Reversing the roles of Twilight, that other teenage romance disguised as a vampire film, comes the dark and creepy-sweet Swedish film, Let the Right One In. I saw it on Christmas Day. The new girl in town enchants the lonely boy next door with her powers - namely, she flies, does a mean Rubik’s Cube, and does not mind the cold - and he cannot resist her awkward ice-cold intimacy. They want so much to be friends that she feigns eating human food though it makes her sick and he overlooks her necessary evil.

Like Claudia in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles our vamp Eli is frozen in the body of a pre-teen girl, her monstrousness disguised in big-eyed innocence. For a vampire, Eli seems very rough around the edges and filthy fingernails, but this isn’t Hollywood. The film has it’s share of blood, but the most graphically violent moments are not classically vampiric and only some involve the fanged exploits of our darling monster. Be prepared for a failed suicide by acid, clumsy bloodletting by an aging yet loyal companion, and a massive revenge fantasy that you smell coming without remotely sensing the magnitude of its enactment.

This is a tale of revenge and friendship, yet that icing barely covers an immoral taste of immortal pedophila.

The ice-encrusted trees and wintry landscapes are gorgeous and recall another vampire film, without the relentless horror. It’s good, and will leave you chilled.

I realized today that I might be scaring people away from my website with the zombie portrait that currently fills the home page. It’s not very Christmasy, but then again, if you don’t like zombies, what are you doing here?

Then again I don’t like zombies, they scare the crap out of me.

Snowed in today due to cancelled transportation, I’ll take the opportunity to mention belatedly a few artworks seen recently. Despite the inconvenience, there’s something romantic about snow days. Perhaps it’s my inner Winnipeger who remembers the pleasures of tunneling endlessly through the snowbanks of my youth, blinking hard to melt eyelash icicles, and the sound of the most delicate puddle-ice layers breaking softly beneath muffled feet.

Here are three enchanting artworks I saw recently:

#1. Leandro Erlich’s Swimming Pool at P.S.1, image below, is a one-liner that does not fall flat once you discover the magic secret. Visit it before Sept 2009, and make sure to take the top view first. If you’re like me you’ll be tempted to slip into the clear blue, and sink deep to the bottom.

More about the artist here.

#2. Børre Sæthre’s Stealth Distortion (…must have seen it in some teenage wet dream), image below, is also at P.S.1.

This installation could do without the rooms of “smoky mirror, plexiglass, and bare light bulb” peep show palace theatrics that are disjointed from the crown jewel, but the wizard behind the curtain is a foggy creature quite sublime - is there or isn’t there a unicorn in the room?

#3. Kelly Mark’s The Kiss, image below from Platform Gallery in Seattle, was at The Aqua Hotel in Miami during the art fairs.

Installed cosily in a closet, the quaint TV bodies glowed cooly pink from their twin bubble glass faces barely touching, and I couldn’t help but feel I’d walked in on some lucky teenager’s 7 minutes in heaven. If I peeked another minute they’d have turned like Dave from 2001, caught and blinking innocently out from his space helmet.

My work in the past few years has been as much about fan subcultures and audiences as about the films they love. Fan fiction - where fans create new scenarios from familiar narratives, thus subverting them - captivates me.

I had dinner with friend and performance artist Carrie Dashow the other night and she slipped me a DVD that said “Play Me” (Alice in Wonderland style)- very sneakily I might add. I dropped it into my computer the next morning to find a fabulous surprise. One of her Purchase students, Mike Peters, made a video response to my work Screen Kiss following a recent lecture I gave. It is quite wonderful. What’s that quote about imitation and flattery?

Above is a still from Steal a Kiss. You can see a few more stills on his website - click on “Projects”, but sadly not the video itself. I laughed so hard I almost fell off my chair. Mike if you’re reading this - put the video online!

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Update: Dec 20,
(originally posted as a comment from Mike Peters)

“Thank you, Jillian. I’m glad you liked it. Steal a Kiss is now online. Unfortunately, I no longer have access to the server hosting my original site, but the video is on youtube. I’ll be working on a new web page in the near future. Until then…. for your fans:

Thanks again. Love your work.”

Brace yourself for this one…