Blood and Pizza
The Minimum Requirements were in-studio on "In the Garage". I'm at my best with other people around, on-air-wise, almost no matter who they are. TMR were good, as usual... they have a new album, "Watch This" out. They came straight from the CD release party. If you buy it you get a DVD with it that includes footage of their last appearance on the show... which means I'm on it, too. It was a great night.
My TV is currently showing "Gryphon"... it's a Sci-Fi Channel movie that features Amber Benson in a sword and a suit of armor. Just to be clear, that is why I'm watching it, if "watching" is indeed the right term for the amount of attention I'm giving to it... whoa! Random twisted sex scene involving a knife just happened. I'm for that... though it's a little strange, seeing her in a hetero sex scene. Plus you have to give props to absolutely horrible Sci-Fi movies. Seriously, "Xena" had better effects than this... and better acting. How did this happen?
As for "Blood and Chocolate"... it's not a bad movie. That's pretty much the level of my endorsement. (It got a 6 out of 10 on the Garagemeter) The first hour is a nice, very otherworldly romance and the last half hour is a halfway decent action movie. I did not really know who Agnes Bruckner was before this, though I'd heard the name... I think now I might be a fan, though none of the men she's playing against do quite as good of a job.
"Do you seduce all your prisoners?" "Only when I want to discover the truth." Oh my God, I love how horrible this movie is... "Gryphon," I mean.
Anyway, back to the werewolves. This was the first movie I've seen based off of the new-school werewolves (unless you count "Underworld", which I suppose was sort of a product of that environment but... not really), the ones with a major place on the romance shelves at Barnes & Noble. Rather than alone, they exist as a separate society, not monsters but a separate species. There's a speech by the male lead where he talks about how it's a "blessing, not a curse". Rather than the bone-crunching transformations of "American Werewolf in London", turning into a wolf is a thing of beauty here, a flying leap and a shine of moonlight. And they use real wolves, not CGI impostors, and trust me when I say you can tell the difference. I rather enjoy the whole subgenre, especially comparatively. They do a good job in this movie of portraying the werewolves as a different race, even when they're in human form; From the first moment we see Agnes Bruckner, we know there's something different about her, the way she carries herself, the way she moves, the way she relates to the world. It's actually a very good performance, and in its own way it's as sexy as Kate Beckinsale in all-leather. She also gets a power shot with a shotgun against a backdrop entirely of absinthe-fueled flames, so that's a plus.
All that said, this is only so good of a movie. The dialogue is usually fairly clunky, though it occasionally manages some nice moments (When Bruckner bids a group of fellow wolves goodbye by saying "May you know the age of hope when you see it" I was still thinking about it after the movie was over). I was never behind the male lead, or really got a sense of who he was, and the plot seems a little too coincidence-driven. When the guy (the character's name is Aiden, I believe) starts killing werewolves left and right, though it's in self-defense I found myself not entirely sympathetic to him, which I think I was supposed to be... this was almost a fatal flaw for the movie. When Bruckner suddenly starts needing a special injection of "AG-287" or some such nonsense to stave off silver poisoning, I thought I'd stumbled into another movie. It seemed like it had two third acts, one right after the other, which didn't quite work. And honestly, sometimes it did get a little YA for my taste, if that makes any sense.
The movie's going to tank at the box office because it's hard to market and it's been so long since there was a remotely good movie like this (in fact, I'm not convinced this movie's ever been made before, so to speak, a miracle in this day and age for an actiony genre movie) that people probably don't think it's possible to even make one. But hey, turns out it is. So check it out if you're one of us who like this kind of thing.
That was the longest review I've done of something in a while. I kind of knew right after the movie that it would be, I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because the sort of movie I'd really like to make is not that different from this one... I loved "The Fountain", but I don't want to devote a bunch of time to writing that script. I like big, fun stories like this.
It was pretty dark even at midday today, though it never really stormed. There was a hard wind that blew right in your face. I had lunch at Capri Pizza, one of my favorite little places. It has that chalky feel, like pizza dough. A few small tables. They play classic rock in the kitchen, "Layla", usually. I sit by myself, wait the ten minutes for them to make the stuff. I read the Free Times. It's thin and floppy, too hot to eat at first, and the cheese has a life of its own.