Blood: The Last Vampire

Director: Chris Nahon

Now, I don't know any of the backstory behind Blood: The Last Vampire. I know the original was an anime film released in 2000, which got turned into manga, and now this live-action movie is the newest incarnation of the story of Saya and her kickassery. 

Our protagonist Saya is a half-demon, half-human slayer who dispatches small fry vampires on her way to the Boss demon, Onegin, the oldest and most powerful vamp who killed her father when she was an infant. Raised by her father's most loyal retainer, Kato, and taught to be an superhuman weapon, her one purpose in life is to avenge her father's death. 

For the first half of the movie she is sent into an American army base, disguised as a student, to find the vampires in the high school on the base. It becomes then a vehicle for American sensibilities--most of the movie is in English. Rather absurdly, she is called on in English class to say a few things about Adam and Lucifer in Frankenstein--a favorite text for high school movies, I should think. The only thing this scene did besides set up subsequent fight scenes is provide a chance for the line "God as irresponsible father figure" to arise. Given the question of God and destiny in this movie, and apparently in the original movie and manga, it's an interesting point, but too heavy-handed and obvious. There was no need to add a major character of a teenage American girl, especially as the chemistry between the two main characters, as female friends, was spotty at best. 

The merit of the movie, the only real reason a layperson should see it, is for some unbelievable action sequences where Conservation of Ninjitsu is used to spendid effect. Several times Saya is mobbed by (or throws herself into a mob of) "bloodsuckers" only to dispatch each quickly and elegantly. The visuals are consistently impressive--gorgeous lighting suffuses most scenes, which are held either under the black cover of night or in the golden sun. Whoever took care of the color saturation did a fantastic job. 

There are some CG sequences that I just had to swallow my skepticism for: particularly when the bloodsuckers showed their true demon forms, and looked like nothing so much as, well, what they were: badly rendered CG monsters. One scene involving a truck and batlike wings reminded me of a similar scene in Underworld: Evolution, and it's never good when an action movie reminds you of another action movie's derivative sequel. Likewise, the trite and obvious ending was handled unevenly (stunningly gorgeous visuals, stunningly gagworthy dialogue). Blood didn't cut any new ground here, but rehashed old themes over again. 

Still, ignore the senseless plot jumps, silly ending, and over-Americanized scenes involving the teenage daughter, and you have some fantastic entertainment fodder. I'd have to agree with my companion, who during a sequence when Saya lops off vampiric limbs, mutter/hissed, "This is so much better than Transformers!" 

Possession, A Romance

A.S. Byatt

It seems appropriate to begin my culture-blog with a review of Possession, which won the 1990 Booker Prize.

The plot is simple: Roland Michell, mediocre scholar, stumbles across an earthshaking literary find in the library--two drafts of a letter written by a long-dead, eminent Victorian poet, R.H. Ash, addressed to a woman he'd encountered at a social gathering whose eloquence compelled him. Michell then embarks on an academic search, discovering that this woman is an obscure poet of the same period, Christabel LaMotte. Together with chilly Maud Bailey, brilliant LaMotte scholar, they uncover more obscured information about the two poets that threatens to change the face of literary scholarship. 

What's fascinating about this novel is not its plot, which is relatively straightforward and rather predates some of the more contemporary novels which are structured as thrillers situated half in the current-day and half-in history. But Possession is not in any way a thriller. The most thrilling thing about it is Byatt's lush, Victorian use of language. 

Moreover, the characters are caricatures--intricate caricatures, but nonetheless lifeless. Michell is the classic passive underachiever, while Bailey is an ice queen whose continual source of angst is the inability of society to reconcile her physical beauty and her exemplary mind. The side characters are scholars, mostly, people enamored of the past and of language. Val, Michell's passive aggressive girlfriend, feels keenly her own sense of erasure and lack of self-worth. Her introduction is some of Byatt's most perceptive writing. Her female characters are the most developed, while her male characters remain mostly prone on the page, driven single-mindedly by one or two motivations. 

The title recalls "Romance" not only in the sense that this is a love story, but "Romance" in the generic sense of epic, legendary quests. LaMotte and Ash are enamored of archetypes--their poetry tastes alternately of the Romantic era (I was reminded of Keats' Lamia quite often) as well as American Transcendentalism (LaMotte's style bears heavy resemblences to Dickinson's poetry). 

Most marvelous is Possession's density. LaMotte and Ash are fictional poets, and yet Byatt inhabits their voices delicately, with precise differentiation between their mindsets and writing styles. She has literally pages of their poetry incorporated into her novel, as well as pages from the diaries of Ash's wife and LaMotte's companion. But it belies a significant weakness--in the novel's density, the pace of the story drags, and plot points seem too obvious... we are never surprised by the plot, but by the writing. It is literature to be pried into and savored, packed with nuance and graceful turns of phrase, but that pace may not suit everyone.