Neil Marshall set to direct "The Last Voyage of Demeter".

This one probably falls into the category of Don't Get Your Hopes Up Yet, but I can't bring myself to care. The mere concept of a seafaring vampire movie directed by Neil Marshall causes me to froth at the mouth.

The Last Voyage Of Demeter concerns Dracula's journey from Transylvania to England, during which Dracula killed all but one of the ship's crew. Unlike every other aspect of the Dracula story, the voyage to England hasn't really been explored much, but under Neil Marshall's direction I'm hoping for it to grow into an awesomely schlocky, 19th-century version of Alien. It's really an ideal subject choice for this type of fanfic-esque movie because in most Dracula adaptations, the the sea voyage remains almost entirely offscreen in order to set up a more dramatic scene when the ghost-ship drifts into the English harbour with nothing but a coffin and a madman onboard. This way you can pick your favourite Dracula adaptation, and watch it with  The Last Voyage Of Demeter sandwiched into the middle! The Demeter story shouldn't step on the toes of other adaptations, but it's still not likely to include a whole bunch of irrelevent additions like one sees in loose adaptations such as Guy Ritchie's Holmes franchise or the recent Three Musketeers movie.

From The Descent, by Neil Marshall. (source)

For those unfamiliar with Neil Marshall, he's an English filmmaker who specialises in gleefully violent, suspenseful horror movies like Dog Soldiers, The Descent, and my all-time favourite, Doomsday. (Doomsday is a film of such brain-vomiting awesomeness that I can barely articulate its multitude of virtues. If you like the idea of a Scottish apocalypse movie featuring medieval knights, a badass female protagonist with a bionic eye, cannibal goth/punk cults, a deadly plague, Dr Bashir from Star Trek: DS9 playing a Tony Blair-esque Prime Minister, and a chase between motorcycles and a steam train, then... click here to read more?) Most recently Neil Marshall directed the Blackwater episode of Game Of Thrones, a self-contained seige warfare episode that received rave reviews and is (in my opinion) better than many of the extended battle sequences in Lord of the Rings. 

Right now the casting of Demeter is rather up-in-the-air. Although Noomi Rapace (!!) and Ben Kingsley's names have been semi-attached for a couple of years, neither have been confirmed and it seems like Ben Kingsley may have dropped out. Viggo Mortensen has just been offered the lead role (which isn't Dracula; I wouldn't be surprised if Dracula turns out to be a straight-up monster role rather than a "character"), but there's always a possibility these things can change right up until filming starts. I have no idea how excited other people are going to be about this movie, but OH BOY, AM I. Even discounting the likelihood of a Viggo Mortensen/Noomi Rapace combo, we have these elements to consider:

• ALIEN. This concept is straight-up Alien. Except instead of being in space, all the action will take place in an ocean-going Victorian ship that can creak ominously all the time and be crewed by a cast of superstitious, disloyal, angry and terrified sailors. I read a few sites today that wondered if it would be possible to retain suspense when the audience alread knows that all (or almost all) of the main characters are marked for death from the get-go, but... isn't that like most horror movies anyway? These things are all in the execution (pun unintended), not to mention the fact that with a cast that necessitates the presence several original, non-Dracula-canon characters, there's a definite possibility for a couple of survivors to be left come the end-credits.
• VAMPIRES. This post is mostly just speculation at the moment, but I feel like Neil Marshall would probably go for the absolute opposite type of vampire from the True Bloods and Twilights we're seeing a lot of right now. Neil Marshall likes to make movies about monsters and grotesques, and old-school Dracula is a monster and a grotesque rather than the dapper Dracula we see in most cinema adaptations. Temporarily unbound by the constraints of having to act like an aristocrat and a gentleman, the voyage to England is the perfect setting for Dracula to turn into the kind of feral villain we see in Dog Soldiers and Doomsday.
• PERIL AT SEA. A sailing ship is the perfect setting for a monster movie because it's 100% isolated and any attempts to get to safety depend on the weather and on the ability of the crew to work together as a unit. Also, Victorian sailing ships already provide unnumbered opportunities for gruesome death without the addition of a murderous vampire onboard, so I have no doubt that Neil Marshall will be able to exploit every available circumstance for gore and terror.

Viggo the Vampire Slayer. Potentially.

(Postscript: Dracula should obviously be played by Tilda Swinton.)

Links
The Last Voyage Of Demeter at IMDB.
Bloody Disgusting: Viggo Mortensen Offered Lead In Dracula Tale, ‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’

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Haute Couture: Ulyana Sergeenko and Maison Martin Margiela.

I was going to write about Batman today, but thinking about The Dark Knight Rises for any prolonged length of time causes my brain to dribble out of my ears. Time for me to do a u-turn from one of my passions (superheroes) to another: FASHION. 

Ulyana Sergeenko
Outside Russia, Ulyana Sergeenko is still relatively unknown. A comparatively young designer, she's only shown a couple of collections so far but is already getting primetime Fashion Week slots off the back of her fame as a socialite, photographer and street-style star. I tend to be very wary of people whose supposed ~fame~ stems from street style because I don't believe that "having good dress sense" is a legitimate reason for critical acclaim, and is usually code for the person in question being the child of somebody famous. That being said, Ulyana Sergeenko's Couture show was very impressive, lending a certain gravitas to the kind of Eastern-European peasant styles that usually turn out looking twee.

This was an emphatically wintry collection, with each of the models looking far warmer and more comfortable than one typically sees in a Couture show. There was a noticeable absense of eveningwear, which I found rather refreshing considering how much of Couture season is ruled by glitz and extremity.

When I say that Couture is ruled by glitz and extremity I don't necessarily mean that as a criticism, but it can be a little limiting. The two extremes one usually sees are graceful, sylphlike feminity (Dior) and harsh, jagged experimentalism (Mugler; McQueen), neither of which lend themselves to bulk or comfort. High-end fashion's obsession with the appearance of thinness means that it's relatively rare for quilted skirts and thick, heavy coats to appear together. Ulyana Sergeenko's old-fashioned silhouette allows for a little extra bulk, though, as it's based on the kind of peasant styles that required a lot of heavy, practical fabrics for warmth and durability.

Long, 1950s skirts are a staple of Sergeenko's designs, almost always combined with a soft, clingy sweater tucked in at the waist. You can see some more summery versions of this look from last season's collection here.

Maison Martin Margiela
Only fifteen looks long, this "artisanal" collection was short and peculiar. The models' faces were covered by jewelled masks and each of the outfits was constructed from a different found item, beginning with a relatively conservative suit with a vintage doorknob as the fastener but quickly branching out into more outlandish designs.

Maison Martin Margiela is a label that seems in love with its own mystery. The masked models are an old favourite for their catwalk shows, and we don't even know who the head designer is -- if indeed there is one. Margiela himself left a few years ago, and it's unknown whether anyone took over from him or if the design work is now purely a team effort.

 Two of the outfits were partially constructed from the dismembered remains of basebal mitts.

 ... and this jacket was made from a windsurf sail.

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Teen Wolf 2x09: Party Guessed.

Previously: Teen Wolf 101: An introduction to the eighth wonder of our world. (Now available in audio as well!)

Why does Teen Wolf hate happiness? At this very moment I'm collecting vials of my own tears to freeze into an ice-sculpture, which will then be mailed to dastardly showrunner Jeff Davis as a sign of protest regarding his unendingly cruel treatment of Lydia. Stiles trying and failing to get a comically huge box through Lydia's door was the one moment of respite in this episode's otherwise horrifying montage of violence, trauma, and mass hallucinations. (Note: Because Dylan O'Brien is a Hayao Miyazaki animation of a baby animal, he makes the action of pushing a box through a door completely hilarious and adorable.)

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This episode saw our favourite crew of preposterously good-looking "teenagers" attend Lydia's birthday party, which realistically featured Allison and Lydia wearing the product of several hours of decision-making while Stiles and Scott just turned up in the same shirts they wear to school every day. Like last week, "Party Guessed" was so full of drama that no one took their shirt off, although several people did get thrown into a pool. And Derek has this whole bloodstained vest thing going on that gives the audience a wealth of opportunity to notice that he moves about 100 times as many muscles in his arms as he does on his face, even when he's standing still. Rarely has he looked more like a videogame cut-scene character than when he was hanging out in the Werewolf Den, clad in little more than the Die Hard vest, blood, his ever-present five-o'clock-shadow, and a ton of hair gel.

DEREK HALE: CGI PERSON. (source)

Derek and the Ducklings.
Is it bad that I laugh and laugh as soon as Derek comes onscreen, and can't stop until he leaves? Same goes for Erica, who after last week's uncharacteristically sensible rave outfit is back on form in a black lace shirt and about 2 lbs of makeup -- perfect for a night spent in Derek's Disused Tunnel-o'-Trauma. I love that Derek is such a malfunctioning person that his super well-thought-out plan to restrain the baby wolves during the full moon is to whip out this medieval torture device rather than, like, build them a cell or something. I mean, what does he do all day? Considering how much he must have work out to maintain his current godlike figure, you'd think that he'd welcome another chance to lift heavy things onto other heavy things. Of course, there's always the possibility that he's just as terrible at DIY as he is at everything else -- a very workable explanation for why all his hangout spots look like sets from a horror movie.

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I'm becoming morbidly obsessed with Derek's wolfpack because every time they show up they seem less and less competent and more and more likely to kill someone by accident. Isaac is a dick and very possibly destined for Evil, Erica craves attention but has no idea what to do with it once she has it, and although Boyd is relatively sensible I don't know how long his loyalty will last if the events of this episode mean that Derek is no longer the Alpha. I suspect that next week's ep is going to be another life-ruiner for Derek because his two options are that either he's no longer the Alpha, or that he's no longer a werewolf at all, meaning that either he's just lost his fledgling surrogate family or he's lost his entire identity, or both. Remember when Derek was happy and everything went well for him all the time? No, neither does Derek.

DEREK HALE HAS A FACE. (source)

I'm never gonna give up on my fixation with the fact that in any other show, Derek would be a dark tragic angst-prince, but in Teen Wolf it's more-or-less openly acknowledged that he's absolutely terrible at everything. The only thing standing between Derek and abject failure is his ability to flex all 97 of his bicep muscles at once while glowering people into submission with his feral werewolf eyebrows. My immediate reaction to Derek is, and will always be, to cry until my room floods and I have to stand on top of a chair to escape the floodwaters while I shout to the ceiling: "DEREK HALE! HAS! A FACE!"

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Briefly wresting the crown from Stiles' beautiful hands, Derek won the Funniest Moment award for this episode with his phonecall to Scott. Did I mention that Derek is terrible at everything? Did I?? He's so desperate that he calls Scott for help! It's not often that I give a performance-based gold star to Tyler Hoechlin, but his slightly high-pitched, "Everything's totally normal here!!" tone of voice in this scene was hilarious.

I'll never hear the phrase "telephoto lense" the same way again.

Matt and Allison
This is one of those moments where I have to applaud Teen Wolf for including something totally basic that nevertheless rarely gets shown in most teen dramas. I'm so used to drawn-out storylines where the characters act like idiots that I assumed that Allison would remain unaware of Matt's creepiness for several more episodes, maybe even to the extent of her breaking up with Scott in order to date Matt. I could see it unfolding in front of us: multiple episodes of Scott failing to communicate to Allison that her new boyfriend is a psycho, as Allison blythely continues to date Matt because girls are idiots. But no! Instead we get this brilliant scene where Allison finds the photos in Matt's camera, accompanied by suitably creepy incidental music that illustrates just how disturbing it'd be to find hundreds of photos of yourself on the camera of some guy you've gone out with once. Matt instantly transforms from "that creepy guy who you don't like very much" to "holy shit, he's a serial killer". For once, we get to see a teen show that not only accurately represents how a girl would feel in this kind of situation, but also how she should feel. It's easy to make comparisons between Twilight and Teen Wolf, but when it comes to treatment of female characters -- particularly in the context of romantic relationships -- Teen Wolf is Twilight's polar opposite. And the scene later on when Allison confronts Matt at the party and he suddenly gets all angry and defensive, even though all she's done is say that she finds his photo collection creepy? Perfect!

Lydia and Peter Hale
Lydia is the most alienated kid in this show. Even Derek isn't as lonely as she is. (Does she even have parents?) The way the audience gets to see Lydia is one of my favourite things about season 2, and it makes smart use of the editing difficulties caused by an ever-growing ensemble cast. In some cases (Boyd; Danny) the fact that there isn't enough screentime for everyone can be frustrating, but with Lydia it helps to illustrate why no one has any time to realise how much trouble she's in. Young-adult supernatural fiction is brilliant when it comes to these kinds of great big clanging metaphors for adolescent angst -- werewolves dealing with strange new urges and bodily functions; vampires lusting after people they never used to notice; human characters being dragged under by mind-control or demonic possession while their friends fail to notice.

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I never thought I was going to be a person who loves Peter Hale, but Teen Wolf seems determined to make me accept that every single character is awesome. Peter is evil in a way that must surely be completely different from his personality prior to the Hale House fire. We may never know what he was like when he was still sane, the one lingering personality trait from his old life being the fact that he's cerebral in a way that most other Teen Wolf characters really... aren't. His treatment of Lydia is beyond creepy, but I feel like the writers are purposefully pushing all the ways in which he values both her intelligence, and intelligence in general. In season 1 he tried to recruit Stiles because he recognised that Stiles was "the smart one", and now he's commiserating with Lydia about how her friends never tell her anything. Oh, and on top of that he's always coming out with these random facts like some kind of quiz-generator. I get the impression that one of the reasons why he scorns Derek may be because Derek just isn't book-smart at all.

FACE OF AN ANGEL.

Spiking the punch.
I'm an idiot and am still not 100% clear what was going on with the spiked punch, so, uh, hit me up in comments if you can explain it to me? It seemed like the purple petals in the punchbowl were meant to be wolfsbane, but Lydia's hallucinated wolfsbane in the past so maybe it wasn't even there? Plus, wouldn't wolfsbane only effect wolves? Or effect werewolves and humans in different ways? Was it Matt or Lydia who did the spiking? Or was it just one of the gatecrashers, drugging everyone with something more mundane? Either way, the spiked punch did provide me with my favourite Scott Is A Potato moment of the episode: his hallucination of Allison making out with a kanima. Everyone else gets to hallucinate an emotionally-scarring image of their greatest fear or worry; Scott McCall freaks out because he thinks his girlfriend might make out with a giant lizard.

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(Note: Like Scott, I am a potato, and therefore when we got to the part where Allison "shot herself", I was like, "Oh my god, does Allison have an evil twin? Is that where we're going with this, Teen Wolf??" which probably says a lot more about the calibre of the shows I habitually watch than it says about Teen Wolf itself.)

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I can't believe that Lydia and Stiles aren't 110% married yet because they're clearly the only two members of their species in this entire show: adorable little geniuses with giant, tear-filled anime eyes. MFEO! Aside from this, my main commentary re: Stiles in this episode is the same as my commentary re: Stiles in any episode, ie, HOW DOES HE MANAGE TO BE THE COMIC RELIEF AND THE MOST EMOTIONALLY ENGAGING CHARACTER AT THE SAME TIME? Like, if Stiles and Derek ever had a baby, their genes would average out to create the normalest kid ever because Stiles has 200% emotions on his face and Derek has zero.

Victoria Argent
I'm already desperately hoping that she'll return from the dead as a werewolf next week, because this episode made me love her. You know, in a "Victoria Argent is a terrifying velociraptor" kind of way, not in the sense that I want to get pedicures with her while we discuss our favourite homicide techniques. As soon as she was bitten last week I immediately knew that this was going to be one of the best plot-twists of the season, and this episode didn't disappoint. Up until now Victoria had been a fairly one-dimensional figure, a terrifying foil for Scott's dual roles as a werewolf and the boyfriend of a teenage girl, but now I've seen the tender relationship between her and her husband I'm suddenly being sucked in like the sucker I am. At first glance she's this evil cyborg Desperate Housewife but at the end of "Raving" we got this incredibly tender scene with Chris cradling her suddenly fragile-seeming body, bookended this week by the unexpectedly personal tragedy of her death.

The Victoria/Chris death scene reminded me of something we were told in season 1 but hasn't really come up since then: that the Argents are matriarchal. Or at least that the women are the planners and thinkers while the men are the muscle, which implies to me that Allison's hunter training is going to step up in the near future. We didn't really see as much of this leadership with Victoria as we did with Kate, but between Victoria and Chris it was still pretty clear that Victoria was the strong one. Oh, and can I just say that Gerard Argent was on top form in this episode? Literally referring to himself as a "cold-hearted patriarch" because he's 100% self-aware that he's a terrifying homicidal warlord and just. Does. Not Care. And calling Victoria a coccoon that's just waiting to hatch! Does Gerard Argent have emotions? Signs point to no.

Teen Wolf realism moment of the week: Lydia's blurred eye-makeup in the opening scenes. No way would Lydia go to bed without taking her makeup off! Runners-up for Teen Wolf realism are Derek's still-mysterious subway train (is there even a subway in Beacon Hills?) and Peter Hale's glowingly white teeth when he first drags himself up out of the ground.

Favourite detail: Stiles calling all his new friends he met at the gay bar. CAN WE TALK SOME MORE ABOUT HOW STILES IS THE ONLY FUNCTIONAL PERSON ON THIS SHOW, PLEASE? He networks! He makes friends! He actually thinks about other peoples' feelings and understands how relationships work!

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Teen Wolf 101: An introduction to the eighth wonder of our world.

Anyone who follows me on Tumblr will know that the past month of my life has been a rapid downward spiral into Teen Wolf obsession. Circa June 2012, I was still innocent of the wonders of Teen Wolf; completely unaware that it is the Shakespeare of our era/Twilight for people who enjoy emotions that make sense/set in a beautiful alternate universe where homophobia doesn't exist. My life was empty and barren, a tragic wasteland wherein I laboured under the assumption that Teen Wolf was a mediocre MTV show populated by a cast of bad actors with great hair. The real honest true truth is that every actor in Teen Wolf has brilliant comic timing (in addition to, yes, great hair), and one of the main characters is played by a guy who, despite having zero previous acting experience, is so talented his that his very presence onscreen is like an icecream scoop directly out of my heart. One day he will be showered with Oscars and Emmys and adoring fanmail from around the world, but in the meantime he'll have to make do with people like me reblogging 40,000 gifs of his face every day. This actor is Dylan O'Brien. He plays Stiles.

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If you watch Teen Wolf, you love Stiles. If you don't watch Teen Wolf, you are merely living through a brief period of confusion prior to the inevitability of falling in love with Stiles.

An accurate illustration of Teen Wolf fans & their attitude towards Stiles. (source)

I won't even attempt to write about the events of Teen Wolf in their entirety, partly because it's impossible to summarise a show that amounts to the distilled essence of perfection, and partly because that would take about 50,000 words. Because I'm a really good-hearted person, though, I will provide a brief 10-point guide to the defining points of Teen Wolf as it stands as the cultural touchstone of my generation.

(N.B. This post contains no direct spoilers for recent eps but since I'm writing it midway through season 2, you can assume that it's not suitable for people who are intensely invested in the idea of watching the series ~completely pure~. I've posted links to sources for all gifs, but if you made one of them and would prefer different crediting or for me to remove it from this page, just comment.) 

1. Scott McCall, the main character, is a moron. Bitten by a werewolf in episode 1, he proceeds to get into trouble and stupidly ignore Stiles' advice on a regular basis. He is played by Tyler Posey who, when asked about Scott's "black and white" attitude to loyalty, replied, "Scott's Mexican, I think." There is no such thing as a non-awesome interview with a member of the Teen Wolf cast.

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In real life, Tyler Posey and Dylan O'Brien live together. If you want to see a video of Tyler Posey answering fan questions while Dylan O'Brien cooks dinner and lays the table in the background, then this is your lucky day because that is a thing that exists in real life.

2. Stiles is beautiful like a timelapse video of a blossoming flower, and is the best mother any young wolf could possibly hope for.

A painting. (copyright rubdown.) (source)

Stiles is the emotional heart of the show. His mother died a few years ago, and now he lives with his father, the sheriff. Stiles' relationship with his father is a source of unending delight because they're so funny together (Stiles is Veronica Mars!!) but occasionally super upsetting as well because Stiles is the only person in the show who has a mature, functioning relationship with a parent but still has to lie to his dad almost every day. The worst thing is that since Stiles' dad is the sheriff, he knows that Stiles is involved in something dangerous but can't work out what it is because "werewolf gang-war" is kind of hard to deduce from the information given. 

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Aside from "every single moment of Teen Wolf", the best moments in this show are the moments when Dylan O'Brien is onscreen, doing anything whatsoever. His face is a painting and his comic timing is perfect and his pratfall abilities are on a par with Hugh Laurie's. The thing about Stiles is that you first get sucked in by Dylan O'Brien's dorky charm and ability to fling his whole body into his comedy scenes, but after a few episodes you begin to realise that not only is he the best actor in the cast, Stiles is basically the most lovable character ever. Stiles is the planner, the strategic thinker, the researcher.... basically, he's the Hermione Granger of the show. He's the Hermione and the Willow Rosenberg and the Giles.

3. Derek Hale is a lonesome werewolf whose main hobbies are shirtlessness and being sad because his family were viciously murdered by an anti-werewolf racist "hunter". He has a lot of emotions but sometimes they take a long time to float to the surface via the murky depths of his damaged psyche because he is so deep and dark like a well full of sadness and anger and abdominal muscles. (This is the reason why there are some episodes where he doesn't have any facial expressions.) Derek Hale is a CGI creation who was originally designed for videogame cut scenes but was deemed too distracting because he's so attractive.

from the Teen Wolf tumblr.

This is the one gif in existence wherein Derek Hale smiles. This is the complete opposite of the actor who plays him, Tyler Hoechlin, who smiles all the time and is an adorable furball who records adorable Teen Wolf adverts with Dylan O'Brien:

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4. The Argents are a family of werewolf hunters, headed up by the intensely terrifying Gerard Argent, who is played by Saul Tigh from Battlestar Galactica. Allison Argent is our primary view into the family, a fresh-faced teenager (played by an extremely fresh-faced 27-year-old) who, at the beginning of the series, has no idea that her family are professional werewolf hunters. Because Teen Wolf is fraught with fraughtness, Allison is in a relationship with werewolf Scott McCall. It's all terribly Romeo & Juliet.

Allison's parents are Victoria and Chris Argent. Victoria Argent is the polar opposite of Stiles because she's the worst mother of all time + a werewolf racist + hates everyone. She looks like a cross between Cruella DeVille and a velociraptor, and her greatest wish is to put Scott into a meat-grinder. Chris Argent is marginally less unhinged and is possibly being set up for some kind of role-reversal because unlike his father, wife, or sister Kate Argent (who is extra unhinged and thinks torturing people is fun), he follows a hunter code that only allows him to kill werewolves who are a) adults, and b) murderers. Important Teen Wolf factoid: According to Tyler Posey, the actor who plays Chris Argent has extremely soft facial hair that he, Tyler, enjoys to touch and stroke. Remember what I said about there being no such thing as a non-awesome Teen Wolf cast interview? Yes.

from the Teen Wolf tumblr.

5. Lydia is a lady and a genius and a role-model, but her life is a continuous river of tears and awfulness because she's preyed upon by the Tom Riddle of undead evil werewolves, plus none of her friends have explained to her what's going on re: the existence of Actual Real-Life Werewolves. She's the "popular girl" and Stiles is tragically infatuated with her because in addition to being stunningly beautiful, she's a math and science genius. Every instant of Stiles hopelessly crushing on Lydia is a moment that stabs an icicle directly into my heart and sends tiny ice-particles through my veins to travel around my body and eventually turn me into Mr Freeze.

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6. Jackson is the last of the primary teenager-aged main characters (although he is played by a 24-year-old), and is the Draco Malfoy to Scott's Harry Potter because he's rich, malicious, and obsessed with being better than Scott at quidditch lacrosse. Aside from the fact that he looks exactly like an Abercrombie & Fitch model, Jackson is a black hole when it comes to redeeming features. He is a rage-douche and a lizard, and unlike with Lydia almost everything bad that happens to him is 100% due to his own hubris. He desperately wanted to become a werewolf so he could be better at lacrosse (Everyone in Teen Wolf is obsessed with lacrosse. Don't question it.) but instead of becoming a werewolf he began to grow an Evil Manicure that drips paralytic poison and led to his eventual Pokemon evolution of transforming into a giant lizard.

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In season 1, Jackson had three settings: Shirtless, Ragedouche, and Being A Dick. In season 2 a fourth category was added: Lizard. His favourite things are ruining Scott's life and playing lacrosse by himself at night because he's angry about how hard it is to be a super-hot millionaire teenager who is only co-captain of the lacrosse team instead of just captain. He's played by Colton Haynes, who is second only to Holland Roden (Lydia) for most ridiculous Hollywood stagename in the Teen Wolf cast roster of ridiculous Hollywood stagenames. Colton Haynes was almost cast as Edward Cullen in the Twilight movies (just as Tyler Posey was almost cast as Jacob Black; Teen Wolf is full of Twilight rejects), but was thrown over for Robert Pattinson, possibly because when you google him you find pictures of him making out with other dudes. He is a sassy Ken Doll and likes to take ridiculous photos with Holland Roden and cries when he listens to Adele.

from the Teen Wolf tumblr.

7. Aside from his near-supernatural ability to be unintentionally hilarious while shouting at people, the best thing about Jackson is his best friend Danny. Danny is sensible and wry and generally delightful, as well as being the least convincing teenager in the entire show. He's also the only character whose life isn't an unending series of disasters and melodrama, because he purposefully remains ignorant of the whole werewolves/murder/peril thing about which Stiles, Scott, Allison and Jackson are so obsessed.

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Danny isn't really a main character but his role is representative of one of my favourite aspects of Teen Wolf: the showrunners' attitude towards the inclusion of LGBT characters. LGBT people are ridiculously unrepresented on TV, and although we're now getting past the point where all such characters are stereotypes, most of their storylines still centre around "issues" episodes and/or LGBT themed storylines like coming out or dealing with homophobia. But Teen Wolf? Exists in an alternate universe where homophobia has pretty much been eradicated. Really the only problem I have with Teen Wolf in this regard is that I'd like there to be a couple more female characters next season.

Teen Wolf is the only show I have ever seen that contains "gay jokes" that don't revolve around gay panic and/or internalised homophobia. The sports coach -- stereotypically one of the last bastions of 1950s-style homophobia and masculinit -- tries to fix Scott up with a guy in one of the several scenes that strongly imply that characters in the Teen Wolf universe don't expect each other to be "straight until proven otherwise" but are open-minded to a degree that rarely exists in real life. With regards to the treatment of gay characters, Teen Wolf seems to me like a new breed of TV show, the next step on from LGBT themed series like Queer As Folk and shows like Torchwood that contain a lot of queer themes but are still riddled with "issues episodes" and homophobia-based conflict. Obviously this wouldn't work for every show, but for a lighthearted comedy-drama show like Teen Wolf it's ideal.

gif from the Teen Wolf tumblr.

8. The wolf pack. Isaac, Boyd and Erica only show up in season 2, so this section is slightly more spoilery than the rest of the post. Derek bites them because he wants a pack of his own to help fight the growing numbers of hunters coming to town, which turns out to be a terrible decision because Derek put precisely zero thought into who he should bite. Prior to The Bite, Isaac and Erica are alienated and afraid, but because Derek told them that being a werewolf would make them powerful, The Bite has the placebo effect of making them take on the characteristics of that which they think is most empowering. So Isaac goes from being an awkward, frightened abuse-survivor to being an assholish highschool burnout, and Erica goes from being an antisocial outcast to being a sexxxy vamp who shows up to school wearing a leather bustier and tries to control boys with the power of her cleavage. According to Isaac and Erica, the primary symptoms of becoming a werewolf are to start wearing a lot of black leather all the time, and to act real sassy.

SERIOUSLY. THEY LOOK LIKE THIS.

Derek's pack is a complete fiasco because Derek is too busy brooding to competently teach his kids how to function as werewolves. It turns out that the best way to form a loyal band of followers is not to recruit emotionally damaged teenagers whose main goal in life is to be popular. Who knew? (Stiles, probably.) Derek may look like he was carved out of granite to the specifications of a romance novelist (TYLER HOECHLIN FOR CHRISTIAN GRAY!!) but he's kind of a Zoolander when it comes to leadership skills and forward planning.

Boyd is the third of Derek's puppies, and if there's any justice in the world he'll end up being Derek's second in command. Part of the reason why Isaac and Erica are so terrible at werewolfing is because Derek never gave them a "The strength of the wolf is the pack; The strength of the pack is the wolf," pep-talk, but Boyd is smart enough to infer this for himself. He actually seems to have a survival strategy in place, and exhibits signs of having some common sense. Maybe this is because unlike Isaac and Erica, the implication is that his everyday life requires him to far more independant.

9. Teen Wolf realism. I'm going to be referring to this a lot in future reviews, so here's a basic rundown of how reality works in Teen Wolf. At one end of the scale we have basic worldbuilding facts like the existence of werewolves and the absense of homophobia: totally fine. At the other end we have weird, laughable details that make you go "WTF" because they're so clearly not grounded in reality. For example, this week's episode -- cleverly titled "Raving" -- took place at a warehouse rave, which cost $75 to get into. $75 per ticket, for a warehouse party populated by teenagers? No. If I spent that much money to go to a party then it'd better involve trapeze artists and complimentary class-C drugs at the very least, not just a bunch of people half-heartedly dancing to Teen Wolf's ever-present soundtrack of dramatic dubstep.

A more consistent example of Teen Wolf "realism" would be the mysterious absense of city-wide panic in Beacon Hills. As of season 2, the body count in this town (plus break-ins at the school, and the mysterious "animal attacks" that regularly cause widespread property damage) is worryingly high, yet no one seems to be freaking out about it. Even Sheriff Stilinski doesn't seem as worried as he should be, considering the fact that he shows up at every crime scene and sees his son hanging out at those crime scenes as well. I can only assume that season 3 will bring some outside law-enforcement into the mix to stir up more trouble.

10. The boys' locker room. Hopefully you already have enough reasons to watch this marvel of a show, but if you need any more persuasion and are of the attracted-to-men persuasion, here's a Teen Wolf PSA for you: in addition to the show's disproportionately tiny quantity of shirts vs torsos, a truly stupendous number of scenes take place in the boys' locker room. Scenes in the boys' locker room are the "Why is Dr McCoy on the bridge of the Enterprise??" of Teen Wolf. The boys' locker room is needlessly home to so many dramatic fights and plot-points that it gets its very own rule in the Teen Wolf Drinking Game that my brother and I selflessly invented for the good of humanity.

Viewing guide: If you're still unsure about whether or not to embark upon Teen Wolf, I advise watching episodes 4 and 9 of season 1. With the basic info from this primer you don't really need to watch the first few eps, but skipping directly onto season 2 would mean missing out on too much awesomeness!

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The Hollow Crown: Henry IV Part 2.

Previously: Henry IV Part 2.

This post is gonna be wayyyyy less in-depth than the one I wrote for Henry IV Part 1 because nothing happens in this play. I'm serious. Maybe there was some heavy editing going on or something but as far as I can tell the only things that happen in Henry IV Part 2: Electric Boogaloo are:

• Random soliloquays about how hard it is to be king.
• The world's greatest collection of Rude Mechanicals, indicating that "LOL, he's a women's tailor" is a joke that remains hilarious for 500 years.
• An extended sequence of Tom Hiddleston's oiled and gleaming torso.
• Sad Falstaff.
• The King is dead; long live the King.

"I just can't wait to be King!"

It was like one of those situations when there's a really awesome, successful movie, and then someone's like, "OK, let's get a sequel up in this joint!" except instead of writing a whole new story they just erase most of the character development from the first movie and try to do it all over again a second time. Although this time round there's little to no plot, and the supervillain was defeated at the end of the last movie so instead of a battle there's just an awful lot of tragicomedy scenes involving an old fat conman slowly sinking into gout, despair and failure along with his new collection of comedy sidekicks. I don't know much about the circumstances surrounding the writing of this play, but I can easily imagine Queen Elizabeth writing to Shakespeare all, "More of this Falstaff fellow, my man! He makes one LOL!" and Shakespeare sobbing into his inkwell as he tries in vain to think up something interesting that happened to Henry V in the years leading up to his coronation.

Unlike in Part 1 when Prince Hal was front and centre as a modern coming-of-age protagonist, Part 2 saw Falstaff in the foreground as a kind of decaying Captain Jack Sparrow figure, unwillingly succumbing to his many debtors in his old age. Simon Russell Beale struck a pretty good balance between playing a sympathetic Falstaff and being outright unlikeable (the first being rather difficult and the second being all too easy), partially because the people Falstaff was taking advantage of were so damn stupid. I spent a significant chunk of this play throwing rotten turnips at Mistress Quickly's head because she just kept getting taken in by Falstaff's wafer-thin scams. I wanted to like her because I'm a Strong Female Character myself and feel a duty to the sisterhood, but sisterhood only goes so far when girlfriend is letting Falstaff eat her out of house and home again instead of letting him be sent to debtor's prison. Also, the girl who hangs out in Mistress Quickly's tavern? Why is she into Falstaff all of a sudden! He obviously has no money, he's super unappealing in every conceivable way, and just last week she was getting to make out with Golden Prince Hal himself! There's a pretty strong implication that she's at least a part-time prostitute, but that kind of just brings me back to the whole "Falstaff has no money" thing. On the whole, the person who consistently had the best reaction to Falstaff was this guy:

This kid was the Henry IV Part 2 equivalent of the hilarious reaction-shot characters we saw in Richard II. Throughout Falstaff's gradual deterioration into the realm of true awfulness, this boy was on hand to remove Falstaff's boots and pour him more wine, apparently for no pay whatsoever. (Which, come to think of it, sounds alarmingly similar to the type of internships my generation are currently suffering through en masse.) All the while he is barely restraining himself from rolling his eyes at every person around him, presumably because his keen young mind is as-yet unmarred by decades of alcoholism. I have no doubt that he'll grow up to be an excellent Calm Thou Tits character, of which this play has many. Shakespeare loves to include these guys: bit-part characters who show up to say "Are you really sure you want to murder the King?" whenever one of the protagonists is foaming at the mouth about love, kingship, patriotism, etc. Henry IV Part 2 saw the old King Henry followed hither and yon by a whole troupe of Calm Thou Tits courtiers, including Ser Jorah from Game Of Thrones. (Which was super exciting for me because whenever Ser Jorah appears onscreen in Game Of Thrones, I immediately sacrifice a gallon of tears to the gods of romance because his slavish loyalty to his Khaleesi is food for my soul.)

"Calm thou tits, my lord!"

Aside from our nameless hero, Falstaff's Boy, this was a play about distinctly unappealing people. Prince Hal's evolution from carefree adolescent to royal hero in Part 1 seems to have regressed a little in the interim, leaving him to lounge around with Poins while he waits for father to die. I feel like the Hal we see this time round comes across a lot more feckless because we've seen that he can do better, but he still goes back to his old ways of spying on Falstaff and failing to live up to his duties when his father needs him the most. He tells Poins that he's upset about his father's illness, but his younger brothers are all either by his father's side at court or busy fighting rebels while he and Poins oil each other up and giggle. When it finally comes to it, Hal's rejection of Falstaff gives every appearance of being needlessly cruel. All through the play King Henry's messengers have been hounding Falstaff down as a bad influence on Hal when he and Hal are barely even in touch any more. Falstaff is a moocher and a con-artist, but Hal really doesn't seem like someone who needs outside help to get into trouble.

If you enjoy scenes made out of pure, nail-biting frustration, look no further than Prince Hal taking the crown from his father's pillow. Look, if you're going to take the crown from your father, check to see if he's dead first! This is basic shit, dude! As it is, there's this long scene that contained what I can only imagine were some potentially enthralling emotions and soliloquays and what-have-you, but the audience are paying way more attention to the door because clearly the still-breathing king is about to burst in at any moment and demand his crown back. By the time Jeremy Irons did lurch into the room, my friends and I had all practically shouted ourselves hoarse from yelling "Take it off! Take it off!" at Prince Hal. And not in a Magic Mike way.

I have no idea if Hal's brothers have a larger role in Henry V, but this scene really made me hope that they do. Prince Hal, who up until now has spent the majority of his time getting drunk and playing pranks on people (interspersed with semi-regular bouts of navel-gazin), has rolled up to the palace to ponder the meaning of kingship in the couple of hours prior to his ailing father's demise. And then he nabs the crown before his dad's even kicked it. I realise that this is a powerful scene and that the brilliant thing about Hal is that he isn't quite ready for power, and that power changes him irrevocably, but -- what do the brothers think? Are they bitter about the fact that they've been standing by their father all this time while all Hal has to do is waltz in and claim the throne? What? Has anyone ever written a fanfic play about Prince Hal's little brothers? Is it like Game of Thrones? Enquiring minds want to know.

To no surprise whatsoever, Jeremy Irons' role was even more impressive here than in Part 1. Now close to death, his frame seems to shrink in on itself, partly helped along by the fact that he spends most of the play in ragged nightgowns rather than the more imposing robes of office he was wearing in the days before Hotspur's rebellion. Also he only appears at night, murkily lit to a grey pallor as he staggers around the throne room by himself, lonely and exhausted. Dressed in a soft, closely-fitted velvet jacket, Prince Hal looks even more lithe and youthful by comparison, and far more subdued than he was before he entered the palace. The most significant difference, though, was the lighting. The scenes we see of Henry IV's rule all seem to take place during the witching hours, with everyone's skin looking drawn and haggard in the grey-blue light. As soon as Hal is crowned, though, the throne room takes on the red-gold tones it had during Richard's reign, and Hal himself seems to glow with youth and vitality.

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