Let The Right One In: Doo!

Let The Right One In
Originally uploaded by umbraco

By now, you may have caught on to our love-hate fascination with vampire fiction-cum-film. The celluloid iterations of True Blood and Twilight made us dry heave; Interview with the Vampire and Bram Stoker's Dracula are fairly decent; Nosferatu is a cool DVD to have on your shelf (just don't watch it if you have ADD).

But this one is in a league of its own. Let the Right One In, originally titled Låt den rätte komma in* in its native Sweden, is an exquisite, seductive, subtle, and, ultimately, haunting film.

To give you all a point of reference, we're usually reticent to linger in front of mirrors late at night, lest the words "Black Aggie" should come into our unwilling heads, thereby summoning said urban legendress to our reflection (with unknown and highly unbearable consequences). Yet we were able to overcome our irrational fears when, tucked up in our bedroom late at night with a screener of Let the Right One In and a zonked-out bed mate next to us, the power went out on our laptop, leaving us stranded in the middle of a particularly eerie scene. So great was our need to see the end of this film that we crept out of our tiny studio and willingly entered the darkened, eerie, 1920s-era main house -- with its creaks and crackles and mirrored walls (Black Aggie) -- in search of our power cord. Creeping back into the studio out back, we watched the shit out of the rest of this film with every hair raised on our body--loving every minute.

Now, we've been chided for our tendency to up-sell in the past; some of our would-be mentors have suggested saying just enough to incite interest without entering the realm of over-endorsement. So let's put it this way: Let the Right One In is worth seeing. Check it out if you want; or don't. It's entirely up to you.

*We're much more comfortable with the Swedish "Ö" than with the Norwegian "Ø" (not to be racist). See here for further explication.

Staring Contest: True Blood v. Twilight

In today's Hollywood Reporter, a woman writing under the pseudonym "Kirk Honeycutt" submitted a relatively gracious review of tomorrow's wetly anticipated release, Twilight.

One line of Honeycutt's review got us thinking about that other new-fangled* vampire phenomenon, HBO's True Blood:

Operas have arias; "Twilight" has stares.

Haha!! We haven't seen Twilight (yet), but based on the hours we've spent masturbating to the trailer, we can't say we're surprised to learn that the movie has a staring problem.

Know what else has a staring problem? Come on, shout 'em out if you know 'em! That's right, you discerning readers, you guessed it: True Blood.

True Blood has the worst staring problem in the world. (NB: True Blood sucks. And not in that fun, first date kind of way.)

If you've seen it, you know what we're talking about--long, lingering, endless wide shots of the tight-pantsed, puffy-shirted, leather-faced "hot" vampire staring creepily at the object of his obsession: sputtering, gap-toothed, yella-haired Sookie Stackhouse. Cross-cut to extreme close-ups of the "hot" (and by "hot," we mean "disgusting") vampire's craggy face, smoldering with the sort of Mr. Rogersy, I'll-take-the-rapists-for-a-thousand stare that makes you want to retire to the bathroom for a good, long, Crying Game-esque shower. Even more outrageous are the back-and-forth shots of Sookie and No-stare-atu, ostensibly looking deep into each other's souls with swoon-worthy passion and intensity--but, in actuality, butterfly-kissing each other's pores, only millimeters away from a full-on nose-joust. Even the Care Bears didn't stare this much.

We look forward to watching Twilight (after the plague of teenage girls passes through this weekend), and will keep you posted on the outcome of the Twilight/True Blood staring contest in the days and weeks to come.

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*Get it? FANG-led? These are the kind of cheap, schmucky vampire puns that most Twilight-reviewers can't seem to stay away from.