Infection Anniversary

For discussion of Tomas Alfredson's Film Låt den rätte komma in
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seigezunt
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Infection Anniversary

Post by seigezunt » Mon Oct 26, 2015 3:48 pm

This weekend will mark it being one year that I have been infected. A mere slip of a thing, me.

If I had kept a log, it might have looked like this.

Halloween, 2014.

Wife and kids asleep. Embarking on my annual ritual of engorging on cheesy horror flicks and popcorn, for the first time with Netflix and not a box of DVDs.

Click on Netflix, which has a panel of Halloween favorites suggested.

Yeesh. A lot of torture porn.

Let the Right One In.

Sigh. I really prefer to read the novel before watching a movie based on it. I'd started the novel a couple years before. Dropped it when it started getting into being bullied, and the Pissball. Should finish though.

No, let's be honest. I'm not going to finish it. YOLO. Watch the movie. And let's see. Maybe an old movie or two. Haven't seen that Frankenstein movie. Cheezy enough.

Hopefully this isn't going to be too gross. The new movies are pretty gross.

Snow…

Wow. Sweden is depressing.

"Would you like me if I wasn't a girl?"

wait, what?

Boy, that kid has a runny nose. I was like that …

Wait, what? Aw…

Ouch.

"Then we can be together."

Wow, this is going somewhere I hadn't…

Ow. Ow. I hate cats.

That's cute.

Wait. Is the dad gay?

(feels)

Yeesh. Ow.

"Be me a little."

sniff.

So cute. He's playing her his music.

Wait. What the hell was that?

Oh, crap. The drunk is going to kill her. Crap crap crap

"Oskar, I must leave."

sniff. sniff. Kleenex.

Oh jeez. Are they going to show an eye-gouging?

Wait, what?

YES. YES.

Click. And then I sit in the dark for an hour, and don't turn on any other movies.

***

So, I will probably watch again this weekend, even though I just watched last weekend. I feel like I should celebrate in some way.

Do you celebrate your anniversary?
"She can fly, she has amazing and horrifying powers, she isn’t exactly a boy or a girl, she can’t come inside unless she’s invited ... and she loves him. That’s enough."

--Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com


My LTROI Pinterest Board

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dongregg
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Re: Infection Anniversary

Post by dongregg » Mon Oct 26, 2015 4:47 pm

I saw it on ShowTime in March, 2013. The way the opening credits rolled in silence, then the snow storm, wind, dog barking -- I was hooked by then and yelled for my spouse to watch it with me. Hooked, but I didn't become infected until "What are you doing?" So it only took about 12 or so minutes for my fate to be sealed. Set it to record on DVR for the next showing, about a week later.

I was lucky it happened that way -- a sort of total experience. I didn't know about questions of moral and gender ambiguity until I started reading blogs and fan reviews. Four months later (and having read a thousand or more such posts and reviews), I found this site. At no point did I appreciate the argy-bargy about this or that aspect of the film, and a lot of that seemed to be fueled by members trying to explain or clarify the film based on the novel.

There's nothing to argue about or that needs explaining. The film is a total experience that stands on its on. And whether I watch it on DVR, streaming from Amazon, on Netflix, or my Blu-ray, my initial feelings for the film haven't changed, or, if they have, it is a deepening of my love for Oskar and Eli.

Yes, I note my anniversary, but I've stayed so immersed in the film experience that there's no reason to set aside time for a special viewing. I watch it all the way through a lot, and that includes showing it to friends at home or to colleagues at work.

On the forum I get to read tons of fan fictions. I've read LTODD and seen the play. All are just other works. If I read the novel, it will be the same -- a different standalone work that invites admiration but not comparisons. None of these can explain each other to me. I take them as they are and laugh or cry or whatever each work evokes.

I very much enjoyed your account of your initial viewing, especially, "Click. And then I sit in the dark for an hour, and don't turn on any other movies."

:D
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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intrige
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Re: Infection Anniversary

Post by intrige » Tue Oct 27, 2015 12:01 am

Oh the first watch,, sweet sweet memories!!
I became a member of this forum somewhere around October! Hmm. I got infected during summer.. It's 5 years now, wow.
Bulleri bulleri buck, hur många horn står upp

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Marlow
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Re: Infection Anniversary

Post by Marlow » Tue Oct 27, 2015 1:35 am

I caught LTROI by accident on pay cable TV around this time in 2011, they must have been running it for Halloween. I saw most of all of it the first time and looked for it and caught just part of it again before seeing it start to finish. I must have seen it, in whole or in part, six or more times in the two months it was being shown. I look for it and it is shown every so often still. I can't believe it has been four years, a long time.

I have been putting off watching recently because I want to write a post on the "You Can Wear My Mother's Dress" scene and I will have to do so if I watch it again. If I start watching it I end up watching too much. I can usually break away when the basketball game starts at the rec center because I dislike the acid scene. I usually must watch the "jungle gym" scenes, though. Du luktar konstigt. ;)

200 posts!
Du luktar konstigt

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dongregg
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Re: Infection Anniversary

Post by dongregg » Tue Oct 27, 2015 2:56 am

Marlow wrote:I caught LTROI by accident on pay cable TV around this time in 2011, they must have been running it for Halloween. I saw most of all of it the first time and looked for it and caught just part of it again before seeing it start to finish. I must have seen it, in whole or in part, six or more times in the two months it was being shown. I look for it and it is shown every so often still. I can't believe it has been four years, a long time.

I have been putting off watching recently because I want to write a post on the "You Can Wear My Mother's Dress" scene and I will have to do so if I watch it again. If I start watching it I end up watching too much. I can usually break away when the basketball game starts at the rec center because I dislike the acid scene. I usually must watch the "jungle gym" scenes, though. Du luktar konstigt. ;)

200 posts!
Okay! 200 posts! Looking forward to the next post about "You can wear my mother's dress."

I've about quit fast-forwarding through scenes. Well, the kid in the gym yells Hjälp! about a million times, so I FF to "Eli..."

But at times I don't intend to watch the whole thing, so I just FF to the scenes I love: jungle gym (all 3), candy kiosk, bedroom, basement, Eli's apartment, Oskar's apartment, Eli's apartment and the kiss, Eli leaving, the swimming pool, the train. I like it when Oskar whacks Connie, too.

But I enjoy just about the whole film, now, even including the cats and Virginia burning up.
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

Bloody Mary
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Re: Infection Anniversary

Post by Bloody Mary » Thu Nov 05, 2015 1:45 am

Congratulations!

My second anniversary is coming up in December. It was actually a process: The first time I saw LtROI, I was sorely disappointed because I had been psyched to see it and didn't even like it. Got obsessed with it anyway, thought about it and analyzed it every day, read the book, and then watched it again in February. That did it. I was all over this forum and would not drink anything but cranberry juice for about a month. :D

Did you do anything to celebrate (besides watch LtROI, of course)? Make vampire cookies? "Blood" drink? I had a smoothie called Blood a few years ago. It was warm and had beets, apples, and some other stuff. It sounds gross, but it was a tangy combination that did not taste anything like beets. Wish I could remember the name of the place that sold it.
"Do not go gentle into that good night . . . Rage, rage against the dying of the light." -Dylan Thomas

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dongregg
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Re: Infection Anniversary

Post by dongregg » Thu Nov 05, 2015 2:44 am

Bloody Mary wrote:Congratulations!

My second anniversary is coming up in December. It was actually a process: The first time I saw LtROI, I was sorely disappointed because I had been psyched to see it and didn't even like it. Got obsessed with it anyway, thought about it and analyzed it every day, read the book, and then watched it again in February. That did it. I was all over this forum and would not drink anything but cranberry juice for about a month. :D

Did you do anything to celebrate (besides watch LtROI, of course)? Make vampire cookies? "Blood" drink? I had a smoothie called Blood a few years ago. It was warm and had beets, apples, and some other stuff. It sounds gross, but it was a tangy combination that did not taste anything like beets. Wish I could remember the name of the place that sold it.
Your coming to LTROI confirms something that I have slowly come to believe -- that it's the film that infects us, not how we got to it and not what we expected. I know the hype can set someone up for disappointment, but I don't think it can hold off the infection for very long. If, that is, we are susceptible.

I read a review of the film in 2009. I recall the review as being somewhat perfunctory, not very pro or con, but I remembered it was about a kid vampire and a boy, and I remembered the creepy title. When I saw it in 2013, I was hooked during the opening snow storm and infected when Eli said, "What are you doing?"

It's a great film, but it has to be met by a viewer with a child heart, and I never know who has a child heart, so I just keep promoting it.
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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Drakeule
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Re: Infection Anniversary

Post by Drakeule » Thu Nov 05, 2015 4:41 am

It was the book that did it for me. I had seen both the movies, liked them both. (LTRIO was better of coarse) Anyway, it was how good the movie was that made me bother with the novel in the first place. I know people say the book is always better, but I had no idea it had twice the story. Movies are great but you can't get inside the character's mind like in the novel.

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metoo
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Re: Infection Anniversary

Post by metoo » Thu Nov 05, 2015 5:18 am

Drakeule wrote:It was the book that did it for me. [...] Movies are great but you can't get inside the character's mind like in the novel.
I would agree. The film is beautiful, but I regard it mainly as an illustration of the novel - it's in the latter that you find the story in its true depth.
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist

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Jameron
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Re: Infection Anniversary

Post by Jameron » Thu Nov 05, 2015 9:21 pm

metoo wrote:
Drakeule wrote:It was the book that did it for me. [...] Movies are great but you can't get inside the character's mind like in the novel.
I would agree. The film is beautiful, but I regard it mainly as an illustration of the novel - it's in the latter that you find the story in its true depth.
QFT.

.
"For a few seconds Oskar saw through Eli’s eyes. And what he saw was … himself. Only much better, more handsome, stronger than what he thought of himself. Seen with love."

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