DVD of the Week: What We Do in the Shadows

Ah, Vampires, you just can't seem to keep them down. We still seem to be in the midst of a never-ending zombie-apocalypse, but Vampires have been with us a lot longer, and show no signs of going away. Yes, they've been (mostly) turned from blood-hungry predators to slightly creepy ideal boyfreind material, but that mutability is in many ways a strength, and certainly the more sympathetic, tragic vampire had given us some good stuff as well as the bad. There is also enough breadth of material that I'm surprised there isn't more spoofery around. Certainly there has been a couple of pretty terrible attempts at it, but it's taken a long time for me to finally find on I really, really liked. And that honour goes to indie New Zealand mockumentary, What We Do In the Shadows. 

TV Review: Penny Dreadful

I'm slightly wary of the ongoing fascination with the high Victorian era. Its a strange time - not yet modern but containing a lot of things that will lead into modernity, and social constructs - the clothes, the language, the locations - that are very familiar, but also different enough that we can be comfortable that it's horrors are safely in the past. There is chocolate box London that you see in so many adaptations, cloaked in snow and poverty, and the grinding mechanical technology so beloved of the Steampunk aesthetic. Its an era at the dawn of most of the modern fiction genres, which probably helps, and right there, mining out  it's dark heart for the horror fans, is Penny Dreadful, now returning for a second season. 

Books Review: The Dresden Files

My reading habits seem to be rubber-banding around a little bit at the moment, mostly between factual (mostly history) stuff and then whatever popcorn paperbacks I can find to fill in the gaps between them. It leads to some interesting whiplash in both style and content, if I'm honest, but mostly I'm fine that. My most recent Popcorn obsession has become Jim Butchers The Dresden Files, in part because I've been meaning to go back after reading one a couple of years back, and partly because I'm now playing in a Dresden Files inflected Role-Playing Game. More of that in some other post, perhaps. But, the books then, how are they?

DVD of the Week: Byzantium

Ah, Vampires. Now the Zombie is the go-to-guy for monsters who really mess you up, the Vampire has been pretty solidly cemented in it's role as the Horror Icon who is really just you, the mis-understood outsider. The Van Helsings of this world have become the oppressors, and the Draculas the heroes. Lonely, tortured, mopey, pretty heroes. I blame Anne Rice.  Or Francis Ford Coppola. Or Both. And of course the mopey teenage angst sort of Vampire Story is even more dominant with the recent success of Twilight, and it's interesting that this weeks film, Byzantium, seems to want to be like both Rice and Meyer in its two lead characters arcs.

DVD of the Week: Dark Shadows

Anyone remember when Tim Burton was an interesting filmmaker? Anyone? I mean, what was the last really stand out movie he made, one that because a must see, something you'd watch over and over? These days it seems like it's just another excuse for Johnny Depp to don a silly costume and mug his way through two-hours of gothic-inflected pantomine. So the lastest movie on the Burton/Depp oeuvre is Dark Shadows, based on a 1970s TV show that I don't think was ever very big over here, but, in fairness, seems perfect territory for them. And in fairness, there are some glimmers of that old magic here and there.

DVD(s) of the Week: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

What with actually getting out to the cinema last week, and wanting to write up some other stuff, I missed writing up last weeks DVD watching, and so I'm rolling it together with this weeks viewing excitement. Which is handy, as whilst very, very different in many ways, both films are solidly "B-list" in our expectations, films we rented to pass a happy couple of hours, but not ultimately be heavily anticipated when they dropped through the postbox. In their own ways, they're both more interesting than I expected, but not always in a good way.

Comics Roundup!

I've been caught saying that I don't really buy comics anymore, having sold or given away my old long-boxes a few years back, but all thats really meant is that I now have half a large bookcase full of graphic novels and collected editions. Currently I seem to be buying a two or three a month, so apart from being easier to store the only real difference is that I'm 6 months or so behind on any given storyline. On the plus side, I tend to be able to work on recommendations, so at least I'm buying less rubbish. 

Anyway, some thoughts on my recent reading....

Box Set Blues: True Blood, Series 1

Ah, Vampires. Savage, blood sucking monsters who descend in the hours of darkness to defile innocence and cause the ruin of all that touch. Somewhere along the line this became a romantic ideal, and whilst I'm not sure why, the pointy toothed fiends seem to be everywhere at the moment, running around and waving their subtext in everyone's faces. On the whole the Vampire hasn't done much for me since Near Dark, but the one show I have been recommended from a couple of places is True Blood, the HBO adaptation of the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlene Harris. So onto my Lovefilm queue they went, and now we've seen the whole first series, I can answer the big question of was it worth it?