump wasn't good enough.
42: I believe that both Nick Cave and Scott Walker have made attempts in that direction.
43: One of the many, many touchstones of pop culture that I feel comfortable judging in ignorance. See also the various reality shows about the housewives of hyperreality.
44: Also, this novel, which didn't, I thought when I read it, bring enough gun to the hunt.
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So, Paul the Octopus may have gotten it right?
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40:Sorry, I'm into zombies right now.
"a dead worker resurrected as a slave into a hellish afterlife of endless toil ... was the perfect monster for the age." ...was the original conception in Haiti, a labourer's fear. White Zombie was a fear of being turned into a zombie. Cf Body Snatchers
Whence comes Romero's rampaging hordes and the fear of being eaten by zombies? Probably too easy to mention the Port Huron crowd's betrayal of the working class. But Romero is as working class as any director.
Part of what I have to do when I read academic work is to get past the SWPL biases of the authors.
Step 1: Get past biases.
Step 2: Popcorn.
Paul the Octopus is really just Cthulu lulling you into complacency with these sports predictions. It all starts innocently enough, sacrificing mussels for his favor, but soon enough human flesh will be involved, then it's Katie bar the door.
Booooooo.
Oh well. Spain really did control the game.
42: Walter Jon Williams did that with his short story "Red Elvis", collected in "Frankensteins and Foreign Devils". It's a really excellent anthology, and that story is one of the standouts.
When will someone make a cthulhu movie, resulting in an awesome cthulhu fad? There could be team Yog-Sthoth and team Nyarlathotep. This is a surprisingly good start: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOHJUrcVdJk
Guy Maddin made a Dracula movie? How frickin' awesome is that? I've got to find that.
Shadow of the Vampire was indeed great. Romanticized vampires are boring. (And gritty alt-vampires aren't that much more exciting, pace 30 Days of Night.) They've been boring since Anne Rice, let alone Twilight. Buffy wasn't boring, but the vampires were the most boring part of it.
Zombies are boring by now, too. Fucking boring. When there are zombie self-help books starting to appear on the shelves, that's how you know a horror meme is dead. Not undead, but just dead. A return to the original Haitian take on them would actually be interesting; but the "zombie apocalypse" genre -- which basically postulates global civilization being overrun by something akin to rabies -- is on one level just a guilt-free revenge fantasy in which the viewer is encouraged to feel superior to the nine-tenths of society they imagine to be slower and stupider than they are. Enough already.
Although maybe zombies will keep shambling along with the zombie economy, until the real bottom of the financial crisis shows itself. In which case I guess I should root for the zombies.
...is on one level just a guilt-free revenge fantasy in which the viewer is encouraged to feel superior...
Like a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, but with better diction.
57:Although maybe zombies will keep shambling along with the zombie economy, until the real bottom of the financial crisis shows itself. In which case I guess I should root for the zombies.
I always have rooted for the zombies.
I wanted Spain to win so there would be a stronger contrast of cultural cliches in the final. Netherlands vs. Germany just lacks any of that oomph you get when national stereotypes collide. But I'm up for the stolid Dutchmen vs. the dashing Spaniards. Plus, you can see it as a replay of the 30 years war, or the wars of Dutch independence...the Spanish were like their Redcoats.
Bring it on, Philip, bring it on.
25 - I've read that, and enjoyed it. It was called Bareback over here though.
real as Fock
Like the Dutch fighter pilot in The Battle of Britain?
the dashing Spaniards
I don't think we were watching the same game.
when national stereotypes collide
I vote the Dutch all have to be high, and each Spaniard has to consume one (1) bottle of wine prior to taking the pitch.
The feminine counterpart to the "Farmboy to Warlord" stuff that we I one devoured by the ream, as a lad.)
According to my reading tastes, I am a boy. Give me my patriarchal dues, dammit.
(Also, yay, Spain. I bicycled my way furiously (ha, ha) to three different venues in order to find a space to watch - apparently no one in this town works during World Cup - and they rewarded me amply.)
I wanted Spain to win so there would be a stronger contrast of cultural cliches in the final.
Imagine the divided loyalties of, say, Nazi war criminals hiding out in Uruguay. Or people from the former Spanish Netherlands.
apparently no one in this town works during World Cup
Productivity hit an all-time low in NYC this month. The bars seem to have done well for themselves. /hic
PGD, 40: And there's a lot of obsession with the tiny chance that if you let the vampire feed on you, you get to become one; or, Americans don't like taxes on the top 1% of incomes because we all believe we might get there.
I remember Lloyd Alexanders' long series as doing a reasonably good job undercutting both "Everybody Loves Princess" and "Farmboy to Warlord". I haven't read them since I was shorter than I am now, so this may be hopelessly naive.
69: I always though "Eilonwy" was a lovely name.
Americans don't like taxes on the top 1% of incomes because we all believe we might get there.
How about a trade, those one percenters who object so strongly to high marginal rates can go Galt and offer their jobs to those who don't.
And on the OP, Tor's blog is currently running a month long special on 'urban fantasy' see e.g. this post by Carrie Vaughan, author of a series about a female werewolf radio call in host who kicks ass and gets laid. The series starts off pretty fun if you like the subgenre, then gets rather forumlaic.
68: Heavens, I hope you are not referring to my 2-hour lunch break where by "lunch" is meant beer! I am the very soul of productivity. Where by "soul" is meant resounding absence.
71: That's a hell of a demesne name.
71: Did someone say you could stop tending Hen Wen, boy?
69.2: All I remember is there were zombies. And cool welsh words. Also, I think I got into the books during the burst of promotion they got from the execrable Disney movie adaptation, which taught me as a child to value literature over cinema. ("literature" here involving a lot of sword-fighting and zombies.)
69-71: I am thrilled that people are/were aware of Lloyd Alexander. He doesn't get nearly enough acknowledgment. I don't remember much of the series in any detail at this point, but we certainly pressed it on kids at the youth library back in the day.
the execrable Disney movie adaptation
Oh, my.
I'm aware of Jason and Lamar Alexander, if that is even more thrilling.
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Is anyone watching the Lebron thing? I have neither ESP nor ESPN, so I'm unable to know, but I'm guessing they're dragging it out as long as possible to keep people watching.
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Reuters headline: Tired Gay succumbs to Dix in 200 meters.
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80: Lebron is tomorrow night. He's really getting annoyingly egomaniacal with this TV special thing.
82: Was that a change? I thought I'd read it would be today.
83: Having Monday off might have put them behind a day. Today I tried to tell two different people that I'd get back to them on Wednesday.
Is this the start of zombie Shakespeare?
82: what?!? He's a prince among men! The greatest basketball player since Joan Of Arc. Who wouldn't want to spend an hour watching him lost in thought? Reality TV as imagined by Rodin!
86: This weekend I mentioned to my father that LBJ had oft expressed a desire to be the first billionaire athlete and we wondered, mutually, how many billionaires got to be that way taking advice from Bill Simmons and a bunch of old friends from Akron.
I am thrilled that people are/were aware of Lloyd Alexander. He doesn't get nearly enough acknowledgment. I don't remember much of the series in any detail at this point, but we certainly pressed it on kids at the youth library back in the day.
I was a fan as well, though now I only remember the various heroic sacrifices.
87: given what happened to Tiger, is it too soon to hope that athletes angling to be billionaires will be inevitably doomed to be foiled by their own hubris?
I am thrilled that people are/were aware of Lloyd Alexander. He doesn't get nearly enough acknowledgment.
This makes me feel old dismays me. I had the impression that the books remained the classics that I thought they were when I was in fifth grade, like a A Wizard of Earthsea.
89: The ancients made their athletes gods, but we just make them rich.
I went as Eilonwy for Haloween one year, I think at age 10 or 11 and probably the year before I was Hatshepsut, though my mother vetoed the ceremonial beard. I loved Lloyd Alexander's books (or at least the Prydain ones) and even took a stab at learning Welsh, though I didn't go far.
I'm feeling kinda sad. I never read Alexander, but then never read Wind in the Willows. I nver had a children books period that I can remember. AFAIK, as soon as I could read I picked up what was laying around the house, which was Stout, Christie, and the 50s BoTM midbrow historicals:Costain, Stone, Taylor Caldwell, Michener, etc. Not so tough for a bright seven year old. My parents saw me enjoying Dear and Glorious Physician etc and never directed my reading. My reading vocabulary became precocious, and I lost any taste for children's level writing.
I probably did lose a development stage, but I don't know what they could have done.
Reading about Prydain, I feel a loss.
In HS it was SF & mysteries, the main 19th century canon, and I always had a Britannica Great Book on my desk. I just loved the look the feel the idea of the Britannicas and I read them thru, almost all. Not Galen or Kepler, but everything readable. All of it useless.
So I got a job sacking groceries and became a drug fiend.
Let this be a lesson to you parents.
I liked the Alexander books quite a lot, but the ending was super-lame. maybe because it was 'say something meaningful' instead of skewering regressive tropes in other fantasy
I liked the Alexander books quite a lot, but the ending was super-lame. maybe because it was 'say something meaningful' instead of skewering regressive tropes in other fantasy
The prydain books are awesome but less genre-subverting than one likes to remember; LizardBreath has explained this in the archives, but since I'm on the iPhone at the doctor someone else will have to put in the "RTFA" link.
Are you suggesting the American public would have been able to fathom a story on minorities that was -actually - about minorities? Instead of about stuff in the line of children's series. Especially if targeting a part of the American intellectuals.
Come on, be serious!
First, Bubba Ho-Tep was awesome. Kudos to your friend, Halford. Of course, I am predisposed to like anything with Bruce Campbell.
Second, Paul Giamatti is awesome.
Third, you shouldn't let Buffy and Twilight ruin a good and historical drama. Whenever you get irritated by Twilight, just think of this. I find it helps.
Finally, this is a good, off the grid, vampire movie.
I was going to praise the Kitty Norville series, but 72 beat me to mentioning it. It has seemed to me for a while to be relatively unknown and under-appreciated, but now that I write it down it occurs to me that that's only true if I compare it to Sookie Stackhouse and The Dresden Files - both of which have been made into TV series. On reflection, my tastes are more mainstream than instinct tells me. (Also, I'd quibble with 72.last. The strongest I could put it is that the series is getting "rather formulaic", in that the first few books were all about mundane or maybe political but still definitely personal problems and the last two have had more elements of cosmic conflict like a typical fantasy story, but it's nowhere near there yet and YMMV on whether that's bad anyway. But like I said, quibbling.)
Actually, I just looked up the series, and it looks like a new book was released this past month. I think I might be making a stop on the way home from work.
what?!? He's a prince among men!
He's the KING.
I've been a big fan of the guy...it's not easy to be a living god from a young age. I mean, it's a lot easier than being, say, me, but it does have challenges, which he lived up to pretty well. But a disappointing curve to his narrative arc right now...what made him special and different was A) the level of his talent and his challenge to live up to that, and B) the loyal hometown guy aspect. If he leaves to Miami, he betrays both...the first by being a second fiddle to Wade (which shows some lack of confidence on his part) and of course the second by stabbing his hometown in the back on national television.
The best piece written on Lebron and his choice . Not as good, but still very good, Bill Simmons thoughts .