Category Archives: vampires

I recently watched Let the Right One in and was talking about it to a fellow film enthusiast at work. To my horror, he informed me that there was now an American remake of the film–Let Me In. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Americans, but I don’t understand why there is a deep-seated need in Hollywood to remake any good film that happened to be made outside the US and happened to do well.

Let the Right One in is a brilliant, beautiful movie, full of atmosphere and innocence tainted with bloodshed. It was balanced, the story and plot were well done and well executed, and it didn’t need to be remade. It’s barely a few years old. There was no need for this remake to happen, and I can only be certain that some of the beauty and feeling in the original film/book is going to be lost in translation as it travels across the pond to be covered in Hollywood glitz.

I have seen numerous films suffer from the desire for everything to be set in America/be not subtitled. The Seven Samurai, Zatoichi, Ju-on, Ringu, all brilliant Japanese films that have been remade to fit American audiences when they should have just let everyone see and appreciate the originals.

So what if you have to read subtitles to follow the film. It really doesn’t make viewing the film difficult. I do it all the time with Japanese / Hong Kong films/anime and it’s no bother at all (Oh, which reminds me, you all know that The Departed is a remake of the excellent Hong Kong film, Infernal Affairs, right?)

Let the Right One in had a brilliant world-film feel about it. It was a simple but deep plot, with scenes that followed the daily actions of a young lonely boy and a young-looking vampire without fuss or overcomplicating them. They spoke for themselves, standing out and creating a film that really did strike me as something amazing.

To me, it had an air about it that reminded me of Night Watch. That film really had an impact on me visually, and the plot was good enough to make it an entertaining film. Day Watch was poor in comparison. The intervention by big foreign movie companies ruined what could have been a great follow up to the first film, turning it into a farce. They even wanted to film it in English!

Really, can the big screenwriters not think of their own original stories to write. Do we have to remake everything?

Cinema seems to be going through some sort of remake hell right now. There are films that are barely a few years old that are getting remade… and don’t get me started on remaking classics like Clash of the Titans! (and killing the most important part of the plot while they’re at it!)

End Rant!

I have a very open mind and heart when it comes to vampires. My love for them is deep and eternal enough that I just couldn’t resist giving Valemont a chance to improve in the final episode. There had to be a chance they could finally get it right, fix the horrific plot imbalances, and come through to snatch victory with a capital V for Valemont.

Unfortunately not.

Christian Taylor (middle) the writer of Valemont with the cast – the man to blame for this horror. Dillon Casey (half-naked) is the best thing about it!

The final episode of Valemont thankfully didn’t end with the death of everyone. Sebastian van Cleer, vampire, survives a sword through the chest (points for keeping the vampire hero alive), the bad guy dies (although since Sebastian survives a worse sword wound, his death is debatable — points deducted for this oversight), and the poorly named Gabriel (points also deducted for using such a cliche name) also survives… not sure what he is. Human I think.

The writing on Valemont hasn’t improved. It’s poor, the plot is so weak that it hurts, and there’s still a shocking lack of emotion. I’m still trying to get over the previous few episodes’ complete disregard for relationship building. Sophie, the heroine, goes from kinda liking Sebastian, to using him to get his key to the Panthera house, to hating him and wanting nothing to do with him… and then… once she too becomes a vampire and is told that pure bloods like her can’t get it on / can’t marry another pure blood like Sebastian, she has a massive weepy tizzy about it in his face, asking him why he never told her that they couldn’t be together. I was like – WTF? – since she had shown NO true emotional interest in the guy and suddenly she was acting as though she was madly in love with him and devastated. Honestly, you’ve got to at least reveal some emotion / her feelings in previous scenes to back up such a bombshell otherwise it just doesn’t work.

The camera work and shoddy sound didn’t improve in this episode. Soft focus was met with blur and sound that fluctuated in volume so badly I had to ride the volume on the remote through the entire episode. It was painful to watch and gave me no reason to connect to it at all. Valemont screams of wannabe and fails dismally to capture this audience and make me give a damn about the characters. The sad thing is, I’m left with the feeling that it could have been so much more. If the writing had been refined, or written by someone else perhaps, or the writer had done his research better about the field he was entering into rather than rushing to leap on the bandwagon, it could have been great. I’m bitterly disappointed and I’m desperately hoping that MTV let this one die a peaceful death and don’t ressurect it for a second series. It’s not even worth it to see more of Dillon Casey!

Although, when Sebastian is supposedly killed, the heroine Sophie has a short weepy moment and then after the grand finale, she doesn’t seem to give a monkey that she’s standing in the same room as his dead body, and that of her brother. If she cared about the vampire hottie, surely she would have returned to his side post-fight? Bitch.

If they do insist on making a second series of Valemont, MTV needs to get a new writer, one that doesn’t come across as though it’s the first thing he’s ever written and didn’t bother to revise it before turning it into a trashy series. I’m available if you want a vampire series with bite and emotion, and a plot that makes sense… although I would have to fire your camera and sound crew.

So, the DH saw that Valemont was on MTV and stuck it in the planner for me. I watched a bit of it this morning, and it isn’t really grabbing me. It’s a touch cliche in the story line and I just get that vibe that I’m watching a poorly made live action (although plot-wise it’s a bit different) version of Vampire Knight (anime). There are SO many vampire animes and series out there right now that centre around vampires at a school / academy / university (delete as appropriate). None of them have bested Vampire Knight yet though.

Here’s my rambling thoughts about Valemont… a not so great vampire series.

Sebastian Van Cleer – the best thing in Valemont

There’s nothing really new for me in Valemont. It’s a bit more interesting than Vampire Diaries, since there’s a whole forbidden love thing going on between leading lady Sophie and sexy vampire bad boy Sebastian, but the shambolic sound and rather clunky camera work on it really takes away too much for me to be continuing with it. I get that vibe that nothing much is going to happen. It switches and changes by degrees every five seconds, so that it’s no longer cohesive. You get a sort of headache trying to keep up. Honestly, stick with the characters/scene for more than a second or two, please! It could have been really good, with stronger writing and better sound/camera work, and more intense/longer scenes. Also, I don’t feel any emotional connection or any feeling towards the characters. Sophie has love interests thrown at her all the time, and Sebastian clearly wants to get it on, but she’s not letting that happen… and when he does kiss her, it’s not exactly mindblowing passion you’re watching on the tv. You just can’t get a feel for the characters, their emotions/feelings towards the rest of the characters, and it sort of all falls flat.

I also get the feeling that they’re gonna kill off all the leading men – Sebastian (a vampire) and Gabriel (presumably human), and that just does not float my boat. Although, if you’re gonna kill anyone, kill Gabriel. Never kill off a sexy vampire!

Might have to ditch this in favour of keeping up with Vampire Diaries. At least that’s better produced, better written, and is a little more unique, although also full of cliches.

The vampires in Valemont are pretty standard. Nothing that hasn’t particularly been done before. The most interesting is that there are five different types of vampires, although I can’t see how a bat biting an animal can then lead to a human being a vampire.

Vampires procreate in this, and age and then mature into their true vampy state. Been there and written that (wait for my future novels that I’m in edits with – Forbidden Blood and Heart of Darkness – and you’ll see what I mean)

Human blood is pretty much like a drug to them (again, wait for Forbidden Blood, same sort of theory)

There’s some sort of rebellion about to begin against the law against drinking human blood… nothing amazingly new about that. If I was a vampire and had to lay of the human blood, I’d be pretty pissed too. Although, in this, human blood is supposed to shorten their life-span and make their true vampire abilities / issues show. Such as sunlight affecting them. I love seeing how people get around the sunlight issue. Vampire Diaries has it done the best way so far for a telly series, although ripping off Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the whole ring thing wasn’t their most imaginative move. Most of the time I deal with it a different way in each of my books, but do like to fall back on the – owie, that’s gonna smart – approach to sunlight.

Has anyone else watched Valemont and liked it?

Right now, I’m eager to re-watch Vampire Knight to erase Valemont from my mind (subbed version of course. I don’t watch dubbed anime)

Valemont… you could have been so much more… you had the looks… but unfortunately, the production sucked (hahaha I made a funny!)

ETA – This is the sort of picture I had wanted to include of Dillon Casey, who plays Sebastian!

Now, that’s hero material right there… he does get his kit off a bit in Valemont. Apparently it’s a bit of a trend for the poor guy.