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I just finished Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter last night. To say that the book is a nonstop tour de force of horror asskicking would be an understatement, but that’s the only way I can think to describe it. And by far one of the best things about the consistently awesome Abe is the way it has brought the vampire back into true monster territory.

Let’s face it, vampires haven’t been threatening for awhile now. They were scary in the first half of the 20th century in films like Nosferatu and the original Dracula, but since then the vampire has been in a steady decline. Part of the vampire’s horror has always been a reflection of the time: unease with old Europe during the decade-long breather between two world wars that centered on disputes born in Dracula’s backyard, fear of female sexuality and predators, etc. Chances wereif you had a vampire in your neighborhood up until the end of the ’70s then it was treated as a very bad thing.

But since the ’80s the vampire just hasn’t been scary. Movies that were ostensibly horror offerings such as Fright Night and The Lost Boys might have been unsettling, but the underlying comedy made their vampires seem somehow more tame than their cinematic predecessors. For some reason Kiefer Sutherland, Alex Winter, and the dad from Richie Rich just aren’t all that threatening as monsters. There were brief attempts to reclaim the vampire as a horror icon such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but by then the long and slow declineto Twilight had already started.

Horrifying for all the wrong reasons.

Not so with Abe Lincoln. The vampires on display here are, for the most part, strictly old world horrors who see humans as cattle and treat them as such with extreme prejudice whenever and wherever they can. These are vampires who are far more interested in ripping out your throat and drinking your blood than helping you with your biology homework and taking you on whirlwind vacations through Central America.

But at the same time the vampires in Lincoln show a level of sophistication that one would expect from immortal creatures who have centuries of free time to absorb culture. And in many ways it’s that dichotomy between cultured gentility and unrestrained brutality that makes the novel work so well as Grahame-Smith draws parallels between vampirism and the curious institution of slavery. The vampires are made more believable and plausible when they’re surrounded by the most brutal and inhumane episode in human history.

So I welcome this new old fashioned interpretation of the vampire. It’s about time that this monster returned to its roots and started shaking off some of the genre malaise that’s been brought on by the Twilight series.

My only regret is that Tim Burton has reportedly been tapped to helm the movie adaptation. I have a feeling that if that goes forward then all of the delicate subtext between vampirism, brutality, and slavery will disappear in favor of an emo vampire amalgamation that owes more to Twilight and would be more suitable for a Hot Topic poster or t-shirt. And that will be a real shame.

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I’ve always been a fan of Kevin Smith’s movies, but the man has also made a brilliant side career out of making appearances and just talking to people.  The man can pontificate like no other.

So in honor of the New Moon inspired Twilightapalooza here at Insert Credits featuring Erron and I ripping the series apart and Chelsey defending it, I bring you Kevin Smith talking about New Moon.  Enjoy.

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Fans of the Twilight series, rejoice! This movie will deliver exactly what you’re after from a Twilight movie — sparkly vampires and werewolves are not a rare commodity in the second installment of Twilight. But for the rest of us like the experience is more like the morning after a night of hard drinking: sitting through New Moon leaves you with an an awful headache and the taste of vomit in your mouth.

Throw out everything you know about Twilight. Forget the legions of brainless, screaming fans. Forget the equal numbers of disgusted haters. Forget the fact that the “vampires” sparkle. Forget absolutely everything you love or hate about the Twilight series when you read this next line.

New Moon is a bad movie.

As is often said on the internet, “I’m no expert on [relevant topic], but…” I’m no expert on the making of films, but with an estimated budget of $50 million one would think the creators of this piece of film could get a few things right. The werewolves, for example, look terrible. Like they took an old-school robotic wolf puppet and modeled that in CG and said “Yes, this fits our vision.”

Thankfully the werewolves in this film are afflicted with Incredible Hulk syndrome, and while there are plenty of shots of them shirtless their pants somehow always survive the change from man to wolf and back again.

A large chunk of the movie is told through voice-over in the form of Bella writing to Alice Cullen, who we are to believe is her dearest friend in the world; the only person who truly understands everything Bella is going through. While everyone else seemed to accept this quickly enough, I was left confused. Having never read the books my only frame of reference for the relationship between Alice and Bella was the previous movie where the vampire girl had half a dozen lines, none of which promoted anything in he way of character development.

The few times you see Bella’s school friends leaves much of the same impression. There is a shot near the beginning of the first day back to school, where all of her friends are totally stoked to see her. Then the next time Bella hangs out with one it’s a complete 180. Apparently Bella has been spending all her time with the vampires and her friends don’t really see her as a friend anymore. But when did that happen?

There are several points in the movie where Bella is engaging in potentially life-threatening situations (motorcycles, cliff-diving, etc) and sees some kind of vision of Edward when she does. But is it really him, or is it a ghost, or a fantasy, or a memory, or some kind of hallucination? The movie manages to get across that he isn’t actually there, though he somehow offers salient advice to whatever situation he might be in.

It’s points like these that make New Moon a bad movie. It’s a bad movie because instead of adapting the book to the best of it’s ability it is an obvious cash grab. Shirtless wolfboys and brooding vampires are what the fans of these movies expect and hey, the movie delivers at the expense of acting, story or character development.

As a short aside, while I was sitting in the theatre jotting notes about this two girls were sitting next to me. At one point one of them looked over and said “What are you writing,” in a completely serious tone. Having heard all about those fucking crazy Twilight fans I decided to play it cautiously. “Twilight review,” I replied. “Oh,” she said. “It better be a good review.”

Needless to say, I assured her it would be a good review. I’ll say it right now, I’ll lie to avoid getting stabbed by a teen girl.

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Today marks the launch of our third podcast here at Insert Credits: Book and Film.  In this podcast we’ll take fifteen minutes each week to look at the differences and similarities between a book, usually the one featured on the Bookcast, and any movies that have been based on that book.

In this week’s episode we continue our focus on Twilight in anticipation of the release of New Moon next week.  Insert Credits staffers appearing this week include:

Andrew: Who hasn’t seen the movie but has read the book and didn’t like it.

Chelsey: Who has read the book and loved it and seen the movie but hated it.

Erron: Who hasn’t read the book but has seen the movie and hated it.

It promises to be an interesting week as we duke it out over the merits of the series and where they went wrong with the movie adaptation.  If you’re reading this article from the main site then you can listen to the podcast in the player below or click the download link.  You can also point your podcatching software of choice to the Book and Film feed.

Podcast (bookandfilm): Play in new window | Download

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Today we have the second of the three new podcasts promised this week.  Bookcast will be appearing weekly and will feature both myself and Chelsey Kalbach, the newest addition to the Insert Credits staff, with an occasional visit from Erron as well.  Books featured on the Bookcast will also usually show up in the third new podcast of the week, Book and Film, which I’ll be posting tomorrow.

This week’s bookcast focuses on Twilight, the series that’s launched a billion ships.  Chelsey loves the series.  I loathe it.  We talk about the sharp gender line between love and hate, Stephanie Meyer’s writing talents (or lack thereof), Edward’s borderline abusive handling of the main romance, and whether or not Bella is actually a Canon Sue.  You can listen to the podcast in this post below or point your podcatching software of choice to the Bookcast feed.

Podcast (bookcast): Play in new window | Download

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I think you’re missing a key fact here, Andrew. With a quick few keystrokes I found my way to the Wikipedia entry for Twilight and discovered that not only do Bella and Eddy knock boots, they actually wind up having some kind of half-breed monstrosity of a child.

What the child of a sparkly bloodsucker and an empty husk may look like.

I mean, if I were a spambot I’m sure my overwhelming capacity for data storage and lust for the death of all humans would drive me to know everything there was about the subject I was commenting on. But since this isn’t the case we can assume that the spambots have another weakness:

They have no attention spans. Just a little food for thought.

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We all know that it’s only a matter of time before our computers and machines rise against us and create a more perfect world where Arnold Schwarzenegger is always a star, Keanu Reeves is a legitimate actor, and Hayley Joel Osment can be a real boy for a day.  You can wait out the robot revolution in your fallout shelters or quietly step into your goo-infused power pod to be jacked into the Matrix, but not me.  You see, I’ve discovered the sentient computers’ one weakness.

Twilight.

That’s the only thing I can think of that explains the comment on this post, where I commented on one of the more stupid aspects of Twilight’s plot:

Cosmetic Dentist in Bakersfield, CA says:

August 14, 2009 at 4:10 pm

Wow you sound angry. Seems strange to me that you’re upset about bella and edward not having sex…

The spambots have become self-aware, and they love Twilight!  If we live in a world where the best thing a spambot can do with its downtime is reading the Twilight series then I think that humanity is safe from our machine overlords for a good while now.  The machine takeover of Deviantart and Livejournal might not be too far off, but that’s no great tragedy.

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Even Dick Cheney would agree that this book qualifies as torture.

I’ve been intermittently reading Twilight lately mostly because I don’t feel right qbout showering a book with scorn and disdain without reading through it at least once.  Throughout this slog through the literary sewer I find myself repeatedly perplexed by Edward, our dark and mysterious borderline-abusive vampire hero who flip-flops between loving and hating Bella, the vapid vessel for the hopes and dreams of lonely women the world over who seem to be Twilight’s sustaining demographic.

Then I got to the second big reveal of the book, the first being, surprise surprise, that Edward is a vampire.  The second reveal was big.  The second reveal was dumb.  And it also explained away all of the silly angst that passes for dramatic tension in this horrible affront to the written word.

It seems that there are particular humans who are an irresistable taste sensation for particular vampires, and it just so happens that Bella is Edward’s idea of the perfect snack.  Except he also loves her and has to resist the urge to treat her like an all-you-can-eat buffet long enough to marry her and bone her.  And we’re not going to do that in the out-of-order fashion so typical of today’s youth because the Twilight series doubles as a soapbox for Stephanie Meyer’s Mormon-tinged belief on the sanctity of marriage and the evils of pre-marital sex.  This from a religion that only gave up polygamy as a condition of joining the United States.  But I digress.

For some reason this scenario doesn’t seem remotely ridiculous to the average Twilight fan, so I’m going to try and frame this ridiculous plot device in terms that might be slightly more understandable to someone who thinks dayglo skin is a nifty new take on vampire mythology.

Imagine that Twinkies are my favorite food, but I’ve sworn off the things because they have a tendency to make me look fat.  Twinkies are strictly an item to be messily devoured, and I certainly don’t have any ethical issues since I’m just a predator stalking my prey in the snack cake aisle of the local supermarket so I can eat.  The relationship is simple enough at this point.

Now imagine that my family has decided that Twinkies are sentient and as such it’s morally reprehensible to hunt and kill them for sustenance when there are plenty of non-sentient alternatives.  Sound stupid yet?  I’m just getting started.  The desire to eat the world’s only foodstuff guaranteed to survive a nuclear apocalypse is still there, but I can tide myself over by eating inferior snack cakes like Star Crunch or Nutty Bars.

You dirty girl.

Except one day a Twinkie comes along that is so gosh-darn perfect in every way that I immediately fall in love with it.  Suddenly I’m faced with the dilemma of whether I should eat the Twinkie or explore my newfound feelings by making sweet sweet love to the Twinkie.  My life becomes non-stop torture as I try to ignore the Twinkie by hunting other less satisfying snack cakes at other supermarkets in upstate Washington where I’m in no danger of hurting the Twinkie, but I’m still obsessed enough that I spend every night in the local supermarket’s snack aisle staring at the Twinkie and imagining all the things I’d like to do with it.

Does that sound even more stupid?  It should.

The bestest most perfect couple since they invented love.

I can understand why Twilight is so popular amongst the tween crowd.  It maintains a perfect blend of angst and vapid romance that could only appeal to someone who is essentially a walking talking bundle of hormones with absolutely no idea of how a relationship is supposed to work between two people who are in love.  But for anyone over the age of fifteen who thinks Twilight is the niftiest thing since sliced bread: please, think of the Twinkie.

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