Byzantium

As a huge Gemma Arterton fan, this was a MUST-BUY for me! Not only is the film a really great take on vampire lore, but Gemma's beauty just radiates and shines in this dark film. The first Blu-ray I received came crushed and would not play in any Blu-ray player I tried it so I contacted Amazon and within a few days I had a complete replacement that worked flawlessly. You have to love that about Amazon! Anyway, here's my review as originally posted on whysoblu dot com:I went into my viewing of Byzantium wanting to like it so much because of my love for the can do no wrong actress, in my opinion, Gemma Arterton. So the truth be told that whenever you do something like that you’re almost guaranteed to set yourself up for failure and utter disappointment (point in case Man of Steel this summer). And when that doesn’t happen, then by God that’s when you know you just experienced a damn miracle. No, Byzantium is not the second coming of Christ, but who in their right mind would compare such a revolutionary event like that to a film’s quality (unless we’re talking Fight Club)? However, if you go into Byzantium with a bloody thirsty seeking of re-experiencing another satisfying tale akin to that of Interview With The Vampire with societal emphasis on themes of brotherhood, okay motherhood, and what it’s really like mentally and socially to live for over two centuries, then I can’t imagine you could ever walk away from this one disappointed. That’s my story and I’m “staking” to it.Obviously I made reference to 1984’s Interview With The Vampire above not because Byzantium is a tale similar to that, although it is, but it’s brought to you by the same visionary director that perfected the vampire formula in cinema, Mr. Neil Jordan. For those keeping score, Byzantium is actually Mr. Jordan’s third flirtation with that of the undead in cinema. It’s based on a screenplay beautifully written by Moira Buffini and stars the ever radiant Gemma Arterton, Saoirse Ronan, Sam Riley, Caleb Landry Jones, Daniel Mays and Jonny Lee Miller. The film saw only a small limited release this year in theaters, but rest easy my weary traveler, the tale is coming to retail shelves near you this October courtesy of IFC Films.For those who were unlucky enough to have Byzantium play anywhere near their hometown or municipality this summer and/or are impatient enough to want to wait until October, you’re in luck! You can experience the blood filled coming of age drama like I did via rental from your favorite digital retailer or your cable’s On Demand channel. It just so happened that the film kept me company on a recent flight from Austin to San Francisco this past weekend. And needless to say, I won’t be canceling my Amazon pre-order for this bad boy…or should I say girl? I look forward to the day when I can revisit Byzantium on the Blu-ray format. So now…what’s it all about? I’m glad you asked. Would you like to come in (I know it’s a bad vampire joke)?So before I go into whether or not I liked Byzantium or not…by the way I loved it! I thought I would preface my review by saying how much I love a good vampire tale of the blood sucking undead. Now don’t get me wrong, I can play on both sides of the field. While I enjoy the nonsensical wars between the Lycans and the vampires in the Underwolrd films, as well as Kate Beckinsale’s body clinging black leather outfits, I’m also a sucker for the films that tread delicately on the subject matter and intricately explore what it truly must be like to be undead and believe it or not the hardships of it all, like in Let The Right One In. Byzantium is definitely the latter with the bonus of Gemma thrown in. In essence, she only makes this film that much sweeter for me. I could get diabetes just watching it (I know…bad tasting joke…literally).The story of Byzantium, as I kind of alluded to before, is that of a mother and daughter vampire duo. We saw the whole surrogate vampire parent relationships explored before in films like Underworld and Interview With The Vampire, but what of that of mother and daughter? I’m sure there are some, but none this weary mind of mine can recently recollect. So what it must be like to raise a teenage vampire daughter over two centuries is really the essence of the story here. What happens when you are made? I mean even if you are a good vampire, you can only be friends or neighbors with someone for so many years before they start to notice hey bubba, why aren’t you growing old, right? Bingo! Imagine how hard it must be living life like this as a teenager. You want to tell someone your secrets to someone so bad, but you can’t. Now all you moms out there who thought you had it rough…try being a single vampire mom raising a rebellious, teenage vampire daughter. So not only do you need to constantly reinvent yourself and find new jobs to provide for her, but you got to deal with her raging teenage hormones for two centuries too. I don’t know about you, but in that scenario being immortal sure sounds like a curse, eh?Our story begins with young Eleanor (Ronan) desperately wanting to tell her story through her penmanship…her writings. The only problem is that she cannot distribute the many manuscripts she creates for people would never understand and just like the government hides UFOs from us, society would freak out if they knew the real truth. However, through Eleanor we the audience learn quite a lot. She spills all the beans. For lack of a better term, she is essentially our narrator on this trip throughout a two hundred year journey as we learn all about her and the ultra compassionate ways in which she kills her food…for the blood. Without any spoilers, it’s actually quite sincere and endearing in my opinion. And I’ll leave it at that.So where were we? Oh! The story! It’s such an delicate story told through elegant flashbacks that I don’t want to ruin any of the mystique surrounding it so like Walter White in Breaking Bad said to Hank, “If you don’t know who I am, I suggest you tread lightly.” And that’s what I am doing here. Let’s just say all your questions of how they became vampires, why they became vampires and every essential piece of backstory you would ever want to know WILL be answered by the movie’s end. I can at least guarantee you that. However, I think I can safely spill the beans that Clara’s main profession is that of a woman of the night. And I don’t mean that because she’s a female vampire, LOL, I mean that because she’s a P-R-O-S-T-I-T-U-T-E. There I said it! My favorite actress is a prostitute in this, and she makes a damn good one too. And rest assured that how she became a prostitute is revealed in the convoluted backstory (more on that subject soon) also.So we find our two essential characters on the run and eventually forming a fresh new start as they seek sanctuary in a coastal resort area complete with its own carnival. How can you not stay here, huh? Clowns make the world go around. I’m being facetious…sort of. Anyway, fate intervenes while Clara is providing her services like only she can to a new client, Noel (Mays), and he spills the beans (I know I used this phrase twice in the same review and for that I am forever sorry) on why he is so lonely and talks about the Byzantium Hotel he has just inherited. Picture a light bulb going off in Clara’s head. She formulates a plan. Oh poor, poor Noel. Ten minutes later…bingo! No, Noel did not climax, but instead the vampire family, keeping their secret under wraps, is making themselves comfy in the abandoned hotel. And it’s not before long that Clara has transformed the Byzantium into a brothel so to speak. Meanwhile, Eleanor is still that same depressed teenage vampire girl we first met in Act 1. Things don’t get better for her as she disapproves of the way her mom, Clara, makes money. What a brat! Gemma is doing her best! I mean Clara. It’s during this pouty time that Eleanor reluctantly falls for Frank (Jones), a waiter who’s quite taken by her. And this Frank definitely has his way with Eleanor as he gets her to do things she has been resistant to do before…share her stories. I’m stopping right there. I already said too much I fear. You’ll just have to see for yourself where this intertwining two hundred year-old tale goes.So I mentioned the word convoluted above and I guess if that’s my only complaint here, then well…that’s not bad at all. It’s 118-minute runtime can be a bit draining at times (not like how a vampire sucks out all its victim’s blood). It’s not the quickest pacing you’ve ever seen and it’s not balls-to-the-wall action like Underworld either. It’s much more inline with Jordan’s earlier work on Interview With The Vampire and the Swedish masterpiece, Let The Right One In. I mention the pacing only because of all the flashbacks. However, without them…you would never have all your questions answered. So you will have to pick your own battles here. Would you rather watch a straight forward moving narrative or do you mind jumping around in the two hundred year proverbial sandbox? I prefer my movies to satisfy all my curiosities, don’t you? If so, then you’re in the right place. While Byzantium isn’t the perfect movie, I sure hope it remains on my Top 10 list throughout the year. Right now it’s hovering near the middle, but we still have four more months to go as we battle it out for picture of the year in the upcoming Oscar laden months. Brace yourselves. Anything is possible. And let’s be honest, when you are talking about a film that hasn’t seen much light of day (not another vampire joke) theatrically, being in someone’s Top 10 of the year is quite an accomplishment in my books. Byzantine is a slow burning journey that I want to take again…maybe even check into the hotel for an extended stay if possible…and re-live all the revealing and blood gushing moments on the Blu-ray format. Until then…digital retailers and On Demand channels are your friend. Enjoy!

"There comes a time in life when secrets should be told."-- dialogue from ByzantiumNothing would give Eleanor Webb (Saoirse Ronan) greater pleasure than to reveal the dark secret she's been harboring all her life. She is seen repeatedly writing it down on pieces of paper, and then crumbling up the pages and releasing them to the wind. "Maybe the birds will read it," she tells us. Her secret has forced her to lie to others, about who she is, as well as the nature of her relationship with her mother Clara (Gemma Arterton). Now she's ready to tell the truth, if only to make a genuine connection with another human soul.Eleanor's secret is that she's a 16 year old girl, and has been for the past 200 years. She and her mother are vampires, and they have been going through time running from a brotherhood of vampires after Clara broke a sacred rule by turning her daughter into one (apparently, women are not allowed to turn people). Clara has kept the existence of the brotherhood a secret from her daughter, and has supported her by working the streets as a freelance prostitute. In an earlier scene, Clara decapitates one of the brotherhood with a cheese wire, and she and Eleanor are forced to relocate to a seaside English town and start over.It is there that Eleanor meets Frank (Caleb Landry Jones), a leukemia-stricken young waiter who immediately takes a liking to her after he hears her play the piano at the restaurant where he works. In time, Eleanor comes to trust Frank enough that she decides to write to him a story detailing her life and her terrible secret. The problem is that Clara is very adamant about making sure than any human who knows the truth about them won't live to tell about it.Byzantium is an extraordinary movie, a quiet, melancholic, and poignant fantasy thriller from director Neil Jordan, who also made the Academy Award nominated Interview With a Vampire back in 1994. While the movie is as gory as you'd expect a film about blood suckers to be, Byzantium is not a horror movie by any means. It is, at heart, a deeply moving and heartbreaking tale about the sacrifices parents make for their children, and about outsiders longing for human companionship.Clara finds a companion of her own in the lonely but kind-hearted Noel (Daniel Mays), whose mother recently passed away, and who has inherited the Byzantium Hotel, which was once a thriving business that has since become rundown. Since Clara was only a few years older than Eleanor when she turned her, she tells Noel that Eleanor is her little sister. Noel offers them refuge at the Byzantium, and Clara sees this as an opportunity to turn the place into a make-shift brothel, but one that's more sympathetic to the working girls, especially since she's been one her whole life.The movie frequently cuts to flashbacks explaining the women's tragic backstory. Clara was sold as a prostitute at an early age by the despicable Captain Ruthven (Johnny Lee Miller), and was forced to give up her daughter when she was born because children weren't allowed in the brothel where she was employed. She contracts a disease that rots her lungs and causes her to cough up blood. When Ruthven's old buddy Darvell (Sam Riley) gives him a map to a rocky island that changes people into immortal vampires (the details how are best left unsaid), she steals the map from Ruthven and gains eternal life for herself. Not wanting to live as an immortal alone, she springs her daughter from the orphanage and makes her one as well.One of the complaints I've heard against the movie is that Clara goes through life as a prostitute, a job she can't stand, when she could easily have been able to find other means of making money. I disagree. From a very early age, this is the only life she's ever known. She may not like the job, but it was enough to support her daughter during her stay at the orphanage, and it's enough to support them now. Besides, Clara's big thing is keeping her identity a secret from the rest of the world, and prostitution is a job that doesn't require deep human connections. A man pays a woman for her services, and nothing more than that.One of the most intriguing elements of the film is the way it shows how both mother and daughter approach vampirism in different ways. Clara targets men who are scum and abusive to other women, or people who discover the truth about her and her daughter. Eleanor, on the other hand, is more of a mercy killer, targeting people who are already at death's door, and that's only after they give her their consent. "Peace be with you," she tells them before making the kill. "May light shine upon you." Even still, every life she ends takes a toll on her. It's easy enough for Clara to kill; she's all about forgetting the past. Eleanor seems to be constantly haunted by it.Neil Jordan paces the movie very deliberately, which is how it should be. A faster pace would have pushed us away from the material and diminished a lot of its impact. Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt contributes to the film's atmosphere with his lushly Gothic images, with some of the most breathtaking shots involving waterfalls of blood. The mother daughter relationship between Clara and Eleanor is beautifully developed (I smiled at the scene where Clara sang to her daughter while they hitched a ride from a trucker), but the heart of the movie is easily the relationship between Eleanor and Frank. Their story is one of lost souls who finally find each other, and when they kiss, it isn't explicit and erotic, but rather tender and sweet (which is the way a first kiss should be).The acting is terrific across the board, but the movie belongs to both Arterton and Ronan, and they both turn in spell-binding performances. Just watch Arterton's face when she's on the phone with her daughter and realizes how much her relationship with Eleanor has crumbled. Just watch Ronan try to fight off temptation when she sees a rag soaked with Frank's blood on the ground. Both of these performances are award-worthy, and both of them keep the viewer entranced throughout the entire movie. The screenplay is written by Moira Buffini, which she adapted from a play she wrote called A Vampire Story, a title that describes this movie the best. Byzantium is now out on DVD, and is one of the very best movies of 2013.(review originally appeared on my internet blog)

Super

Tres satisfait de ma commande

yo la compre porque en su momento estaba muy barata y me encantan las historias de seres sobrenaturales, para ser sincero ya no me acuerdo ni de que se trato, es aburrida y lenta y el ritmo no la mantiene interesante, yo no la recomiendo.

Clara (Gemma Arterton) und ihre Tochter Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) sind Vampire, aber moderne Exemplare, die keine Reißzähne haben, sondern anders an Menschenblut kommen.Seit 200 Jahren werden sie von einer Vampirbruderschaft verfolgt, da es sie eigentlich gar nicht geben dürfte. Wie es die junge Clara geschafft hat, trotzdem die Transformation vom Menschen zum Vampir hinzubekommen, wird in eindrucksvollen Bildern gezeigt, wie überhaupt der ganze Film von den beiden Hauptdarstellerinnen lebt. Gemma als lebenslustige, verführerische Schönheit mit jeder Menge Sex-Appeal, Saoirse als zurückhaltende Tochter, die das ewige Fliehen leid ist. Clara tötet bedenkenlos, Eleanor hält sich wo möglich an alte, bereits vom Tode gezeichnete Menschen.Nachdem die ertappte Clara ihren Häscher mit einer Garotte enthauptet hat (schön realistisch gezeigt, aber so nicht machbar!), landen Mutter und Tochter schließlich in einem Seebad . Clara, die mal wieder als Prostituierte arbeitet, lernt einen Mann kennen, der ein altes, aber wunderschönes Hotel mit Käfigaufzug und schönen Ornamenten besitzt. Er läßt sie da einziehen, wo Clara schnell ein Bordell betreibt und auch als Puffmutter fungiert.In Rückbleneden erfahren wir immer wieder "plausibel" die Vorgeschichte der Frauen, die Verhältnisse , in denen sie vor dem Vampirdasein gelebt bzw. existiert haben, bis schließlich auf einer malerisch-schroffen Felseninsel mit schönen Wasserfällen und einer geheimnisvollen Höhle die Transformation erfolgte, die eigentlich Männern vorbehalten sein sollte. Eleanor lernt schließlich einen kranken Jungen kennen, der sich in sie verliebt, sie will wegen ihres Geheimnisses seine Liebe zunächst nicht erwidern.In diesem Seebad kommt es schließlich zum blutigen Showdown mit den Verfolgern. Haben Mutter und Tochter eine Chance, trotz ihres Vampirseíns ein annähernd normales Leben zu führen, dürfen sie für alle Zeiten außer sich keine anderen Freunde oder sogar mehr haben?Bleiben sie ewig aneinandergekettet ?Bemerkenswert an dem Film fand ich, daß bis auf die Alterslosigkeit und den Transformationsprozeß die ganze Geschichte logisch und glaubwürdig ist. Die Vampire sehen bis auf ein zunächst unauffälliges Detail aus wie normale Menschen, haben keine übernatürlichen Kräfte, können nicht fliegen, Verbrennen nicht bei Sonnenlicht, scheuen weder vor Knoblauch noch vor Kruzifixen. Sie wollen eigentlich bis auf die notwendige Nahrung Menschenblut normal leben, insbesondere Tochter Eleanor hat fast so etwas wie bürgerliche Moralvorstellungen. Die beiden Frauen werden von Gemma Arterton (schön, sexy, verrucht,in knappster Reizwäsche) und Saoirse Ronan als zurückhaltende, nicht strahlende, eher stille Schönheit (man sehe nur die Augen!) gut verkörpert. Natürlich dominiert Gemma, aber das liegt auch in der von ihr verkörperten dominanten Mutterrolle, sie liebt ihre Tochter aufrichtig.Bemerkenswert ist auch die traumhaft schöne Inszenierung mit vielen liebevollen Details. Das Interieur des Hotels, die alten Bauten bei den Rückblenden, die magische schroff-schöne Felseninsel mit gemauertem Eingang zur Höhle und den Wasserkaskaden.Auch die Nebenrollen sind gut besetzt, sympathisch besonders als Darvell, der eine wichtige Rolle beim finalen Aufeinandertreffen mit den Verfolgern spielt, Sam Riley, der nebenbei auch Geschmack hat: er ist mit der Schauspielerin Alexandra Maria Lara verheiratetInsgesamt bietet der Vampirfilm Spannung, in sich glaubwürdige Handlung, Blut fließt nicht purer Grausamkeit willen, es gibt eine schöne Liebesgeschichte und auch richtige Mutterliebe sowie in ihrem Rahmen auch einen "moralischen Anspruch", das Ganze in zum Teil wunderschönen Bildern und mit beeindruckenden Hauptdarstellerinnen. Richtig gut gemachte Unterhaltung!Doc Halliday

Género de vampiros, pero no apto para adolescentes fans de Stephanie Meyer y sus chorradas de vampiros en celo, sino para amantes del buen cine, los guiones inteligentes y las historias bien trenzadas. Un toque sutil a este tipo de cine, del que solo salen brodios últimamente. Muy recomendado para seguidores de "entrevista con el vampiro", "thirst" o "déjame entrar". Olvídense los fans de Blade, Abierto hasta el amanecer y Eclipse.