Greetings my dear Gothlings!
After a strange and unsettling end to my night at Salvation (read: I don’t really enjoy the habitual “I just like you as a friend” speech…but I am very used to it by now), I woke up to a very hot and muggy Sunday afternoon and scampered to get ready and left my apartment to meet my good friend Cindy at the Landmark Sunshine movie theater to see a screening of Thirst. When I got there I had to get into the huge line for tickets. The long line was largely in part because there were several films starting at the same time and only one cashier at the box office window. Long story short: Cindy showed up late but just in time (thank Hollywood marketing for the additional 15 minutes of buffer time due to trailers!), and we only found seats on the front row, toward the right side, making the screen look like some sort of strange trapezoid with subtitles…no problem though…Cindy and I are a bit nearsighted anyway (damn computers!).
The movie, Thirst, if you don’t know anything about it, is…as a friend of mine put it to me: “different.” Basically throw away any ideas of Vampire films you might once had. The cultural differences between Korea (yes, that’s right…this is a Foreign Korean Vampire flick! You’ve been warned) and the Western culture really does come into play here, and you have to pretty much succumb to those differences and just accept them as is. For the most part, Thirst treats Vampirism as a sort of horrible disease and has a very scientific/medical slant to it. In contrast though, the “Hero/Vampire” of the film is actually a Korean Christian priest and orphan who gives last rites at a hospital, moreover, he is bent on helping the sick and dying. In being so he takes part of a medical experiment that ends up turning him into a Vampire from a blood transfusion tainted with Vampire blood. After surviving the suicidal experiment, he is re-united with a family he once new as a child, befriends them, and falls in love with their adopted daughter/daughter-in-law (remember: cultural differences), who is basically being kept as a servant/puppy.
Without spoiling to much of the film’s plot: Vampire Romance–> Passionate Sweaty Sex–> Murder(s)–> Ghost–> Insanity, and lots of blood and slurping sound effects, is what you should expect. Oh, and by the way…it’s 100 times better than Twilight…sorry Twilight fans. This film is 133 minutes long…standard for a foreign film, if you can stand a film that takes its time to tell its story, as opposed to the 1 hour and 15 minute films created for us attention span lacking Americans! If many of you saw Let The Right One In (and I know most of you have), you should expect this film to have the same cadence. Seriously though, if you haven’t seen this film yet, go see it as soon as you can! It is such a strange and refreshing take on the entire “Vampire” film genre. Furthermore, this film is more of a “forbidden romance goes very wrong” tale than anything else…you will be amazed, or at least left scratching your head in wonderment.
After the film, my friend Cindy and I had our typical post-cinematic discussion talks as we strolled uptown with an hour long pause in Washington Square Park as the sun set. Hanging out in that park, surrounded by a bunch of lunatics and stoners, was something I haven’t done in way too many years and was glad to do so (Thanks for the suggestion, Cindy!).
Soon it was 8:30pm and I had to make my way up to Lillie’s Irish-Victorian Bar (17th Street between 5th Avenue and Union Square Park West) at which I scheduled an impromptu Gothic Gathering! Lucky for me, Cindy accompanied me for the seven block trek up 5th Avenue, and even had a glass of wine with as I waited for those kind enough to join me at this experiment outing (those of you who showed up…and you know who you are…thanks again! I think we had a fun time, no?) and partake in New Goth City’s first ever Gothic Gathering!
We were about 20 in all and occupied a small tabled/stooled nook toward the middle of this very long and lavish gem of a bar. All of those who showed up, and had never been before, were indeed quite impressed with the wonderful Victorian decor, and were glad for it too. However, here is the weird thing with Lillie’s: the decor does not match three other key elements in the place: the music playing (very top 40), the sports playing overhead on flat screens at each end of the bar, and more importantly, the clientele! Most of their customers are 20/30something yuppies and the women that want to marry one…a slight better than a room full of hipsters, granted, but the crowd was pretty slim by the time 10:00pm rolled around…or maybe we just scared them away. LOL! Our waitress, Katelyn, even though she was cursed with blond hair and a bubbly personality, was really on her game with multiple separate tabs, was really nice with us stranglings, and was attentive and on top of the constant drink orders…I am proud to report that I bled their entire Pinot Grigio stock dry! Don’t look so shocked…they only had a few bottles and it is their more popular white wine there…I moved onto Sauvignon Blanc! After a while as proving ourselves as worthy clients we asked Katelyn if we were ever to come back on a semi-regular basis on a very slow night…more notably Sundays…if we could “tweak” the music selection to a more “darker” persuasion. No go, was the response. She informed us that the management of Lillie’s is very “corporate” and has even edited the music selection list themselves and require that each song be played in that order. Wow. But we’ll work on that angle…it’s pretty worth it.
All in all we stuck around until 1:30 or so and then we disbanded…just when the clouds above decided to have a “piss-like-a-race-horse” storm all over the city. Did you guys see that rainfall? It was insane!!! But with that aside, I had a really good time with some very good friends…also, it was great to finally meet Zoe, all the way from England! Be sure to keep an eye out on NewGothCity.com for further Gothic Gatherings, either at Lillie’s or other fun spots!!!
See you in the Dark!
Sir William Welles