Review: No fun to be had in 'Morbius'

By Ben Miller 

Too silly to take seriously, but too serious to be any fun, Daniel Espinosa's Morbius suffers from a lack of vision and commitment from its stars and filmmakers. Jared Leto stars as Dr. Michael Morbius, a brilliant scientist suffering from a rare blood disease that has been wrecking his body since childhood. Dr. Morbius is supported by his colleague Dr. Martin Bancroft (Adria Arjona) and his best friend Milo (Matt Smith), who also suffers from the same blood disease.

Morbius attempts to cure himself by using the genetic mapping of vampire bats to compliment his own DNA. You can guess that the experiments go array giving Morbius a form of vampirism...

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Showbiz History: Stewart enlists, Blade returns, and Streisand's legend begins

7 random things that happened on this day, March 22nd, in showbiz history

1941 James Stewart joins the Air Corps, three weeks after winning the Oscar. He was the first American movie star to join the military for  World War II

1957 The Elvis Presley single "All Shook Up" is released, soon hitting the top of the charts and becoming one of his signature songs...

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Horror Actressing: Kim Ok-bin in "Thirst" (2009)

by Jason Adams

What's funny looking back on Kim Ok-bin's work in Park Chan-wook's 2009 vampire film Thirst for the first time in a decade is just how brief her character Tae-ju's time as a bloodsucker actually is in the movie. Over the past ten years my memory had turned Thirst into the "Tae-ju Supernatural Vampire Olympics" -- she had opened her maw and swallowed the whole movie whole. And yet in actuality Tae-ju doesn't get turned into a vampire until the last half hour of an over-two-hour film -- her character is there, very much there, but Song Kang-ho's conflicted priest Sang-hyun is the main course. Until he isn't.

Kim is just so damn good that I think any of us would be excused for having handed her the stage. Even before she's turned, as the saying goes, she's already nibbled down the film's edges until it's become Her Shaped...

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Horror Actressing: Kirsten Dunst in "Interview With the Vampire"

by Jason Adams

All of the best moments in Interview With the Vampire belong to the eleven-year-old. Re-watching the film now here on its 25th anniversary there's a lot to like (Tom Cruise allows himself to be camp in ways that he usually is but this time purposefully, and Neil Jordan floods everything with opulent blood-red atmosphere) and there's a lot to hate (it's a slog and Brad Pitt is awful) but there's really only one thing to love, and that thing is Kirsten Dunst every single second she's on-screen as the immortal vampire trapped in a little girl's perpetual curls.

The story goes that Dunst was the first girl that they auditioned for the role of "Claudia" but that she auditioned twice -- her agent supposedly told her she was terrible the first time through and forced her back into the room to do it all over again. "How avant-garde," indeed. Still that gambit worked, and one of our greatest actresses got her start by slashing up multiple nannies and kissing Brad Pitt on the mouth -- an experience Dunst maintains was "gross," speaking for exactly zero other people aged eleven to one hundred and eleven...

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Emmy FYC: Eva Green and Christian Camargo, "Penny Dreadful"

Team Experience shares their dream Emmy nominations. Consider it an FYC as nomination ballots are out...

by Dancin' Dan

Showtime's now cancelled gothic horror show Penny Dreadful has never been one to receive much awards love, even when it should have been (has there been a better villain on any television show in recent memory than Helen McCrory's Evelyn Poole in the show's second season?). Part of this had to do with timing: Airing always began around June, near the time the Emmy nominations for the previous season were voted on, meaning that by the next nominating period, it was long forgotten. The other part is the nature of the show itself. Emmy has rarely favored genre shows, much less ones as bloody and occasionally over-the-top as this.

Sadly this has meant that the series's leading lady, Eva Green, has been ignored despite giving the most committed, most fearless, and best performance on television...

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