恶人谷

我一直追随的一个系列幻想书的最后一本终于发行了

Jun wrote:2012 的主角是印度年轻科学家？长得好看吗？ 这个导演就喜欢黑黑的 exotic 男孩子。

camellia wrote:据我理解，本来造的是飞船（spaceship). 结果灾难来的比预期的快，又赶上门关不上的意外，就飞起来，成诺亚方舟了。
题材挺好的一片子，结果太追求惊险效果，每次都要最后一秒钟脱离危机，傻了。

笑嘻嘻 wrote:我嫌特技拍得不够惊心动魄，扣人心弦。就是说我怀抱着我肾上腺刷刷地分泌的期待去看的，结果没有发生。就紧张程度来讲还不如终结者3。

Bite: A Vampire Handbook: Kevin Jackson

http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/545753 ... wine.thtml


展望杂志，11月18，作者Sam Leith



为什么吸血鬼题材的电影现在如此流行？马克思主义者会说，吸血鬼和僵尸都体现了中产阶级的焦虑，反映了中产阶级生活的两面受敌：来自上层的剥削和来自底层的造反。

吸血鬼是右派，僵尸是左派；吸血鬼是有钱人，僵尸是无产者；吸血鬼是个人主义者，僵尸是愚笨的暴徒；吸血鬼跟等级制度、传统、血统有关。他们使用中欧的敬语，住在城堡里，衣着讲究，风度翩翩。

吸血鬼故事吸引人的地方在于女孩有点想被吸血鬼咬到，其中暗含着高度可疑的被强暴的幻想，但也表现了中产阶级对贵族的嫉妒和迷恋。他们担心领主劫掠他们的女人，但又渴望进入吸血鬼的城堡。

吸血鬼性感，僵尸则不然，他们不讲个人卫生。吸血鬼咬人时性感妖娆，如同在做爱，僵尸则是咬向人的脚、大腿、手、屁股、鼻子……所有能咬到的部位，就像醉鬼在跳迪斯科。吸血鬼聪明，僵尸却没有脑子，它们想吃你的大脑，不是为了让自己变得更聪明，而是为了让你变笨。它们想把你降低到它们的水平。

吸血鬼狡诈、躲躲藏藏——它们在睡觉时很容易受伤害，白天要由伙伴帮忙防止农民的攻击。僵尸则是靠数量取胜，一个被打倒，十个站起来。小跑就能超过它们，但是架不住它们数量多，它们知道同志无处不在，革命必将胜利，所以它们不着急。

一旦吸血鬼应邀跨进你家的大门，你的房子就不再安全：跟你形成一种房东和租户之间的关系。带着革命气概的僵尸会直接破窗而入。一旦进入你家，吸血鬼像老板一样，慢慢地吸干你的血。而一旦僵尸进入你家就全完了。吸血鬼反映的是升迁——被咬之后你将加入权贵阶层。僵尸则是平均主义者：你家不是它的城堡，私有财产被取消了，你将跟其他人一起浪迹街头。吸血鬼和僵尸很少一起在同一部电影里出现。它们代表着两种互相对立、互不相容的阶级诉求。很多人显然更愿意被吸血鬼咬一口，他们是阶级的叛徒。所以伟大的社会主义实验失败了。吸血的富农太多了。

I Never Drink ... Wine
John Preston

Although almost every country in the world has some vampire element in its folklore, it still comes as a surprise to learn that Wales was once home to something called a Vampire Chair which bit anyone who sat in it. The Bulgarian vampire, however, is much easier to recognise, being possessed of only one nostril and given to emitting sparks at night. But if you should ever find yourself nostril to nostril with a vampire, there’s a lot to be said for hoping it hails from Germany.

As this handbook rather touchingly informs us, the German vampire clutches one of its thumbs while lying in its coffin. It can also be killed by the comparatively simple method of sticking an apple in its mouth. But perhaps it’s no wonder German vampires are a bit delicate; traditionally, their mothers are women who have ‘used horses’ collars to ease the pain of labour’. Yet another reason to opt for the epidural, I would have thought.

Ever since he was a child — a snarlingly disturbed child, one can safely conclude — Kevin Jackson wanted to be a vampire. Denied this modest ambition, he inched one rung up the evolutionary ladder and became a film critic instead. In Bite, he combines both obsessions, tracing the vampire from its earliest appearance and following its triumphant progress into movies.

After drifting around in a purposeless haze for several hundred years, vampires really caught the public imagination at the start of the 19th century. Here, with some measure of predictability, all roads lead back to Lord Byron. When Byron, Shelley, his fiancée Mary and their other house- guests wiled away rainy days trying to scare each other senseless in the summer of 1816, Byron came up with a fragment about a vampire. Expanded by his friend and doctor, John Polidori, it was published three years later. The book became a huge hit and spawned a host of imitators.

Then, in 1897, Bram Stoker published Dracula. This, as Jackson says, ‘is to vampires what The Origin of Species is to the theory of evolution.’ Hitherto, Stoker was best known for being the manager of Sir Henry Irving. Far from being supportive of his old friend, Irving was appalled by Dracula’s success. When Stoker staged a public reading of the book at the Lyceum Theatre in May 1897, Irving only hung around for a few minutes before uttering the single word, ‘Dreadful!’, and striding out.

Others, however, were more impressed. Various candidates were put forward as the inspiration for Count Dracula — among them Lord Tennyson and, even more bizarrely, Walt Whitman. In fact, Stoker doesn’t appear to have based Dracula on anyone, except possibly himself. But while the book’s gestation remains mysterious, its timing could not have been bettered — it arrived in America just as the film industry was starting to stir into life. The first vampire film appeared in 1913 and since then barely a year has gone by without some etiolated insomniac dutifully baring his fangs and swishing his cape at the moon.

Kevin Jackson has put his obsessions to excellent use. Bite is snappily written, erudite and extremely good fun to read. Personally, I could have done with more folklore and less of an exhaustive trawl through innumerable Dracula movies. If, however, you are one of those reprehensibly ignorant people who need reminding that Denis Waterman narrowly missed being eviscerated by a rampant Christopher Lee in The Scars of Dracula (1970), then this little book has your name spattered all over it.

笑嘻嘻 wrote:是啊，这篇中文不是翻译。我开始也以为是，后来感觉那个英文链接就是贝小戎推荐了一篇英文评论，跟他写的内容遥远地相关。