strange and random happenstance

My awakening to vampires didn't happen until 2001. Of course I knew about vampires, I just didn't seek them out. It took Buffy and William the Bloody for that to happen. But prior to that I wasn't in the dark. I knew who Anne Rice was because of an art class acquaintance who was obsessed with her books. I think she was actually the only Goth at my high school which makes me sad. There should have been more. And then you could not be alive in the nineties without knowing about the Tom Cruise Lestat casting controversy. But again, it was background noise. I didn't even see the Interview with the Vampire movie until it was on basic cable. Then I saw it. A lot. Randomly. It's one of those movies you just kind of watch some of and get drawn inexorably in. Eventually, as in only about ten years ago, I thought it was time for me to finally read Interview with the Vampire and I really didn't like it. Gave the book away didn't like it. What's odd is the only thing I actually remember about the book, other than hating it, is Claudia's death scene. That's very vivid in my mind. Also I kind of what to re-read it to see if it's really as bad as I thought it was, so it just goes to show I should hold on to all my books for ever and ever. Which makes it oddly strange that I was so excited for AMC's new Interview with the Vampire. But I was. And it was magical. It transformed the book into something more. The book became a starting off point and from their it grew to be about sexual identity, racism, family, justice, relationships, trauma, abuse, truth, as Louis says at one point to Daniel, now older, wiser, grumpier, and played perfectly by Eric Bogosian, we are on an odyssey of memory. And memory changes, becomes warped, distorted by love and hate. This adaptation is very insular, an almost claustrophobic little world, where thought and language and words are king. Daylight is never seen, everything happens in these opulent little rooms in New Orleans that look and feel like jewel boxes. You actually feel the suffocation that Louis feels while around Lestat. The words swirl around and around in your head so that after an episode you feel lightheaded, as if somehow they snuck into your house and drained you of blood while you watched. Every change is so much for the better that I can not praise the writers of this series enough. But the biggest improvement is when Louis refuses to talk about Claudia's rape at the hands of another vampire. He says that he will not exploit her pain. And that's when I realized the showrunners really knew what they were doing. Claudia's exploitation almost to the point of child pornography in the book is what alienated me from it and they knew they had to point blank say that this adaptation was going beyond the book, making it more modern, more thoughtful, and yes, even a bit more Grey Gardens. And if this entire adaptation just existed to give me Lestat and Louis as Big and Little Edie, then I say it was a job well done.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: AMC, And the Emmy Goes To, Anne Rice, Big Edie, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Eric Bogosian, Goth, Grey Gardens, Interview with the Vampire, Little Edie, New Orleans, Odyssey, Tom Cruise, Vampires, William the Bloody

Interview with the Vampire gave me false hope that Mayfair Witches would be equally good, despite different creators, writers, and cast, though oddly sometimes repurposed sets. I should have known better. This is the new Anne Rice "immortal universe" that AMC is fully embracing and we're getting the full range of her writing, and not all of that was good. There is literally a third show in development as I write this, possibly more by the time this publishes. The thing is within this "immortal universe" this is the trailer trash end. This is AMC by way of V.C. Andrews. I mean Harry Hamlin was actually in a V.C. Andrews adaptation only six months previously to Mayfair Witches airing. The problem is they don't realize they're V.C. Andrews, they think they are better than that. Lifetime's V.C. Andrews adaptations are a joy to watch because they know exactly what they are, unlike this show. Mayfair Witches' opening credits alone hit you over the head with a mallet with there "subtle" White Lotus Southern Gothic vibe. Just because your star was on the first season of White Lotus that does not give you permission to ape the style. Especially because it's not carried through the rest of the show. It's an aberrant opening credit sequence to trick the viewer. It's just infuriating. I would gnash my teeth just watching them. And given I don't live in a bubble and I talk to other people I am still shocked this got a second season. The number one problem noted time and again in my discussions with fellow viewers is the pacing. This show is glacial. It took them eight episodes to do what could have been done in a single TV movie. And still they omit things. Mayfair Witches is eight episodes of WTF and why am I watching this. And no matter how obsessed the internet is with Alexandra Daddario I will never get it. I have seen no evidence that she can actually act and her character is totally unlikable, which is actually a problem for all the characters in this series minus the marvelous Jen Richards as Jojo. I'd watch a show about Jojo. So if that's the forth "immortal universe" show then I'm down with that. I mean, how did they ruin Jack Huston!?! Gaw! But the WORST problem of all is that I think they think the viewers are stupid. How have I come to this conclusion? The subtitles. In the flashbacks to Scotland, which yes, I confirmed it's Scotland, the accents due tend to wander and slip and if you occasionally thought they were Irish I forgive you. So instead of fixing this problem by redubbing with actors who could do the accents much like the Andy MacDowell Greystoke controversy, they had the brilliant idea of subtitles. Now I was watching this show at the same time as Karen Pirie, which has true Scots accents, and this subtitling infuriated me. I really couldn't decide if they thought their viewers couldn't comprehend or they knew their actors were horrible. And maybe that's the problem at the bottom of this all, do they realize what a bad job they are doing or are they aware and trying to right a sinking ship? Either way I won't be turning into season two. Unless they are evil geniuses and figure out someway to tie this into the divine Interview with the Vampire... But even then there are enough websites that write summaries of shows that I don't think I'll be forced to endure anymore of whatever this is.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alexandra Daddario, AMC, And the Emmy Goes To, Anne Rice, Harry Hamlin, Immortal Universe, Interview with the Vampire, Jack Huston, Jen Richards, Karen Pirie, Mayfair Witches, Scotland, V.C. Andrews, White Lotus

The End of Temperance Dare by Wendy Webb
Published by: Lake Union Publishing
Publication Date: June 6th, 2017
Format: Paperback, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★
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Despite a looming sense of dread she's carried for months everything seems to be falling into place for Eleanor Harper but in the most unexpected of ways. She loses her job as a crime reporter at the same time the position for director of the prestigious Cliffside Manor artists retreat becomes available. Eleanor has been drawn to the old tuberculosis hospital ever since she went there twenty years earlier as a cub reporter covering the sudden deaths of the hospital's founder, Chester Dare, and one of his daughters, Milly, in a tragic car accident. His remaining daughter, Penelope, has run the retreat ever since and she feels it's time to hand the reigns to the next generation. While Eleanor isn't the most qualified Miss Penny felt a connection to her all those years ago because they both agreed that the accident was no accident. Miss Penny never blamed Eleanor, who as an inexperienced reporter was unable to shed light on the deaths, but admired her tenacity and has followed her journalistic career with interest. When Eleanor arrives at the Manor through the mists she feels like she's home. Miss Penny welcomes her with open arms and inducts her into the running of the retreat, which is mainly handled by an extensive staff. In a week they are to get the current group of artists for a month-long residency and Eleanor will shadow Miss Penny until she's confident enough that she can handle the responsibilities herself. At least that's what Eleanor thought the plan was to be, Miss Penny had other ideas, as that afternoon she commits suicide and leaves everything in Eleanor's inexperienced hands. Eleanor is baffled by the predicament she has landed in but she views it only right to mourn but continue on in Miss Penny's memory. Therefore a week later the five artists arrive. Things do not go to plan. Miss Penny brought everyone here with a purpose... is she acting from beyond the grave? But more importantly, is she acting alone or are other supernatural elements at work?

Here's the problem I have with Gothic stories that involve haunted houses, there needs to be enough wiggle room that the "haunting" could all be chalked up to psychological issues. You need that suspension of disbelief. You have to be convinced or dissuaded through the story, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is a masterclass in this conceit. A Tuberculosis hospital is a whole lot of heck no from me. The reason for this is that TB hospitals were, as it says in this book, a “waiting room for death.” All hauntings derive from a death, here we have a plurality of death, so in my mind there is no question as to whether or not Cliffside Manor is haunted. It is SO haunted. This is a place where ghost hunters go, not artistic types. I have NO DOUBT that ghosts exist. What exactly they are I'm not sure, but I have seen many ghosts in my life, some benign, some very much the opposite. I would NEVER go willingly to a place like Cliffside Manor, it would be too much. Add to that the fact this retreat is made for artists like me... I really don't get how places at the retreat are so sought after. Yes, there is a wide range of susceptibility when it comes to seeing the supernatural, but the truth is the more sensitive you are to the world around you, the more open you are, the more likely you are to have such an experience. Therefore people who are artistic are more likely to pick up on these vibes, much like how artists are the ones who can hear the call of Cthulhu in the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. So how are these artists not being like, don't go there, it's haunted. Word of mouth would spread like wildfire, but instead they have people clamoring for vacancies. This makes no sense to me, which makes me feel like the entire setup is unbelievable and therefore I don't buy into the story.

What's more it's hard to buy into a story where you're not quite certain if you're dealing with an unreliable narrator or not. My problem in this instance was that I couldn't tell if the red herrings I was following were meant to be red herrings or were just bad editing. To be clear, I reached the correct conclusion, I just don't know if I was meant to reach that conclusion in the first few chapters. What alerted my spider senses was Eleanor arriving at Cliffside Manor on a Thursday and the guests being scheduled to arrive the next Friday, but within minutes it was "arriving in one week." I don't know who taught Eleanor or Webb about the days of the week but that's longer than a week. Yes, you could brush it off as just common vernacular, it's about a week, but the way Webb writes I disagree. She is very precise, very matter of fact, you can tell she was a journalist herself in the very way everything is as it should be and nothing is out of place. If a book could be neat as a pin, this would be that book, and if I'm honest, I'd rather choose sloppy and lyrical than this. Which makes this first error glaring. IF this was a hint as to Eleanor's reliability as a narrator, I have to give Webb kudos. It was subtle and just enough to bait the reader. If, on the other hand, this was just a typo, in fact the most common of typos if I'm to be honest, because writers as a whole don't look at calendars despite the fact you can look up ANY calendar year online, well, then it's bad luck that a transcription or writing or editing error gave away something that's rather important. But then again, I feel like the whole unreliable narrator is played out. It's a way to delay the reveal while having the answer in front of you the whole time, and to me, that's kind of smug storytelling, though not nearly as bad as an author like Josephine Tey who purposefully left clues out so that the reader couldn't solve her riddles.

The truth is, The End of Temperance Dare relies too heavily on overplayed tropes. The obviously haunted local, the unreliable narrator, the love triangle (more on that in a minute), and the sexualization of children as a sign of evil. Think of all the movies and all the books over the years that have had innocent children possessed by evil spirits say licentious things and you know where I'm coming from. The Exorcist anyone? The problem I have with this trope is that instead of just being unsettling it verges on the edge of child exploitation, which is one of the MANY reasons I have never read Anne Rice again after Interview with the Vampire because of how she handles Claudia. Here it's taken further with the evil spirit of Temperance who is eleven in human years being obsessed with the Doctor as her future husband and later while controlling her sisters body not only is a loose woman, but stalks the photographer Richard, who is one of the members of the retreat we meet. It's hinted at that she was born a demon and she had impure thoughts and behaviors from the day she was born, yet Webb is never explicit enough with these revelations. Instead she leaves it all up to the reader's imagination, and I just don't like that because it's a cop out. She shows us these disturbing images and behaviors and then never fully goes to the root of the evil, therefore making the villain a sexually precocious child. That just freaks me out too much. And not in the good way. Instead I felt ill and the denouement and happily ever after left a bitter taste in my mouth because evil was left to be evil and the motives behind that evil were just to have her way with everyone especially these two men?

These two men who then form the other two corners of a love triangle wit Eleanor/Temperance. Because instead of Eleanor being involved in a healthy relationship she finds herself drawn into flirtations with the retreat's doctor, Nat, and one of the guests, Richard. This triangle felt so forced. Here is a professional woman trying to make a good impression at her new job and instead she is behaving like a lovestruck teenager... or should I say sexually precocious child? So the reason I hated this element of the narrative isn't that I just hate love triangles, because I do, I really really do, it's because the relationships don't feel like they organically develop. Which, I guess you could say, they didn't. But in order to achieve that happily ever after we bafflingly reach there has to be a kernel of truth amongst all the supernatural manipulations for the ending to be at least mildly believable. But in the end, looking at the whole story of Temperance Dare, I can't help think that it was a looong setup for very little reward. Sure, all the pieces fit into place, but mechanically. You have no emotions invested in the characters. It's too by the book. A paint by numbers narrative which would just horrify Henry, who was the resident painter at the retreat who worked in oils yet had no proper venting in his room for painting oils indoors. And then a happy ending where everyone gets what they want? That's not believable, that's contrived. I haven't read any of Webb's other books, but I hope there's a little more spark and a lot less plodding out of plot points. I can't take another book like this one, it was too predictable and plebeian.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Anne Rice, Artists' Retreat, Ghosts, Going Gothic, Interview with the Vampire, Josephine Tey, Possession, Shirley Jackson, The End of Temperance Dare, The Exorcist, The Haunting of Hill House, Trope, Wendy Webb

Talking As Fast As I Can by Lauren Graham
Published by: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: November 29th, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 224 Pages
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The official patter:
"In this collection of personal essays, the beloved star of Gilmore Girls and Parenthood reveals stories about life, love, and working as a woman in Hollywood—along with behind-the-scenes dispatches from the set of the new Gilmore Girls, where she plays the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore once again.

In Talking as Fast as I Can, Lauren Graham hits pause for a moment and looks back on her life, sharing laugh-out-loud stories about growing up, starting out as an actress, and, years later, sitting in her trailer on the Parenthood set and asking herself, “Did you, um, make it?” She opens up about the challenges of being single in Hollywood (“Strangers were worried about me; that’s how long I was single!”), the time she was asked to audition her butt for a role, and her experience being a judge on Project Runway (“It’s like I had a fashion-induced blackout”).

In “What It Was Like, Part One,” Graham sits down for an epic Gilmore Girls marathon and reflects on being cast as the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore. The essay “What It Was Like, Part Two” reveals how it felt to pick up the role again nine years later, and what doing so has meant to her.

Some more things you will learn about Lauren: She once tried to go vegan just to bond with Ellen DeGeneres, she’s aware that meeting guys at awards shows has its pitfalls (“If you’re meeting someone for the first time after three hours of hair, makeup, and styling, you’ve already set the bar too high”), and she’s a card-carrying REI shopper (“My bungee cords now earn points!”).

Including photos and excerpts from the diary Graham kept during the filming of the recent Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, this book is like a cozy night in, catching up with your best friend, laughing and swapping stories, and—of course—talking as fast as you can."

Yes, it feels a little bit too much of a tie-in to the show returning, but really, who cares? It's Gilmore Girls! 

Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis by Anne Rice
Published by: Knopf
Publication Date: November 29th, 2016
Format: Hardcover, 480 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"From Anne Rice, conjurer of the beloved best sellers Interview with the Vampire and Prince Lestat, an ambitious and exhilarating new novel of utopian vision and power.

"In my dreams, I saw a city fall into the sea. I heard the cries of thousands. I saw flames that outshone the lamps of heaven. And all the world was shaken . . ." --Anne Rice, Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis

At the novel's center: the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, hero, leader, inspirer, irresistible force, irrepressible spirit, battling (and ultimately reconciling with) a strange otherworldly form that has somehow taken possession of Lestat's undead body and soul. This ancient and mysterious power and unearthly spirit of vampire lore has all the force, history, and insidious reach of the unknowable Universe.

It is through this spirit, previously considered benign for thousands of vampire years and throughout the Vampire Chronicles, that we come to be told the hypnotic tale of a great sea power of ancient times; a mysterious heaven on earth situated on a boundless continent--and of how and why, and in what manner and with what far-reaching purpose, this force came to build and rule the great legendary empire of centuries ago that thrived in the Atlantic Ocean.

And as we learn of the mighty, far-reaching powers and perfections of this lost kingdom of Atalantaya, the lost realms of Atlantis, we come to understand its secrets, and how and why the vampire Lestat, indeed all the vampires, must reckon so many millennia later with the terrifying force of this ageless, all-powerful Atalantaya spirit."

Seriously, if you're laughing as hard as I am after reading this synopsis, let's be best friends! 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Altantis, Anne Rice, Gilmore Girls, Interview with the Vampire, Lauren Graham, Prince Lestat, Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, Talking As Fast As I Can, Tuesday Tomorrow, Vampires