Movie Monday #13: Vampire Academy: Blood Sisters

We all delight in seeing our favorite books brought to life on the big screen.  We cringe at casting.  We scoff at release dates.  All the while, we're gearing up to see if the director's vision lives up to the world we've conceived in our own imaginations.  Sometimes it does...and sometimes it doesn't.  We could lament the movies that don't measure up, or we could return to the books for a re-read, possibly with a slightly different mind-set.  All's fair when it comes to artistic vision, right?




This week, I'm featuring the following adaptation:

Title: Vampire Academy:  Blood Sisters
Director: Mark Waters
Stars: Zoey Deutch, Lucy Fry, Danila Kozlovsky
Release date: February 14, 2014
Based on: Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

Rose Hathaway is a Dhampir, half human/vampire, guardians of the Moroi, peaceful, mortal vampires living discretely within our world. Her legacy is to protect the Moroi from bloodthirsty, immortal Vampires, the Strigoi. This is her story.
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Rose Hathaway is a dhampir, half-vampire and half-human, who is training to be a guardian at St. Vladimir's Academy along with many others like her. There are good and bad vampires in their world: Moroi, who co-exist peacefully among the humans and only take blood from donors, and also possess the ability to control one of the four elements - water, earth, fire or air; and Strigoi, blood-sucking, evil vampires who drink to kill. Rose and other dhampir guardians are trained to protect Moroi and kill Strigoi throughout their education. Along with her best friend, Princess Vasilisa Dragomir, a Moroi and the last of her line, with whom she has a nigh unbreakable bond, Rose must run away from St. Vladimir's, in order to protect Lissa from those who wish to harm the princess and use her for their own means.

First things first, here's the teaser trailer that was just released:

I don't know about you, but I am pretty effing stoked for this movie.  I am totally on board with the casting. I love that the cast is full of virtually unknown actors...I think it makes it a ton easier to envision them as the characters from the books.  And boy is it easy to envision Danila Kozlovsky as Dimitri!  =)

Look, he's wearing the duster!!!

I came to the VA series after all the books were released, and I listened to them back-to-back on a road trip.  It was awesome.  But even more awesome than that was finding out that the first book was being made into a movie.  I admit, I was skeptical at first, but I see some serious potential in the movie, especially after this teaser trailer.  Twilight hypocrites and naysayers, back the eff off!  This is NOT that kind of vampire story.

See that humor there?  The friendship?  Those things set this book apart from that other vampire novel. Another good thing this adaptation has going for it is the writer/director team of Daniel Waters (of Heathers fame) and Mark Waters (of Mean Girls fame).  Some of the quotes already up on the IMDb page are more proof -- at least to me -- that this film is going to excel where others have failed. 

I hate that we have to wait until Valentine's Day for the release, but that's just clever marketing. I will definitely be dragging my honey to see it with me.  In the meantime, I'll be doing a series re-listen, I think.  :D

Have you read the book?  What do you think about it being made into a film?  Do you think you'll see it?