Sunday, August 21, 2011

Vampires, Spaghetti and Clint Eastwood

I watched “Let the Right One In,” a Swedish version of the movie “Let Me In”.  I mentioned the American cut of this movie in previous blog. Basically it’s a coming of age story where 12 year old boy meets neighbor girl who’s more or less 12 and a vampire.  I preferred the American version.  First special effects in American movie were much better.  The Swedish version did not convince me that this petite pre-teen could take down a grown man, while the American version left no doubt! The other reason was trying to keep up with subtitles means not paying attention to the scene and focusing on the other cinema elements. (I give American version 4 stars and Swedish version 3 stars)
Also caught this weekend the movie “Priest” and was not sure what to make of it.  The movie is in a futuristic world of humans vs. vampires where the priests are trained to combat the vampires. Heavy handed use of Catholicism made this rather weird, like rosary weapons, going to confession and a board of Monsignors who resemble something out of the Inquisition. The movie rapidly becomes a Western where the town looks and the people act like something out of Tombstone. The good guy and the bad buy both talk like Clint Eastwood, and the bad guy actually looks like Eastwood from one of the spaghetti Westerns. Something tells me the book was much better. (This one gets 2 stars.)

There’s my nickels worth for today.

Ron D. Voigts is the author of PENELOPE AND THE BIRTHDAY CURSE, available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

1 comment:

  1. I liked the swedish version better ;) But then I saw it first, and I find that often makes a difference. Haven't seen Priest. I dunno, it just didn't catch my interest for some reason.

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