Cut for Christinebabble

So I am sure you are all on the edge of your seats to hear about this vampire cowboy movie. (Don't deny it, I know you are.)

Quick and dirty opinions, for those who don't want to read the whole thing:
+ Rayne's outfit
+ The scene of Rayne's heroic entrance, despite everything wrong with it
+ Hilarious dialogue like "Goddamn bear's back!" "This ain't the work of no bandits!" and "Vampiiiiiireessssss."
+ Natassia Malthe is kind of cute
- EVERYTHING ELSE




The little blurb on the Netflix envelope gives this introduction:
"BloodRayne 2: Deliverance
Things get even wilder in the already Wild West when Billy the Kid and his band of cowboy buddies - vampires one and all - arrive in Deliverance, Mont., to establish their kingdom. Now, it's up to the half-human, half-vampire Rayne to use her fearsome powers to stop them. Along for the ride is reporter Newton Pyles, whom Billy spares so he can tell the bloodsuckers' story."

I guess Uwe Boll assumes you will rely on Netflix to save you, because none of this is ever actually explained in the movie. There is an absolute lack of backstory. If you are unfamiliar with the plot of the games or the first movie, you will be completely lost. And even if you are familiar with them, you will still be at a disadvantage because you are not Uwe Boll and cannot possibly understand the inner workings of his crazed brain, which is I am sure the only place where any of this actually makes sense.

Even so, there is a decided lack of continuity between this movie and the last one in the series. In Boll's timestream, last time we saw Rayne it was the end of the eighteenth century and she had evidently just inherited the vampire kingdom in Romania from her daddy Kagan, after defeating him. That movie ended with a looooooong long take of her sitting on the throne, at any rate, so I guess that is what we are meant to assume. Now it's the 1880s and she's gallivanting about in the West looking for trouble, so I guess in the past century she was either deposed or got up and left. It remains a mystery, much like just about everything else that goes on, as you will see.

Also we have a new Rayne actress, Natassia Malthe, this time for complicated reasons. She used to be an opera ballerina in Norway, which is AWESOME, but was last seen as far as I know playing a biker werewolf in Skinwalkers, which was also a really bad movie but not as epic fail as this one. Naturally there's a lot of comparison between her and Kristanna Loken, and I think she had a few advantages over her. For one thing she actually kind of looks like Rayne, and I guess the balletic training helped because her fighting scenes were a lot more graceful and adroit, albeit still terribly choreographed. (She's also like six inches shorter, but nobody thought to put her in tall boots so she comes up to about everyone's shoulder.) And she managed to employ a few more facial expressions. Not many, but there are some. Her main disadvantage I think is something that can't really be helped, and that's her voice. I don't know how old she really is, but she has the voice of a sixteen-year-old girl. Rayne's voice is supposed to sound kind of sultry and sarcastic, Kristanna succeeded at least in sounding bored, Natassia sounds like a teenage girl constantly on the verge of a tantrum. Which is really kind of cute, but as soon as she talks it's impossible to take her seriously.

From a technical standpoint, it's kind of a demonstation on How To Attempt to Film a Cool Western and Fail. I don't know if they were trying to achieve a more rustic atmosphere or what, but all of the camerawork is handheld, and not very steadily. When it is not being filmed by someone obviously walking after the actors with the camera or panning unevenly between them, we get a lot of extreme closeups of the lead characters' eyes and teeth, and slooooooow slow motion shots of their feet walking around or their hands drawing their pistols. This would be effective maybe if it were used sparingly, but I swear nobody draws a gun at a normal speed in this movie.

And the dialogue is all so terrible and so badly delivered that it would honestly sound like the rehearsal of a middle school play if the language weren't so pointlessly crude and offensive, which it is. I guess because the gore is kind of cut back and everyone actually keeps their clothes on (onscreen anyway) Boll felt he needed to get his R rating somewhere (actually I think this was the unrated cut which could explain it. I really hope so.)

So what in the WORLD is Rayne even doing in the Wild West? Did Boll pick just a movie genre at random, and landed on the Western? (In which case I suppose we should be glad that it wasn't the musical. Or like, the space opera.)

Now, there is some skanky but cute cowgirl outfit in the second game that Rayne can wear if you beat it, but she's clearly not wearing it here, and even if she were that's a reaaaaaallly thin premise for a movie. She's actually mostly clothed most of the time, which was a nice surprise. (And, like most video game characters, evidently in possession of only one outfit, which involved a black and red leather corset, a black leather trenchcoat, black cowboy hat, and boots with spurs.) Her blades, like in the first movie, don't attach to her arms so she carries them around in sheaths on her back, which are arranged, intentionally or unintentionally, so they look like wings, which I thought was nice. :) So . . . points for her outfit? I guess?


So that's all my opinions on the technical aspects . . . onward to the actual plot.

( If you are brave. )



So do I recommend this movie?
Well that depends. If you have any love or respect for good cinema, Rayne, yourself, vampires, cowboys, children, or canon . . . then no. But if you like movies that are so bad they're not even so-bad-they're good, Uwe Boll, and torturing yourself, then . . . sure, have at it. Otherwise, you can reassure yourself with the knowledge that now that you have read my review, you don't actually have to see the movie yourself, because I took that bullet for you. (And when I say a bullet I mean . . . like the end of Bonnie and Clyde.)

Also, in bizarrely related news, when I was on iTunes the other day looking for Nightwish, I found this bit of weirdery. More dismaying than the fact that there actually is a soundtrack is the fact that there is Nightwish on it. (And no, the song is definitely not anywhere in the movie. Haahaa and no the one person who evidently bought those songs was not me, either.) And he must be a Nightwish fan because if I remember correctly he debased "Wish I Had An Angel" by using it in another film of his. Booooo. >:(

Backlogged from rosewing

So I watched the Dracula movie on PBS tonight . . . I had mixed reactions. First thing I shall say is that is was surprisingly intense, for PBS. There was the little warning at the beginning saying it was not adviseable for young viewers and my mother says to my sister's cat, "Chloe, you're a young viewer. Time to go to bed." (Chloe instead spent most of the movie staring fixedly at the DVD player, which she had been doing since a DVD was ejected from it earlier. She's fascinated and confounded by the DVD player because she can't figure out where the tray goes so she'll sit there waiting for it to come back out.)

Also this is the one fandom I am an avid purist about regarding canonical accuracy so I'm probably a little judgemental, but I still enjoyed it. Once it started really veering from Stoker (as most versions do . . . the Francis Ford Coppola version tried hard and is generally recognised as the best, but I thought some of the characterisations in there were unforgiveable) I just decided not to take it seriously and settled in for a good giggle.

Because I have gotten to the point that I think immorality is funny.

( Cut for spoilers )


The short version: It's not the best ever, but on its own, it was pretty good, evil!Arthur, nymphomania!Lucy, emohair!Dracula and the weird syphilis subplot aside. I liked the mention of Dracula's plan to conquer London and then the British empire with a race of vampires becase that usually seems to be what he's trying to do, and apart from being bent on not being a virgin, most of Lucy's symbolism was intact. And the camerawork was interesting and the acting mostly sound.

So that's my review.

Backlogged from rosewing

And it is this: actually, I love this movie, because of what it is. It's a Phantom of the Opera movie. It is not everything it could have been, or should have been, but as a movie it isn't bad.
I like the presentation, for the most part, like most of the sets and the design and most of the costumes. I did not much like Gerard Butler’s or Emmy Rossum’s singing, but Patrick Wilson was all right. He was kind of a neutral entity. I think the only thing that really bothered me about Raoul was his hair. (Christine’s did, too. I approve of pre-Raphaelite ringlets and at least they didn’t try to make book canon phans happy by making her blonde, but it stood too far off her head.) Emmy sounds nice enough when she’s not trying to reach high notes, which she sort of can’t, at least not the way they’re supposed to be reached. And Gerard Butler in my opinion, can’t sing the role at all.

Yes, I’m a harsh critic, but I am one of those diehard Phans of the OLC, (and of course, Erik himself) so I’m allowed to keep this opinion. But it isn’t just Sarah; there are many stage Christines who can hit those notes more gracefully than Emmy did (like Anna Maria Kaufmann on the German cast recording) . . . All right, and by some accounts the slightly-above-average Phan can sing it better than Emmy, too. Her voice is pretty, but it just isn’t . . . Christine material. This is supposed to be a girl with a voice like nothing the world had ever heard, Life’s own Daughter bearing Her own voice for the mortal world to hear, the girl blessed by the Angel of Music himself. And Erik’s voice is supposed to be even more entrancingly angelic. I wouldn’t follow Mr. Butler’s voice through my mirror or even over to Starbucks in broad daylight.


( On specific details. )


And that is enough of my high-flung opinions on the subject for today. :)