Tag Archives: vampires

Book Giveaway: Ocean of Blood

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To celebrate the release of Darren Shan’s blood-soaked vampire tale, Ocean of Blood, HarperCollins have kindly given me copies to give away to lucky readers of Blood and Barricades.

Ocean of Blood is Book Two in the Saga of Larten Crepsley series:

The epic tale of the vampire Larten Crepsley continues. The question is — how far can Larten go… alone?

Free from their mentor Seba Nile, Larten Crepsley and Wester Flack join the Cubs — wild young vampires with little respect for human life, and a taste for mindless enjoyment.

For the Cubs, everything is easy. But nothing has ever been easy for Larten, and soon fate throws his life into another spin. With dark paths to travel, Larten finds himself far from the Vampire Mountain and its rules. A long way from home, sick and alone, he must decide what kind of vampire he will be. Whether he will stand firm, be true to his master and his principles — or whether he will lose himself in blood…

To go into the draw to win a copy, email benjamin@benjaminsolah.com with your name, contact details (email, Twitter handle etc.) before Sunday, the 27th of November. First prize will receive a copy of Ocean of Blood as well as Book One, Birth of a Killer with the runner-up receiving a copy of Ocean of Blood.

Movie Review: Let Me In

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When a movie is based on a book, I always find it hard to separate the two when making a judgement on the movie. For Let Me In, I was left comparing it to the book I’m half way through reading as well as the original movie I haven’t seen yet.

Let Me In is the Americanised version of the Swedish movie, Let the Right One In which is based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist of the same name. It’s about Owen, a bullied 12-year-old who meets Abby. She says she’s been “twelve for a very long time.” Eventually it’s revealed there’s something different about Abby; she’s a vampire.

Let Me In feels very different to any other vampire movie. It’s got a dark, subtle and almost art-house aesthetic that very much suits the feel of the novel. After trying to force myself to disconnect from judging the movie based on what I’d read of the book, it was this feel of the movie that pulled me in and put me at ease.

The screenplay cuts out a few of the subplots I’d come across in the movie and weaves some of those scenes into the main plot, which kind of jarred with me at first but it worked and made the story overall fit the screen better.

Without having seen the original Swedish movie, it’s hard to comment but I thought it was a pretty good version of the film. But friends have commented that it is very close to the original, which begged the question to me, why not just screen the original?

Let the Right One In was never given cinematic release in Australia and it took someone to make it American in order for it to reach a wider audience. This is not a new thing with (poorly done) Americanised versions of many Japanese horror films hitting the big screen but when you go back and watch the original you wonder how they got it so wrong.

What is it with Australian and American culture that makes audiences too backward to watch a foreign film? To turn the whole film American makes it seem as if culture-wise, America is the centre of the world. I guess it reflects a political reality of America being the number-one super power so it translates to this cultural domination.

Despite enjoying Let Me In, I think I’m going to go find the Swedish original and wish they’d just played that at the cinema.

Movie Review: Daybreakers

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Daybreakers bucks the trend of modern day Vampire film with a nod to science fiction whilst going back to the dark and sinister.

DaybreakersThe first thing you notice about Daybreakers is the dark and stylised aesthetic. It pulled me into the film, along with the world it slowly unfolded for me. It’s all set in very modern and corporate type settings, illustrating a kind of dark mood to a society driven by vampires.

This society is very much on verge of crisis. With vampires having taken over, the minority of humans are quickly becoming extinct and therefore the blood supply is running out. It has some parallels with real life; with economic crisis, food or oil shortages as well as global warming and climate change.

And I felt that it dealt with this with class. The division between the rich and poor was an obvious element to the world with those unable to afford the dwindling blood supply suffering.

Add to this the richer elements like Charles, played by Sam Neil. He heads a company researching a blood substitute but remarks “There will always be those willing to pay more for the real thing.” And Charles is evil. Not only did I enjoy the rich being the bad guy, but it’s a return to vampires as vicious and evil characters unlike the current trend of vampires like in Twilight.

I found the conflict between Edward and Charles as well as the underlying crisis within the society much more interesting than the more central plot which was with Edward fleeing with the humans and to help them find a cure to Vampirism.

Part of it may have been that I’m not much of a fan of Claudia Karvan, but there wasn’t a lot of inner conflict with this thread.

Another aspect that had more conflict was between Edward and his brother Frankie, who was in the army and had the job of trying to hunt humans. That kind of battle between Edward trying to regain his humanity and Frankie being faced with that and the purge of the ‘Subsiders’ – those that were mutated due to being starved of blood – made references to soldiers turning against the Iraq war.

There were lots of these seamless nods to real world events though they were never so obvious or jarred with the storyline. It all fit within the world and the story.

I’d have to say that the ending was a bit sudden and didn’t tie up a lot, but otherwise this was a great movie with the return of vampires as being sinister and a movie that relates to the world in a way I can agree with.

Contradictions in the Vampirism to Homosexuality Analogy

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The rise of vampires in popular culture being used as an analogy for homosexuality or alternative sexuality can often be looked upon favourably but can it lead to homophobic conclusions?

Vampire

Photo by nulus

Vampires in literature and film at the moment come in a variety of forms stretching from the traditional dark and evil vampire to the new, romantic, sexy vampires that you sympathise with.

I’ve been particularly interested in one strand that’s emerged that sees Vampirism as an analogy for homosexuality, the obvious example being the TV series, True Blood.

I’ve only watched a few episodes but I’m already enjoying the strong characters and am impressed with the plot pulling no punches with its political references. You can quickly see the resemblance to various civil rights struggles including that for gay rights.

And on a superficial level, I think this works. The portrayal of the anti-Vampire bigots works quite well, as do the people sympathising with them.

But I’ve run into doubts after trying to extend the analogy further in some of my own work. I had an idea for a piece of short fiction centring on a vampire that’s forced to hide his vampirism, get married and dissolve into normal society.

The main problem I find is that LGBTI people don’t eat people. We don’t suck people’s blood. We might bite, if you like it that way, but we don’t go about to cause harm.

So much of the analogy is about hiding your vampirism, suppressing innate desires in order to fit into society. The conclusion could be drawn that this lifestyle is harmful, preditorial, and in order for equality to be achieved you have to push aside these innate feelings and become normal.

I feel that delving into the analogy too deeply can lead to conclusions that there is something wrong with homosexuality, but it just needs to be tolerated or controlled, not that it is a perfectly natural and positive lifestyle that people should be free to explore and be open about.

It’s for this reason that I feel my piece of short fiction might not work, but it doesn’t mean that things like True Blood fail in what they’re trying to do, just that I think there are contradictions that if explored, present problems.

I’d be curious to hear people’s thoughts but bear in mind that I’m not saying vampirism is always an analogy for homosexuality but this is in specific reference to some cases like in True Blood.