One of the biggest cultural mysteries of our generation is: why would a fully-functioning, adult member of society leave the house wearing a Team Edward t-shirt?

In their new documentary, Explorer: Vampire Forensics, the National Geographic Channel set out to answer that question. Well, not that question, exactly; NatGeo was more concerned with the origin of the vampire, so they employed a little forensic anthropology to a centuries-old myth.

It was sort of Bones meets Anne Rice — an interview with a vampire skeleton, if you will.

Using Mark Jenkins’ book as a springboard, National Geographic trekked back to the Middle Ages to study the legend of the undead.

The vampire wasn’t always a sparkly, tragic emo hipster with bedhead, of course. Or a leather jacket-wearing, strong-jawed Angel. Or even a caped aristocrat with a widow’s peak and a pale face. That’s all 19th century European romanticism. Jenkins believes he traced the legend of the vampire all the way to the Indo-European past.

China’s centuries-old version the vampire is a monster of the undead who spreads disease and discord. Unfortunately, for him, he’s not much of a fly-er. In fact, his only mode of transportation is hopping.

India’s blood-suckers are spirits who weren’t cremated properly. They can reside in the air and are small enough to accidentally swallow. Unlike tasty insect legs in a bar of chocolate, though, India’s vampire spirits feast on intestines.

Greece — Santorini, specifically — is home to lush tales of the undead. But these vampires didn’t always want to destroy people. Some came back to help out in the family business, or steal vegetables from the garden. (Vegetarian vampires! Just like the Cullens!)

Jenkins thinks the legend of the vampire probably sprang up around the time of various plagues. In the 19th century, Europeans were completely clueless about things like bacteria and hygiene. In the face of pandemics, folk tales usually took over. When people dug up mass graves and saw bloated corpses and compared that to the emaciated bodies of their dying relatives, they just assumed that the undead were somehow absorbing life from the living. Similarly, decomposing clothes and bloodstained mouths were thought to have been defiled by vampires.

Also, when villains were put to death, it was easy for mass hysteria to set in, and for people to think they kept seeing the undead baddie wreaking havoc around town.

As far as flying goes, vampires only really became associated with capes and bats during stage productions. If an actor needed to disappear through a trap door, there was nothing like cape flair to distract the audience. (For further proof of the power of cape distraction, see: Elvis, Adam Lambert.)

Much of NatGeo’s documentary focuses on “The Vampire of Venice,” a partial skeleton of a woman that was discovered in 2006, on the Venetian island Lazaretto Nuovo. The jaw of the skull had been opened and a brick was shoved between her teeth, an exorcism technique  Italians used on vampires.

Here’s a clip from Vampire Forensics:

So the origin of the vampire can be traced back to the plagues of the Middle Ages. And the modern vampire can be traced to the plague of the Twilight Saga. Somewhere in between, good people like Bram Stoker and Anne Rice and Joss Whedon made vampires a staple of the fantasy community.

Here’s hoping someone else comes along and puts the smackdown on the sparkle. It’s the modern version of the brick between the teeth.

Vampire Forensics will air various times on National Geographic, including this Saturday at 4 PM.

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• Our long national nightmare with vampires has happened before, and it will happen again. According to NPR, vampires always appear during time of chaos and strife, because they stand above all the ups and downs of humanity. So since the economy sucks, so do the vamps.

• Johnny Depp and Tim Burton sat down with MTV to talk about Alice In Wonderland, but ended up on a tangent about the worst idea Johnny had ever had for a movie – H.R. Punstuf with Johnny in the role of Freddy the Magic Flute. There’s also this story about flatulent horses during the filming of Sleepy Hollow.

• The 2009 Nebula Award nominations have been announced, and while I’m evidently too illiterate to have read any of the books, I have seen three of the movies. “Put him in the cone of shame.” Up was nominated.

• io9.com points us to the SCP Foundation, which is a Wiki project to catalog the weird. In essence, it’s a database with bite-size descriptions of monsters, immortals, objects of power, and the like. It’s organized like a shadowy Warehouse-13 style organization that catalogs and organizes a shadow world that takes place in the shorts that are submitted.

• Comic Book Resources has an interview with Jeanine Schaefer on Marvel’s Girl Comics. I’m not a huge expert on the characters, but it seems like they set out to grab attention for the series with a polarizing name. There are worse things in the world.

• I know we once featured the Locus Recommended Reading List, but this version looks longer – maybe what we had before was a teaser list? In any case, I recognize a few of the books here, and more than a few of the authors, so go buy a some and prepare for the next paralyzing blizzard.

• We tend to think of green-screen special effects as the sole province of fantasy and science fiction movies and television. This Stargate Studios production reel shows a different story, with work on everything from Mars landings to adding a subway train to Ugly Betty. We can no longer trust anything we see, apparently. On the plus side, you can now show this to your friends that mock your favorite fantasy show:

• There’s a great blog that has a guy recapping episodes of Lost from the point-of-view of someone who hasn’t watched any of the seasons of Lost. It’s hilarious if you think the series is “punking” us all, since there really is no master plan. If you think it’s the most brilliant television ever aired, please send the hate mail to him, not me.

• Evil Wil Wheaton is returning to The Big Bang Theory as Sheldon’s arch nemesis. Last time he out-geeked Sheldon, this time Sheldon wants revenge. If this doesn’t excite you, please turn in your all of you Magic: The Gathering Cards and proceed to TMZ.com

• There’s an argument being made for why NBC shouldn’t cancel Heroes, and parts of it make sense, like reaching the magical 100 episodes required for syndication. But the best argument I’ve come up with isn’t in the article: NBC obviously hates viewers, so why shouldn’t they keep punishing us with more episodes of what this show has turned into?

• We mentioned last week that Supernatural is coming back for season six, and we said that Eric Kripke, who has guided it from the beginning, would be returning. We were sort-of right. He’s still doing the mapping of the show, and producing, but he’s handing showrunner duties over to Sera Gamble. Can’t lie, it makes me a little nervous.

• J.K. Rowling is named in yet another lawsuit charging she stole the ideas for the Harry Potter books. In this case, it’s fairly narrow, concerning mostly elements of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but that’s not stopping the lawyer from talking about going for a billion dollars from the thing.

• Geekcrafts has an awesome Avatar: The Last Airbender cake version of Appa, along with step-by-step construction tips for making your own. This is edible, and frankly looks more like Appa should than that hard plastic action figure last week. Also, there’s a new trailer with a few seconds of new footage that aired during the Winter Olympics. Still not seeing the humor – needs more Sokka.

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One Torch (Out of Five)

Mention the word “vampire,” and watch eyes roll. It’s no secret we’re in a period of overload when it comes to undead properties, so why anyone would greenlight such a mediocre film as Daybreakers is beyond me.

In a way, though, I suppose it was inevitable. It was only a matter of time before someone shook an angry fist to the sky and cried, “No, dammit! Vampires are not sexy! They don’t sparkle, they don’t drip of genteel southern manners, they don’t want to make tender, angsty, emo love to you! They’re not a metaphor for the anguish of the human condition! They just want to freakin’ kill you and drink your blood!”

I’m all for putting a pair of fangs on the current trend of sensitive vampires, but unfortunately, when someone finally did it, they made Daybreakers. It’s a film that offers nothing unique, instead playing as a mash-up of tired, cliche vampire tropes and small pieces of far, far better movies.

So derivative and unoriginal is this film that they even went as far as naming their vampire protagonist Edward, the same name as Robert Pattinson’s romantic lead in the soapy vampire series Twilight. They couldn’t even take the time to come up with a new name? Just look in the phone book.

Edward, played by Ethan Hawke, is a joyless vampire who lives in a future in which most of humanity has been turned into vampires, and living humans are scarce and constantly on the run. He is sullen and morose and feels bad for the humans, a Louis to the rest of the world’s Lestat, an Angel to the rest of the world’s Spike and Drusilla, a … you see where I’m going with this?

The film does have a small success in creating a vision of a total vampire society, and the sight of dozens upon dozens of human beings being harvested for blood is genuinely chilling. Sam Neil is decent as the villain (although he’ll always be the Jurassic Park guy to me) and Willem Dafoe does what he can to entertain as the human-turned-vampire-turned-human gunslinger, Elvis. But not even the Green Goblin can save this dud.

We may not be in a world overrun by vampires, but we are in a world overrun by vampire stories, so the only way to make one stand out is to make it unique. Unfortunately, Daybreakers is as story-by-numbers as you get.

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I’m a tolerant guy. I believe in the mantra “live and let live.” I don’t judge other people for what they do behind closed doors, provided no one is being hurt, everyone is an adult, and everything is consensual.

But I’m taking a stand: I think sex with a dead body is pretty effin’ nasty.

So why are all these fantasy heroines doing it?

Personally, I blame Buffy, that sexed up vampire slayer. The girl had a thang for corpses. Yes, corpses, plural, because she did the deed with not one but two vampires, and all the Buffy the Vampire Layer jokes that can ever be made have already been exhausted.

Psychic redneck Sookie Stackhouse from HBO’s True Blood didn’t just sleep with a vampire — she inhabits a world where many people, male and female, chase the excitement of sex with the undead, and are given the hilarious moniker “fangbangers.” Genius.

And Bella Swan from Twilight? Well … okay, I don’t really know because I’ve never read the books, but I read online that she and Emo King Edward Cullen do eventually make the beast with two backs, despite the entire story being some kind of weird allegory for teen chastity. (Because how else to encourage young girls to guard their virtue by inundating them with sexual images of guys like the one below?)

It’s funny, this new creature that is the sexually active vampire. Vampires have been sensual creatures ever since Bram Stoker penned Dracula, and Anne Rice reinvigorated the idea of erotically appealing vamps with Interview with the Vampire way back in 1973. But Dracula never actually sealed the deal with Mina Harker, and Anne Rice made it clear that these were dead bodies that just happened to be walking around.

Lest you think they work like living bodies, Rice specifies. Never one to shy away from descriptions of bodily functions, she explained that once a person becomes a vampire, their body evacuates itself, and they can never eat (food) again. Furthermore, all their … stuff … stops working, so no sex for Lestat, sexy as he may be.

But then along came Buffy and Angel, and their tragic romance — she was born to kill all vampires, and he got all fangy whenever he got excited. So naturally, who better to lose her virginity to? According to Angel, vampires don’t breathe, even though we see him panting and smoking cigarettes at times. What’s more, we’re informed that his heart isn’t beating. But if … well … doesn’t his heart have to beat, so blood can flow in order to … well, you see where I’m going with this.

In any case, ew.

All the rules of death were thrown at the window for True Blood, because those southern vampires have a lot of sex. With a lot of people. In every conceivable combination. They’re still dead, though, Sookie! Gross!

As for Bella, well, I can tell from the inescapable advertisements for New Moon that she’s involved in a love triangle between vampire Edward and werewolf Jacob, so I guess it’s a toss-up between necrophilia and bestiality.  (I say go with the werewolf — at least he’ll keep you warm at night.)

I get the forbidden love, Romeo and Juliet angle that a relationship between a vampire and a human offers.

But ew! Dead bodies!

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Have a question about something fantasy-related? Ask the Oracle! (Be sure to include your first name and the city, state, and/or country you are writing from.)

Q: O Ominiscient Oracular Omnipotence: So are George R. R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss just time-shifted versions of the same author? Both are great authors currently involved in telling fascinating and complicated stories in a series of staggered time frames. Could they possibly be one and the same? — Ralph

A: Actually, Martin (above left) and Rothfuss (right) have more in common than just rounded noses and dramatic face hair. Rothfuss’s first novel, published in 2007, was originally called The Song of Flame and Thunder, but that was deemed to be too similar to Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice, so it was re-named The Kingkiller Chronicle (and split into three books, a la The Lord of the Rings).

So could they be the same person existing in some sort of time-shift? I like the way you think, Ralph. Alas, if you look closely at the photograph above, there is a clear, distinctive difference between the two of them that proves they are not the same person.

Yes, that’s right: Martin is wearing a hat.

Q: Why do vampires always bite people on the neck? Is there something magical about that location? — June, Milwaukee, WI

A: Where would you have them bite — the groin? The fact is, if you want blood from a clothed human, the neck really does make the most logical sense.

In the new book How to Catch and Keep a Vampire (Sellers Publishers, $14.95), a humorous guide to loving the undead, author Diana Laurence suggests that it’s also a question of intimacy:

“Just as a kiss on the hand is more formal, cordial, or friendly than a kiss on the neck,” she writes, “similar principles apply with vampire bites. Well-mannered vampires seldom ‘go right for the jugular.’”

Later in the book, Laurence also answers the age-old question of how vampires manage to avoid paying taxes. She says they have the ability to use mind control even over the phone:

IRS Agent: Mr. Vladimir, it’s come to our attention that you haven’t paid taxes since, well, ever.

Mr. Vladimir: I am not the citizen you want to audit.

IRS Agent: Beg pardon, I just realized you’re not the citizen I want to audit.

Q: What were the principle classics the fantasy genre is based upon? I’d say “name three”, but I don’t want to limit the Oracle, so name the number you find fitting. — Ben, Heidelberg, Germany

A: It’s not as easy a question to answer as you’d think. It mostly depends on how you define “fantasy.”

There are, of course, many classic stories that contain fantastical elements — The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Mahabarata, or even The Bible — but it’s not necessarily the case that these works were perceived as fantasy, or even fiction, at the time they were told.

Then there’s the long tradition of books written for children that include elements of magic or fairies, even before The Brothers Grimm (and continuing with influential children’s authors like Frank L. Baum and Lewis Carroll).

A case could be made that One Thousand and One Nights (the collection of stories that includes Aladdin and Sinbad that dates from the 10th century) is the oldest surviving work of “fantasy” fiction for adults, although most scholars point to 1858’s Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Both Men and Women by George MacDonald as the first fantasy novel for adults.

(But what of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, first published in 1818, or John William Polidori’s The Vampyre, published in 1819? Do monster novels not count as “fantasy”?)

Once we get into the 20th century, it becomes easier to pinpoint those who shaped and solidified the “fantasy” genre: writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard. It was, of course, J. R.R. Tolkien who created most of the conventions of the modern fantasy genre we know today. And finally some mention must be made of J.K. Rowling, who has legitimized and popularized the genre more than ever before.

Three books? Ha! You were right to suspect that wouldn’t be enough for the occasionally long-winded Oracle.

Q: If, as you said last week, the All-Knowing Fantasy-Question-Answering Oracle is not Brent Hartinger, the editor of this site (but is only channeled by him), who exactly are you? — Magpie, Toronto, Canada

A: Wouldn’t you like to know?

Suffice to say that I am an entity that exists outside the bonds of time, privy to the knowledge of the entire universe and capable of comprehending truths that are far beyond the ken of mere mortals such as yourself.

That said, you’ll note that I am also extremely humble.

Have a question about something fantasy-related? Ask the Oracle! (Be sure to include your first name and the city, state, and/or country you are writing from.)

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Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at the week in fantasy. You’ve been warned!

SO WAS I RIGHT ABOUT WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE?

I’m on record as telling readers to ignore the mixed-to-decent reviews for Where the Wild Things Are – that this movie was one seriously naked emperor (i.e. a bad movie that many people refused to acknowledge).

It is, of course, impossible to say who is “right” on something as subjective a film opinion. But now that the movie has opened and played for a while, what did everyone else think?

Here at TheTorchOnline.com, most commenters seemed to agree with me. This may not mean much, since perhaps people were drawn to a review they agreed with (although usually people online are pretty, uh, forthcoming when it comes disagreeing with opinions!).

This was typical:

It’s not just a bad movie, it’s a really, really, REALLY bad movie. Lovable Max from the book became a latchkey brat in need of serious therapy.

Much was made about how the movie was supposed to be from the POV of a child, but I thought TheTorchOnline.com commenter Nina made a particularly trenchant point that I wish I’d made:

I’m sorry, but 9 year olds are way more sophisticated than this movie makes them out to be. Max is a 4 year old in a 9 year old’s body.

In addition, while the reviews were mixed-to-good, there were plenty of critics who hated it — a heated critical split that EW noted in their most recent issue.

What about audiences? The movie did open strongly (not surprisingly, given a very effective advertising campaign), making $32 million its opening weekend.

On the other hand, it fell a dismal 57% the second weekend, and another 52% the weekend after that, and has now grossed a total of not quite $70 million (US), where it has stalled. It’s not an outright flop, and will probably make money (it cost $80 million to make and probably a similar amount to market), but it’s definitely not resonating with audiences either.

User reviews at various websites are split too, although they usually come in lower than the critics: at Yahoo, it’s at B- (critics gave it a B+), and on Netflix, it’s at just over three out of five stars (due to the nature of user ratings, movies rarely go too much lower than this). At Metacritic, however, critics gave it a “70″ out of a 100, while users gave it a “71.”

There was once some talk of Wild Things getting a Best Picture Oscar nomination (!!), but I think the poor box office makes that extremely unlikely.

In the end, the movie seemed to split audiences even more than it split the critics. In any event, it’s nice to know I wasn’t alone!

VAMPIRE OVERLOAD!

We’ve written before about the current overload of vampire-themed projects,  but I was confronted by vampire-mania in a rather dramatic way when I went into a Barnes and Noble last weekend.

Here’s a photo I took of all the vampire-themed books in the teen section:

And keep in mind that this was just the teen section! There were plenty of other vampire books in the “fantasy,” “romance,” and “general fiction” sections too!

Incredible.

THE TINDER BOX TAKES ON THE IDIOT BOX

I confess I was a little disappointed by the season premiere of Legend of the Seeker. Oh, wait, there’s another prophecy for you to fulfill. Oh, and yeah, here’s yet another relative you didn’t know about.

Please. Resetting a series doesn’t mean just rejiggering last year’s storyline, giving things different names, and doing the same thing all over again. The Stone of Tears? Really?

Still, the show continues to look fantastic, and the leads are appealing, so I’m still in. This week, the search for the Stone of Tears brings the Seeker face-to-face with “an evil from the grave”. (The show is syndicated, so check local listings.)

I’ve seen all six hours of the mini-series remake of The Prisoner, starring Ian McKellen, running Sunday through Tuesday. Here’s my review. Nutshell: it’s a major snooze. (AMC, Sunday-Tuesday, 8 PM).

On Tuesday, NBC and DreamWorks Animation try their hand at creating one of those lucrative Christmas classics with Merry Madagascar, where Santa crash-lands in the zoo in Central Park (and encounters the voices of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, and the rest of the gang from the Madagascar movies) . The rivalry between the “north pole” reindeer and the “south pole” penguins sounds cute. Here’s a clip:

On Thursday, look for new episodes of Flash Forward, The Vampire Diairies, Fringe, and Supernatural. A friend recently said to me, “Something is very wrong when it takes you three days to watch Thursday night television.” So true!

THE TINDER BOX AT THE BOX OFFICE

I missed the advanced screenings of the two fantasy-esque movies opening this weekend, but I confess I so disliked Roland Emmerich’s 10,000 BC (not to mention just about every movie he’s done other than Independence Day, which was at least fun) that I’m extremely wary about  his latest, 2012. The critics have not been kind, but then the critics didn’t really like Independence Day either, which just proves again how worthless they are.

For what it’s worth, the critics love Fantastic Mr. Fox, and I confess that this looks like a movie I should love. But I haven’t liked any of Wes Anderson’s previous movies — all style, lousy or non-existent plots, IMHO — so I’m wary about Fox too, especially since Variety called it beautiful, but “self-indulgent.”

Well, this week’s flame has sputtered out, but join me again next week when I promise I won’t be nearly so cranky.

Oh, who am I kidding?!

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One Torch (Out of Five)

We’re in the middle of a full-fledged vampire-mania. Has anyone noticed?

After the break-out success of Underworld, Twilight, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries, you might be tempted to think that Hollywood can do no wrong when it comes to vampire-themed stories.

You’d be wrong.

Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, the long-delayed movie opening today, is a major misfire, and I’ll be shocked if, when all is said and done, it isn’t an equally major box office flop.

Truthfully, I’m sick to death of vampires. But even I can see that most of the recent successes work, more or less, as good entertainment.

The Vampire’s Assistant doesn’t. Which is a real shame, because it’s based on a series of surprisingly fun children’s books, The Saga of Darren Shan (usually referred to as Cirque du Freak).

The trailers make it sound like this movie is a remake of I Was a Teenage Vampire, but that’s not really the story here at all.

In fact, the movie starts quite strong, with “goody-two-shoes” Darren being pressured by his parents not to hang out with his “bad boy” best friend Steve. When they sneak out at night to visit a traveling “Cirque du Freak” — a mysterious freakshow — Darren finds his rebellious streak at last, sneaking backstage to learn that several of the freaks are, in fact, vampires.

Soon Darren’s impetuousness leads to his friend Steve’s near-death. In exchange for saving Steve’s life, one of the vampires makes a deal that Darren become his assistant — which also means his becoming a half-vampire (although this is apparently no different from a “full” vampire, except he can go out during the day).

But there’s more going on here than meets the eye. Both Darren and Steve, it seems, have an important, if completely coincidental, destiny in an ongoing battle between “vampires” and the much more brutal “vampaneze.” Problem is, they might end up fighting on opposites sides of the war.

As usual, the movie’s problems all come down to the screenplay. The Vampire’s Assistant is an adaptation of the first three entries in the book series, but this requires a major rearranging and reinventing of events. The end result comes across as way too convoluted, glossing over some important things and shoehorning in plenty of unnecessary ones.

Why does Darren like spiders (a major plot point) and why is Steve drawn to vampires (another major plot point)? The movie spends all of ten seconds explaining it with the narration that says “it’s in our blood.”

As a result, the movie’s central conflict between Darren and Steve feels forced — and seems to require Steve becoming a wholly different character halfway through the movie.

Meanwhile, John C. Reilly’s Mr. Crepsley, the central vampire, is very different from the books — and the characterization falls almost completely flat. (Journey to the Center of the Earth’s Josh Hutcherson, an ordinarily appealing actor, is also seriously miscast, as Steve.)

Even the movie’s “freaks” — a luscious palette for a fantasy filmmaker if there ever was one — come across as surprisingly cliched and boring (although the actual “freak show” at the beginning of the movie does work quite well).

Surprisingly, the movie was written and directed by Paul Weitz, Oscar-nominated (with his brother Chris) for About a Boy. Then again, they also directed the wildly over-praised American Pie.

I have no idea if the current vampire-mania is going to continue unabated. But if it doesn’t, we can point to The Vampire’s Assistant and say, “That was the beginning of the end.”

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Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at the week in fantasy. You’ve been warned!

WAIT, ANGELS AREN’T THE NEXT “VAMPIRE” — ZOMBIES ARE!

Last week, I wrote that “angels” are the next “vampire” — the next fantasy trend that’s going to engulf us all.

But now the word comes down (based on a throw-away line in an article I read!) that it won’t be angels (or rather, in addition to angels), it’ll be zombies!

It’s true that, as with vampires (and angels!), there are a zillion zombie projects in the works.

But I think before we declare a full-fledged “trend,” one of the projects will have to be a break-out hit. (I predict Zombieland, opening October 2nd, will be a hit, but what the hell do I know? I thought Jennifer’s Body was going to out-gross Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs!)

If you haven’t picked this up by now, I basically hate all genre-”trends,” which mostly result in derivative rip-offs of the formula established by whatever the first break-out success in a genre/trend happens to be. I was alive back when the first Star Wars was released, and it was depressing to me how virtually all the sci-fi movies that came in its wake were so utterly terrible (they’re all forgotten now, except for the TV show Battlestar Galactica, which is only remembered because someone finally made a good version!). It wasn’t until Alien that Hollywood produced a worthy successor to Star Wars, and I think that movie worked because it was so different from George Lucas‘ film — in many ways, it was the anti-Star Wars.

But if I must endure 20 zombie movies all in a row, I do hope they make a good one out of World War Z which was a brilliant book.

DO AWARDS MATTER?

Yesterday, I posted the results of the British Fantasy Awards (btw, that’s a Hugo Award in the picture).

Anyway, a reader asked: do awards make you more likely to read a book?

I had to think about this.

The truth is, in my “other life” as a novelist, I’ve been a judge for a number of awards, and here’s what you should know about the process:

• You know how you always hear how everyone takes jury duty so seriously? The judges in these contests usually take it seriously too. I’m sure there’s some nepotism and politicking, but I’ve never seen it.
• Awards are just someone’s opinion. Granted, they hopefully pick informed judges, so they’re literate, educated opinions. But they’re still just opinions.
• “Serious” books always get more respect than “comedic” ones. Books that have a POINT are taken more seriously than books that are “merely” enormously entertaining. I don’t know why this is — and it really frustrates me — but I’ve seen it again and again. (Part of it, I think, is that it really is harder to do comedy well!)
• Often the judges disagree even among themselves, sometimes emphatically. Sometimes the “winner” of an award is not the book that all the judges necessarily loved the most, but it’s the one that they can all agree to live with. It’ll be a “compromise” choice.
• Even if there are specific disagreements, there is usually a general consensus as to which books were good, and which weren’t. In fact, I’m always kind of surprised how, if a contest has a 100 submissions, everyone pretty much agrees which the Top Ten books are (and that the rest are crap). Getting from that ten down to five can be hard, but it’s usually not hard getting from 100 down to that ten.

What’s the moral of this story?

Major award nominations (not necessary the winners, which can be kind of random) usually are a pretty good indicator of the “best” that’s been published in any given year — at least if you like serious, “literary” books.

On the other hand, if you’re more into popular fiction or “light” reads, take awards with a big grain of salt.

THE TINDER BOX TAKES ON THE IDIOT BOX

Three TV season premieres tonight (Friday): The Ghost Whisper (CBS, 8 PM), Dollhouse (Fox, 9PM), and Medium (CBS, 9 PM). I’ve seen the Dollhouse ep and didn’t particularly like it, but I concede it’s better than the first season.

Saturday night, SyFy rolls out a remake of Stephen King’s Children of the Corn, and boy, does it look corny! (Not that that’s a bad thing.) It stars Kandyse McClure (Battlestar Galactica) and David Anders (Heroes). Here’s a preview:

On Sunday’s season premiere of Family Guy, Stewie invents a device that takes him and Brian into alternate universes. (I find Seth MacFarlane’s work uniformly unfunny and unwatchable, and I won’t be watching this, so let me know how it is! For what it’s worth, I was forced to attend a “live” reading of his new Family Guy spin-off The Cleveland Show, also premiering Sunday. Really hated it — thought it was the opposite of funny, as usual –  but if you’re a fan of MacFarlane, you’ll probably like it.)

Did anyone else watch Eastwick? They kept telling us how it was so much more than a rip-off of the movie, but I didn’t see it.

THE TINDER BOX AT THE BOX OFFICE

There are two fantasy-esque films opening in wide release this weekend, neither of which were screened for critics (always a bad sign): Surrogates, the Bruce Willis movie that you’ve surely seen the trailer or commercials for, and the long-delayed Pandorum, about the passengers on a spaceship who awake to find they are being terrorized by … something.

Yes, Pandorum will probably suck, but I’ll see it anyway, because — completely contradicting what I said earlier in this column — I’m as much a sucker for these derivative rip-offs as anyone. What if it’s as good as Alien and the critics have it wrong? (The critics have mostly missed the point of a brilliant movie before, as with Starship Troopers.)

Much better (at least according to the critics) is Paranormal Activity (in limited release), a new “hand-held”-type movie that, unlike last year’s disappointing Cloverfield, appears to finally deliver on the promise of The Blair Witch Project. Here’s the trailer:

(Oh, and I saw a preview screening of the non-fantasy film Fame last night: it’s terrible.)

Well, this week’s flame has sputtered out, but join me again next week when I promise I won’t be nearly so cranky.

Oh, who am I kidding?!

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Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at the week in fantasy. You’ve been warned!

LET THE VAMPIRE BACKLASH BEGIN!

No, seriously. Let it begin. Because if it doesn’t start soon, I’m going to kill myself.

Unfortunately, the evidence so far suggests that it’s not coming any time soon.

Earlier in the week, I touched upon how discouraging it is to see a show like The Vampire Diaries get massive ratings (setting a record on the network), while Supernatural, which followed it, lost most of that lead-in.

If you’re following my articles, you know I don’t think that Diaries is a terrible show — it’s pretty good for what it is.

But it’s basically a soap opera with vampires. It just doesn’t hold a candle to Supernatural it terms of quality or complexity (IMHO).

And yet audiences — or hoards of teenage girls, at last — seem to want nothing but more vampires.

A reader tells me (and Publishers Weekly confirms) that angels may be the next vampire-like craze, at least in publishing. But trust me, there are a zillion more vampire projects coming too.

It’s hard to tell Hollywood not to follow the vampire herd given the insane, phenomenal successes of, in quick succession, Twilight, True Blood, and now The Vampire Diaries.

But I still say it’s like the housing market. When vampire “securities” fall, they’re going to fall hard, and a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money.

Or so I keep saying! Maybe if I say it often enough, it’ll finally come true.

USE THE FORCE, OBI-BAMA!

So you gotta love the picture, above, of Obama with a light saber, taken during the announcement for Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympic games. (Hat tip, /film.com)

MORE ON OLIVIA DUNHAM’S CONVENIENTLY TIMED AMNESIA

So in my review of last night’s season premiere of Fringe, I mentioned in passing something that bugged me: the fact that Olivia Dunham, having returned from the “alternate dimension” of last season’s finale, is back in the “real” world … but she doesn’t remember what happened there, or what “really important” thing she has do to prevent some big catastrophe.

I’ve long had a low tolerance for “amnesia” storylines, mostly because they seem like a writers’ cheat — a way to reset a plot without having to use any actual thought or creativity — but I guess every show needs to be allowed one case of amnesia.

But when I was writing that review, it occurred to me that Fringe already has the biggest “amnesia cheat” in the history of television in the character of Walter Bishop.

Walter was involved in, apparently, every science project ever conceived … until he went insane 17 years ago and has to be institutionalized. Now, whenever the plot calls for it, he “remembers” a key pierce of information from his previous research — often in the final act, so the other characters can then “solve” the mystery of the episode.

Sure, whatever. This isn’t the first show to use nonsensical “science-babble” to set up a plot, or as a sort of deus-ex-machina to resolve that plot. But now for Fringe to do the exact same thing they did with Walter with Olivia?

The more I think about this, the more annoyed I become.

THE TINDER BOX TAKES ON THE IDIOT BOX

What can we look forward to on television this week, fantasy-wise?

Clive Barker’s Book of Blood, a miniseries based on some of Barker’s short stories, turns up on SyFy this Sunday (9 PM/8 C). It’ll be out on DVD the following week.

Trailer for Clive Barker’s Book of Blood

In other TV news, Heroes is back with its two-hour season premiere on Monday (NBC, 8 PM/ 7 C); Eastwick, a remake of The Witches of Eastwick, debuts on Wednesday (ABC, 10 PM/9 C); and Smallville is back for its ninth season on Friday (The CW, 8 PM/7 C).

I’ll have my review of the premiere of Flash Forward (ABC, Thursday, 8 PM/7C) up early next week, but nutshell? It’s a good show.

THE TINDER BOX AT THE BOX OFFICE

Two fantasy-esque movies open this weekend in theaters: Jennifer’s Body, a movie about a girl possessed by a demon that’s being panned, and the animated flick Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, an adaptation of a children’s book that is getting raves.

Just as with Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries, I have this sinking feeling that one is going to be a big hit and the other not-so-much. But again, I suspect the one that’s going to be a hit (*cough* Megan Fox *cough*) won’t be the one that deserves to be.

Well, this week’s flame has sputtered out, but join me again next week when I promise I won’t be nearly so cranky.

Oh, who am I kidding?!

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Four Torches (Out of Five)

A teenage girl falls in love with a vampire. Hmmm, where have I heard this story before?

Okay, okay, way too much has already been written about how The Vampire Diaries only exists because of the insane popularity of the Twilight books and movie — despite the fact that the new CW series, debuting this Thursday at 8 PM, is based on a series of books that pre-dated by the Twilight ones by more than a decade.

Here’s the set-up: four months after her parents were killed in a car accident, 17 year-old Elena is barely keeping it together in the small Virginia town of Mystic Falls. Then a mysterious new student comes to town, Stefan, and even distraught Elena can’t help but be drawn to him. Alas, Stefan has three big flaws: (1) he’s a vampire (albeit a “good” one), (2) he’s in love with Elena because of her resemblance to his true love, who died ages ago, and (3) his brother, with whom he has an ancient feud, is a “bad” vampire, and he’s suddenly shown up to do everything he can to get between Stefan and Elena.

The Vampire Diaries is created by Kevin Williamson, the influential screenwriter of the Scream movies and the creator of Dawson’s Creek, along with his long-time collaborator, Julie Plec.

It shows. The pace is fast, the angst is thick, and the dialogue is snappy (and, thankfully, much more realistic than the ridiculous Dawson’s Creek).

Meanwhile, the cast is pretty, if a little vapid (although Ian Somerhalder is quite effective in the scene-chewing role of the “evil” vampire brother).

But let’s get something very clear: despite the fact that the CW is pairing this show with Supernatural on Thursday nights, The Vampire Diaries is simply not in the same league as that show, either in terms of Supernatural’s gritty realism or its transcendent themes.

Then again, The Vampire Diaries isn’t trying to be. Even the show’s creators admitted in my recent interview with them: it’s simply a serialized teen soap opera set in a supernatural world.

And for what it’s worth, in that respect, it’s much better than Gossip Girl (although the fangs are arguably much sharper there!).

Anyway, keep in mind that this is what my four-torch review is based on: The Vampire Diaries is simply a teen soap opera riding the current very popular vampire wave.

Given that’s what it set out to be, it pretty much succeeds.

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Let’s face it: with Twilight’s teen angst and fresh-faced actors, it was only a matter of time until a Twilight-like TV series ended up on the CW — home of Gossip Girl and Smallville.

This Thursday, that show, The Vampire Diaries, finally debuts.

At the same time, the CW could have done a whole lot worse in who created the show than Kevin Williamson, the screenwriter behind the Scream movies — projects that completely redefined the horror genre simply by including characters who had seen all the horror movies, and knew all the cliches.

A few years after Scream, Williamson struck gold again, creating Dawson’s Creek, a TV show with more hyper-aware, hyper-literate teens.

In short, Williamson was pretty much the perfect person to bring The Vampire Diaries to life.

Kevin’s co-creator on The Vampire Diaries is Julie Plec, who he first met on the set of Scream and who has since worked with him on many projects, including the Scream sequels and Dawson’s Creek.

“I was [director] Wes [Craven's] assistant on Scream,” Plec says. “It was [Kevin's] first movie that ever got made. My first movie. I was 22, just out of college. We were two kids in a candy store, up in Santa Rosa, California, on location, making a movie.”

Recently, I got a chance to sit down with both of them and talk about The Vampire Diaries — how they almost didn’t make it because of the success of Twilight, how the show is, and isn’t, different from that project, and how vampire stories are really all about sex.

TheTorchOnline: Just how sick are you of the comparisons to Twilight?

Kevin Williamson: We’re not sick really, but we don’t know what to say. We can give you the studio answer, which is that they’re based on these books that were released in 1992 or whatever.

Julie Plec: The comparisons are difficult only in that you never want anyone accusing you of ripping something off. But because we have the source material that pre-dates Twilight so significantly, we feel confident that the story we’re telling is our own. But there is going to be a lot of that.

TheTorchOnline: How did the project come about?

Kevin Williamson: In the beginning when I read it, I didn’t want to be involved with it, because I felt like it was sort of a Twilight rip-off, no matter what came first. The premise was the same: girl falls in love with a vampire. But Julie kept saying, “Keep reading, keep reading!”

And then you realize that this is [much more] a story about a small town, about the underbelly of a small town, and what lurks under the surface.

TheTorchOnline: In the beginning, were you told, “Give us a project about vampires,” and then you searched for something that spoke to you?

Julie Plec: We were talking to [executives at the CW] about vampires and how much we love them, and one of us said, “We’d love to do a vampire show, but nobody’s going to do another vampire story.”

Kevin Williamson: And we don’t want to be the one that comes after.

Julie Plec: And they said, “Actually, we have a property that we’ve been dying to do. We absolutely want to do a vampire show, and we’d love for you to look at it, so we did.”

TheTorchOnline: It does seem like the perfect CW show, that if it didn’t exist, it should exist.

Kevin Williamson: That’s what we all thought.

Julie Plec: That’s why when people say, “Are you treading ground that is too familiar?” we say, “Specifically, on our network, it’s the perfect amalgamation of what they’ve been doing, that takes all the genres they’ve been dabbling in and combines them into one show.”

Kevin Williamson: It’s also different from the Buffy and Smallville and Supernatural model in that they’re sort of monster-of-the-week shows, and we’re not that. This is actually closer to Gossip Girl than that. In the sense that it’s a serialized ensemble teen soap with a supernatural element. It’s more about characters and romance.

TheTorchOnline: What do you think accounts for the ongoing fascination with these vampire stories?

Julie Plec: Bandwagon! [laughs]

For me, in a weird way, it’s less about vampires than it is about love. And when you’re telling a love story, the great love stories of all time are always about people who are attracted who are polar opposites. It’s about, “Who is that person who caught my eye across the room, and what is it about that person, why do they seem so different and why do I find myself so drawn to them? What is it about them that fills me up from the inside?”

When you have a love story that’s this powerful, and then you throw this genre element into it, with the great guy across the room who’s moody and brooding and sexy and dangerous, and also happens to be a vampire, then you end up with stories you can tell for days!

Kevin Williamson: I also think sexuality has something to do with it. We’re living in an age where Twilight is being read by thirteen year-old girls. There’s a sophistication to readers today. Subconsciously, they’re reading about sex, but they don’t know it. They’re reading about sex and sexuality, their awakening, and it’s all through the guise of this very safe vampire who goes and bites your neck and does nothing else. It’s a very safe form of releasing sexual tension.

There are those who say that you go to a horror movie so you can be scared and release all your hormones, so you don’t go out in the world and do “it.”

TheTorchOnline: You look at Buffy and Anne Rice, and it seems like a big part of most of these vampire projects is that they take on big moral issues. Is that something you plan to do with this show?

Kevin Williamson: We do deal with morality in the sense of right and wrong and control and betrayal and trust and friendship — all the great themes of coming of age will be told, but with life-and-death stakes.

Julie Plec: You look at Twilight, for example, and they notoriously are an abstinence metaphor, which is a really beautiful and ironic idea when you consider that vampires throughout literature have been a sexualized object.

Kevin Williamson: The seducers.

Julie Plec: We’re not saying we’re going down the abstinence road.

Kevin Williamson: At all!

Julie Plec: But it’s more about the idea of self-control, and finding your inner core, the morality that exists in you: “I have a choice here, I can take this very dark road and be a predator and I can be evil. Or I can fight those darker instincts, and choose to live my life on a clearer, stronger path.”

Kevin Williamson: Which is not his natural instinct. His natural instinct is to kill, and he’s fighting that every day. For the love of a woman!

TheTorchOnline: How closely are you following the books?

Julie Plec: I like to say that if you look at the gross content of the books, we’re following it incredibly closely. But if you look at the timeline, it’s varying quite a bit. We’re telling some of the stories a lot faster, some of them a lot slower. But the core relationships are very specific, and very much what we’re playing with.

We’ve got about five books that we’re hopefully turning into many, many seasons. The lead character in the books is actually dead by book three, she’s a ghost. It might take us a bit longer to do that!

There is a core fan-base for the books. And they’re mad that the lead character is not blond. So when you start there, there’s not a lot you can do.

TheTorchOnline: In Scream, the characters have all seen all the horror movies. In The Vampire Diaries, do the characters live in a world that’s familiar with fictional vampires? Are they aware of Twilight?

Kevin Williamson: A little bit. Look, this isn’t going to be Scream dialogue, or Dawson’s Creek heightened psychobabble. It’s going to be its own show. It’s based on a book, and we’re going to stay true to that book and those characters.

But yes, the characters live in the real world. They go to the movies, they turn on the TV at night. We actually wrote the scene yesterday when one of the characters finds out [the show's star] Ian Somerhalder is a vampire, her first question is, “Why don’t you sparkle [like in the Twilight books]?”

Julie Plec: And Ian says, “Because I live in the real world where vampires and sunlight don’t mix!”

Looking to buy The Vampire Diaries books (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing them through this link.