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Dracula (The Sequel) v. Green Hornet
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 02:46 pmIn Books:
Dracula: The Un-Dead, by Dacre Stoker & Ian Holt: You know that something's wrong when one of the reviews at the beginning of the book sings its praises by saying "At least it's not [X]!" In this case, it was a review saying that "these vampires don't sparkle!" Vampires are quickly becoming the most wrung-out monsters in modern horror, and when the greatest accolade you can think of is that they're not the bottom of the barrel, the problem is, there's still a lot of barrel to go through to get to the top. Anyway, I would venture to say that this is one of the worst vampire books I've ever read. The amount of gore described was unnecessary and counterintuitive as a sequel to a book that contains virtually no gore, only well-placed trickles of blood. DtUD doesn't just trickle blood; it oozes with it, in an effort to be what the writers no doubt thought would be shocking (but is, instead, boring.) This book is like a coherent piece of long fanfiction: there are pairings (Mina/Dracula = OTP!!4Ever!!OMG!!1!!), pretentiousness (minor characters from the original appear in the sequel, or have honorary buildings named after them), a few minor good ideas and occasionally decent writing (the combat is well described, and the writers switch between various characters' POV with relative ease), but an overall sense of "I can't believe I just read that!" And if I hadn't been proctoring the SAT on an early morning and brought other books, this wouldn't have gotten finished. Poor Bram Stoker--he's even a character in this novel, and comes off as a whiney, desperate opportunist who didn't know the worth of his work. Attention, descendants of famous authors: do not attempt to write sequels unless you are already a writer who knows what the hell you're doing. Don't embarrass yourself and cheapen your relative's literary legacy.
Also: Can we have a moratorium on Jack the Ripper stories? Yeah, yeah, unsolved gory crime, dead prostitutes, sensationalism, etc. etc. But. It's. All. Been. Done. Before. Let's stop giving this our attention and focus on better literature.
On DVD:
The Green Hornet: This really should have been called Kato and the Green Hornet, since it's Kato who's really the brawn, brains, and finesse behind the whole hero deal. While the screenwriters went to great lengths to show us that, hey, our feckless, rich boy hero really does grow up and gain super-strategy powers, they didn't stick--Kato has already spent far too much time in the movie designing cool cars and weapons, kicking ass, and strategizing how to handle the bad guys. It's a good thing that Seth Rogen as Britt Reed/Green Hornet is fairly likable and I didn't spend my time wanting to bash his head in. (Well, maybe a few times I did. But those parts were short.) Jay Chou/Kato is much more interesting to watch and much, much easier on the eyes. Generally speaking, this film falls into the "mostly harmless" category--it's not the best or worst superhero film I've ever seen, but it was diverting and silly and I enjoyed it. Still wish Jay Chou had gotten better billing, though.
Dracula: The Un-Dead, by Dacre Stoker & Ian Holt: You know that something's wrong when one of the reviews at the beginning of the book sings its praises by saying "At least it's not [X]!" In this case, it was a review saying that "these vampires don't sparkle!" Vampires are quickly becoming the most wrung-out monsters in modern horror, and when the greatest accolade you can think of is that they're not the bottom of the barrel, the problem is, there's still a lot of barrel to go through to get to the top. Anyway, I would venture to say that this is one of the worst vampire books I've ever read. The amount of gore described was unnecessary and counterintuitive as a sequel to a book that contains virtually no gore, only well-placed trickles of blood. DtUD doesn't just trickle blood; it oozes with it, in an effort to be what the writers no doubt thought would be shocking (but is, instead, boring.) This book is like a coherent piece of long fanfiction: there are pairings (Mina/Dracula = OTP!!4Ever!!OMG!!1!!), pretentiousness (minor characters from the original appear in the sequel, or have honorary buildings named after them), a few minor good ideas and occasionally decent writing (the combat is well described, and the writers switch between various characters' POV with relative ease), but an overall sense of "I can't believe I just read that!" And if I hadn't been proctoring the SAT on an early morning and brought other books, this wouldn't have gotten finished. Poor Bram Stoker--he's even a character in this novel, and comes off as a whiney, desperate opportunist who didn't know the worth of his work. Attention, descendants of famous authors: do not attempt to write sequels unless you are already a writer who knows what the hell you're doing. Don't embarrass yourself and cheapen your relative's literary legacy.
Also: Can we have a moratorium on Jack the Ripper stories? Yeah, yeah, unsolved gory crime, dead prostitutes, sensationalism, etc. etc. But. It's. All. Been. Done. Before. Let's stop giving this our attention and focus on better literature.
On DVD:
The Green Hornet: This really should have been called Kato and the Green Hornet, since it's Kato who's really the brawn, brains, and finesse behind the whole hero deal. While the screenwriters went to great lengths to show us that, hey, our feckless, rich boy hero really does grow up and gain super-strategy powers, they didn't stick--Kato has already spent far too much time in the movie designing cool cars and weapons, kicking ass, and strategizing how to handle the bad guys. It's a good thing that Seth Rogen as Britt Reed/Green Hornet is fairly likable and I didn't spend my time wanting to bash his head in. (Well, maybe a few times I did. But those parts were short.) Jay Chou/Kato is much more interesting to watch and much, much easier on the eyes. Generally speaking, this film falls into the "mostly harmless" category--it's not the best or worst superhero film I've ever seen, but it was diverting and silly and I enjoyed it. Still wish Jay Chou had gotten better billing, though.
