VAMPIRES!!!!

[compared2what?]

I will also squeal "Buffy!" in girlish glee, despite being not a girl, or typically very gleeful.

I loved that fucking show.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

the gay Vampire King of Mississippi

Now THAT deserves to be a film title in it's own right! With the subline: "And his Court of Gorgeous Boytoys," preserved in full.

In fact, in this day and age, I wouldn't be surprised to see it as a news headline. Strange times.

Can't believe I said gay male vampires were rare, though, in a post that also mentions Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite. There don't seem to be any straight vampires of either sex (or people, for that matter) in any of their works - until Rice's Jesus book, I suppose.

With God's grace, I'll be able to avoid reading that one for the rest of my life, and shall die with the question of whether or not she made the Last Supper into a massive gang bang still unanswered. I wouldn't put it past her.

@ Ian Eye - Imelda Marcos can be added to the list of political vampires. Literal ones, too. Idi Amin ( and, On Edit, Papa Doc Duvalier and son) must surely qualify as well.

Saw a documentary about Evel Knievel not too long ago. The man wasn't misnamed, but it was maybe misspelled. What an absolute monster. To think I used to have the little bike-firing toy thing of his... Well, actually, that was great. No regrets on the toy ownership.

In the show I mentioned, Being Human, a Star of David can fuck up a vampire as well as a cross, whether silver or not. However, it loses it's power if the wearer and the vampire are friends, for some reason - the lead vampire regularly looks after the Jewish werewolf's Star of David when he is due to transform. Yes, I said Jewish werewolf. It's a great show, very like Buffy in the writing quality and humour.

@ C2W, watching those Kinski clips of him at the piano (and elsewhere) I couldn't help feeling what a tragedy it is that Kirk Douglas got cast as Van Gogh in 'Lust For Life.'

He was pretty good, I suppose, but Kinski would've nailed it - he just was it.

To my shame, I still haven't seen Aguirre yet, but I've read a fair amount about it. Must. Watch. Aguirre.

Either Kinski himself, or possibly his daughter, wrote a biography of him that is (according to the review I read) unflinchingly graphic and very revealing about the kind of man he was. To say he lived life to the full is an understatement - and to say he was tortured is probably putting it mildly as well. What a guy. If I re-find that review (think it was by Clive James) I'll post it up.

In da meantime, here's Kermode's interview with Herzog where he gets shot - with an air rifle. It's quite long, but unfailingly fascinating - Herzog and Kinski are both forces of nature, I think, human hurricanes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ugQrfDr ... re=related
.
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Oh, and Buffy's great, but Willow and Spike were the best things in the show. The writing's rarely been bettered.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Would you be free from the burden of sin?
There’s power in the blood, power in the blood;
Would you o’er evil a victory win?
There’s wonderful power in the blood.

I give to you the greatest filmic vampire of recent times (oh yes).... Mr. Daniel Plainview.

It's all there... the hatred of religion, the insatiable thirst (both for alcohol and, counterintuitively - but not really if you've ever known a drunk - absolute control). Also, less commonly, the ambiguously protective/abusive relationship with a young child or protege.

Plus, obviously, he feeds without any sign of satiation on the very Blood of the Earth - it seems to be his life's goal to drain it dry.

And maybe he doesn't sleep in coffins, but it's rare to see him rising from a bed. In the film he is nearly always roused from his sleep by some calamity or interruption while sleeping on floors, tables, trains - always in contact with panneled wood, coffin-style.

"I drink your water. Every day. I drink the Blood of Lamb from Bandy's Tract."

An epic vampire of Biblical proportions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXTc9BndmJQ

And I forgot about his most sinister thirst. The thirst for MILKSHAKE!

It's interesting to see the clear differences between Daniel Day-Lewis' acting style and that of Klaus Kinski. Both are said to be actors who "embody" the characters they play, or are taken over and possessed by them, but I actually find Day-Lewis quite mannered and theatrical at times, clearly "performing", whereas Kinski (as C2W says) seems to have no barrier at all between himself and the character he's playing. Which is nearly always himself.

EDIT: Maddy, I meant to ask - the last image in your list of vampires, with the knight and the serpent woman... what film is that from? the armour is exactly like that in John Boorman's Excalibur, but I don't remember a snake woman in it...?

[compared2what?]

No, no, no. I don't think he was playing himself. He played many different characters. And he had exceptional cold, hard technical acting skillz, too. A large number of which are pretty dull, disciplined and mechanical when it comes to acting in movies. What I meant was that he was....I don't know. He was an actor and that was his identity, rather than a pretense. Sort of like he difference between his real-life self and his characters was that the former sloshed around being uncontained in response to a bunch of uncoordinated external stimuli, whereas the latter sloshed around being uncontained in response to a bunch of highly coordinated, structured and precisely cued stimuli, although less passively than that. He's actually a very controlled actor, in his movements and line readings and so forth. As in his performance in Nosferatu.

And, um....I still haven't succeeded in saying what I mean, I don't think. I'll give it one more try, after which I advise you just to ignore me. Here we go: He played characters, not himself. However, I don't think that he regarded or experienced one as more real than the other. Because he just doesn't appear to have made that kind of distinction. Due to being completely out of his fucking mind. But a great artist, nonetheless. And in part despite that rather than because of it. Mental illness is a handicap in any line of work. All that A Beautiful Mind crap notwithstanding, if you're mentally ill but not a genius, it's not like your mental illness is going to somehow confer upon you all the exceptional talents you so sadly lack while you're not looking. Some people are both mentally ill and geniuses. Some are one but not the other. And some are neither. However, in every combination, they're two discrete, albeit mutually informing attributes. Not one uniform phenomenon.

I seem to have gotten a little off-topic. Sorry!

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I'm not sure if we're disagreeing or misapprehending each other at all. I'm pretty sure we both know what we're both saying. I wasn't saying Kinski just always played himself, without effort, like a savant or something - but that whatever character he found himself playing actually was himself, or a part of himself, a constituent part of his own character. He had some kind of (torturous) access to the collective unconcious, basically, and although, unlike Criswell, he didn't "know all", he knew enough about everybody to play anyone, be they great or small, while always being himself. Even if it hurt him.

C2W said: "he just doesn't appear to have made that kind of distinction. Due to being completely out of his fucking mind. But a great artist, nonetheless. And in part despite that rather than because of it. Mental illness is a handicap in any line of work. All that A Beautiful Mind crap notwithstanding, if you're mentally ill but not a genius, it's not like your mental illness is going to somehow confer upon you all the exceptional talents you so sadly lack while you're not looking. Some people are both mentally ill and geniuses. Some are one but not the other. And some are neither. However, in every combination, they're two discrete, albeit mutually informing attributes. Not one uniform phenomenon."

I agree entirely with every word of that. I hope it wasn't my mention of Van Gogh that made you feel I was conflating genius and madness into one attribute. I'm not that young anymore. Kinski (in my view), like Van Gogh, was simultaneously a mentally unstable and vulnerable man, a talented and skilled genius, a disciplined "professional" artist (that's the bit that always gets overlooked in any famous artists' biography), and just a guy like any other. That last bit gets overlooked too.

C2W said: "He was an actor and that was his identity, rather than a pretense."

Exactly. He wasn't being an actor, he was an actor. And Van Gogh wasn't trying to be an artist - he was an artist. All the time.

What do you make of Day-Lewis in comparison to Kinski though? Do you believe there can be any comparison? Enquiring minds must know.

[Alaya]

@ ahab's: it's a good comparison, i think.

"I drink your milkshake."

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Oh yeah, Plainview is definitely a vampire on many levels (social, psychic, economic, ecological - his sexuality is murky as hell, well nigh unreadable, though definitely always there) but I was wondering more about the differences in Day-Lewis' and Kinski's acting styles, and if anybody agrees with me that although Day-Lewis is a better technical actor, and generally appears in much better films, Kinski still somehow trumps him as... whatever he was. A star? That might actually be the difference.

Daniel Plainview totally drinks everybody's milkshake though. He drinks it up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4inIaEuGnY&NR=1

What a film!

[Maddy]

I will be back to this as soon as I can. I was sick yesterday and today I pick up my new rescue dog. Yay, growing family!


Also: Underworld, and White Wolf, VTM.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Mmmm, was sure Alaya had posted between my last one and Maddy's... I was gonna reply, just to say I get obsessed with certain films as well every now and then, and have to watch them in a kind of "tell me the nature of Man!" kind of way.

Haven't read any Cormac McCarthy, but loved 'No Country For Old Men', and am definitely looking forward to 'The Road.' I needed a lie down after just reading a review of 'Sutree.'

Maddy, I don't know if you ever play computer games, but there is an excellent pretty recent PC RPG of Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. Some really good characters and situations, and, oddly enough, a number of RI-like subplots - a female vampire with multiple personalities (it's hinted that they developed from childhood abuse), a high-class snuff movie ring involving pillars of the community, and a huge number of secret societies of various kinds fighting amongst themselves behind the scenes and manipulating the player into doing their bidding.

Some of it was in poor taste, though, and just ended up annoying me.

Still haven't seen any of the Underworld films - generally takes me a few years to catch up with whatever the pop cullture zeitgeist is, and for some reason it just never appealed to me. I got the impression that despite having werewolves and vampires, and basically being action-based, it took itself totally seriously in that annoying tennage boy way, like Blade.

[Maddy]

I've played RPGs since I was a teenager and the First Edition D&D came out. Left them for a bit as I got older, went back when WW came out with WoD, and later discovered UO on the internet. Never had patience for games like WoW, because I hate grinding and continual PvM, but UO is an awesome base for pure RP. I heard about Bloodlines, but couldn't afford it, but then I also heard it uses up some hellacious RAM. WW does have an online version of VtM you can access from their site, but its more along the lines of an old fashioned MUD. I have an old Dracula: Ressurection and Dracula: the Last Sanctuary I play now and then - because I love puzzle mysteries!

I got no sleep last night, to talk about (that's been happening a lot in the last few years) so I'm not completely with it today.

[barracuda]

I thought I'd just leave this here.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Never had patience for games like WoW, because I hate grinding and continual PvM, but UO is an awesome base for pure RP. I heard about Bloodlines, but couldn't afford it, but then I also heard it uses up some hellacious RAM. WW does have an online version of VtM you can access from their site, but its more along the lines of an old fashioned MUD. I have an old Dracula: Ressurection and Dracula: the Last Sanctuary I play now and then - because I love puzzle mysteries!

Never played WoW for the same reasons you stated (and I'm scared if I started I'd never stop), and I couldn't play Ultima Online now, though I was jealous as hell of everybody who got to play it when it was the biggest (only?) game of it's kind on the scene. It looked amazing, and that was only about ten years ago. Now it looks like it would run on a mobile phone.

For better or worse, I've gotten used to snazzy graphics and physics and all that - got a computer recently that could happily run NORAD as a background service, and I love it to bits. Cost a bomb, but I never buy anything else except food and drink so I figured it was worth it. V:TM: Bloodlines does use a lot of RAM, and needs a decent graphics card, but it's cheap now and getting older, so technology's caught up with it.

You know what you reminded me of, though? The best point and click adventure game of all time - featuring vampires. Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned. It's got vampirism of the old-school Biblical order (sons of Cain), the Holy Grail, the mystery of Rennes le Chateau, the Priory of Sion, the Illuminati, Scottish Rite Masons, Templar history, the 'real' story of Mary Magdalene, Merovingians, Cathars, Le Serpent Rouge... I might have left something out...

Sorry for not explaining what it's actually about very well, but I'm betting you've played it already. If you haven't, you should.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Kn ... the_Damned

...Dear God, though, how did vampirism get so nerdy? Weren't we talking about sex a minute ago? And now it's video games, and I'm getting all excited?

... I'm ashamed of meself.

I got no sleep last night, to talk about (that's been happening a lot in the last few years) so I'm not completely with it today.

No worries. I think I've got swine flu (not really, just the normal stuff) and I'm having a great time experimenting with all the different cough mixtures I've got here (never buy non-drowsy, it's a rip-off) so I'm not with it either. It's The Lounge anyways.

[MacCruiskeen]

Any Kinski fans here who haven't yet seen Herzog's Mein liebster Feind should correct that omission immediately. It's a wonderful film.

Here's half a minute of a fairly typical Klaus Kinski press conference at Cannes. (There's a long silence after he screams the word "MERDE!!" Watch how he reacts when somebody then dares to laugh.)

[Maddy]

Nerdy sex always gets me excited, too, don't worry, Ahab.

I am going to buy that game! It sounds awesome, just up my alley! And vampires became nerdy back in either the 90s, when VTM was popular, or in the late 70s when Anne Rice began writing (when I was introduced to Interview and went "OooOoOoOOO Vampires!" - also, coincidentally, around the same time puberty hit hard. Coincidence? I don't think so!).

I hope you feel better soon! I'm half-hoping and half-dreading getting the flu, myself, this season. Flu is great for buffing my immune system! But with two dogs to take care of, by myself, its really going to suck if I get it. >.< Now I know how parents feel!

Oh yeah, edit: Kinski scares me.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I hope you feel better soon!

I feel better already. It's the wine. The red, red wine. Plus all the medicine. Works a treat.

You seriously should buy ... or find... Gabriel Knight 3, because I am certain you will love it. It's very long and involved, though - no human being will solve all the puzzles without resorting to some (out of game) internet searching - you can search the net inside the game as well, but it's like an internet featuring only the occult-related articles from Wikipedia, ie. not very good. Don't believe what they say about Madame Blavatsky! Or Jesus Christ, for that matter.

I'm not sure that it runs well on Windows XP or Vista, btw, pretty sure it doesn't. There are fixes, though.

I'm half-hoping and half-dreading getting the flu, myself, this season. Flu is great for buffing my immune system! But with two dogs to take care of, by myself, its really going to suck if I get it. >.< Now I know how parents feel!

I am almost certain that this is the only board on the internet where I could find someone else who views getting the flu as being, at least partly, a good thing - "I've done my deltoids and my abs - now I just need the flu to come and give my immune system a work out! Bring it on!"

Dogs are pretty hardy, I find. And even if you got sick, I reckon you'd rise from the dead long enough to feed them and let them out the door for a run around. It's not like kids, where you have to listen to them and stuff.

Oh yeah, edit: Kinski scares me.

He's totally going to feed on that puppy.