Aaliyah in "Queen of the Damned"

Aaliyah's purty

 

I'm still waiting to see what happened to that 13-yr-old chick who got pregnant in the Witching Hour trilogy. Was she in Merrick at all?

 

I am not going to see this movie...the previews look bad...VERY BAD.

 

I'm still waiting to see what happened to that 13-yr-old chick who got pregnant in the Witching Hour trilogy. Was she in Merrick at all?

Nope note at all

Anne Rice sadly (well it's sad for me anyway) said that she won't be writing any more Mayfair Witchs books

 

I haven't read Merrick yet, but wasn't that supposed to tie the two series together or something?

 

Yes, Merrick does start to tie the two stories together. How that happens, I can't say because I don't want to spoil it for you.

 

I'm thinking I might watch it... that is, if I can see it for free...

 

Anyone see it?

 

I *did* actually, because I got to sneak in... and it *really* is a a second-rate vampire movie, although there were quite a few people in line.

I actually think this Townsend guy's got much more charisma than Tom Cruise... and Aaliyah looks gorgeous, but she's only in the movie for like 20 minutes... all in all, a waste of time.

 

i guessed as much

 

What about the other vampires?

Anything on Louis, Gabrielle, Khayman, Maharet & Mekare, Marius, Pandora, Eric, Armand, and the rest of the bunch?

 

What I want to know is, why is Akasha being played by an African American? The character's Egyptian, she should be played by an Arabic actress.


Oh, I guess there are none. Nevermind.

 

Heh, I've seen films where arab characters were played by hispanics. Come on, there have got to be SOME out there!

 

Well, how do I put this...let's just say that the majority of those in charge in Hollywood may not be the biggest fans of the Arabic people...

 

Come on now, Padme Bra, you don't want to go the way Marlon Brando did, do you?

Now that I think about it, there's Alexander Siddig, who played Dr. Julian Bashir in Deep Space Nine, and Oded Fehr, who was the lead actor in the recently-cancelled NBC action-drama, UC Undercover, playing the part of federal agent Frank Donovan (wtf!?).

 

Um, Oded Fehr was born in Tel Aviv. He served in the Israeli navy. Not helping your case.

Hey, it's not racist to say that all American presidents are white males is it? I spent time in Hollywood. They make no bones about it, it's a joke there. All agents, about 80% of studio execs and producers, about half the directors, are Jewish. Does this translate into a racial bias against Arabs in Hollywood? I don't know. I know that you can count on one hand the number of Arab characters in modern film who aren't terrorists and there are very few Arab actors. Just something to think about.

 

Hehe, shows how much I know. But Siddig is from Sudan, unless I'm wrong about that too [face_shocked]

If the JC were like Hollywood, you would be given a spank ban for your "controversial" comments.

 

Yeah I know, I'd be blacklisted. Oh well.

 

Actually, Akasha is supposed to be an ancient Egyptian vampire. The ancient Egyptians were not of the Arab race. It's debated which race they were, but it's possible that some of them may have been African-American/black.

By the way, I just saw the movie 2 hours ago. I liked it a lot, surprisingly, since I had read all the bad reviews and I was really expecting it to suck. It was pretty good for a movie that was supposed to go direct to video. It has a really good soundtrack.

(Oh, and I'm new. Actually, not new, this is just a new screen name. I forgot what my old one was. )

 

I present to you Roger Ebert's ** review:

Vampires are always in pose mode, which tends to make vampire movies into comedies. The stark horror of "Nosferatu" has long since dribbled down into overwrought melodrama. The buried message of many scenes is: Regard me well, for here I am, and I am thus. A lot of the dialogue is declamatory, and many sentences are versions of "Together, we (will, can, must) (rule, change, destroy) the (world, our victims, the people in this bar)."

"Queen of the Damned," based on Anne Rice's endless Vampire Chronicles, happily occupies this mode. It is happy to be goofy. "Interview with the Vampire," Neil Jordan's glossy 1994 version of the earlier Rice novel, was more ambitious and anchored--even sad. This sequel, also about the vampire Lestat, is filled with characters who seem to have taken Gene Simmons as their role model.

The movie stars Stuart Townsend as Lestat, in the role played last time by Tom Cruise. The world got to be too much for him, Lestat explains, and so he withdrew from it and went to sleep 200 years ago. But then "the world didn't sound like the place I had left--but something different, better." Cut to a montage of musical groups, and Lestat pushes back the stone lid of his crypt and materializes during a rehearsal of a rock band. When they ask who he is, he smiles and casts centuries of tradition to the winds: "I am ... the Vampire Lestat!"

Soon he's a rock god, the lead singer of a goth band. Other characters emerge. We meet Jesse (Marguerite Moreau), researcher for a London vampire study institute. She likes to play with danger, and even cruises a vampire bar Lestat told her about. We meet the fey Marius (Vincent Perez), the older vampire who turned Lestat on, or out. And Maharet (Lena Olin), who I think is supposed to be a good vampire, or at least one who wishes the others would follow the rules. Along the way we are given vampire feeding lessons: "You must never take the last drop, or it will draw you in, and you die."

Most noticeably we meet Queen Akasha, the title character, played by Aaliyah, the singer who was killed in an air crash last August. She appears first as a statue in a phantasmagorical Egyptian crypt-like shrine, where Lestat plays his violin so fiercely that parts of her stone body seem to glow back into life. She "drank the world dry when she ruled Egypt," Marius tells Lestat. (Historical footnote: The first movie to make the queen of the Egyptians black also makes her a vampire. Is this progress?) Soon Akasha is alive all over, and has the hots for Lestat, making plans about how, together, they will rule the world.

Since this will be Aaliyah's only starring movie role, it's sad that her character has such a narrow emotional range. The Lestat-Akasha romance suffers by being conducted in declarative mode, with Akasha addressing her lover with the intimacy Queen Victoria would have lavished on her footman. Lestat digs her, though, because when he drinks her blood, it makes him wild. Nothing good can come of this.

A more intriguing relationship is between Lestat and Marius, who seems to have a thing for him. Marius reappears in Lestat's life after so many centuries that Lestat comments on his outdated apparel. "How did you manage to slip through the '50s in red velvet?" he asks, forgetting that he slept through the 1950s himself and has probably not made much of a study of the decade's clothing styles. He welcomes Marius to Los Angeles and shows him the world from a perch on a painter's scaffold, which hangs directly in front of Lestat's leather-clad crotch on a giant Sunset Boulevard outdoor advertisement. We get the feeling Marius would enjoy the view more if he turned around.

There is a showdown. Queen Akasha's subjects, fellow vampires, revolt against her tyrannical rule when she reveals her plans to rule, etc., the world, etc., together, etc., with Lestat. The others hope to drink all of her blood, so that even if they die, she dies, too. But Akasha is not without her defenses. All she has to do is

 

I agree with shield_maiden.

Egypt is in Africa, so it makes sense to give the part to an African-American...

But seriously, complaining about Aaliyah playing an Egyptian is kind of like complaining about Madonna playing the part of Evita instead of an Argentine actress... or about Jennifer Lopez playing Selena instead of a Mexican-American actress... or about Renee Zellweger playing Bridget Jones, instead of getting a real Brit for the part... or about Alfred Molina, who's Brit, playing Satipo in "Raiders of the Lost Ark", instead of a real Latino actor.

I think it's best to try to look beyond race/nationality/religion/etc....

 

I just read it opened at #1, in spite of the critics...

 

#1 or not, last week's movie business wasn't so good!

But I am glad Aaliyah will be missed!!!

 

The movie was decent, but nothing too spectacular.