I complained in my previous entry about Dracula 2000 that it didn’t live up to its potential and that a lot of it was pretty campy. But it did cause me to think a little bit more about the ways in which religion, the Catholic church in particular, gets leveraged in vampire movies and literature. … Read More
I just finished watching Dracula 2000, #68 on the Top 70 list, and it was one of those movie watching experiences I hate. And that is, I hate it when you feel like a movie could have been WAY better and actually sort of cool but then something must have gone very, very wrong in … Read More
Last night JP came over and we set out to watch Bordello of Blood, #70 on the Top 70 list, and John Carpenter’s Vampires: Los Muertos. Jon Bon Jovi is the main character in Los Muertos. The movie is a loose sequel to the first John Carpenter vampire flick. And much better, I might add. … Read More
Father Abel with a steampunk-esque bible. The illustrator of Trinity Blood has a real technology fetish. The more ornate the better. Besides those amazing AX priests and nuns, another reason I get such a kick out of Trinity Blood is its obsession with religious references. It’s pretty much inescapable. Among them are: The vampires are … Read More
My friend and colleague Chad and I taught a class called Speaking Pictures for Interim 2009. Here is a little presentation I did on parody and the aesthetification of violence. I hope the links still work….. ******** Die Walküre What’s Opera Doc? (1957) Clips from Mystery Men. Chapter 8: Wisdom of the Spinx Slow Motion … Read More
Ok. So, as I said last night, we watched From Dusk Till Dawn. #19 on the Top 70 list. The screenplay was written by Quentin Tarantino (he acts in it too) and the film was directed by Robert Rodriguez. It opens with a Texas Ranger and a gas station store clerk chatting about the recent … Read More
I just finished watching From Dusk Till Dawn, #19 on the Top 70 list. For various unimportant reasons, I ended up watching the first half last night and then finished the second half this evening. Man. Watching the movie this way made it seem like two entirely different movies! I had one impression of the … Read More
Trinity Blood is one of the novel-manga-anime “worlds” I got caught up in last month. “Angst” is Trinity Blood’s middle name because boy! is this an angst ridden bunch! Trinity Blood is set in a post-apocalyptic (of course) world. There was a great war between humans and vampires 900 years ago and now the humans, … Read More
Dale and I watched John Carpenter’s Vampires with JP and JK last night. Wow. What to say, what to say? The movie is #55 on the Top 70 list and any doubt I may have had about whether the list is organized by popularity versus quality have been banished. The movie is completely campy. And … Read More
I have to get back on track with the Top 70 list after my long detour through Vampire Hunter D, Hellsing, Blood+, and Trinity Blood. It is so interesting to me how each title has multiple incarnations — manga, TV series, movie, novelization — and that each version has distinct differences in plot. But that’s … Read More
I watched Cronos (#10 on the Top 70 Vampire Movies of All Time list) with JP the other day. It’s directed by Guillermo del Toro so I had pretty high expectations. It was good but definitely not like the stuff he does now (Hell Boy, Pan’s Labyrinth). But, in true del Toro style, it does … Read More
Here’s a D story that’s pretty different from the previous ones. First of all, it takes place over two volumes so the narrative itself is a lot more expansive. I’m not entirely sure if that’s a virtue or not. There is a certain great economy in the one volume stories. I’m always impressed with how … Read More
Dale and I both wanted to watch a movie last night so we had to find a compromise film. We watched Bubble. It’s by Steven Soderbergh. We thought it would be a horror film but it wasn’t. It’s about the relationship between three people who work at a doll factory somewhere in the midwest. It’s … Read More
The English translations of Vampire Hunter D mostly end with a postscript by Hideyuki Kikuchi. Some, I assume, are translations of postscripts that were written for the original Japanese novels but some are written especially for the English translations. I find these postscripts almost as fascinating as the novels themselves because they always have to … Read More
I’m alternating grading blue books with reading. I’m up to volume 5 in the Vampire Hunter D series. The English translations all have postscripts by Kikuchi, some written especially for the translation. And what strikes me again and again is that D seems to be a Western character through and through. And by Western, I … Read More
My husband and I watched 2046 the other night. It was visually stunning but boy was it long. A whole week past while we were watching it! We actually didn’t even watch it to the end because we simply lost stamina. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t stick out until the end with … Read More
Now that I’d read all of the issues of Hellsing that are out, I find myself shifted to a new obsession — Vampire Hunter D, of course. Those take longer to read because they are novels, at least. The other day I read 3 of the series, Vampire Hunter D: Demon Deathchase, and then yesterday … Read More
I finished all the grading for ONE of my classes so as a reward, I watched Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. This is the one I saw with my good friend Jim way back in grad school. Wow. What a terrific film. I take back what I said about the anime version of D being a … Read More
You can now buy chapters of Hideyuki Kikuchi’s Vampire Hunter D, the manga, from iTunes. You use an app called Uclick to deliver sections of the manga to your iPhone or iPod touch. There are 6 downloads for volume 1 and each download is $0.99. You can read the press release from DMP here. Yet … Read More
In the interest of equal time, I found a list of the top 25 surfing movies of all time. So now I suppose we will alternate movies nights or something? The crossed off titles are the ones that Dale has seen. I may or may not have seen them as well. Surfing Magazine’s Top 25 … Read More