Vampire Slayer

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is a title in search of a movie.But the film is, at least for an hour or so, so wondrously effervescent and its young star is such a complete charmer that it's hard to sit there without feeling those irritating pangs of warmth and pleasure that signify you are having a good time.Kristy Swanson plays Buffy of that cultural mecca of strip malls, doughnut shoppes and GAP stores called the San Fernando Valley. She is not just from the Valley or of the Valley, she is the Valley: She's the Valleygeist, beautiful, shallow, casually cruel, obscenely vacuous.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is back on the big screen -- this time with a new spin. The character first appeared in the 1992 movie, which spawned a hit TV show and earned her a cult following. Now, Clinton McClung is screening a singalong called Buffy the Musical in cities around the country. It comes to the Avalon Theatre in Washington this weekend. The singalong version of Buffy started as a tribute to a single TV episode. McClung, a self-admitted "Buffy geek," ran a movie theater in Boston a couple of years ago. In November 2004, he thought it would be fun to screen the episode "Once More With Feeling" as a singalong for himself and a few of his friends.

LOS ANGELES - For all the tons of copy written about the move of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer from WB to UPN starting this fall, in the end it mainly comes to this in the television business: Thanks to Buffy, Maybelline now is spending millions on UPN, and that makes the network previously known for WWF Smackdown! and its teen-boy audience very happy. UPN is so happy to have Buffy - even though it's paying an astronomical $2.3 million an episode, $900,000 more per hour than WB - that the first half of its day with critics on the Summer Press Tour yesterday had a decided all-Buffy, all-the-time feel to it. Network president Dean Valentine and chief operating officer Adam Ware, spent most of their time with critics saying how "thrilled" they were to have Buffy.

When audiences last saw the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in May 2003, Buffy and her friends had won a nearly apocalyptic battle between good and evil. Their hometown of Sunnydale, Calif. -- also known as the Hellmouth -- was a gargantuan pit as a result. After peering into the crater, Buffy, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, walked away with a smile, and the television series came to a close after seven seasons. On March 14, Buffy the Vampire Slayer will return in comic book form. Joss Whedon, Buffy's creator, has written the first five issues and will oversee -- or "executive-produce," he says -- the whole arc as if it were a television show.

When audiences last saw the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in May 2003, Buffy and her friends had won a nearly apocalyptic battle between good and evil. Their hometown of Sunnydale, Calif. -- also known as the Hellmouth -- was a gargantuan pit as a result. After peering into the crater, Buffy, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, walked away with a smile, and the television series came to a close after seven seasons. On March 14, Buffy the Vampire Slayer will return in comic book form. Joss Whedon, Buffy's creator, has written the first five issues and will oversee -- or "executive-produce," he says -- the whole arc as if it were a television show.

It's about time those of you who still think Buffy the Vampire Slayer is some silly kids' show woke up and smelled the coffee (or perhaps blood would be more appropriate). And the recently released DVD collection of the show's 12 first-season episodes is a good place to start the process. The episodes on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Complete First Season --beginning with "Welcome to the Hellmouth," in which the newly expelled Buffy moves to a new town, meets new friends and finds her slayer responsibilities never go away, and running through "Prophecy Girl," her final encounter with The Master, in which Buffy dies for the first (but not last)

Angel is sitting in a bar in downtown L.A., trying to drink away the Buffy blues. He's got 'em bad, and he's sounding sad."My story?" he says in the voice drenched in neon and noir. "It all started with a girl. She was a really, really pretty girl. I mean, her hair. Her hair was."Angel never quite finishes the sentence. Before he can take another sip, he's out in an alley behind the bar slugging it out with a couple of nasty-faced vampires, saving a girl with long blond hair from their drooling fangs -- a girl a lot like the one he left back in Sunnydale.

Between the switch from WB to UPN and the season finale that left Buffy six feet under, no returning series has generated a buzz equal to that of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I remember a grown-up critic grabbing me in the hallway the day after the season finale and saying, "But, David, she was dead and buried. How can they possibly bring her back and remain credible?" I don't think credibility is a big concern for hardcore fans of this remarkable series. I mean, think of all the wild mythology you had to buy into just to get past the pilot.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is a title in search of a movie.But the film is, at least for an hour or so, so wondrously effervescent and its young star is such a complete charmer that it's hard to sit there without feeling those irritating pangs of warmth and pleasure that signify you are having a good time.Kristy Swanson plays Buffy of that cultural mecca of strip malls, doughnut shoppes and GAP stores called the San Fernando Valley. She is not just from the Valley or of the Valley, she is the Valley: She's the Valleygeist, beautiful, shallow, casually cruel, obscenely vacuous.

People who can't name the U.S. secretary of state or locate Florida on a map can tell you exactly what they think Pee-wee Herman was doing on the evening of Friday, July 26, 1991, in a porno house in Sarasota, Fla. Some will even remember the name of the theater and what it was showing the day Pee-wee, alias Paul Reubens, was arrested there. (Answers: the South Trail Cinema; "Nancy Nurse," "Turn Up the Heat" and "Tiger Shark.")When the news hit, the TV and movie star's own lawyer pronounced his career dead -- proof that even Hollywood lawyers don't know everything.

The Historian By Elizabeth Kostova. Little Brown, 656 pages, $25.95. A crucifix, a tiny silver pistol with matching bullets and dagger, a head of garlic. These accoutrements are viewed by the heroine of The Historian in a tiny rare books chamber at Oxford University in 1974. The vampire hunting kit dates to the 17th century. Our heroine -- unnamed in classic gothic fiction style -- is just shy of 18. Her American father, Paul -- one of the historians of the title -- may or may not be a vampire slayer.

Buffy Summers has died before - twice, in fact. But this time, sadly, there will be no vampire CPR or resurrection spell to make things right again. For seven years and 143 episodes, the heroine of television's Buffy the Vampire Slayer has kept the world safe from whatever demons would wish us ill. But after Tuesday, after episode No. 144 concludes, after Buffy and the gang dispatch the ultimate evil they've been battling all season, that job will fall to someone else. The slayer is soon to be no more, slain by the actor who plays her and the writer who created her, both of whom have decided its time to move on. Major bummer.

Looks like there's a changing of the guard in store for Sunnydale. Faithful watchers of UPN's Buffy the Vampire Slayer know Sunnydale as the ill-named California town that had the misfortune of being built over the hellmouth, a spot all the world's supernatural nasties call home. They've also doubtless heard that star Sarah Michelle Gellar will have fulfilled her seven-year commitment to the show at the end of this season and may not be returning. And while it's dangerous to assume too much from watching just the first episode of any Buffy season - season five, which started out with the Buffster battling Dracula, ended with her dying to save a sister who had never even been introduced in seasons one through four - tonight's 8 o'clock opener suggests the creative forces behind the show are getting ready for anything.

It's about time those of you who still think Buffy the Vampire Slayer is some silly kids' show woke up and smelled the coffee (or perhaps blood would be more appropriate). And the recently released DVD collection of the show's 12 first-season episodes is a good place to start the process. The episodes on Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Complete First Season --beginning with "Welcome to the Hellmouth," in which the newly expelled Buffy moves to a new town, meets new friends and finds her slayer responsibilities never go away, and running through "Prophecy Girl," her final encounter with The Master, in which Buffy dies for the first (but not last)

Between the switch from WB to UPN and the season finale that left Buffy six feet under, no returning series has generated a buzz equal to that of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I remember a grown-up critic grabbing me in the hallway the day after the season finale and saying, "But, David, she was dead and buried. How can they possibly bring her back and remain credible?" I don't think credibility is a big concern for hardcore fans of this remarkable series. I mean, think of all the wild mythology you had to buy into just to get past the pilot.

LOS ANGELES - For all the tons of copy written about the move of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer from WB to UPN starting this fall, in the end it mainly comes to this in the television business: Thanks to Buffy, Maybelline now is spending millions on UPN, and that makes the network previously known for WWF Smackdown! and its teen-boy audience very happy. UPN is so happy to have Buffy - even though it's paying an astronomical $2.3 million an episode, $900,000 more per hour than WB - that the first half of its day with critics on the Summer Press Tour yesterday had a decided all-Buffy, all-the-time feel to it. Network president Dean Valentine and chief operating officer Adam Ware, spent most of their time with critics saying how "thrilled" they were to have Buffy.

Looks like there's a changing of the guard in store for Sunnydale. Faithful watchers of UPN's Buffy the Vampire Slayer know Sunnydale as the ill-named California town that had the misfortune of being built over the hellmouth, a spot all the world's supernatural nasties call home. They've also doubtless heard that star Sarah Michelle Gellar will have fulfilled her seven-year commitment to the show at the end of this season and may not be returning. And while it's dangerous to assume too much from watching just the first episode of any Buffy season - season five, which started out with the Buffster battling Dracula, ended with her dying to save a sister who had never even been introduced in seasons one through four - tonight's 8 o'clock opener suggests the creative forces behind the show are getting ready for anything.

Michael Atwell and Bill Brockelman are best buds. The next-door neighbors do everything together. They fish. They fix up old rods and reels. They tell stories. They cruise the flea markets. And after Atwell gets out of school, he usually makes a beeline to his Colorado home just to hang out with Brockelman. The two have been friends for four years. They view their friendship as ordinary. But many people might see it as unusual, because Atwell is 12 and Brockelman is 71. "It's pretty different, for as old as Bill is and as young as Michael is," Michael's mom, Debbie Atwell, says of the friendship.

Michael Atwell and Bill Brockelman are best buds. The next-door neighbors do everything together. They fish. They fix up old rods and reels. They tell stories. They cruise the flea markets. And after Atwell gets out of school, he usually makes a beeline to his Colorado home just to hang out with Brockelman. The two have been friends for four years. They view their friendship as ordinary. But many people might see it as unusual, because Atwell is 12 and Brockelman is 71. "It's pretty different, for as old as Bill is and as young as Michael is," Michael's mom, Debbie Atwell, says of the friendship.

Angel is sitting in a bar in downtown L.A., trying to drink away the Buffy blues. He's got 'em bad, and he's sounding sad."My story?" he says in the voice drenched in neon and noir. "It all started with a girl. She was a really, really pretty girl. I mean, her hair. Her hair was."Angel never quite finishes the sentence. Before he can take another sip, he's out in an alley behind the bar slugging it out with a couple of nasty-faced vampires, saving a girl with long blond hair from their drooling fangs -- a girl a lot like the one he left back in Sunnydale.