Why do vampires still thrill?

“Unclean, unclean!” Mina Harker screams, gathering her bloodied nightgown around her. In Chapter 21 of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” Mina’s friend John Seward, a psychiatrist in Purfleet, near London, tells how he and a colleague, warned that Mina might be in danger, broke into her bedroom one night and found her kneeling on the edge of her bed. Bending over her was a tall figure, dressed in black. “His right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare breast which was shown by his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink.” Mina’s husband, Jonathan, hypnotized by the intruder, lay on the bed, unconscious, a few inches from the scene of his wife’s violation.

Joan Acocella studies vampire books and movies.

Additional links:

• Vampires
• Vampire literature
• Vampire films
• Journal of Dracula Studies
• Dracula by Bram Stoker (for free here: book – audio)
• The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice
• Nosferatu, a 1922 German Expressionist vampire horror silent film, directed by F. W. Murnau, starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok

Ran

Added to my favourite movies: Ran – Akira Kurosawa. It is a jidaigeki (Japanese period drama) depicting the fall of Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai), an aging Sengoku-era warlord who decides to abdicate as ruler in favor of his three sons. The story is based on legends of the daimyo Mori Motonari, as well as on the Shakespearean tragedy King Lear. Continue reading at wikipedia which has a very good article on Ran.

This is the 6th film by Kurosawa in my list. Then again he is one of the truly great directors. The other movies I had previously addded :

• 1980 – Kagemusha (Shadow warrior)
• 1961 – Yojimbo (Yojimbo the Bodyguard)
• 1954 – Shichinin no samurai (Seven samurai)
• 1952 – Ikiru
• 1950 – Rasho-mon

New movies

I have added three movies to my favourite movies:

• Le silence de Lorna (The silence of Lorna) – Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. In order to become the owner of a snack bar with her boyfriend, Lorna, a young Albanian woman living in Belgium becomes an accomplice to a diabolical plan devised by mobster Fabio. Fabio has orchestrated a sham marriage between her and Claudy. The marriage allows her to obtain Belgian citizenship and then marry a Russian Mafioso willing to pay a lot of money to acquire the same quickly. However, for this second marriage to be possible, Fabio has planned to kill Claudy. Will Lorna keep silent?
• The Dark Knight – Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is part of Nolan’s Batman film series and a sequel to 2005’s Batman Begins. For once a movie that is as good as the comic.
• Waltz with Bashir – Ari Folman. This film belongs to a rare genre called the “animated documentary” and deals with the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre. One night in a bar, an old army colleague tells film director Ari Folman about a recurring nightmare in which he is chased by 26 vicious dogs. The conversation triggers off a related dream for Folman, who also served in the campaign but has developed a mental block about that period on his life. By visiting old friends and psychological experts, he begins to reclaim his suppressed memories about events leading up to one particularly horrific massacre.

Keith Jarrett

Stella by Starlight performed by Keith Jarrett on piano, with Gary Peacock on bass and Jack De Johnette on drums.

Tonight a documentary about Keith Jarrett on Nederland 2 (Dutch tv…): L’art de l’Improvisation / The Art of Improvisation (2004) by Mike Dibb.

Movies on the financial crisis

The Belgian magazine (Knack Focus) lists in this week’s issue movies on the financial crisis:

• Dr. Mabuse the Gambler. Mabuse, a sinister mesmerist/psychiatrist, toys with the weaknesses of the rich and influential. He worms his way into the confidence of wealthy men, plays cards with them, hypnotizes them into cheating at their businesses, then puts them in a position to be blackmailed so that he can corner the stock market.
• L’Argent was adapted from the novel L’Argent by Émile Zola, and scathingly portrays the world of banking and the stock-market in Paris in the 1920s.
• Faites sauter la banque! Shopkeeper Victor Garnier (Louis de Funès…, I know…) has naively invested his family’s life savings in an African mine, on his banker’s recommendation. When the mine is nationalized, rendering the stock worthless, he considers himself shamelessly robbed by the bank; it seems only fair to him to return the ‘favor’ and rob the bank, teaming up with the whole family as they were all duped.
• Stavisky is a 1974 French film drama based on a true story surrounding a 1934 political scandal known as the Stavisky Affair, which led to fatal riots in Paris, the resignation of two prime ministers and a change of government.
• Rollover, a 1981 political and financial thriller starring Jane Fonda and Kris Kristofferson.
• Wall Street is a 1987 American film directed by Oliver Stone and features Charlie Sheen as a young stockbroker desperate to succeed and a wealthy but unscrupulous corporate raider (Michael Douglas) whom he idolizes.
• The Hudsucker Proxy is a 1995 comedy fantasy film written, produced and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. The film is the story of Norville Barnes, a naive business graduate who is installed as president of a manufacturing company as part of a stock scam.

Not really my cup of tea, but I can’t think of any really good movie with this theme.

The James Bond Theme Songs

Dr. No

James Bond Theme – John Barry

Kingston Calypso – Byron Lee & The Dragonaires

From Russia with Love

From Russia with Love – John Barry/Matt Monro

Goldfinger

Goldfinger – Shirley Bassey

Thunderball

Thunderball – Tom Jones

You Only Live Twice

You Only Live Twice – Nancy Sinatra

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

We Have All the Time In The World – Louis Armstrong

Diamonds Are Forever

Diamonds Are Forever – Shirley Bassey

Live and Let Die

Live and Let Die – Paul McCartney & Wings

The Man with the Golden Gun

The Man with the Golden Gun – Lulu

The Spy Who Loved Me

Nobody Does It Better – Carly Simon

Moonraker

Moonraker – Shirley Bassey

For Your Eyes Only

For Your Eyes Only – Sheena Easton

Octopussy

All time high – Rita Coolidge

A View To a Kill

A View To a Kill – Duran Duran

The Living Daylights

The Living Daylights – Aha

Licence to Kill

Licence to Kill – Gladys Knight

GoldenEye

GoldenEye – Tina Turner

Tomorrow Never Dies

Tomorrow Never Dies – Sheryl Crow

The World Is Not Enough

The World Is Not Enough – Garbage

Die Another Day

Die Another Day – Madonna

Casino Royale

You know my name – Chris Cornell

Quantum of Solace

Another way to die – Jack White and Alicia Keys

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Just added a new movie to my list of best movies ever: The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a 1988 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Milan Kundera. Like the novel, it is set in Prague in 1968 and details the lives of artists and intellectuals in Czechoslovakia in the wake of the Prague Spring and the subsequent invasion by the USSR. It is also listed as one of the top 100 love stories in American Cinema by the American Film Institute.

Europa Film Treasures

Thanks to this collaborative effort by several European film archives & centers, the Europa Film Treasures aims at preserving in digital format a good part of the world’s memory in picture – although “it is probable that already 70% of the images shot during the first fifty years of cinema is definitively lost”.

All genres and time periods are on the playbill! From comedy to science fiction, from westerns to animation, from erotic to ethnological movies, Europa Film Treasures dives into the moving heritage of European cultural and political history, through each film archive working on preserving their movies.

A lot of information is not available yet, but already this site is worth a visit. The videos are via streaming, and cannot be downloaded.

Related : European Film Gateway, and Europeana. And of course AFI…

Dream story

Dream Story (German: Traumnovelle) is a 1926 novella by the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler. It details the thoughts and psychological transformations of Doctor Fridolin over a two day period. In this short time, he meets many people who give a clue to the world Schnitzler is creating for us. This culminates in the masquerade ball, a wondrous event of masked individualism, sex, and danger for Fridolin the outsider. In 1999 the book was adapted into the film Eyes Wide Shut by Stanley Kubrick

Fracture

Watching Fracture, a 2007 legal/crime suspense film, directed by Gregory Hoblit and starring Anthony Hopkins.

I shot my wife…prove it.

The Vega Science Trust Videos

From The Vega Science Trust web site:

The Vega Science Trust has created a broadcast platform for the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) communities, so enabling them to communicate on all aspects of their fields of expertise using exciting Internet opportunities.

There are 12 categories of science videos.

Jackie Brown

Tonight I’m seeing Jackie Brown, a 1997 motion picture written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. The film stars Pam Grier, Robert Forster, Robert De Niro, Samuel L. Jackson, Bridget Fonda and Michael Keaton. This movie follows Tarantino’s success directing Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994) which also stars Jackson in a lead role (both these movies were selected for my movie list). The screenplay is based on the novel Rum Punch by American novelist Elmore Leonard, although Tarantino made significant changes to the story and characters.

Cyd Charisse

Cyd Charisse passed away yesterday, Jun 18th, aged 86 (just heard this on the news – yes, not all information comes to me via the internet…). Cyd was born to be a dancer. She spent her early childhood taking ballet lessons and joined the Ballet Russe at 13. In 1939 she married Nico Charise, her ex-dance teacher. In 1943 she appeared in her first film, Something to Shout About (1943), billed as Lily Norwood. The same year she played the Russian dancer Galina Ulanova in Mission to Moscow (1943), directed by Michael Curtiz (indeed, the director from the famous movie Casablanca !). In 1945 she was hired to dance with Fred Astaire in Ziegfeld Follies (1946), and that uncredited appearance got her a seven-year contract with MGM. She appeared in a number of musicals over the next few years, but it was Singin’ in the Rain (1952) with Gene Kelly that made her a star. That was quickly followed by her great performance in The Band Wagon (1953). As the 1960s dawned, musicals faded from the screen, as did her career.

Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain:

And with Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon:

Obituary at the BBC, more about Cyd at Legs – A tribute to Cyd Charisse

Aliens

I’m watching Aliens right now. Aliens is a 1986 science fiction/action film starring Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, and Bill Paxton. A sequel to the 1979 film Alien, Aliens is set fifty-seven years after the first film and is regarded by many film critics as a benchmark for the action and science fiction genres. In Aliens, Weaver’s character Ellen Ripley returns to the planet where she first encountered the hostile Alien; this time she is accompanied by a unit of Colonial Marines.

Directed by James Cameron, Aliens’ action/adventure tone was in stark contrast to the science fiction/horror motifs of the original Alien. Following the success of The Terminator (1984), which helped establish Cameron as a major action director, Twentieth Century Fox greenlit Aliens with a budget of approximately $18 million. It was filmed in England at Pinewood Studios, the same location used for the filming of Alien, and at a decommissioned power plant.

Quote

Convictions can make men blind.

–Marquis d’Apcher in Brotherhood of the Wolf

Dressed to sell: the secret plot to change James Bond’s suit

In a move that will shock the espionage community to its foundations – James Bond has changed his tailor. After weeks of dangerous undercover investigation, we [The Times] reveal who’ll be measuring 007’s inside leg.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley

The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a 2006 Ken Loach film set during the Irish War of Independence (1919–21) and the Irish Civil War (1922–3). Written by long-time Loach collaborator Paul Laverty, this drama tells the story of two County Cork brothers, played by Cillian Murphy and Pádraic Delaney, who join the Irish Republican Army to fight for Irish independence from Great Britain. Widely praised, the film won the Palme d’Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. A great movie and a nice way to spend this Eastern afternoon.

Nessun dorma

Nessun Dorma (None Shall Sleep) is an aria from the final act of Giacomo Puccini’s opera Turandot, and is one of the best known tenor arias in all opera. It is sung by Calaf, Il principe ignoto (The unknown prince), who falls in love at first sight with the beautiful but cold Princess Turandot. However, any man who wishes to wed Turandot must first answer her three riddles. If he fails, he will be beheaded.

I just heard this song watching Mar Adentro, a 2004 film by the Spanish/Chilean director Alejandro Amenábar. This superb movie is based on the real-life story of Ramón Sampedro (played by Javier Bardem), a Spanish ship mechanic left quadriplegic after a diving accident who fought a 28-year campaign in support of euthanasia and his right to end his own life. In the movie the song is performed by José Manuel Zapata. Here is another version by Luciano Pavarotti. This particular song was also played at his funeral last year during the flypast by the Italian Air Force :

Lyrics

The Prince

Nessun dorma, Nessun dorma!
Tu pure, o Principessa,
nella tua fredda stanza,
guardi le stelle
che tremano d’amore e di speranza.
Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me,
il nome mio nessun saprà, no, no!
No, no, sulla tua bocca lo dirò
quando la luce splenderà!
Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio
che ti fa mia!

Chorus

Il nome suo nessun saprà!
e noi dovrem, ahimè, morir!

The Prince

Dilegua, o notte!
Tramontate, stelle!
All’alba vincerò!

Meet The Cast

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.

Helvetica encompasses the worlds of design, advertising, psychology, and communication, and invites us to take a second look at the thousands of words we see every day.

(source text – official film web site)

Helvetica is the name of a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger. More info on this typeface here and here.

Six Degrees Could Change the World – Preview

A video from the National Geographic Channel’s “Six Degrees Could Change the World” explores the potential impacts of global warming degree-by-degree—through six degrees over the next hundred years. Filmed on five continents, the program tracks the world’s top climate researchers and follows ranchers, photographers, and everyday people to uncover climate trends.