Nosferatu Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Twilight: Goth or Not? (Not.)
Filed under: Horror », Fan Rant »
I don't remember when it started, but somewhere around the age of 16 I discovered Bauhaus, heavy eyeliner, and Neil Gaiman's Sandman. (Guess who my favorite character was?). I acquired a leather jacket, big boots, and a collection of Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite books. Bram Stoker's Dracula and The Crow were the height of romance. That's right. I'm a former goth. (My friends are snickering right now. Former! Former, damn you all.)
What I find very interesting is that what Twilight, from an admittedly cursory glance at its fanbase, is, well, not goth. They're screamy teens with Hot Topic tees or grown women and the occasional dude. But werewolves and vampires and smoldering glances and longing are all super goth! And there are some goths who do enjoy a bit of glitter (or a LOT of glitter), but not on our vampires. I mean, their vampires. I asked one friend, and she replied, "Because VAMPIRES DON'T SPARKLE. Make sure you put that in there. One goth I spoke to says, NO SPARKLING KTHXBAI."
But more importantly, the velvet-and-lace crew of goths are a bit older and not the target audience. And the teen goths can't relate – Bella might toss her hair and bite her lip, but her angst isn't relatable to someone who is truly an outsider, someone who is rejected or even beat up by their peers, not the center of attention, no matter how uncomfortable she might feel with her new hangers-on or her dad.
Top 250 Movies as a Subway Map
Filed under: Fandom », Lists », Images »
Here's a different way of thinking about well-known movies: imagine each one is a stop on a subway line! Designed by David Honnorat and posted at Vodkaster, the cinematic subway map is based on the top 250 movies as voted by IMDb users on June 19 (which, I suppose, is why The Hangover made it). Honnorat created 16 different imaginary subway lines, including "Universally Acclaimed Masterpiece," "Political drama," "Drama about tolerance," "Dark and weird drama," and other, more traditional categories, and then placed each film on one of the lines. He asked: "How would you go from Alien to North by Northwest without crossing The Godfather: Part II? Which station have you not visited yet?"
The placement of movies on the map can be amusing (Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction side by side with Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America on the gangster line) as well as bizarre yet strangely fitting (Se7en sitting at the intersection of Vertigo, Rashomon, Nosferatu, and Let the Right One In). Click through to see the big map and roll around a bit. Like all subway maps, it's confusing at first but starts to make more sense as you follow the lines from station to station. What's your favorite cinematic subway line?
[ via Geek Tyrant ]
Lauren Bacall and Cinematic Lessons from Grandma
Filed under: Classics », Celebrities and Controversy », Fandom »
Twitter is a website rife with the technologically obsessed, the geeks, the hipsters, the has-beens, and everyone in between. But there are also some classic names who can provide a slice of history and perspective to our modern mumblings -- such as the lovely Lauren Bacall. Since joining in May, she has not only gotten snarky about the backlash against smoking, but offered some thoughts on our cinema-going public.Most recently, she discussed Twilight, which has sent the blogosphere buzzing. See, her granddaughter insisted that she watch the film, calling it the "greatest vampire film ever." Of course, Grandma Bacall had to set her straight. "After the 'film' was over, I wanted to smack her across her head with my shoe, but I do not want a book called Grannie Dearest written on me when I die, so instead I gave her a DVD of Murnau's 1922 masterpiece Nosferatu and told her, now that's a vampire film! And that goes for all of you! Watch Nosferatu instead!" Even earlier, she raved about the wonders of Nine, and Fellini's classic 8½, saying: "Almost forgot if you have not seen 8½ I suggest you do or else be condemned to hell."
I Like Vampires, But I Wouldn't Want to Date One
Filed under: Fandom »
So Twilight kicked ass at the Teen Choice Awards this week, picking up 11 highly prestigious trophies for groundbreaking stuff like "Choice Movie Rumble" and "Choice Movie Liplock." And the news just made me sigh, and feel very old, and very tired.
Because vampires? Sorry, kids. I am so over vampires.
It's not that I begrudge today's teens, tweens and "Twilight moms" their love for vamps. It's just that I've got a couple of decades of vampire books, movies, and TV shows under my belt while for them, the honeymoon period with broody blood-suckers is still in full swing. If Robert Pattinson looks more to me like a pouty emo kid who should be serving up my triple sugar-free vanilla latte than a 104-year-old creature of the night, that says more about me than it says about Twilight fans. I've been reading about vampires, watching movies with vampires, and enjoying the occasional TV show about vampires longer than many of them have been alive -- and honestly, I've never understood why women find them so dreamy.
Of course, I never got the fascination with that particular breed of male hero at all, going all the way back to my early exposure to chick-lit and romance novels. I like my men funny, personable, and emotionally available. The vaguely dangerous bad boy with his gloomy demeanor, quick temper and withholding of affection, who only opens up when he finally finds True Love in the arms of the heroine ... that's not for me. I'd have kicked Heathcliff to the curb for being whiny and self-centered, and Mr. Darcy's rudeness would have placed him firmly on my uh-uh, not-in-a-million-years list. Vampires are merely a more cold-blooded take on the same hard-to-wrangle men that star in all those books with the ripped-shirt Fabios on the covers.
RvB's After Images: Nosferatu, The Vampyre (1979)
Filed under: Horror », After Image », Columns »
The image of Lugosi's Dracula is heavily copyrighted; Nosferatu is, by contrast, an open source vampire; you could tell that from his cameo a few years back on Sponge Bob Square Pants. The silent classic was originally a bootleg version of Bram Stoker's novel. When Werner Herzog went to work on a remake of F. W. Murnau's 1922 vampire film, he could call his creature Count Dracula, thanks to public domain laws. Herzog preserved much of the original's style out of admiration for Murnau and "the most important film ever made in Germany" (maybe so...any other suggestions?).
But Herzog's skeptical, neo-documentary approach--seen this summer in Rescue Dawn--wouldn't permit him to use Murnau's mistier plotting. He took pains to see how Nosferatu works. Why has no one burned the evil castle down in daylight? Simple: it doesn't really exist except in ruins, "except in the minds of men" who are tricked by the darkness of night. How does the vampire beat Harker home? There's a line about how the sea voyage is faster than heading back from Transylvania overland. (Unlike the book, this is set about the time Murnau set his version, 1838; there are no railroads yet in Central Europe.)
Retro Cinema: Nosferatu
Filed under: Horror », Retro Cinema »
It must have been something to be a filmmaker in the 1920s, trying to imagine ways to scare people; you had a huge blank slate in front of you. Hardly any of it -- ghosts, vampires, werewolves, mummies, zombies, cat people, maniacs, monsters, homicidal killers -- had been done yet. Moreover, the negative connotations of horror had yet to take hold. Whereas most modern horror films are ashamedly snuck past reviewers, Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) was released to rave reviews. The great critic Carl Sandburg, writing in the Chicago Daily News, called it "the most important and the most original photoplay that has come to this city of Chicago the last year." We can only imagine what Sandburg would have said about F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922); he may have seen it, but he didn't review it. For my money it is the superior of the two films, made by a far greater cinema artist.
Like Wiene, Fritz Lang, Joe May and many German directors of his era, Murnau (1888-1931) worked in German Expressionism, finding ways to manipulate the images in the frame to a point beyond reality for maximum emotional effect. But Murnau was unique in that he used these images to express his personal fears and desires; he also intermingled realistic, nature shots with his bizarre, artificial Expressionist shots. He completed just over 20 films in his short career, and almost half of them are said to be lost. He was gay and constantly struggled with all the conflicting pros and cons of his emotions in his films. He moved to Hollywood in 1927 and made his masterpiece Sunrise there. Just a few years later, after completing his final film, Tabu, he died in a car accident.
Giamatti is Game for 'Bubba' Sequel -- But is Bruce?
Filed under: Comedy », Horror », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », MGM », Remakes and Sequels »
Well over a year ago I covered a Bloody-Disgusting report that said Oscar nominee Paul Giamatti might be playing Colonel Parker in Don Coscarelli's Bubba Ho-tep sequel. And then I pretty much forgot about the whole thing. But those non-stop movie freaks over at Rotten Tomatoes recently spoke with the actor during his Shoot 'Em Up press tour -- and he actually had something to say about status of Bubba Nosferatu and the Curse of the She-Vampires.Well, first Mr. G expresses some affection for Coscarelli's earlier films (you go, Paul!) but then he sort of blames the delays on the most unlikely of people: Is Bruce Campbell the one holding up Bubba 2? Say it ain't so! But here's what Giamatti had to say: "Bruce Campbell was waffling around about whether he wants to play Elvis or not again. So that's the problem ... I'm playing Colonel Parker, which will be great, but you gotta have Elvis and you really want him playing Elvis, so hopefully we can get him to do it. If not, I'm sure they will try and find somebody else but I think it's contingent on whether he'll do it or not. It's a great script, a completely insane script. I would love to do that because I love [Bubba Ho-Tep]. It's a great movie."
The first Bubba flick earned a lot of praise on the genre festival circuit before hitting DVD and becoming an overnight cult favorite. Based on the short story by Joe Lansdale, it's the story of a forgotten old Elvis Presley (Campbell) who teams up with John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis) to rid their nursing home of an evil soul-sucking mummy. Very weird, very fun. And if this is true about Mr. Campbell weighing his options, I'd like to offer one piece of advice to the square-jawed cult hero: Bruce, do the flick!
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