Blade Puts Vampires To Shame
	Everybody loves vampires. Yeah, they sport big-ass teeth and suck the blood of innocent, unsuspecting humans but they're so cool! So stylish, so beautiful, so wealthy, so sexy.... And what we want to know is, SINCE FUCKING WHEN???!!! These are the undead we're talking about here, creatures without souls, without hope of redemption, rejected by the embrace of humanity and even the friggin' sun. Remember how Max Schreck looked in Nosferatu? He looked like a fleshy, animated skull, evil but terrified at the same time. That's what the damned should look like. You know, like they're damned or something. Somehow, pop culture managed to convince us that we're supposed to admire and envy vampires. Honestly, who could blame us, when they look like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise? When they're the best-dressed, have the best taste, have some sort of inescapable sexual pull and never have to show up at a day job? Blade just ups the visual ante. Its production design perfectly conveys a comic book come-to-life. And the vampires that inhabit this world are the ultimate club kids. The movie opens with a scene of a manic, hypersexual blood-drenched rave in a gigantic meat locker. All the horror aside, you've gotta be a bit jealous. The last rave we went to had a couple hundred sullen high school delinquents trying to sell us GBH while the bass speakers kept going out. If that scene is the recruitment poster for vampirism, we're convinced. But then, just when the vampires can't get any cooler, Wesley Snipes bursts in and slaughters the guilty. And you know you've met one sharp-dressin', vampire-killin', bad motha -- hush yo mouth! -- baby, I'm just talkin' bout Blade. Wesley even sounds like a stern Isaac Hayes with a little bit of reverb for the 25 or so lines he has. (Blade don't talk too much.) Blade's got it all: immortality, immunity to the sun, a stunning arsenal of sharp, shiny things, a stoic human father figure that keeps him in weapons and blood-substitute. And best of all, he has an awesome hematologist sidekick that kicks proportionately more ass than Blade does (she's human, and you gotta take that into account) and even saves his "life." And Blade never even says thank you. Typical superhero. So yes, the vampires in Blade are objects of superficial envy with a butt-kicking soundtrack. But the guy who kills them is 100 times cooler. And doesn't have the unfortunate last name of Dorff. .Gadgetgirl	In marked contrast to Blade, John Carpenter's Vampire$ is making the rounds in Europe, and a vampire-geek buddy stationed in Germany tells us that it reverts to the more classic notions of vampires, as in ugly mofos that look like they've been dead for a couple of days. Broken capillaries, filmy eyes, monstrous teeth, and they sleep in the ground during the day (dirt, ewww...). And to top that off, James Woods is ragging on them the whole movie. That's gotta make eternity ... er, suck.