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I'm So Excited

Director: Pedro Almodovar

Genre: Comedy

Running Time: 90 minutes

Rated R for strong sexual content including crude references and drug use

With: Javier Cmara, Pepa Charro, Lola Dueas

They shack up in the shuttered hotel that gives the film its title, and soon Clara has convinced Noel (Daniel Mays), a hapless would-be john, to let her run a brothel out of the place. Meanwhile Eleanor wanders the town, plays piano for the senior citizens she's targeting for mercy killings, and falls for Frank (Caleb Landry Jones), a local teen whose dark moodiness mirrors hers.

The modern scenes are interspersed with the twosome's 19th-century origin story, in which Jonny Lee Miller plays an officer with a habit of making harlots out of respectable girls, taking their virtue by force and convincing them that selling themselves is all they have left.

Therein is encoded a neat notion: Buffini's script parallels the "making" of a prostitute with the way vampire stories treat the making of a vampire; out of a singular act of predatory violence, something is lost, and a life is changed forever. The device allows for a narrative with strong feminist avenues to explore: Buffini's sucreants, as a culture, have a rule that only males are allowed to make other sucreants. Just as men choose women to force into lives of sexual servitude, so too do they determine which will lose their souls and become part of their undead family.

Jordan is at the height of his visual powers here, and his appetite for grim fairy-tale imagery is fully up as well — he dresses Eleanor in a red hood at one point, merging a monster of a different sort with the eternally carnal Little Red. These kinds of crossovers and juxtapositions are all over the film; in one wonderfully choreographed sequence, he crosscuts between one of Eleanor's impromptu piano recitals and Clara's seedy sexual negotiations, the elegant music providing a soundtrack for some decidedly dirty deeds.

But despite its smart subtext and expert direction, there's something missing. Part of the problem lies within the 19th-century sequences, which just don't have the narrative drive of the present day. We need to see Jonny Lee Miller scowling and being cruel only so many times before we get the picture.

There's also a Victorian chill to Eleanor's writings that winds up permeating the entire film, despite the glowing neon lights and blood that runs (very) red. Jordan favors that reserved tone ever so slightly, and the upshot is that his film too often winds up feeling what a film about the undead shouldn't: lifeless.

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

When NASA launches its first solar sail mission into deep space, it'll be carrying DNA from some of the late, legendary science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke's hair. Most famous as the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clarke was also an explorer, and in 1956, he discovered the underwater ruins of the Koneswaram temple in Sri Lanka while scuba diving. NASA's mission is called The Sunjammer Project after Clarke's 1964 short story about outer-space solar sail racing. NASA describes a solar sail craft as "a huge, ultra-thin sail unfurling in space, using the pressure of sunlight to provide propellant-free transport, hovering and exploration capabilities." NASA says it hopes to launch the sail "as early as 2014."

The body of Dr. James Martin, author of The Wired Society: A Challenge for Tomorrow, was found Monday floating off of Agar's Island, the island he owned in Bermuda, authorities told Bernews, a Bermuda news outlet. Police said that although the investigation is ongoing, "there does not appear to be any suspicious circumstances." Martin wrote more than 100 books but was best known for The Wired Society, which was published in 1977 and it is seen as an early prediction of the Internet. He is also the largest-ever donor to Oxford University, whose eponymous Martin School released a statement saying that the author was an "inspiration to millions — an extraordinary intellect, with wide-ranging interests, boundless energy and an unwavering commitment to addressing the greatest challenges facing humanity."

The Random House imprint Hogarth is commissioning authors such as Jeanette Winterson and Anne Tyler to write "prose retellings" of Shakespeare plays. Winterson, who chose The Winter's Tale, wrote in the press release: "All of us have talismanic texts that we have carried around and that carry us around. I have worked with The Winter's Tale in many disguises for many years." She told The Guardian that "the Shakespeare purists miss the point about his exuberant ragbag of borrowings thrown into the alchemical furnace of his mind and lifted out transformed. He sums up the creative process, which is not concerned with originality of source but originality of re-making." The project is expected to launch in 2016, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.

Ben Urwand, author of the forthcoming book The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact With Hitler, told The New York Times that in the 1930s, "Hollywood is not just collaborating with Nazi Germany. It's also collaborating with Adolf Hitler, the person and human being." Although the Nazi influence on Hollywood has been well-documented, Urwand suggests previous historians have underestimated Hitler's reach. Among other discoveries, Urwand found a letter from the German arm of 20th Century Fox asking for Hitler to give feedback on American films and signed "Heil Hitler!" (The Fuhrer apparently hated Tarzan, but liked Laurel and Hardy.)

The City of Devi author Manil Suri describes growing up gay in India for Granta: "While launching my new novel at the Kolkata Book Festival this year, I was warned that Calcutta was a very conservative city. 'Whatever you do, don't read out any of the gay scenes. Especially not the gay sex scenes.' Naturally, that's exactly what I did. The results were disappointing. Nobody shouted, nobody swooned, the city seemed to pull through just fine. ... This was supposed to be my great in-your-face coming-out campaign, which I'd fretted over for months beforehand. Had India suddenly lost its conservativeness, turned enlightened, even hip?"

When blueberries are in season, you don't need to turn on the oven to make a delicious dessert. Valerie Erwin says it takes just 15 minutes to make one of her favorite summer dishes, Blueberry Dumplings. She shared the recipe for All Things Considered's Found Recipes series.

Erwin is the chef and owner of Geechee Girl Rice Cafe in Philadelphia. "Geechee" is a term for the descendants of the enslaved Africans who lived off the coastal islands of South Carolina and Georgia. Erwin's grandparents are from the area.

She says her family is a close-knit one — where siblings are best friends who aren't hesitant to ask for sweet favors. Among her sisters, blueberry dumplings are always in demand, especially during their annual vacation together in August.

The dumplings in question are similar to those used in dishes like chicken and dumplings.

"It's made from a soft biscuit dough dropped on top of sweetened, stewed blueberries," Erwin says.

She got the recipe from her Great Aunt Lil. Like Erwin's relationship with her siblings, Lil was close to her sister, Erwin's grandmother. Both were seamstresses who worked in the garment industry.

"She came from Charleston with my grandmother and my grandfather in the '20s, and she lived just about maybe a mile and a half away from where we did in North Philadelphia," Erwin says.

She had her first taste of blueberry dumplings in 1964, when she was 11. Lil served the dish to Erwin and her cousin, who was visiting from across town. It was love at first bite.

"The minute I put a piece of the dumpling and a little bit of the blueberry sauce in my mouth, it was just mesmerizing," she says. "It was so delicious and so unusual that it cemented everything else about that memory — that it was warm out, I remember that it was rainy, I remember that it was the middle of the day — things that I'm sure I would have forgotten if that dish hadn't been so delicious."

The dumplings are best when served warm. Erwin's family also likes to pour a little cold heavy cream on top.

"[It] makes it even more delicious and helps with the cooling," she says.

Never fear if blueberries aren't in season — Erwin says the recipe can last all summer long if you substitute other fresh fruits like tart cherries and blackberries.