I love all monsters. Man-made, supernatural, mutant-hillbilly…vampires. Especially vampires.
My garlic-adoring wife Nichole doesn’t do vampires. She does zombies. My friend Kari doesn’t do zombies. She does vampires. In this case, I suppose you could go ahead and declare Kari my Vampire Buddy. We watched “True Blood” together, suffered the “Twilight” movies together, caught a screening of Werner Herzog’s “Nosferatu” at Cinefamily earlier this year with our friend Carrie (greatest opening credit sequence to any vampire film ever), and made our way over to the Vampire Lounge in Beverly Hills not too long ago (or was it?) for a tasting of their wishfully-bloody offerings.
The only problem with loving the Art of Vampirism so much is not being able to sleep in a coffin during the sun wrath because I’m way too goddamn claustrophobic.
Oh, wait, I’m still human. FUCK!!
So the other day, I was hanging with my Vampire Buddy and we took in arthouse indie icon Jim Jarmush’s “Only Lovers Left Alive”. Our mutual mate of morose tendencies, James Sie, had been touting this one hardcore to me and I knew once it hit iTunes that my VB and I had better to stop at NOTHING to withstand it. And, OH, how we did.
Not only do I think this might be one of Jarmush’s finest films, but also his most heartfelt. This is a love story spanning centuries that almost takes the piss out of the genre by basing it in a very sad, subdued, human-centric reality. Tom Hiddleston (a gloriously gifted dude I had no idea existed) plays a reclusive, rock star-like vamper named Adam who’s just about HAD IT with immortality. He’s bored, he’s tired, he’s lost his bloodlust/his hankering to hunt, and it appears he just wants OUT. Tilda Swinton is Eve (‘natch), Adam’s undead wife (they’ve been married multiple times throughout the ages), who is perfectly contented to living alone in Tangier and reading every notable work of literature ever drafted in time and talking to her Adam on makeshift Skype-like technology (even John Hurt shows up as a certain playwright you may or may not have heard of). Well, one night Adam decides that it’s enough already and he needs to see his wife one more time. The extent in which uncomfortable, inconvenient, worldwide vampire travel ALONE is conducted and portrayed in this film will astound you. It’s pure black magic. With red satin sheets to wrap about you and a haunting, alt-rock-trance-y soundtrack that destroys (also available on iTunes).
So, yeah. It’s good to have a Vampire Buddy who you can take the ghostly horse buggy up to the foreboding, fog-blanketed castle with. Because vampire stuff can be a very emotional, self-reflecting experience. Dare I admit, even a little romantic. Blech!
WINE PAIRING: Suck-cumb to “Only Lovers Left Alive” with a True Blood Santa Maria Valley Pinot Noir from Vampire Vineyards. Dude, what more do you need, the stuff-of-life juice even comes in it’s own red-velvet-lined COFFIN CASE!!
