That other vampire movie

If you want a more compelling love story between a vampire and a human, you'd want to see Let the Right One In. The vampire is the girl and the human is the boy. They're both 12 years old. You get to see the vampire be like a vampire and the human be more like a human. It's a love story within a horror story.

I have to give the writers credit for convincing me to care for the vampire that, unlike in Twilight, actually did vampire stuff (like killing an innocent stranger for blood). Hey, it's not everyday that I sympathize with vampires. When I was eight, there was this certain time when I and my friends wore red arm bands as protection from vampires rumored to be roaming around preying on children. On hindsight, it was very naive of us to believe that a piece of cloth of a particular color would protect us from the bloodsucking creatures of the night, but the most interesting thing was that it was our parents who actually made us do it. It was as if all the parents in our neighborhood unanimously agreed that vampires did exist, infiltrated our peaceful village, and the red arm band would spare us. It was a very rural thing. And it was my childhood. And here I am, actually caring for this bloodsucking vampire in a way that Twilight never made me, however tame the vampires in there were compared to this one in Let the Right One In.

Go see it if you get the chance. It's a Swedish film based on a Swedish novel.

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Speaking of writers who made me care for characters whom I normally wouldn't, I can say the same thing for the writers of the Prison Break TV series that is now in its fourth season. It takes time for a US series to come here in the Philippines. At first, I mainly only heard about this series in its pilot premier. I heard about it from the Fox News Channel. They were predicting it to be a hit and I thought I'd never watch the series if it ever came here in the Philippines. When I was young and whenever we heard news about a local prison break, our neighborhood would become alert all of a sudden and our parents would barely let us out especially if the escapees included murderers. I'd imagine, if that breakout from the first season of this popular TV series happened in our city, my parents would never let me out the house and play with my friends until all of them are aprehended or killed. And here I am, many years later, actually sympathizing with the escape convicts from the series. The writers should get an award for each season the series is on air.

Twilight

The best thing about this movie is that I got to see it for free because of our company's monthly movie night.

I thought it was boring. I mean not "I'm sleepy" boring, I never felt sleepy while watching it, but that there's not much anything going on for probably the first half of the movie. At the end there was this action sequence that I thought was too tame for a vampire movie. So I guess this is truly a movie about love more than it is a vampire movie. It's a love story. But with vampires. It's okay, but did it really have to be boring?

Now, this is the Philippines so usually when there's a buzz about an upcoming movie based on a book, that book shoots up the Philippine best seller list. It shoots up in popularity. A number of my co-workers devoured book after book in the series. I thought I'd read the book after the movie, in case I liked the movie and want to find out more about it. But the cheezy quotes from the book that were being used by my friends as their "status messages" in their messenger accounts made me think I really shouldn't bother. Well, now, I've seen this movie and I'm not going to bother.

Incidentally, when the first Harry Potter movie made the book popular in the Philippines I didn't rush to buy the novel. I only bought the books after seeing the second movie. I thought there was more to the story than what the movie conveyed. Does this mean that the second movie in this franchise will make me read the books? Potentially, yes, but if the status messages of my IM buddies are any indication, most probably not.

Revisiting the half-blood Prince

I've just finished rereading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the 6th book of the Harry Potter series. This would just be my 2nd reading of book 6, the first one being back in 2005, when the book was first released. Unlike the first time that I read it, this time around I wasn't in such a hurry to finish, my rereading was spread in three days. And I realized that I'm appreciating the events in the book much more than when I first read it. I guess fictional books are designed to be read recreationally and never in a hurry. I appreciate the characters more, as well as the events. The death of Dumbledore, for example, resonated on me stronger than when I first read it. Now I want to continue with a rereading of book 7, but unfortunately I'm in Cagayan de Oro right now and my copy is in Cebu. I don't want to wait to return to Cebu to reread the book because then I'll be busy with work. I want to reread it now while I'm on vacation. So I downloaded a PDF of book 7. I'd much rather read the ink-on-paper book, but this will have to do for now.