Or, for those that don’t speak Yoonilecchoorese “Vampires suck”…

But why am I expressing this in even wankier, more academically clouded, terms than usual? Because the Australian Center for the Moving Image is having a series of academic talks about the place of vampires in modern popular culture:

http://www.acmi.net.au/studio_vampires.aspx

I don’t know if I actually have the time to get there, but I’m definitely interested in going. Edutainment at it’s finest, after all.

I should point out that Dr Walton, the chair of the discussion panel, is one of my more enjoyed academics thanks to a paper of hers I saw earlier on the year in regards to animation, which you may read here.

Thanks to Buffy The Vampire Slayer, we are all well aware that the lamest and most awkward time in your life can be made substantially more awesome by adding in vampires… and a British guy that can sing.

But what happens if you suddenly take out all the cool and raunch of a show like Buffy, and instead added in all the lameness of a highschool drama? What if you crossed True Blood and Degrassi: The Next Generation?

You’d get The Vampire Diaries.

Much like Twilight and True Blood, these are based off a series of books from an author no one had ever heard of until recently, and all seemed to come out with remarkable speed. I guess the big push for vampires at the moment is the same as in the mid 90s. They’re the in thing again, and it needs to be squeezed into teenagers, so their cash is squeezed out, before they go back to some other form of disaffection with life and stop buying black clothes and silly hairstyles. On the bright side, I suppose this current craze could possibly see a revival in goth clubs… On the down side, they might insist on bringing the sound tracks to these shows with them, which in this case would include a fair bit of terrible terrible emo music. Yes, I hate My Chemical Romance in no small degree.

Back to the show!

The plot revolves around Elena, a girl who’s parents died the year previously, being sort of taken care of an aunt, whilst she takes care of her dope fiend brother. She’s having a hard time at school, as all high school drama protagonists do. It should be pointed out the Elena is played by Nina Dobrev, who is probably one of the better people for this role. Why? Because she’s been in other teen horror crap before, she was in Degrassi: The Next Generation, and hell, she even had a part as an extra in Repo the Genetic Opera… So yeah, I’ll give her, and the casting director, some credit in this. She’s also not a woeful actor, unlike many many teenagers.

Enter Stefan, one of the founders of their small town, who is now a vampire, and looks about as much a teenager as Luke Perry did as Dylan. He’s here to recapture his lost love from 150 years prior, because Elena, who is not only underage, but so much younger than him that it’s all kinds of wrong (Buffy was wrong too… Except for Willow. Her relationships were all kinds of right.), and his troublesome brother, Damon (nice and obvious name there).

Stefan’s a “good” vampire, because he doesn’t drink human blood. Suck it up, bucko. Literally. Male humans come with a convenient-for-vampires meat straw that they’re more than happy to have someone, anyone, suck on so that some kind of fluid is drained out. It’s what the female fandom are secretly wanting in the first place. Ladies out there, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

I’ll admit to only having seen two episodes, but the show irritates me on a number of levels, and I’m not talking about how much they tried to get a guy that looked like “Edward” to cash in on the Stephanie Meyer / Twilight craze.

The show is simply not that well constructed.

For a start, plot devices ripped straight out of every other vampire series out there. The sunlight going ring from Buffy, so Stefan doesn’t burn up. The “I’m a good vampire now” shtick from numerous sources. The “She reminds me of a lost love” from Anne Rice. The highschool setting from Poppy Z Brite. It’s like it’s every good idea stolen and rolled in together.

The pacing is terrible. Admittedly, this is partially the fault of poor source material, but a good team of writers or director know how to pad scenes so that they can give better over all pacing to a show. True Blood is a fantastic example of how tacky source material can be redone to make a much better paced show.

The special effects are just annoying. One prime example: The mist. Ok, we get it, vampires like mist. But mist rises from the ground, it doesn’t billow in from the sides, and certainly not in great rolling gusts. Maybe it’s mystical mist! No, I still don’t buy it. It shouldn’t be hugging the ground like a thick blanket, but rather be a solid wall. I drive through mist on a regular basis when interstate tripping. It’s scary shit when it looms like a wall, and I only ever see it hug the ground in valleys. Also, crows… Seriously?

The soundtrack to this show is woeful. The non-diegetic music simply does not suit the scenes that they’re paired with, and it really does sound like they’re simply trying to slot tracks in so that later down the road they can sell an MTV approved sound track.

I think I’m going to have to write another article on heart throb vampires that don’t fucking sparkle…

In the meantime, here’s a clip from Vampire Diary (not Diaries). It’s done on a budget of almsot nothing, seems to have no script, yet still manages to not be so lame… No wait, it does.

Are you as sick of Twilight as I am?

Good. Then maybe we can get back to some real vampire stories, like the sort Poppy Z Br–

*kaTHUNK* … *TWANG!*

Sorry, that’s me hurting myself over beginning that suggestion. Let’s start over.

Are you as sick of vampires sparkling in the daylight as I am? Thanks to a half ok written set of books, and a really shitty movie (soon to have a sequel), Vampirism has basically been turned from the dark and brooding mystery it was when I was a lame teenage wannabe vampire goth thanks to Anne Rice, to basically being the next misunderstood minority now that it’s ok to be gay… And like movies about gay guys, they’re thin, pouty, and you really really want to sodomize them.

Well, all is not lost. Thank the powers that be that the Europeans still now how to make good movies based of decently well written books, instead of turning them into steaming piles of crap.

Let The Right One In is one such book, and it’s been made into a remarkably good film.

The gist is that Oskar, a 12 year old ideal of Aryan perfection notices a new girl, Eli, move into his apartment building… And that he only ever sees her at night… and that she doesn’t need to wear heavy padded clothing in the middle of the night in the middle of winter in the middle of Sweden. Being the outcast at school that he is, he quickly befriends her

And then people in the town start to die mysteriously and they fall in love.

Where this deviates from most vampire films that don’t sparkle is that it is: a) a romantic drama; b) not about the vampire; and c) you’ll go to jail if you happen to have topless shots of the main characters on your computer, regardless of the fact that the film actually does do a couple nude scenes.

Now, I’m going to be honest and say I know dick about the Scandinavian film industry, but this really is a masterpiece.

The sets & costumes made it almost impossible to believe that this movie was not shot at some point in the 80s and simply digitally remastered. Terribly out of date clothes, tiny CRG TV sets, little government built apartments, awful haircuts all round. Simply impeccable set and costume design.

The score was very well rendered by one Johan Söderqvist (who I am now trying to find in the torrents). At all times it was appropriate to the scene and well blended instead of attempting to force the emotion of the moment on to you. So much so that you can’t even distinctly remember a catch. It’s just… pleasant.

The acting was rather impressive. In the film industry, you’re never meant to work with animals or children. Especially first timers. Yet Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson pull off some amazingly realistic performances. The awkwardness of a young child, and the even more awkwardness of a child that is now dead and cant’ even remember when it happened. The build the characters in a most believable way.

Honestly, my accolades shouldn’t be that surprising. The book and film have won over 50 awards combined, and not just crappy European ones. If you’re the sort of person that doesn’t really mind reading subtitles, this movie is well worth it.

Go see it before it finishes its runs at the art house cinemas.

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