kpduty

So anyway, on the way out of the movie The Brother and I had the following exchange:

ME: Do you know who Dracula was? He looked really familiar.

THE BROTHER: No. We'll have to look him up when we get home.

ME: He was kind of a hottie.

THE BROTHER: I wouldn't know, I was too busy looking at Jessica Biel.

ME: There's nothing like watching BLADE: TRINITY to make you feel fat.

THE BROTHER: Ryan Reynolds did not look like that in VAN WILDER.

By the way, as a side note Ryan Reynolds guested on THE X-FILES on that episode where Scully's investigating the never-dying photographer and she gets shot. Just in case you wanted to know.

BLADE: TRINITY is the ironically named third installment in the BLADE trilogy, and it features a host of REALLY HOT ACTORS. I say "ironically" not because it's THIRD in a TRILOGY, or that there are THREE VAMPIRE HUNTERS (although one is taken out of most of the action for a good deal of the movie so technically that's not true), but because Blade has three lines in the whole movie:

"I forgot my sword."
"Choochie-coo."
"*grunt*"

Okay, I may be exaggerating, but seriously Blade's in the movie for all of five minutes.

BLADE: TRINITY is about a group of vampires who awaken Dracula (who's buried in Iraq for some reason) because they believe he's the only thing capable of killing off Blade once and for all. Meanwhile the FBI's gunning for Blade because he's a Menace to Society, and they end up blowing up his hideout. And some of the cops are helping the vampires. It looks really bad for our hero until a heretofore unmentioned shadow network of vampire killers led by heretofore unmentioned Whistler's daughter Jennifer Biel comes out of hiding to rescue him and help him out. And then there's fighting and stuff blowing up and sarcastic line delivery and tight abs and THE END.

The acting, for once, is top notch. Parker Posey, Queen of Indie Film, plays the head vampire, and you can tell she's having fun bossing people around, throwing fits and torturing people. Also she looks like a bad ass. Ryan Reynolds is kind of funny. The guy who plays Dracula is awesome (he was TV's JOHN DOE, by the way, on Fox's short-lived series).

And this is where the problem comes in. BLADE: TRINITY had the possibility to be something really great. It's hinted at in a couple of places: you have the King of All Vampires coming head-to-head with the King of All Vampire Killers. What kind of strange dynamic would this create? What sort of mutual introspection would it lead to? Dracula talks about an honor modern vampires have lost, an honor he finds in Blade. In the end, he "sacrifices" himself so that Blade can live. AND there's this awesome scene where he goes into a goth shop and is horrified to discover how his legend has been twisted by lame poseur kids. So many possibilities!!!

Then there's this MATRIX-y subplot where the vampires have victims set up in this warehouse being artificially kept alive so that their blood can be continually harvested. It was really cool looking, but pretty easy to undermind: Blade grunted at the only tech to "turn it off."

The only other thing worth noting was that Dracula's "true form" was fucking BAD ASS. This movie did some cool stuff with the conceit from the second of the vampires with the expanding jaws. But in the end I think it was just way too much trying to be packed into one movie. Not that I expected BLADE: TRINITY to be a Master's Class in character development, but it was disappointing even from a blowing lots of shit up angle.

I think I have to stop trusting in trailers. I'm learning that they don't often deliver what they promise.

I'm JUST NOW coming to understand this?!?!?!?

Coming up: WHITE NOISE (which still freaks my shit out), ELEKTRA, HIDE AND SEEK (looks pretty awesome), and CONSTANTINE. And some other stuff. Also I just bought some really awesome crap films like ZOMBIE LAKE, THE VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG, and DEMON UNDER GLASS featuring the sort-of-hot goateed guy from BABYLON 5. So I will be wallowing in shit for some time to come, and I'm taking you with me.

PS speaking of zombies, The Brother made The Mother watch SHAUN OF THE DEAD after telling her how awesome it was. The Mother hated it. Her exact quote was, "Why did it need to be so violent? I mean, did they really have to eat those people?"

We tried to explain the concept of zombies to her, but she wasn't having it.