Vampire

One would suppose most women would want to look healthy and natural as summer approaches, so it is odd that vampire-style makeup is catching on just now. But fashion often has no rhyme or reason. Even Madonna is wearing her version of it.For those who would sink their teeth into the vampire look, the mouth is the place to start. Pass by the lipsticks in reds, pinks, corals and oranges. Go straight for those with a purply, brownish cast. They may have names like Sepia or Blackberry, but their coloration should more closely resemble that of fresh liver or dried blood.

Here's a tip for the next bad-guy vampire who captures Blade, Marvel Comics' fearless vampire hunter: Just Kill Him. Don't toy with him. Don't taunt him with your perceived superiority. Just kill him and get on with your plans to take over the world. Had the nasty vamps at the center of Blade: Trinity heeded that piece of sage wisdom, this third starring vehicle for Wesley Snipes as a half-breed vampire out to rid the world of bloodsuckers would have lasted about 10 minutes. But then, film fans would have been denied the joy of watching Jessica Biel's superbly sculpted abdominal muscles and listening to Ryan Reynolds' nonstop wisecracks.

Everything that's good about "Daybreakers" bursts forth in the scene wherein a hematologist played by Ethan Hawke undertakes an experiment and injects a not-quite-FDA-approved synthetic liquid into the veins of a fellow vampire, under the watchful eye of a pharmaceutical magnate played by Sam Neill. From the scene's relative placement early in the story, and the familiarity of its premise, it's clear the operation will fail in the most spectacular way possible. The setup goes back a lot further than "Independence Day" or "The Thing" (either version)

Can you give me some information about the "vampire tours" in New Orleans?They're called the Anne Rice Tours for the author of vampire books, who lives in New Orleans. The tours have been running since August 1996 and this year added Rice's homes as part of some tours. Locales include Lafayette Cemetery, Garden District homes and several places in the French Quarter.Organizers and most tour guides are Rice relatives. Tours operate on foot or on buses, range from two to five hours and in price from $20 up. One is a progressive dinner tour to three different famous restaurants.

Bing and Bob. Butch and The Kid. Holmes and Watson. Dracula and Van Helsing. They're all famous pop culture pairings that have survived the ages, but only that last duo has the scent of the supernatural about it. In a saga that has caused flaps during three centuries, usually the vampire gets top billing. But now the vampire slayer stars in his own film - Van Helsing, which opens tomorrow - proving that the Dr. Watson of the Undead deserves another look. Because without Abraham Van Helsing, Dracula would be just another fanged footnote in horror history.

You want your first crush to last" could have been the theme song for Twilight, the movie version of Stephenie Meyer's mammoth best-seller about a high school junior, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), who moves from her mother's place in arid Phoenix to her dad's place in the dank, small town of Forks, Wash., where she is smitten with her biology desk-mate, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). He's part of a clan of gorgeous, super-pallid high-schoolers adopted by the town's respected, super-pallid physician, Dr. Carlisle Cullen (Peter Facinelli)

Neil Jordan won a Best Screenplay Oscar two years ago for "The Crying Game." He will not win his second for "Interview With the Vampire." Best Director, perhaps. But Jordan's name, which along with Anne Rice's was on an early print of the film under "screenplay by," is not on the print at theaters all over the world. "It's a thing with the Writers Guild," is all Jordan will say.However, Neil Jordan's signature is on every frame of "Interview With the Vampire." He underlines it in a scene where a journalist (Christian Slater)

Think of it as your basic love story. Vampire meets girl. Vampire likes girl. Vampire sinks fangs into girl's neck.OK, OK, so maybe it's not exactly like "Romeo and Juliet." It is, however, a lot like "Dark Shadows," the revamped cult favorite that has brought the 175-year-old vampire Barnabas Collins back from the dead.But the show, which airs at 9 p.m. Fridays on WMAR-TV, is only the latest example of growing interest in the living dead, which some say exploded with the success of Anne Rice's vampire novels.

He's tough as nails and more lethal than the Nosferatu. He wears shades after dark and lives in the light. He's Blade, the death-dealing vampire hunter at the center of a third feature film, Blade: Trinity. And the surprise is, he's black - and he's a hit. Rare as it is to see an African-American character survive in an action/horror film at all, let alone as a champion of good, Blade's thirst for vengeance has captivated moviegoers worldwide. "What's cooler than a black superhero who's a vampire and can kick [butt]

Max Schreck endures as one of cinema's most bizarre-looking icons, one Willem Dafoe acknowledges he was a natural to play. "Steven Katz says he wrote it for me," Dafoe says, referring to the role of Schreck in director E. Elias Merhige's "Shadow of the Vampire." The new film imagines that Schreck, star of F.W. Murnau's surrealistic 1922 "Dracula" clone, "Nosferatu," really was a vampire, and that all the work that went into making him look so archetypically demonic was really no work at all. Now, some actors might not take such a connection to Schreck as a compliment.