The best review

I've yet seen of this film...

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

The book was really quite good, in a vampirey way. (No sparkles here. The vampires are bad!) The film has recieved mixed reviews, but I always take these things with a larger grain of salt than usual anyway. The one thing I won't do is watch it in 3D. Besides being visually disturbed by 3D,I tend to watch films at home long after their theatre release, and I certainly do NOT plan to buy 3D television equipment. While it may be here to stay, it's still not a style of presentation I'm fond of (read the technical part of this film review to see partly why).

And if anyone can't take the 'messing with history joke', that's their problem.

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I guess a response is necessary,

as people seem to be unable to separate truth from fiction these days.

A Christian Response to Vampire Obsession

The whole problem is due to the glamorization of vampires (and then werevolves, etc.). I think we can pretty much blame Anne Rice's books for the start of this. I recently started to read one of her 'enhanced' books on my iPad. Enhanced means there are little sound clips and video clips embedded in the book text. In this there are two magazine writers (young, goth types) who say it would be wonderful if vampires really existed. There's the dilemma.

The romantic vampire is a very recent phenomena. True, there has always been an undercurrent of sensuality in Dracula and similar works, but it was something academics discussed, not something that created fan sites. This is something different. Vampires, in historic folklore, are evil. There is no good in them. This is what I find interesting in the traditional vampire stories. The fight between good and evil, and, usually, the vanquishing of evil by good, though the good may be hurt or damaged in the struggle. These whingy young romantic vampires are something entirely different and part of a completely different genre.

And when all is said and done, it's all fiction. Remember that, everyone. Say it loud: "IT'S ALL FICTION!"

Thank you.

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Finally

'getting' vampire stories...

All the Dead Are Vampires

"A natural-historical look at our love-hate relationship with dead people."

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An intelligent take

on the whole 'Twilight' series...


My thoughts on Twilight, let me show you them

With links to more 'Twilight' madness. Give this site a read. You won't regret it...

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Isn't twilight a time of day?

I've written before about how the whole tweeny vampire 'Twilight' thing has ruined the whole vampire genre. And then these silly people go and do something like this:

The Higher The Fauxhawk, The Closer To God

Being 14 or 15 means never knowing what the phrase 'the rest of your life' means...

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What does...

...Mormonism have to do with vampires? I'm glad you asked!

Big Vampire Love: What’s So Mormon about Twilight?

"Much ado has been made about the theme of chastity in the Twilight series (currently drawing hordes into movie theaters for its second installment), but few have noticed the other, less commonly understood, Mormon theological themes that course through the series’ fevered plotline."

Even if she's not writing about that which she knows (vampires?), she's at least including themes that she's familiar with...

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But, this writer

feels that critics are not being fair to the Twilight series...

Girls Just Wanna Have Fangs

"The unwarranted backlash against fans of the world's most popular vampire-romance series."

...and suggests feminists should agree...

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Not only that...

Twilight is a 'deviant moral vacuum': Vatican slams blockbuster New Moon film

...but they're destroying the whole concept of the vampire that started with Sheridan Le Fanu, Bram Stoker, et al. While more disturbing, and more full of horror, there was no moral vacuum or ambiguity in them. Good and evil are both represented showing their best (and worst) attributes...

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Probably the best

review I've read about the new tweenie romance flick, New Moon.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

(As I've written before, I'm mostly upset about the destruction of an interesting genre.)

As an aside, I hadn't realized that the author of the books is a Mormon. Just a bit of interesting trivia...

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Another blog

posts on the 'Twilight' phenomenon. (I won't even make a link of the 'Twilight' title. They don't need any more encouragement.)

WPost: Chaste vampires are not us

Fortunately, GetReligion isn't just any other blog. As their header states, 'The press...just doesn't get religion', a quotation from Willian Schneider. It's about the media and religion.

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Well...

A Real Vampire

Whether you believe the author of this article and his 'expert' or don't, and you believe what the individuals say about themselves, or don't, it still leaves you with the impression that if vampires were to be real they would be the Bram Stoker type of vampire and not the 'Twilight' sort of vampire. They would be truly evil...

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Today

Dracula: The Un-dead

The first sequel to 'Dracula' that has been approved by the Stoker family is being released. It was written by Dacre Stoker, the great-grandnephew of Bram Stoker. I'm looking forward eagerly to reading it.

I've written about my fascination with the original 'Dracula' in the past. Unlike the tweeny vampire novels that are so popular today, there's no teenage angst and unrequited struggles of love in the novel. The vampire is evil. Period. What the novel is is an allegory to the stuggle of life for most people - the struggle of good vs. evil, the ultimate vanquishing of evil by good, but in the battle good is hurt, damaged, and changed.

But perhaps the evil wasn't vanquished after all. We now have a sequel. I won't know until after I finish reading it...

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For anyone

who hasn't seen it, here's a link to

The Vampire Blog-a-Thon

I've posted it before, and it's from 2006 (that's when I posted it) but no one else has done one since that I've found yet.

So there...

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Yes!

Del Toro seeks to return evil to vampire fiction

This is a series I will certainly be buying as they are published, and the films on DVD as he makes them, if he does. Someone is finally bringing the traditional nature into the Vampire mythos again, bringing us back to Stoker's Dracula and away from the poor, misunderderstood, brooding, trendy 'oh, poor me!' young adult vampires of Buffy and Twilight. It's about time!

(Oops! Bought it today after I posted this. We'll see how it is.)

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Every species

has it's own Count...


Dracula fish discovered in Borneo

This

is the sort of vampire flick that terrifies me!

Blood Lust

Oh, sorry. I got 'terrifies me' and 'makes me gag' mixed up. My mistake. (mi-stake, get it? No? Sorry...) Anyway, what a terrible waste of a genre. Poor, poor misunderstood vampire. 'I don't want to be evil. I just can't help it.' Such tragedy...

Peh!

Oh, my!

Twilight Zone

"Christians grapple with the messages in this teen generation's defining book"

This generation's defining book? Very scary, boys and girls...

I haven't read it


What Girls Want

"A series of vampire novels illuminates the complexities of female adolescent desire."

I've seen the books. They're definitely a main focus of promotion at Coles and Chapters/Indigo, so they're pretty hard to miss. I haven't read any as I don't generally get attracted to young adult literature focusing on young girls. This is despite my generally attraction to vampire novels. I might see the film, I don't know. I tend to like my vampire stories about the battle between good and evil, not lustful desires and angst. The modern vampire stories about poor, misunderstood, conflicted vampires really set my teeth (not fangs, I don't have fangs) on edge...

Another movie list

The 10 Worst Movies About Jesus

"(Not Counting The Passion of the Christ Because That Would Be Too Easy)"

The Robe really got on this list as a victim of changing times - it was filmed in 1953 after all - and we often find things done that many years ago wanting from the perspective of contemporary production values.

I actually watched Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, as bad as it is. It's not that I wanted to watch a bad film about Jesus but rather that I have a attraction to vampire films and this just happened to be about vampires. So, I didn't watch a bad film about Jesus, I watched a bad film about vampires. It was a pretty bad film...