Vampires on screen

Hear that ominous squealing sound echoing out from just over the horizon? Possibly not; personally, my ears haven’t stopped ringing since the last instalment of High School Musical. But, yep, whatever the condition of your auditory paraphernalia, there’s no escaping the fact that it’s that time of year again - Twilight: Eclipse is soon to be unleashed to the hormonal masses, and consequently every single pre-pubescent girl in existence is shortly going to spontaneously combust with excitement and repressed sexual feeling. They literally won’t shut up for months. It’s going to be like living in a Jonas Brothers concert. Don’t you just love it when a Mormon housewife’s plan comes together?

Now, I’d hazard a guess that when Bram Stoker first published Dracula back in 1897, there weren’t swarms of screeching 13 year olds camped outside bookshops with ‘Team Vlad’ sewn onto their parasols – they were all too busy lying in the gutter dying of cholera, for one thing. These days, however, we’ve got girls literally slicing their arms open in order to thrust the freshly dripping wound into Robert Pattinson’s chiselled features, presumably amid hopes that he’ll forget all about that pesky restraining order and gratefully get sucking. And I’m not even joking. It’s all a bit creepy, to be honest, and raises a number of questions. Namely, why is modern society suddenly so bloody obsessed with vampires? Or, to put it another way, does WHSmiths honestly require a dedicated ‘vampire’ section? Do all Hollywood executives have shares in plastic fang manufacturers or something? Oh and also, is Pattinson actually even that attractive? His face is weird. Go on, look at it. Properly. See? Yeah. Told you so. Weird.

I digress. Why are vampires suddenly such an omniscient screen presence? Today’s TV listings are positively infested with the things; US import True Blood’s just begun its third season, having been one of 2009’s most popular series, and the never-knowingly original ITV is also busy flogging angsty teen soap The Vampire Diaries. Cinema’s no better – this year we’ve got Daybreakers, Lost Boys 3 and Stake Land all desperately attempting to cash in on the post-Twilight vampire mania. It’s genuinely got to the stage where it’s cliché to even call it a ‘phenomenon’. General consensus amongst the journalistic pseuds writing faux socio-analytical pieces on this current fanged screen monopoly (such as this, in fact) is that the appeal lies mostly in society’s similar, all-consuming passion for sex. Since Dracula first took a nip of Mina and Lucy back in the 1800s, there’s always been a hint of the sexual predator about vampires, pandering to our modern pansexual tastes very nicely. The romances central to these stories are a far cry from the snarky, repressed exchanges of the Austenian mating ritual – vampire love tends to be very much focused around sex, or (in the case of the Twilight series) lack thereof. It’s all smouldering glances, sinking teeth, heaving bosoms and so on. And in the case of True Blood it’s full-on, howling soft porn. No wonder modern audiences love it so much.

And the other attraction lies, perhaps, simply in a need for escapism. Modern life is, currently, one long relentless slog through many and varied forms of misery - culminating of course in protracted, agonising death caused by too much Diet Coke or too few aduki beans. We’re all obese. The economy has effectively hurled itself, screaming, off a cliff; most of us are now rapidly hurtling towards the day we’re forced to trade in our left kidney for that week’s thimbleful of water. Every day we’re expected to cope with yet more devastating news of frail Cheryl’s secret heartache. It’s impossible. No wonder we need something mindless to distract ourselves from this wretched 21st century existence, and, let’s face it, you can’t get much more mindless than sparkling, romantically-inclined vampires. Twilight, True Blood and even that odious ITV wannabe thing, The Vampire Diaries, all let us switch off and lose ourselves in a world of attractive lead actors, enjoyably preposterous storylines and expensive sets, all of course dished up with a hefty portion of bodice-ripping action. Twilight even provides us with a conveniently characterless personality vacuum to all project onto, aka Kristen Stewart. Everybody’s happy.

Well, particularly Stephenie Meyer of course, who is no doubt already concocting a few spin-off series to ensure that this especially lucrative cash-cow keeps ‘em squealing well into the next decade. It’s summer 2010, and vampire-mania shows no sign of letting up.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Dir: Mike Newell
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley
(12A) 115 minutes

Aaah, the video-game adaptation. Not a genre that has served Hollywood particularly well in the past (remember Tomb Raider? Of course not, years of therapy) but Disney’s certainly pumped the cash into this latest attempt, presumably hoping for another Pirates of the Caribbean-esque franchise. The result’s no masterpiece by any means, but some great sets and brilliant stunt-work ensure a perfectly acceptable, rambunctious summer blockbuster.

Gyllenhaal stars as the titular Prince, who discovers a mystical time-controlling dagger that must be returned to its resting place (or possibly cast into the fires of Mount Doom) before his villainous uncle uses it to TAKE OVER THE WORLD. Accordingly, he’s pursued by Ringwraiths or some such bollocks, and joined by ‘fiesty’ Princess Tamina (Arterton), with whom he constantly flirts in a bloodcurdling manner (and shares perhaps the worst onscreen kiss in history - Arterton sort of unhinges her jaw, like a python, latches on and sucks). It’s all rather laboured, and more than a little convoluted, but somehow manages to overcome this, its chemistry-less leads and clunky, exposition-packed dialogue to actually be quite entertaining. Who knew? Yep, so if you’re after pretty sets and mindless action sequences, this’ll fit the bill nicely, much like its piratical cousins.

Oh, but incidentally. No matter how much you’ve ploughed into painstakingly rendering every individual grain of sand in your elaborate, awe-inspiring cinematic setpiece, subtitle it with the Papyrus font and you might as well have done it on Paint. Jesus.

Cop Out

Dir: Kevin Smith
Cast: Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Seann William Scott
(15) 107 minutes

You know how sometimes, someone tells a joke that’s so desperately unfunny, you can practically hear the air itself cringing, gritting its teeth and praying for them to shut up? The kind of joke that makes you genuinely long for death, for both yourself and whichever smirking Michael McIntyre-wannabe first spewed it out? OK, well, now imagine that joke spread out over almost two hours, punctuated with regular blundering ‘action sequences’ and accompanied by incessant, bleeping synths. Then imagine it being shouted in your face by Tracy Morgan. Make you want to napalm a primary school? If so, for Christ’s sake, stay away from Kevin Smith’s latest effort Cop Out, a toe-curlingly dreadful buddy cop movie that’ll unleash the inner Colonel Kilgore in pretty much anyone. I mean it. It’s for your own good.

Now, when it comes to comedy, my tastes are, in general, not particularly highbrow. Infantile blowjob-joke-fests such as Scary Movie 3 and White Chicks usually have me howling with mirth. But, Jesus, there’s a limit. Writers the Cullen brothers seem to equate lengthy scat jokes and lewd sexual imagery with ‘witty banter’, and given that any buddy film is only as good as the exchanges between its leads this pretty much kills the film stone dead before it’s even begun. Ugh. The plot itself somehow manages to be formulaic yet hideously convoluted – I’m not entirely clear on the details, but it’s something to do with a dastardly Hispanic drug baron that kidnapped some other drug baron’s wife, and also stole a valuable baseball card, and shot someone in a church. Oh, and Willis can’t afford his daughter’s wedding and Morgan’s wife may or may not be having an affair. Who the hell cares?

It doesn’t help that the direction is so abysmal. An example of the sheer bloody ineptitude on display here occurs pretty early on, when Willis and Morgan are interrogating some interchangeable minion of the aforementioned dastardly drug baron. As Morgan hurls the dealer against the two-way mirror, shrieking obscenities in a HEEELARIOUS manner, Willis draws a massive phallus in the dealer’s clouded breath on the glass. Desperately, excruciatingly puerile in itself, but it’s when you realise that it’s also PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE given that he’s actually on the other side of the mirror that you really want to start necking the paracetamol. Christ, Smith, is this what you’re reduced to? Even the donkey sex scene in Clerks 2 looks like unattainable comedic genius when compared to this steaming heap.

While none of the cast have much to be proud of here, Morgan deserves a special mention. Poor old Brucey looks, at times, to be utterly mortified even to be sharing a screen with this gurning, hooting moron, who starts off punchable and ends up positively genocide-inducing. It’s little wonder his character’s wife had an affair, for God’s sake.

Anyway, so yes, Cop Out is probably the worst film I’ve seen in a long time. Kevin Smith’s career, I fear, may well end here, and I'm speaking as someone who actually used to be quite the fangirl. Tragic, really...

The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

Dir: Tom Six
Cast: Dieter Laser, Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie
92 Minutes (15)

So, imagine you’re in a foreign country, driving to a party late at night. You don’t have a map or a sat nav, nobody is apparently expecting you, and nobody apparently even knows you’ve gone out. Suddenly, your car gets a puncture. You’re left stranded in some dark, sprawling forest, tropical monsoon raging, with (of course) no mobile signal. You also have an unbelievably irritating whining American friend sitting next to you. Now, do you a) calmly fit the spare tyre, or b) decide to blindly stumble further into said forest? If you chose option b), suppose you then came across a house. You’re confronted with a menacing skeletal German who literally answers the door by breathing “are you... alone?” Would you now a) run like hell or b) mince gratefully inside and accept a strangely bitter-tasting drink?

If you answered mostly b), I’d suggest you avoid The Human Centipede – its grittily realistic portrayal of human behaviour will probably terrify you. Everyone else, well, still avoid it, it’s crap. Tom ‘Gay in Amsterdam’ Six’s latest effort is a pointless, steaming pile of bathos, despite its shrieking pull-quote informing us how ‘shockingly controversial’ it supposedly is (clearly the distributors have great faith in their intended audience’s motivation for watching). It’s ludicrous, poorly shot, appallingly acted and actually, for long stretches, quite boring. Oooh, told.

To be fair, the central premise of the film is genuinely quite a departure from standard tacky horror fare – newcomer Laser’s typically demented mad scientist decides, for some reason, to surgically attach three hapless tourists ass-to-mouth, thus creating the titular centipede. The idea is that they’ll form one digestive system, and I’m sure you can figure out how that works (think Two Girls One Cup if you’re stuck). It’s never actually explained why our villain has concocted this charming plan; presumably though he just fancies watching the finished product lumber around his home screaming in incoherent Japanese, as that’s essentially all that seems to happen once he’s pulled it off.

To his credit Six doesn’t rely on explicit Hostel-esque gore to shock his audience, letting the inherently disgusting idea of being forced to quite literally eat shit and die do the work for him. Once this initial squirm-value has worn off, however, the film has no idea where else to go, and just meanders along aimlessly like a fly with Alzheimer’s until it reaches its frankly pathetic climax. Most disturbing perhaps is the shameless set-up for a sequel. Jesus, what the hell else can possibly happen? Stick a blonde wig on it and let the ‘centipede’ embark on a niche porn career? Go away, Six, just go away.

Unpleasant as the concept is, it does at least shut the two screeching lead actresses up, whom I despised within seconds of their characters being introduced. I’ve seen X Factor judges deliver dialogue more naturalistically than these two giggling imbeciles, who are no doubt already hurtling towards a lifetime of ‘Where Are They Now?’ MTV specials and cheap DVD-only spin-offs. Their tormenter Laser, in contrast, is the film’s sole strength - genuinely creepy-looking , he lends real menace to a role that could have all too easily descended over onto the Gaga side of camp.

(He does chase the Americans around with a riding crop though. Bellowing ‘feed her! FEED HER!’ and cackling manically. Perhaps I should retract that last statement.)

In summary then, watching The Human Centipede is the audio-visual equivalent of being force-fed the waste products of Six’s clearly warped imagination – appropriately enough. Avoid it like its protagonists avoid common sense.

...or end up so appallingly desensitized to on-screen horrors that you laugh all the way through Schindler’s List.

Dr Who, Series 5

So. When the hell did Doctor Who (BBC1, Sat, 6:20pm) become cool?

Genuine question. It wasn’t that long ago that the title alone was enough to conjure up images of snorting, mouth-breathing ubernerds, huddled round flickering ‘60s TV sets shouting equations at Tom Baker and feverishly hoping to catch a glimpse of the female assistant’s bare ankle. Ooh yes, ‘sci-fi’ was a dirty word, the bleeping, impenetrable preserve of the tragically over-educated and even more socially underdeveloped; a cursory mention of ‘daleks’ sent most people running to the hills, screaming with despair and frantically denying all knowledge. It’d have been more socially acceptable to pump an elderly goat full of laxatives and unleash it into a crèche than casually drop the c-word into conversation (and I’m referring to ‘cybermen’, of course, you filthy-minded scum).

NOT IN THESE PROGRESSIVE TIMES, HOWEVER!  Somewhat unexpectedly, in recent years the programme has enjoyed a massive popular resurgence, courtesy of a big-budget primetime BBC reboot, and now practically everyone’s lining up to shower it in yet more astronomically hyperbolic praise. Suddenly, no-one’s favourite poorly-dressed-eccentric-with-horrendously-complicated-back-story has been reinvented as a kind of swashbuckling action hero - brandishing his sonic screwdriver with all the slightly camp bravado of James Bond with a Beretta, he hurtles fearlessly through space-time, scores of women (‘companions’) hopelessly lusting in his wake. He’s even kissed Kylie Minogue, for Christ’s sake. Seems that lick of CGI and a better-looking cast has worked wonders for the good Doctor (not to mention the BBC’s Saturday night audience share) and, frankly, it’s bloody weird. It’s a bit like the nerd from secondary school turning up to sixth form in a leather jacket; acne, brace and inhaler mysteriously absent. Creepy, and deeply suspect, but even you can’t deny its sudden appeal.

Ugh. Well, that’s my excuse anyway, because, shamefully, this year I’ve gone and fallen for the ex-nerd. Yep, despite having previously avoided the programme like a coughing Mexican pig (ostensibly out of contempt for its hideous levels of hype; really in a desperate bid to stave off my own inevitable descent into geekdom), I’m now shunning my usual hectic Saturday-night social whirlwind in order to nail myself to the sofa and gawp mindlessly at the new series, cackling and devising Dalek conspiracy theories like some gurglesome village idiot. It’s embarrassing, really. Not even the looming prospect of a James Corden supporting role is enough to dampen my newfound ardour. Take that, cosy misanthropic worldview, take that.

As it happens, this year actually marks a bit of a seminal moment for the franchise, as Saint David Tennant of Over-actington finally left late last year, leaving a nation of hormonal housewives sobbing into their Brita filters whilst simultaneously unleashing a torrent of spluttering outrage from Internet fanboys everywhere. The current series, therefore, has been subject to some fairly vicious criticism from fans of His Over-Exposedness even prior to airing, and there’s a palpable sense of it having something to prove, not least in the almost totally revamped cast. First in the firing line of course is the BBC’s desperate attempt at a Tennant replacement, the somewhat self-consciously ‘zany’ Matt Smith. However, despite possessing a face that somehow manages to look both attractive and hideous simultaneously, he’s actually turned out to be quite good, forcing the online Bastard Brigade to sheepishly retract most of their pre-emptive shrieking and focus instead on the inevitably shoehorned-in romantic subplot with perma-pouting new companion, Karen Gillan (a ‘ten’, as Smith huskily informed us on the Jonathan Ross show back in March). There’s even a kissing scene, which has particularly infuriated them. Oh and, of course, the Daily Mail, who helpfully published a series of grainy frame-by-frame screengrabs of the offending segment in case anyone failed to grasp the full extent of its shocking depravity first time round. (Incidentally, I’ll just quickly confirm now for anyone concerned for their moral wellbeing the the scene in question is actually more hamfisted farce than steamy erotica - I kept expecting Kenneth Williams to burst out of a wardrobe with an appalled look on his face – so it’s OK, no need to blind the kids.)

Anyway, I digress. The acting from both leads is excellent, and, sub-romcom level ‘smouldering banter’ aside, the writing this series is also otherwise exceptional. Sound like I’m gushing yet? Good, because I am. In fact, sod it. I’ll just go straight out and say that the 2010 incarnation of Doctor Who is actually, in general, NOT BAD. Indeed, it’s NOT BAD AT ALL. And occasionally (such as in the opening sequence of the Tardis having a seizure over the London skyline, or the Spitfire dogfight in space), it’s even RATHER BRILLIANT. So frankly, when given the choice between watching this or Amanda Holden pretending to cry as another enormous belly-dancing Liverpudlian relates their tragic life-story, the Doctor gets my vote every time.

That’s not to say this series is perfect, though, obviously. It’s definitely got its fair share of flaws, poking out from amongst the glowing brilliance like a headlice infestation in a halo. For instance, it seems the regeneration wasn’t quite thorough enough for the Doctor to kick his habit of periodically descending into all-out, scenery-chewing, boggle-eyed irritant mode – and there’s only so many times you can sit through Smith’s ‘charmingly-befuddled’ routine before you feel like machine-gunning everyone in the world to death. Not only that, occasionally the plots themselves can also veer dangerously close to ‘utterly bloody incomprehensible’(see the beginning of Episode 4), though admittedly that may just be because I’m an idiot. Oh and the monsters aren’t actually that scary either, let’s be honest (with the possible exception of the Weeping Angels, which I‘m convinced are going to appear at my window every time I draw the curtains). But, let’s face it, all that is fairly negligible when the series as a whole is this... well, odious as it sounds, this fun. Yes, I’m disgusted with myself for saying that too. But it’s true.

So, to conclude then – Doctor Who may be the TV equivalent of a reformed teenage geek, but it’s actually pretty good. And if you’re like me and have previously just ignorantly sneered at it from afar, it’s probably worth a investigatory watch. You might like it. Yes, you. Get on iPlayer now, you newspaper-reading fool. Quickly.

Then at least we can all be snorting, mouth-breathing ubernerds together.