Day: September 27, 2003

Just came back from seeing “Underworld,” a film that could well have (indeed, perhaps should have) been filmed in black and white. It was like watching the world’s longest “Obession by Calvin Klein” ad.

The film is a curious paradox of moving along both briskly and slowly. The story pacing is quick enough, but the problem is that the audience forms no emotional connection with the protagonists. Selene, the vampire (Kate Beckinsale) is written, directed, filmed and edited to be remote, so it’s hard to care about what happens to her. The way into the film could have been through Michael (Scott Speedman), the human who attracts Selene’s attention because he in turn is being sought by werewolves (or “Lycans”). But the movie’s told from her POV, not his, and beyond the fact that he’s an intern, we don’t know anything about him…or, at the very least, enough to make us care if he’s bitten by werewolves or vampires or the acting bug.

The way to make the film work would have been to tell the entire story from Michael’s point of view and learn about the warfare between vamps and werewolves through him. Or, if it’s to be Selene’s story, intercut between modern day and her origins, like “Highlander,” which took this basic “mysterious group of people trying to kill each other” bit and did it far better. As it is, we’re hit with a bunch of emotional reveals in the last fifteen minutes of the movie that are designed to throw our perceptions of the characters on our ears. But instead of being emotionally shocking, as the filmmakers presumably hoped, you just go, “Oh. Okay. That’s interesting.”

A sequel is built into the conclusion. Joy.

PAD

Quite a few people are asking me the order in which the latest “New Frontier” novels (which should be on the stands just about any time) should be read. They are as follows:

“Gods Above,” which is the long-awaited conclusion to “Being Human.” The bad news is, it ends on a cliffhanger. The good news is, you don’t have to wait two years for the conclusion because the continuation, “Stone And Anvil,” should be out by the time you finish reading “Being Human.”

The short story collection, “No Limits,” can be read at any time because most of the stories are set before the crew of the Excalibur came together. The one exception to that is the story I wrote which is set immediately after “Restoration.” But it’s been a couple of years, so I’m hoping you’ve gotten around to reading that one by now. Thus it isn’t a problem.

PAD