Posts Tagged with movies

Feature Friday: Guy Maddin’s Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary

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Despite the vampire fiction genre taking its place in the mainstream — and the movies that have followed — in the 21st century, one vamp still reigns as the granddaddy of them all: Dracula.  But is that just because he’s become a classic monster? Is he still relevant?  Can he still be compelling? Offbeat, acclaimed filmmaker Guy Maddin — Icelandic by descent and from Winnipeg, to boot — tackles those questions in his adaptation, with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, in Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary.

Once bitten, twice Guy

Maddin, RWB reinvent classic vampire

Cover of "Dracula - Pages from a Virgin's...
Cover of Dracula – Pages from a Virgin’s Diary

A character like Dracula comes with a lot of baggage. Despite the relatively recent explosion of vampire fiction (and keep in mind this review was written in 2003, before the explosion of Twilight — DJF), Bram Stoker’s incarnation of the blood-sucking count, followed hard by Bela Lugosi’s screen portrayal, looms large in the popular conception of the ultimate creature of the night.

That hasn’t stopped filmmakers from sallying forth to capture Dracula — but given the heavyweights who have left their mark on the mythos (F.W. Murnau, Terence Fisher, even Francis Ford Coppola), you might think all has been said and done.

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Middle-earth music: The Fellowship of the Ring

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Beginning with a stirring choral piece sung in one of Tolkien’s Elvish languages, Howard Shore immerses the listener in Middle-earth. Rather than composing themes for each of the characters, as per John Williams leitmotifs, Shore adds atmosphere to a story already rich in history.

It’s just as well he eschews character-specific creations; at nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien’s cast was just getting started. The film’s score isn’t monolithic by any means.

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Books to Film: The Two Towers

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Time has a way of changing your perspective on things, and favourite movies and books are no exception. The article below was originally published in 2004; and since then I’ve reread The Two Towers and rewatched the movie version. So rather than just tinker with this I decided to let it stand, with some second thoughts added in.

I still like both book and movie — but they are very, very different creatures.

Director Peter Jackson had a thankless task in adapting the second part of The Lord of the Rings for the big screen.

The difficulty lies in the fact that Tolkien originally intended The Lord of the Rings to be a single volume. His publisher balked at this; it was too much of a risk for a book whose only known audience consisted of readers of The Hobbit — in many ways a vastly different book. Thus the story was published in three volumes.

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Werewolf Wednesday: Underworld

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Underworld (2003 film)

I had no idea when I first wrote about Underworld during a stint as movie reviewer for Uptown Magazine that the movie would spawn a four-movie franchise, the latest of which, Underworld: Awakening, hit theatres in March this year.

I’m afraid I never got past the sequel.  This first instalment had its moments (few and far between) but the second, despite Derek Jacobi doing his best Hunt For Red October riff as a sub captain hunting paranormals (if you’re saying “huh?” I say: exactly), was a hot mess.  And that’s kind of unfair to words denoting temperature and chaos.

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Werewolf Wednesday: Rachel Deering’s Anathema

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Welcome to a new feature here at As You Were: Werewolf Wednesday. In which we reserve a day for that greatest of monsters, often overlooked thanks to shambling zombies and flawless vampires. Our first feature in the series is with independent comic book writer and letterer Rachel Deering.

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If you’re tired of garden-variety werewolves, comic creator Rachel Deering has a new one for you: a lesbian shapeshifter out for revenge against religious zealots and fighting members of a sinister cult for her lover’s soul.

Rachel, 29, was born and raised in a small town in northeastern Kentucky. Her passion for comics took root at age seven, when one of her uncles gave her his old collection, and horror was front and centre. It was love at first sight.

“It wasn’t a very large collection, maybe ten or twelve magazines,” she says, “but they were all quality.” Among the titles were genre staples such as Heavy Metal, Creepy, and Tales from the Crypt.

“Not exactly light reading, especially for one so young as me. I read every single issue until the pages were falling apart.”

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The zombiepocalypse comes to Canada

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Today I’m pleased to present an interview with a Canadian zombie writer, a none-too-subtle reference to Julianne Snow, which should come as no surprise to those of you who follow her (@CdnZmbiRytr) on Twitter.

Julianne is in the midst of a marathon blog tour for her new novel, Days With the Undead, which brings her her to As you Were today.

Julianne was born in Toronto, Ont., where she still lives, and was the only girl in a family with four children.

She got her taste for horror early, watching Alien at age four with the rest of her family (her older siblings chickened out, but Julianne hung in till the end).

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