Twilight: The Book

This weekend, I was at a rock concert, and the guy in front of me had a tee-shirt that read, “Hot Topic is not punk rock.” Which is, of course, true, and the message was clearly a poke at the younger, prone-to-screaming-hysterically contingent of the band’s female fanbase. Hot Topic promotes bands that are like the Sex Pistols defanged, punk rock watered down and made palatable to legions of swoony young girls who want to tack pictures of William Beckett and Pete Wentz all over their walls. So it’s unsurprising that Hot Topic sells scads of Twilight merchandise, since, as Fall Out Boy is to the Sex Pistols, Twilight is to, say, I Am Legend. (And I say that as a fan of all four of those things.) Twilight is vampires watered down, made palatable to the generation that’s too young to have seen Interview With A Vampire (the first emo vampire movie) in the theatres.

The last time I wrote about vampires, I had nothing to say about Twilight because the movie wasn’t out yet and I hadn’t read the book. (My friend Lindsay had read it, however, and came down firmly on the side of "YOU SHOULD NOT READ IT.") I had the book sitting around for a while, because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, plus it was recommended to me a couple of years ago by a beloved professor who had never steered me wrong when it came to reading recommendations, so I figured it had to either have some kind of merit on its own, or in the very least had to be the kind of thing that generally appeals to me, since this professor knows my taste (and occasional lack thereof) pretty well. Still, I was reluctant to dive in because it seemed like it would be unbearably cheesy, but then I read the second Entertainment Weekly cover story and saw this:

The author loves the movie, though she had her disagreements with Hardwicke. ''I mostly stepped in on the script level,'' she says. ''You know the line 'So the lion fell in love with the lamb'? It's a bit of a cheesy line, I have to say. They had changed the wording on that, to downplay it a little. And I said, 'I really like how you've changed this, but this line is tattooed on people's ankles. I think you're going to have a problem if you don't do it exactly right.' And they listened to me — and saved themselves the outrage of the people who know these books.''

I kind of liked that acknowledgment of both sides of the coin – the cheesiness of the source material, the devotion of the fans. It made me think that maybe the people involved in this juggernaut had their heads screwed on straight.

So I finally cracked open Twilight, and I didn’t put it back down until I was done several hours later. Suffice to say, it was a lot better than I expected. Granted, after taking something like ten or eleven writing workshops in college, I have a nearly endless capacity to tolerate crap writing and find the merit in nearly everything I read. After some of the exorable sadsack excuses for student writing I had to slog through on a weekly basis for several years on end, something has to be really atrocious to even ping my radar of bad writing. I think I’ve got the literary equivalent of PTSD, I’m the dead-around-the-eyes reading equivalent a war vet who can walk past a nasty car wreck and not even flinch because I’ve seen real horror. You think a little purple prosey vampire melodrama can compare to reading a novel-in-progress, written partially in a hokey southern dialect, that regularly waxes rhapsodic about the massive torso of the psychotically unhinged narrator who is really just a thinly veiled version of the douchebag writer? And then having to find nice things to say about said exorable piece of dung in workshop because if you don’t, the unhinged writer/narrator might follow you home after class, chop off your head, and add it to the trophy case of heads you’re convinced he has stashed under his bed? Jesus, people, I’ve been in the shit, okay? Those who complain about the quality of Stephenie Meyer’s writing need to live inside my head for a moment and see just how much worse it could be.

Um. Sorry. Like I said, literary PTSD. Anyway, I found a lot of the book surprisingly charming. If you can get past the purple prose, the narrator’s unflagging low self-esteem, and the ten thousand exclamations of Edward’s immortal hotassness, there’s actually a pretty good book in there. It needed a more brutal edit, to be sure, and I’ve no doubt it would have gotten one had they known how much it was gonna blow up. Twilight is surprisingly funny, the characters are all pretty likeable, and the story moves along at a decent clip. I read the other three books in the series over the course of the week. It was interesting to see Meyer’s prose fade from vivid purple to a pale lilac as the series progressed and she honed her writing (albeit on a very public stage). Alas, her plotting skills do leave something to be desired. The books build towards big, climactic battles that are either fought off-page and described later because the narrator was not present mentally or physically, or are resolved with lame truces. And the fourth book, Breaking Dawn, rather famously went off the rails and into wackadooland plotwise, though I still enjoyed much of it. It probably helps that I was already spoiled for the la-la-lunacy so I knew what I was getting into before reading page one of book one.

It’s easy enough to see why the books are so popular. For the teen set, well, come on. When I was the age of the Twilight target demo, my friends and I were addicted to Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. We saw it over and over in the theatre, clipped pictures out of magazines, memorized the soundtrack, all that good stuff. There will always be something like this for teen girls to rally around. Of course, it wasn’t as big a media story back then because we weren’t in the midst of a major economic depression that’s left the oh-so-very-doomed media (who are all sick of writing about the major economic depression at this point) grasping at any straw of what might be a viable story in vain hopes of proving its continued relevancy.

And the books work even for those of us whose hormones are finally mostly in check, because they tap into the two most primal driving forces of human nature: sex and death. Sex and death are the only things worth writing about because they’re the twin codes of our entire existence. We are programmed to avoid death at all costs, both on a personal level by, you know, breathing and eating and sleeping and not stepping into oncoming traffic, and on a species level by mating and procreating. It’s the reason naval-gazing literary outings don’t fare well outside of the MFA incubator while mysteries and romances clog up Bookscan’s top spots, because sex and death will always trump artistic merit when it comes to mass appeal. And star-crossed romance has been popular since Shakespeare wrote about Romeo and Juliet, since Ovid wrote of Pyramus and Thisbe, since ancient Greeks sat around telling the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The archetype has endured for over two millennia because there’s something about that dynamic that appeals to us on a really primal level. Bella and Edward are merely the newest iteration of something very old and enduringly popular.

The thing about the Twilight series is, the author basically wrote it on a lark and sent it off to see if she could get published on a lark. Luck was on her side and she got published and it snowballed into this huge thing that’s put her – a young and unrefined author with definite potential but lacking polish – under a huge microscope. Now, I can’t exactly cry for her because she was certainly well-compensated for her troubles, but I still think she didn’t set out to write the Great American Novel, which is why I find the furor on both sides – she’s a genius! she’s everything wrong with the world! – to be frankly hilarious. Is it Mormon propaganda masquerading as vampire romance? No, it’s just a book written by someone too green to properly pull herself and her views out of her writing – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless you’re a Mormon or a Scientologist or a douchebag sociopath with an under-the-bed head collection and a massive torso. Taken at face value, stripped of all the hype, the Twilight series is a good yarn and an engaging read, no more or less.

Red Eye: A Bad Show, or the Worst Show?

I recently started an internship where my primary responsibility is to watch assigned television shows looking for (then pulling, editing, and uploading) newsworthy, interesting, or entertaining clips for the web. On my first day, I dutifully moved down the list of shows until I hit one I’d never heard of, a Fox News offering called Red Eye. (I’m not exactly Fox News’ target demographic.) I started to watch, and after about five minutes I turned to my editor, slightly alarmed. “Is this a real show?” I asked. Part of me suspected they were hazing the new girl by making me watch a compilation of terrible collegehumor.com clips or something. My editor assured me that Red Eye is a real show that real people pay money to produce. So I watched. And after it was over, I told my editor that I was a worse person for having watched that.

Red Eye is, in theory, a funny look at the day’s news that airs on Fox News every morning at three a.m. It’s exactly like The Soup, if The Soup was daily, aired in the dead of night, focused on news instead of pop culture, was packed to the gunny walls with slanderously racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, and homophobic remarks, and was painfully unfunny. Which I guess means it’s nothing like The Soup. Of course something like this would air on Fox News.

Fox News and I go way back. In 2006 there was an incident at my school that made a lot of national headlines, and Fox News picked up on it and held on like a monkey with a damned banana. They spent the rest of that semester and a good part of the next trolling for non-stories to make us look bad. For example, I wrote a completely innocuous newspaper article that had a section on our school’s S&M club. A few weeks later, Ann Coulter’s reporting on how depraved the student body is because we have an S&M club. Because I was the humor editor for our newspaper’s spin-off magazine at the time, it was my job to try and comment on all the insanity, but I found it oddly difficult to make fun of Fox News because they were insane on a level that seemed to exist outside the confines of reality. I do recall writing one spoof article that was so vitriolic and unambiguously offensive that my co-editor had to reverse our usual dynamic and tell me I’d gone too far – that was usually my role. The toned down version was still pretty terrible and I’m unbelievably relieved that the archives for that semester are not online.

So there I am on Friday, watching Red Eye, feeling far less alarmed than I was in my first outing. Somewhere along the way, the show kind of grew on me. That, or Stockholm Syndrome has set in. I’m now ashamed to admit I’ll occasionally flip it on at home when I have insomnia. It’s just so surreal to see that many racist/homophobic/misogynistic/anti-Semitic comments packed into one hour. Sometimes, a particularly crazy homeless person will come onto your subway car, ranting about the government and Jews or whatever, and you don’t want to stare because he might try to dash in your brains with a brick, and also he smells like pee. But with Red Eye, there’s a television set standing between you and the crazy ranting man! You can openly stare and not even feel guilty because, against all odds, the crazy ranting man is getting paid to do this! For all you know, Greg Gutfeld might not even smell like pee!

Anyway, after the show I wanted to see if any of the other episodes this week had covered a particular topic in the faux news alerts that kick off the show, so I went through the episodes I had on hand. I didn’t find what I was looking for, but I did find something else - a bizarre pattern of picking on Belgium. Belgium is not a country I’d ever given much thought to outside the confines of French class. I know they have good waffles and chocolate, and I sometimes confuse Belgium with Germany and Austria because I have an astoundingly terrible sense of geography and global politics, but that’s about it. But here were two clips in one week, picking on Belgium for no discernible reason. Still looking for the other topic I wanted, I hit up Hulu to see what they had, and the first thing I clicked on, an episode from September, featured more Belgium mockery. I found the arbitrariness of it hilarious – Belgium! Who in the world has a deathgrudge against Belgium? – so I compiled the clips and sent them off. The managing editor, Gabriel Snyder, picked it up and wrote a hilarious post about it. So if you go here, you can read his hilarious post and see video proof that someone at Red Eye has a grudge against Belgium. (Belgium! Really!)

Earlier in the day, I had pulled another hilarious clip off Fox and Friends, Fox News’ answer to the Today Show, which is only slightly (slightly) more PC than Red Eye. In the clip, Fox and Friends claimed that 81% of all “babes” were planning to see Twilight, and that most young girls were turned on to the book series by their mothers. (Which may have been true in the 80s/90s when I was a kid pilfering my mom’s V.C. Andrews, but I think it’s safe to say that nowadays, moms are following their daughters into the Twilight, not the other way around.) The clip was picked up by both Defamer with New 'Twilight' Report Affirms Fox News's Commitment to Cultural Tone-Deafness and Jezebel with 80% Of All Women Babes Plan To See Twilight. Fox News might in fact be my new favorite place to go for I’m-laughing-at-not-with-you hilarity.

As far as Red Eye, I can’t in good conscience recommend that you watch this show on TV. If everyone reading this blog tuned into Red Eye all at once, their audience would grow 1000% to a staggering twenty viewers, and that would send the producers the wrong message. But it’s worth pulling up some clips on YouTube and marveling at the insanity. Just make sure to cleanse your palate by tuning into The Soup on Friday.

Movies: Repo! The Genetic Opera

Repo! The Genetic Opera imagines a steampunk, noirish future where organ replacements are handily engineered by GeneCo, ensuring a long life for those who can afford it. Those who can’t afford it can get the goods on credit, but of course, if you default on your payment, said organs are handily repossessed by the Repo Man, making for a less long life. Oh, and it’s an opera. Co-starring Paris Hilton. These elements could be the recipe for something eye-bleedingly awful or something unbelievably brilliant. Repo! yo-yos between those two extremes.

The visuals of the film are phenomenal, full of dark, twisted, lush, steampunk imagery, like someone spilled out the brain of Edward Gorey, H.G. Wells, and Hieronymus Bosch onto the screen. And all the heavy lifting of world-building and background exposition is handily dispatched by flashes of a highly-stylized comic book, which both sets the mood and allows the film to cut right to the heart of things, i.e. graphic organ removal. The visuals alone might even be worth the full price of admission. If you’re going for the music, however, you might want to wait for a bargain matinee. Some of the opening songs (”Genetic Repo Man” and “21st Century Cure”) are catchy and mood-setting, but the next thirty or so minutes are filled with tuneless, meandering melodies that swing between bland and outright annoying. They so counteracted the great imagery, interesting characters, and imaginative story that I initially wondered if Repo! might not have been better off as a music-free movie rather than an opera. But after a while, standout songs started appearing, interspersed with the blander offerings, which led my final opinion to be that Repo! would have done better with a traditional book-and-music musical format than a sung-through rock opera.

The performances are hit or miss as well. As the Repo Man, Anthony Stewart Head is phenomenal, displaying savage ferocity and overprotective tenderness in equal measures. He’s also an accomplished singer, which comes as no surprise to those familiar with his collaboration with George Sarah, Music For Elevators, as well as his stint in Rocky Horror and his occasional musical performances as Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Sarah Brightman, the original Christine in The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway and the West End, is quite good as Blind Mag, the opera diva with the creepy genetic eyes. And Alexa Vega (as Shilo, the Repo Man’s daughter) and Paris Hilton (as Amber Sweet, daughter of GeneCo’s founder Rotti) turn in solid performances, even if their singing voices are a bit anemic. Paris Hilton might not be the next Grace Kelly, but love her or hate her, you notice her, she has an undeniable charisma that makes her hard to ignore, and she is, if nothing else, interesting. Paul Sorvino as Rotti Largo - founder of GeneCo, employer of Repo Man, and jilted paramour of Shilo’s deceased mother who left Rotti for Nathan (Repo Man’s kinder, gentler, slightly-less-kill-happy alter ego) years ago – gives an interesting performance as a villain who is not really layered, but not entirely unsympathetic, either. Rotti also has two sons, brothers to Hilton's Amber Sweet: Ogre as Parvi Largo and Bill Moseley as Luigi Largo. Ogre is chilling and hilarious as a creepy dandy who wears women’s skinned faces over his own. Bill Mosely, however, is out-acted by Paris Hilton as the angry Luigi. His every line reading is convoluted and contorted. It’s lucky for him the scenery of Repo! is so expansive, allowing the film to retain its lush look after he’d chewed through half of it.

But the real standout is Terrance Zdunich as GraveRobber, the narrator who makes his living peddling a black market drug extracted from the brains of corpses. (And you thought jenkem was a disgusting idea.) He oozes sinuous charisma and lights up every scene he’s in. His singing and mannerisms are spot on, and he, more than any other component, holds the film together, serving as our Virgil on this hellish descent. Before the credits rolled, I wondered whether his performance stood out because he was the best or because he had been given the best materials to work with. The answer turned out to be a little bit of both, as Zdunich is the co-writer along with Darren Smith, who also has a small role in the film.

Repo! knows its roots. The anarchic feel shared by similar cultish rock stage musicals (the arena where Repo! got its start) such as Bat Boy the Musical, Reefer Madness, and Evil Dead: The Musical, and off-screen musical performances by goth-rock staples Poe and Melora Creager of Rasputina, help ground this work with its spirited predecessors. Repo! also manages to layer in some nice themes that elevate genetics to more than just replacement kidneys. When Rotti is diagnosed with an illness even he can’t cure, he has to decide which of his three children is least unfit to inherit his legacy. Meanwhile, Shilo is kept prisoner by the blood disease she inherited from her mother, and she voices the thesis of the film with “Infected”: “How much is it genetics, how much of it is fate, how much of it depends on the choices that we make?” Frankly, I went to Repo! for the gore, camp, and rock, so finding an actual story with themes and imagery and symbolism and all was just gravy.

Repo! The Genetic Opera isn’t for the squeamish – it is, after all, by Twisted Pictures, best known for the Saw franchise. If the phrase “Repo Man sings a song using a corpse as a puppet” makes you go “Awesome!” rather than vomit slightly, then Repo! is definitely for you, and make no mistake, I am definitely in the “Awesome!” camp. The movie has its flaws, there are some moments that are cringe-inducing and some performances that are a crime against humanity. There’s also some unresolved business where a character dies before receiving an important piece of information that would absolve them of much past angst, which is unsatisfying and frustrating for the viewer who knows this information. But these low lows are coupled with some of the highest highs I’ve seen in cinema in years. Repo! is exciting as hell, something new that doesn’t color within the usual Hollywood lines, and I’d gladly sit through another performance of the disjointed rock number “Seventeen” to see something as thrilling as GraveRobber’s “Zydrate Anatomy” (which you can watch below) or Blind Mag’s high-flying operatic swan song. If you’re not lucky enough to live in one of the handful of cities where Repo! is playing now, it’s due out on DVD in January, and I highly recommend you rent it – hell, buy it – as soon as it hits stores. Just try to pay cash instead of credit.

Movies: Rachel Getting Married and The Duchess

Happy day, the apocalypse has been averted and we no longer are at risk of having a zombie puttering around the White House for the next four years, which means I can get back to worrying about more frivolously important things, like the Oscars. The Oscar race for Best Leading Actress is often the most interesting category each year. While Hollywood might not excel at putting multiple women on the screen together, it does seem to do a good job of pairing amazing women up with amazing material. And I suspect two recent releases are going to get that category off to a good start.

Anyone who’s been lucky enough to be around a recovering addict knows what special hell they can bring into your life. All of the self-absorption that comes from being an addict gets redirected into being a recovering addict. Instead of funneling all of their energy into chasing the next high, they’ll funnel all of their energy into self-righteously patting themselves on the back for not chasing the next high. I’ve run into some recovering alcoholics who felt the need to condescendingly explain why they’re morally superior to me since they no longer drink but I still do. The fact that I have a couple of drinks tops every few weeks tops with friends and never had an incident involving my car making furious love to an embankment of trees is apparently irrelevant. Look, I’m Irish-American with a once-large-now-mostly-deceased Catholic family, I know from alcoholism, okay? So it’s a testament to Anne Hathaway’s acting prowess that she could deliver such a nuanced turn in Rachel Getting Married and make it pleasant to be around a recovering addict for once.

In Rachel Getting Married, Kym (Anne Hathaway) leaves rehab for a weekend to come home for her sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt)’s wedding. While home, she has a fling with a groomsman and fellow recovering addict (Mather Zickel), makes an awkward toast to Rachel and her fiancé (TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe), crashes a car, and has moments both tender and volatile with her family. Rachel is a quiet film – sometimes literally, as music is used sparingly – that offers only a few emotional explosions, though when they come they’re quite compelling. The one thing Rachel Getting Married excels in is avoiding easy answers. When The Great Family Tragedy is revealed, we learn that it was not the event that drove Kym to drugs but rather that it was Kym’s drug use that caused the tragedy. In fact, no explanation is ever given for why Kym got to where she is, which is what keeps this from being a Lifetime movie. Sometimes smart people make stupid decisions for no good reason and hugging it out won’t magically fix everything. When Kym returns to rehab after her weekend at home, it’s not with any great revelation into the meaning of life, she’s just taking one of the many steps she’ll have to take towards recovery. Like a lot of indie movies, Rachel Getting Married does suffer from a few problems common to the genre. The steadicam shots are occasionally too precious in trying to mimic reality, and the wedding scene goes on far, far too long – there’s verisimilitude and then there’s flat out annoying. But with strong performances across the board and Anne Hathway as the spitfire center, this is one wedding you won’t want to miss.

Anne won’t be without competition when it comes to Oscar nominations, as Keira Knightly is deserving of consideration for her turn as Georgiana Cavendish (née Spencer), Duchess of Devonshire, in The Duchess. Just as Rachel Getting Married avoids devolving into standard Lifetime fare, The Duchess avoids turning into a typical bodice ripper. Mostly, anyway. The story follows Georgiana through her first decade of marriage to the Duke (Ralph Fiennes), when the primary concern (as it always seems to be with these royals) is producing a male heir. The Duke is abusive and neglectful, and Georgiana ends up conducting an affair with Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper) that results in a child. When she is forced to give the child away, it’s hard not to be moved by the situation and by Knightley’s stellar performance.

But all those relationships pale in comparison to Georgiana’s relationship with Elizabeth “Bess” Foster (Hayley Atwell). To say this is a complicated relationship is a slight understatement. Bess and Georgiana meet while on vacation in Bath and strike up so close a friendship that Georgiana invites Bess, recently separated from her husband who denies her visitation with their children, to move in with her and the Duke. She comes to regret this situation when Bess and the Duke begin a rather open affair. This comes as little surprise, of course, since the Duke is a philanderer and Bess is a woman desperate to curry favor with anyone who might be able to reunite her with her children. Georgiana’s dismay is, of course, of little surprise as well, but what keeps The Duchess interesting is the way that it keeps from devolving into a catfight for a cad’s affections, The Other Boleyn Girl revisited. Bess stays with Georgiana during her exile to secretly birth Charles Grey’s child and the two manage to rebuild their relationship despite the awkward Duke-sharing. It’s a complicated and compelling storyline. The only downside is that this storyline is not given as much time as the Georgiana/Duke and Georgiana/Charles Grey drama. In fact, that is one failing of The Duchess. There is a lot of meaty material – Georgiana’s political work, her incessant gambling, her complicated relationship with Bess – that is minimized in favor of the soapy aspects of the story. Still, those elements are present and do happily distinguish The Duchess from similar historical movies. Another quibble, though, when the political aspects are mentioned, they’re not given much context. I suppose I can’t fault the filmmakers for assuming everyone paid attention in history class, but I had to hit the books (or, well, let’s be honest – Wikipedia) when I got home. Still, I really enjoyed The Duchess, and I’m a tough sell as I avoid most costume dramas and historical movies like the plague. I recommend seeing it to give yourself a leg up in the office Oscar pool come 2009.

Comic Domination

A bit of media round-up for a potentially pre-apocalyptic election eve, since lots of comic book-inspired movies and TV shows are in the news this week.

First, Ain’t It Cool News has managed to get ahold of some on-set pictures of the new Sherlock Holmes adaptation starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. Defamer also has a cool picture of Downey in flight. But Monsters and Critics takes the cake with this sizzling report that begins with, “Robert Downey Jr. set his crotch on fire while shooting his new film.” Which is possibly the best lede I have ever read. I’m really excited for this movie. I always liked the idea of Holmes more than the adaptations I’ve seen, and I’m hoping this new one will change that.

Second, Marvel recently announced they would be replacing Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle as Colonel James “Rhodey” Rhodes for Iron Man 2 and the Avengers movie that will follow Iron Man 2 and will (hopefully) pay off that Samuel L. Jackson cameo in the post-credits of Iron Man. Iron Man’s core fanbase reacted, well, about as well as you’d expect. This news came as a bit of surprise to most of the non-fanboy industry as well, because when your movie grosses over $300 million, you usually try not to mess with the winning formula in the sequels. Remember how well that worked for New Coke? This affects more than who Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark will snark at on-screen for two and a half hours, as the Rhodey character will logically take on more importance in the ensuing movies, assuming they follow the comics, where Rhodes dons his own metal suit to become Iron Man’s sidekick War Machine. Marvel, being a movie studio, didn’t come right out and explain their decision, though a few interesting reports have surfaced. Of course, there is no good reason for getting fired when you’re the one on the receiving end of the pink slip, so I doubt anything’s gonna make Howard feel better when the trailers for Iron Man 2, The Avengers, and maybe even War Machine start rolling out in the next few years. The latter movie would be my pick for the reason behind the cast change, though. Howard was good in Iron Man, certainly, but he was on the bland side and didn’t rise to the great heights of Downey, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jeff Bridges, which was fine for the first movie because all you really had to do in that movie was not completely suck and those other three could carry you. But with a potential spin-off franchise in the works, it makes sense to get someone with a little more oomph. Is Cheadle the man for the job? I don’t know. My first reaction was “Really? Hm...” But I’ve since been unable to think of anyone else I could see more in the role, so I suppose it’s worth waiting to see how this shakes out.

Terrence Howard isn’t the only one out of a job. NBC axed the two top Heroes producers, Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander, who had been with the show since its earlier, happier days of cultural relevance. E! managed to dig up some dirt and found an interesting place to point fingers:

"Someone had to take the fall." This is what a reliable inside source on Heroes tells me of the firings of Loeb and Alexander. "NBC is not happy with the current status of the show, and there had to be a visual and tangible change in the course of action."

The final blow came from last week's Entertainment Weekly cover, which I'm told was reported on under the ruse of a promotional story for the series. The surprise—a cover story pointing out Heroes' third-season flaws and fan discontent—did not go over well with higher-ups.

Oh, silly execs, you can’t trust journalists! (Except me, because I always weenie out of going in for the kill on my stories, which is why I stick with puff pieces whenever possible. I’d rather forfeit a Pulitzer than be universally reviled. Because I am a weenie.) Seriously, your show is floundering, bleeding audience members and getting slammed by critics, and you think Entertainment Weekly, one of the few pop culture-based media outlets to weave actual hard-nosed pieces in among the usual softball stories, is gonna write a little hot air piece for you?

At any rate, I’m sure the higher-ups think this movie will reinvigorate the failing show, but I see it more like writing DOOM! on the wall. I finally watched the first few episodes of Heroes this season, and I was struck by overwhelming apathy. I just don’t care anymore. It’s not awful, it’s not even all that different from the first season, I just...can’t bring myself to care anymore. I suspect the show was always fated to have a great first season then fizzle out. Maybe it should have been a really cool movie trilogy instead of a television show.

There are some more great-sounding comic book movies on the horizon. SciFi.com reports that David Lindsay-Abaire, the playwright responsible for some amazing plays like Fuddy Meers, Kimberly Akimbo, and the Pulitzer-winning Rabbit Hole, is in negotiations to write Spider-Man 4. After the sticky mess that was Spider-Man 3, this is a welcome bit of good news. I was lucky enough to have Mr. Lindsay-Abaire speak to my playwriting class last year, where he proved himself to be very thoughtful about the nature of human interactions and confronting one’s own fears. It gives me hope for a more character-driven Spidey movie with crackling dialogue and imaginative plot...not unlike Lindsay-Abaire’s plays.

Finally, Variety says that Sam Mendes will be directing a feature version of the comic book Preacher. Though I won’t get my hopes up until the cameras start rolling, considering a television series was in development by HBO until it suddenly wasn’t and this isn’t the first time a feature adaptation has tried to get off the ground, if this does in fact materialize it will be great news for both comic and movie fans. The Preacher series is fantastic, rife with wit and moral dilemmas, and I can’t wait to see who would be cast as the alcoholic Irish vampire Cassidy, as well as erstwhile-hitwoman-slash-love-interest Tulip O’Hare and of course the Preacher himself, Jesse Custer, who is accidentally possessed by the offspring of a demon and an angel and might have more power than God himself who, by the way, is missing. Of course, when I think “comic book movie”, the first name that comes to mind isn’t exactly Sam Mendes, who is better known for his thoughtful meditations and closet of Oscar hardware, but he might be just the person to lend more gravitas to a genre that, even after The Dark Knight’s success, is still marginalized by the industry if not audiences.

Ebs Just Gave Me the Heebs

No matter how dreadful a movie seems at the outset, I usually try to tough it out to the end. Best case scenario, it picks up a bit and I’m pleasantly surprised. Worst case scenario, at least I’ll be able to cogently state my case when I tell everyone it blows. For example, earlier tonight I was watching The Abandoned, and had I been watching alone I would have shut it off after eight minutes because the opening was slow like honey and poorly filmed. But I wasn’t alone, and I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be a pretty good movie once it got rolling. And on the flipside, because I sat through all one hundred and five excruciating minutes of Doomsday, I feel comfortable saying it’s the worst movie I’ve seen in 2008.

This seems like a solid method to movie reviewing, which is why there was a minor shitstorm when Roger Ebert recently posted a negative review of the indie movie Tru Loved after having seen only the first eight minutes. That he disclaimed this fact at the end of his review did not stop said shit from storming.

So Ebert did the old mea culpa schpiel acknowledging his error. Then he watched the rest of the movie and issued forth a longer and even more brutal review of the movie. And the filmmakers can’t be the only ones now wishing he’d stopped after those eight minutes, because the new, extended review (available here, along with the original missive) contains the following, disturbing view into Roger Ebert’s libido:

I've kissed a fair number of girls and you could never hear us smacking. I've seen a fair number of kisses in the movies, and can't remember anyone smacking. After 15 seconds, Tru pulls away: "I'm thrilled you're hetero, but you don't need to prove it on your first date." Said in real life? Not often. He presses his case: "Can I please just feel you up?" This is a question that is usually asked in body language, not words. Your ol' dad here has copped a fair number of feels in his lifetime, and he never asked first. Sometimes he sure shoulda, but you live and learn.

Yup, I’m not gonna sleep well again until I drink enough to erode those words from my memory.

Halloween Monster Special: Zombies

And so we come to the end of the week long monster extravaganza. Truth be told, I could fill up three posts with recommendations of my favorite zombie media, but then I wouldn’t have time to go see The Haunting of Molly Hartley, ready my Halloween costume (I'm going as Ashley Todd, to match my friend who’s going as the Crazy McCain Rally Lady), and meet my friends at the Village parade. So I’ll keep it brief and highlight just a few of my faves.

The gold standard for modern zombie movies, in my mind, is the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead. It has everything you want in a horror movie – hordes of roaming zombies (including some zombified celebrities), horrible moments when the survivors realize one of their own is infected, a super creepy zombie baby, and people acting more logically than they sometimes do in horror movies. Of course, if comedy is more your thing, you could try the zom rom com spoof Shawn of the Dead, starring Simon Pegg. Or hell, marathon them both and top it off with Diary of the Dead, another Romero zombie flick done in the handheld-cam style of The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield and Quarantine, which means if you hate those films you’ll hate Diary, but if you’re open to the format you’ll find it’s a pretty great addition to the walking dead genre.

I never expected rock and roll to embrace zombies so wholeheartedly, but lo, three of my favorite artists have zombie-flavored songs. (Hm, zombie-flavored? Okay, that sounds disgusting.) First there’s “Zombie Me” by No More Kings. No More Kings specializes in kitschy pop-culture pop, they’re best known for “Sweep the Leg” which is a love letter to the 80s hit Karate Kid. “Zombie Me” is exactly about what you think it would be about – a dude who turns into a zombie – and is a pretty solid song musically as well as being pretty damned funny. Then there’s “The Living Dead” by Phantom Planet, a track off the soundtrack for Stubbs the Zombie, an Xbox game that lets you play as a zombie instead of as the person fleeing from zombies for once, and like the No More Kings selection, works perfectly well as a song regardless of content. Then there’s Ludo’s second album, The Broken Bride, which is a short concept EP which combines zombies, time travel, pterodactyls, angels, demons, and a scientists trying to reconnect with his dead wife, all in the span of five tracks. It’s an ambitious endeavor that the band pulls off beautifully. Now I’m just waiting for someone to write a full-length zombie rock opera.

Finally, there’s Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners, a wonderfully imaginative and fantastically written book of magical realism short stories. The book is worth reading no matter what, but in case you need more convincing, you can get the (almost) whole thing for free online right here as part of a promotion for Link’s new story collection, Pretty Monsters. Needless to say, my favorite story in the collection is “Some Zombie Contingency Plans”, which is not about zombies to the same degree as, say, World War Z, but it’s a clear nod to those of us who have zombie contingency plans in place and is just a fun read. And for now, it’s free, so you have no excuse not to check it out.

So go, rent a few zombie movies, prep your Halloween costume, go over your zombie contingency plan, and I’ll see you in November!

Halloween Monster Special: Assorted Monsters

Some of the scariest monsters are the ones that are the most plausible. While I don’t actively worry about werewolves munching on me, I do worry that some random psychopath is going to snap and kill me for no good reason. (This isn’t to mention the psychopaths I have given a reason to kill me.) Which is why I’ve kind of grown out of slasher movies, because I use movies to help me escape from the horrors of the real world, not remind me of them.

That said, I have to recommend a very plausible and completely horrifying (and totally entertaining) movie, Funny Games. It stars Naomi Watts and Michael Pitt and is best described as The Strangers meets A Clockwork Orange. In Funny Games, Paul (Michael Pitt) and his cohort Peter (Brady Corbet) terrorize a family (Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, and Devon Gearhart) over the course of a night. What makes the terror so horrifying is the genteel, almost refined, nature of it. Paul and Peter are normal-seeming, clean cut young men, which is exactly why the family allows them into their home in the first place. It’s also interesting that it’s an upper class, well-reared family that is attacked, and that the family’s adherence to social conventions and good manners seemingly prevents them from doing what those of us born-in-a-barn types might have done (kicked the perps in the nuts and ran screaming from the house). The movie makes nice use of breaking the fourth wall a few times, allowing Paul to communicate directly to the audience. It’s a technique that is tricky and needs to be handled perfectly, and Funny Games does handle it perfectly.

On the other end of the genteel scale is one of my favorites, Wrong Turn. Wrong Turn is your basic “inbred cannibal hillbillies” story, and yes, that’s actually a genre. And because I was raised in New Jersey and lived in New York City and this have the snobby northern attitude and fear of the non-urban, I’m pretty much open to the idea that hidden in the Deep South are pockets of untouched-by-civilization cannibal breeding grounds. If you like this genre of movie, you can’t go wrong with Wrong Turn. It’s got imaginative deaths, good acting, and plenty of fright.

When I was young, we’d always play Bloody Mary at sleepovers. As a result, even though it’s probably been sixteen years since I last played and I know better because time and logic are on my side, I still get a little creeped out when I walk past a mirror in the dark. So it’s no surprise that Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh scared the crap out of me. Yes, the first movie was good, too, but Candyman 2 has a better story and makes wonderful use of its New Orleans setting. Candyman modifies the old Bloody Mary legend, with the same basic premise (chanting a name in front of a mirror) attached to a new ghoulie (Candyman). It’s a nice enlivening of a creaky premise.

Finally, there’s Silent Hill. I’m not too into video games, I lack the attention span necessary to sit glued to the couch hacking away at monsters for hours on end to be any good at them. But last year I got a cheap used Xbox to check out the Buffy the Vampire Slayer games. A friend who knows I’m a horror movie freak suggested I check out the Silent Hill series, claiming it was pretty much like steering your way through a particularly awesome horror movie. I hadn’t been too impressed by the movie when I’d seen it a while back (“Too much like a video game, too little like a movie” were my exact words, actually), but I gave the second game, Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams, a shot since a used version was available for cheap on Amazon. It took me a while to get into it, but I totally got sucked in by the mythology and creepy atmosphere. This game will absolutely impede your ability to sleep, and not just ‘cause of the flickering graphics. I went on to play Silent Hill 3 and loved it as well. And then I played Silent Hill 4: The Room for, like, an hour and hated it and put it aside in favor of re-playing Silent Hill 2. And then I played Silent Hill: 0rigins, a prequel to the series and a port from Playstation Portable, and I hated it even more and kept dying, so I put it aside for a re-play of Silent Hill 3. So the series isn’t fool proof. (There’s also the first game, which is similar in plot to the movie and which I haven't played, and a fifth game that just came out but, alas for me, is only on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.) But the second and third installments are highly recommended for gamers and non-gamers alike. Both feature great stories and unbelievably creepy images and sounds. The sounds alone are a huge selling point – the sound effects are chilling, and the music, by Akira Yamaoka, is good enough to inspire soundtracks for each game. They’re perfect mood music for a creepy Halloween party. If you’re a horror movie fan, you should definitely pick up a cheap used Xbox of PS2 and get these games. They’ll keep even an attention-span-lacking non-gamer glued to the screen, frantically trying not to die, not unlike a protagonist in a horror movie.

Halloween Monster Special: Werewolves

I'm not really a werewolf expert. I know, you're thinking, "Well, yeah, but who is?" To that I say, cryptozoologists, assuming they exist outside of SciFi Original Movies. While I couldn't find one of those to pitch in, I was able to convince my friend Lindsay, the resident werewolf enthusiast, to give a rundown of some of her favorite werewolf media. So, without further ado, here's what Lindsay sent me.

In terms of supernatural monsters, werewolves have played second fiddle to those oh-so-sexy vampires for quite a long time. One reason might be that vampires have a more cross-gender appeal. Biting someone and drinking their blood is a sex/domination metaphor that goes both ways; but setting loose that inner wolfy beast is, let’s face it, a little more of a guy thing. The other reason is that werewolves just don’t work as well in the TV/movie medium. On-screen vampires range from campy to sexy to gritty and beyond, but on-screen werewolves are pretty much caught somewhere between terrible CGI and your standard Guy in a Furry Suit fallback. (Sorry, Joss, but you know that Oz costume was terrible.) I can only assume this is because it’s hard to train real wolves to howl on cue.

But with the steadily rising popularity of the urban fantasy genre in literature, werewolves are finally having their day. Granted, they’re still an afterthought much of the time (in Laurell K. Hamilton’s bestselling Anita Blake books, you’ll even see vampires keeping wolves as pets), but there are a number of authors who’ve actually managed to bite the silver bullet and put the werewolves first. (Shut up, I’ve been dying to use that one.)

The first book on anyone’s werewolf reading list should be Kelley Armstrong’s BITTEN, the first in her increasingly popular Women of the Otherworld series. The series itself switches narrators with nearly every title, in order to explore the variety of supernatural beings Armstrong has created, but BITTEN and its immediate sequel STOLEN both feature a narrator named Elena Michaels, who is the only female werewolf in the entire world. The story itself is a thriller (werewolf pack is under attack, its members are being killed off one by one, could the culprit be a werewolf too?), but just as cool is the exploration of pack life through Elena’s eyes. As I mentioned before, werewolves are traditionally Guy Territory. Armstrong knows it – and so does her heroine. By the end of the novel, Elena has to choose between living a normal-but-fake girly life in the city, or running wild with her wolfy boys in the woods of upstate New York. Of course, it’s not exactly a surprise which one she picks, but how she gets there is the coolest part. I might add, too, that this is very much a by-women-for-women sort of book, by which I mean: watch out for the sexy men. I’m a die-hard Jeremy fan, but I wouldn’t say no to a night with Clay either….

Another great one to check out is MOON CALLED by Patricia Briggs, which is another female invasion of male territory by someone who’s very aware of the fact. The narrator here isn’t actually a werewolf, but rather a “walker” – a term which comes from the Native American “skinwalker.” Mercedes “Mercy” Thompson is, in fact, part Native American, and she can turn into a coyote at will. But since she’s the only one of her kind that she knows about (thanks to those pesky werewolves coming over from Europe all those years ago and wiping her people out), she was literally raised by wolves. Like Kelley Armstrong, Briggs employs the “werewolf pack” device here, with fascinating attention to details like rank and lupine body language. Mercy operates from outside the pack (where she is thankfully free of the social constraints that are placed on werewolf women), but remains close enough to get embroiled in wolf business. Not just because she has a nose for trouble, either – that Pack Alpha, after all, is quite a nice piece of man-candy.

Those are my Big Two, although I should also give a mention to a few others. BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE by Annette Curtis Klause is your standard “I don’t fit in, woe is me, O what do I do?” teen fare, with werewolfism as a metaphor for being just a little bit different. THE WOLVING TIME by Patrick Jennings is a middle-grade novel that I picked up because it had cool cover-art, and I was surprised at how sweet it was. Jennings uses much the same metaphor as Klause does, but sets it instead in a surprisingly believable 16th century France.

Charlaine Harris’s insanely popular Sookie Stackhouse novels also get a mention. Even though the series falls under the All About Vampires category, she does some really cool things not only with werewolves, but also with werepanthers, werebears, and various kinds of shapeshifters. (For the record, even though they haven’t gone into any of the were/shifter stuff in the HBO series TRUE BLOOD yet, I can’t speak highly enough of the show. This is vampire melodrama at its absolute best!)

I should also say something about the TWILIGHT series by Stephenie Meyer, in which there is a human girl / vampire guy / werewolf guy love triangle. (Guess who gets the girl?) I only mention this because YOU SHOULD NOT READ IT. Seriously. I did, and I think I’ve suffered enough for all of us. Trust me on this. Just… don’t.

And of course, a shout-out to J.K. Rowling and that damn HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN, which features Remus Lupin, werewolf extraordinaire and my own personal literary boyfriend. I blame Remus and JKR for my ridiculous werewolf obsession. Thanks ever so much, guys.

Thanks, Lindsay!

Now, I am not without some werewolf recs of my own. An American Werewolf in London is still one of my favorite horror movies. Forged in the dark ages before CGI (1981), An American Werewolf in London was forced to rely on imaginative makeup (it even won an Oscar) and a compelling story to spook the audience. When David and Jack go backpacking in England, they get attacked by a large beast. Jack is killed outright, but David is only slightly mauled. David is relieved to be alive, until he starts seeing Jack (with a nice post-mauling visage that decays as the movie goes on), who warns him that he's gonna turn into a beastie himself. Jack urges David to kill himself (whatta friend), advice that David of course ignores, because otherwise the movie would be a half hour long. The movie is similar in tone to the original Evil Dead, before the franchise went fully camp and still walked that excellent line between horror and humor. Of all the werewolf movies I've seen, this is the only one I feel really gets it right.

Next are two movies that don't get it exactly right but are at least watchable, unlike some other werewolf movies I've seen (The Howling). First, Cursed, which I enjoyed more than I expected to. It probably helped that my expectations were low after reading the reviews. Yes, it's campy. Okay, really campy. I mean, it features a pre-redeemed-by-Fringe Joshua Jackson. But it's still a solid movie. And it's by Wes Craven, the master of horror, that has to count for something. Then there's Ginger Snaps, another film I enjoyed because my expectations were low. It makes clever use of a lycanthropy-as-puberty metaphor and spawned two sequels that are, okay, dreadful, but the first movie is worth catching the next time it's on TV.

Despite its Guy in a Furry Suit problem, Buffy the Vampire Slayer did a nice job handling werewolves. Two episodes stand out the most, the second season's "Phases" which you can watch on Hulu, and the fourth season's "Wild At Heart", which you can't. I promise I'll stop flogging Buffy, as soon as you all rent the complete series, or after this week, whichever comes first.

Finally, a bit of an anti-rec. After Dark's Horrorfest (aka 8 Films to Die For) is always hit or miss in its selections. There's usually a gem or two (Unrest, Tooth and Nail) buried among the selected dreck. Mulberry Street is not one of those gems. I love horror movies set in New York City (Cloverfield!) so I was excited for this one. And since the summary - "The city that never sleeps may shut its eyes for good when a deadly infection turns its residents to savage creatures" - led me to think it was a zombie movie, I was doubly excited. Well, Mulberry Street is not about zombies. It's about...god, I can barely bring myself to type this...wererats. Wererats are exactly what you think they are - instead of werewolves, people get bitten by infected rats and become wererats. Giant people-rats. Which I guess isn't a completely ridiculous concept, I'm sure someone somewhere could have pulled it off, but it was not pulled off by the team making this movie. It was on TV last week and I turned it on briefly to see if it was as bad as I remembered it being, and it was. It may be worth watching for a laugh at the insanity (and inanity), but that's about it. Wererats!

Halloween Monster Special: Vampires

Ironically, for someone whose favorite television shows are Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series, I’m not really all that keen on vampires. For every decent vampire movie, there’s at least three frou-frou Anne Rice lamers clogging up the genre. Also, there are really only so many “vampires as not-very-subtle metaphor for sex” stories I can watch before I get bored. Yes, yes, we get it, vampires and werewolves represent our Id longing to burst free and have bitey/furry sexy funtimes blah blah...you know what a zombie is a metaphor for? Dead people chewing on your brains. (Well, okay, and sometimes political corruption and mindless consumerism, but mostly the brain chewing.) And most ghost stories just wanna scare the piss out of you. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy Moonlight in its brief, melodramatic season, and I have all the episodes of True Blood still sitting on my Tivo awaiting my attention, but bloodsucker stories that engage me are few and far between. So here are a few vampire tales that don’t suck.

First, naturally, is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of course, if you haven’t already seen this series, I suggest you add the whole thing to your Netflix queue ASAP. But if you don’t want to commit right away, Hulu has a good selection of early episodes. Over seven seasons, Buffy battled not just vampires but trolls, demons, gods, rogue slayers, witches, and all manner of otherworld beasties. But the series’ most memorable arc came in the second season and revolved around a trio of memorable vampires, two of whom had been or would go on to be paramours of the titular slayer, and the other of whom was just unsettling. And luckily, the entire arc is available for free viewing on Hulu. Start with Surprise, where Buffy’s vampire boyfriend Angel gives her the birthday gift that keeps on giving – syphilis! Just kidding, vampires (probably) can’t spread STDs. Though apparently, if you’re dying of syphilis and then get turned into a vampire and then get staked by your ex-boyfriend’s new slayer girlfriend only to get brought back as a human by an evil law firm, you will resume your dying of the syphilis you had hundreds of years ago, but that’s okay because the crazy lady that your ex-boyfriend drove mad then vamped will (at the behest of that evil law firm again) re-vamp you and you’ll be in good health again…until that pesky mystical pregnancy, anyway. But that’s a second season arc on another show. Look, it’s complicated, okay? Just rent the DVDs. Anyway, after Buffy and Angel sleep together, Angel loses his soul (the thing that made him a good vampire instead of a, y’know, homicidal maniac) thanks to a sex-makes-you-happy-makes-you-lose-your-soul clause in the Gypsy curse that gave him said soul in the first place, and Angel and becomes Angelus in Innocence, one of the most gut-wrenching hours of television you’ll ever see. This leaves Buffy with the grim task of hunting down her erstwhile lover and trying to stop him from bringing about the apocalypse. The arc continues in Passion, Becoming Part 1, and comes to a devastating conclusion with Becoming Part 2. This is vampire melodrama done right. Set aside a rainy weekend afternoon to marathon these five episodes.



If you want the Buffy or Angel vampire-centric story experience without having to set aside big blocks of time for the whole Angelus arc, both shows do offer good stand-alone episode options that are both available online. Check out the Buffy second season episode, Lie to Me, and the Angel first season episode, Eternity, for some good commentary on vampire lore in popular culture.

Buffy and Angel are now off the air but live on in comic form. But before Joss Whedon rendered his most famous creations in 2-D, he’d written another vampire slayer comic miniseries that’s since been compiled into a trade paperback. Fray follows a vampire slayer hundreds of years into the future, when vampires and demons have been gone for centuries but make a sudden, and devastating, reappearance. The comic has a great visual style, mixing the zippy high-concept gleaming future of rich people with the hard-scrabble grimy future of poor people that Whedon would later revisit in his doomed series Firefly. Fray is a fantastic, stand-alone story that is a must for both Buffy fans and general fans of the vampire genre.

Okay, enough Whedonverse. I should acknowledge that Joss Whedon and, yuck, Anne Rice do not have the vampire market cornered. So my next recommendation is Dracula 2000. Dracula 2000 is not the definitive vampire movie – I honestly don’t even think I know what is – but it’s a little fresher than some of the other, staler offerings that have come out in recent years. It makes great use of its New Orleans (pre-Katrina) setting and walks a fine line between camp and genuine creepiness. It’s the basic Dracula story re-imagined for a modern setting, with some cool narrative twists that deepen the mythology of that most infamous of bloodsuckers. It’s an underrated little gem that’s worth checking out.

Since it was a book that brought vampires into popular culture lo those many years ago, it’s only fitting that I recommend two vampire books worth checking out. First is I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson. It’s been made into a movie three times – The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price, The Omega Man starring Charton Heston, and the recent Will Smith blockbuster I Am Legend – with varying degrees of faithfulness to Matheson’s original work. Last Man comes the closest until it goes a bit astray in the end, and I Am Legend does a decent job of keeping the general spirit intact while of course ballasting it up to be a Will Smith blockbuster, but then they went and fucked with the ending again. The original novella is a quick read, most people should be able to blow through it in a day or two, and it’s worth checking out to see Matheson’s vision without the filter of directors and stars and all that hullabaloo. It’s also a more interesting take on man vs. monster than we usually see.

Finally, you might have noticed my neglect to mention the newest vampire phenomenon and upcoming movie, Twilight. Well, I haven’t read it. I bought it, and I hope to read it before the movie comes out, but only so I can join in on all the making-fun-of-sparkly-sparkly-emo-vampires fun my friends are having. You know what I did read when I was growing up? The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith, the original four book series about a human girl and her love triangle with two vampire brothers. Yeah, Twilight is pretty much old news to the L.J. Smith generation. The books were hard to find for a while, but they’ve been repacked into two attractive volumes designed to capitalize on the Twilight phenomena, along with some of L.J. Smith’s other teenage supernatural drama series like my personal favorite, The Secret Circle. These books helped turn me on to writing and reading and supernatural stories when I was younger. I haven’t re-read them in probably over ten years out of fear that they won’t be as good as I remember considering my tastes have changed slightly in the ensuing decade, but the new bindings might be enough to lure me in. And who knows, maybe a re-read of the books that started it all for me will cure me of my vampire fatigue.