Vamps for Valentines Winner + Love for The Tale of the Body Thief

As chosen by Random.org, the winner of the two paperbacks in my Vampires for Valentines is...Denise Z! I'll be e-mailing you with a request for the address to which the books should be sent. Anne, you won the romance paperbacks giveaway.

I was thrilled last week when I read Nola Cancel's article stating that Imagine Entertainment, Ron Howard's company, has optioned Anne Rice's fourth Vampire Chronicles novel, The Tale of the Body Thief for possible production. The word that comes to mind is "Squee!"

This has inspired me to watch the first two film based on the Chronicles. I enjoyed Interview with the Vampire - but not the Guns 'N Roses cover of the Rolling Stones classic "Sympathy for the Devil."

This should be the theme song instead:



Not quite as entertaining, but still interesting, is Queen of the Damned, starring Aaliyah and Stuart Townsend. I don't love all the music in this; I'm no more a fan of Korn (whose lead singer acted as composer) than I am of G&R. I do like one song, though: The Deftones' "Change." In "Oakley Falls," I used this as Oakley's intro music.

This clip won't play on this blog, but it does link to YouTube, and you can see it there.



BUT it does bother me a tiny bit that Stuart Townsend is clearly brown-eyed, while book-Lestat has gray eyes. I'm not sure if the first movie had Tom Cruise wear contacts, but he seems to have naturally blue eyes. Blue is much closer to gray than brown is.

The non-Queen of the Damned version of the "Change" video will play here.



More on Anne Rice tomorrow...

Sorry, Edward, but this is too good to resist. This comes courtesy of Rhiannon Mills.

When Bigger Isn't Always Better

I saw Daniel Radcliffe on The Talk yesterday. This was the first I'd heard of his upcoming role in a film called Kill Your Darlings, in which he'll play Allen Ginsberg. The plot revolves around a murder committed by Lucien Carr in 1944.

[Sidebar: Presumably, this refers to the killing of David Kammerer. In the film Beat, David Kammerer is played by another actor I greatly admire - Kyle Secor, who played the sexually conflicted homicide detective Timothy James Bayliss on Homicide: Life on the Streets (on the right; his TV partner is the brilliant actor Andre Braugher).

In Beat, Ginsberg is portrayed by Ron Livingston. Norman Reedus, perhaps best remembered from Boondock Saints, played Lucien Carr, and Courtney Love made an appearance as Joan, the wife of William S. Burroughs.]

I'm so excited that Daniel Radcliffe is attempting to play Ginsberg. I think I will like this as much as, or even more than, James Franco's portrayal in Howl.

Some of the discussion on yesterday's talk show was about the fact that Dan hasn't really grown much (in height) since he first donned the robes of the Boy Who Lived.

This does not bother me at all. I still say Radcliffe's grown into a very attractive young man. Here he is at age 18 in a photo by David Dj Johnson.

You don't have to be tall to be beautiful - right, Tom Cruise as Lestat?

Tom Cruise as Lestat agrees.

This height-challenged hottie gets tons of great movie roles based on books, from The Outsiders to The Firm to War of the Worlds. You know, I used to think he wasn't very attractive, but the older I get, the more I like Tom Cruise. (No Scientology jokes - I respect everyone's religious freedom. But I will say this again - his wife is not as good a Rachel Dawes as Maggie Gyllenhaal is.)

You know who does a hella good impression of Tom Cruise? Miles Fisher.