E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Ben Stainton reviews The Darwin Vampires by Patrick Chapman There is a startling range to Patrick Chapman’s fifth collection, in terms of language, areas of enquiry and technique. These poems are by turns metaphysical, political, quotidian and spiritual; themes include Star Wars , adultery, smoking, sexual ambiguity and global warming; there are cameos from Tchaikovsky, Bridget Riley, Louis Jordan and The Polyphonic Spree . The key to the collection’s appeal, though, is also its potential weakness – an almost constant emphasis on variation. This multiplicity is, of course, indicative of Our Modern, Media-Saturated Society™, but unfortunately Chapman’s shifting styles can begin to feel like watching a TV channel-hopping by itself, and have a polarising effect. On page 19, for example, there is the disturbing, black-blood-and-guts punch of ‘Baby’, recalling Crow-era Ted Hughes ; three pages later we are confronted by the willowy romance of ‘Reef’ – ‘Over time, we grow on each other l...

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

One hopes that Heaven will be letting in Ingrid Pitt - surely the right one - who has sadly died today, the Queen of Hammer Horror, and the Countess Dracula.  Pitt, whose buxom figure emphasised the diabolic sensuality on offer to her victims, was synonymous visually with the tantalising transgressions of a certain tendency in semi-erotic horror films - a far cry from today's dismal and dehumanised "torture porn".  Pitt, who was Polish, appeared in several of the classic films of all time - such as The Wicker Man , and Where Eagles Dare ,   and also acted in television, appearing in Dr Who , and Smiley's People .  Her three most famous roles are likely in The Vampire Lovers , Countess Dracula , and The House That Dripped Blood , at the start of the 1970s.  Indeed, her major period is brief, 1968-1973.  She had earlier taken small or uncredited roles in Welles ' Chimes at Midnight , and Lean 's Dr. Zhivago .  She will be missed.

Director Matt Reeves was tasked impossibly with remaking a universally acclaimed horror masterpiece, Let The Right One In , for the American market.  The original is sombre, pensive, sensitive, and artful - perhaps the most profound meditation on love, desire, ageing, adolescence, and evil, in all of the horror film canon - so the idea that a new version would have anything to add was obscene.  Instead, Reeves has turned in an unusually sensitive reappraisal, which subtly readjusts the setting, and some of the scenes, without altering the themes, the mood, or the mise-en-scene. The new version, Let Me In , has not been embraced by audiences - though it has made ten times as much as the art-house precedent.  This is too bad, but perhaps inevitable - Let Me In is not just a horror movie, but a character study, and a potential love story (as signalled by the introduction of the Romeo and Juliet theme here) - and it unfolds at a solemn, almost funereal pace.  Reeves...

I finally saw Twilight - and haven't read the novels. Let me wear my heart on my sleeve - I loved it. Most reviews patronise "the girls" in the audience who swoon. However, I feel everyone deserves a slice of the Teen Gothic Sublime, and rarely has a film delivered so well on the genre ( Titanic perhaps). There are dozens of art-house reasons to sneer at this sort of sentimental portentous product - and one to cheer: because they did it without irony. Irony, the bane of modernism (and its spice) has rendered many a Hollywood project DOA - so this one's undead and undying romanticism was blessedly true to the material, and the vein being mined. No one tried to be hip or knowing. They just played it straight. Star-crossed lovers, vampires, deep woods that David Lynch could sink his teeth into, and high school hormones and angst, even baseball - what more could a North American kid marooned in London want? Well, one thing - a Carter Burwell score, his best since Farg...