favorite movie #14: bram stoker’s dracula

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #14 - Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) - There are some clunky moments, but overall this is an amazing visual experience. Director Francis Ford Coppola channels Gustav Klimt and goth and splatters it all with buckets of blood. Gary Oldman has the time of his life and chews victims and scenery in equal measure. The Oscar-winning costumes by Eiko Ishioka are beyond memorable. They’re art.

dan curtis' dracula

Just released on Blu-ray, Dan Curtis' Dracula features Academy Award winner Jack Palance (City Slickers, Shane, Barabbas) in the title role of the Transylvanian count. Produced and directed by Dan Curtis of Dark Shadows fame, the film adds a more romantic spin to Bram Stoker's classic tale, with Dracula obsessed with a beautiful young woman who resembles his long-lost wife. The film was written by science-fiction and horror legend Richard Matheson (I Am Legend, The Box, Trilogy of Terror), who pared down Stoker's epistolary tale to a fast-moving, but still scary 98-minute film.

The always charismatic Palance is impressive as Dracula.  ...

Jack Palance as Count Dracula

Fiona Lewis as Lucy, after she has spent some time with the Count

... Considered one of the scarier versions of the tale, even co-star Nigel Davenport seemed put off by Palance's take on Dracula, "I was pretty frightened of that gentleman, because he was so bloody tall! He was six-foot-four and, as he wanted to look like Dracula, he had three-inch lifts in his shoes, so he was like six-foot-seven ..."

Dan Curtis' Dracula, although adapted from Stoker, made some changes to the origin story that turned up in subsequent vampire films. Dracula's search for his lost love was not only similar to Curtis' anti-hero Barnabas Collins love for Josette from Dark Shadows, but was also echoed in Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula and Gary Oldman's more romantic take on the Count. Coppola's Dracula also followed Curtis' version in taking Stoker's inspiration for the character, historical figure Vlad the Impaler, and making him and Dracula one and the same. With an emphasis on scares, and even (gasp) blood, it's great to re-welcome Dan Curtis' Dracula to the filmed pantheon of the infamous bloodthirsty Count.

You can read my complete review on Cinema Sentries

more proof that gary oldman makes everything better

The actor recites the lyrics to "Timber," taking Pitbull's part:

il quinto elemento

The ultimate guilty pleasure movie, The Fifth Element, or how I like to refer to it, Il Quinto Elemento, is also incredibly entertaining. It also manages to be colorful, funny, and a little scary at times. Its sci-fi roots are definitely in Blade Runner territory, but director Luc Besson has managed to create a wholly original future world, that even upon multiple viewings manages to enchant. This is helped in no small part by the amazing costumes designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier.

The Italian poster

Milla Jovovich as Leeloominaï Lekatariba Lamina-Tchaï Ekbat De Sebat — but you can call her Leeloo

Leeloo: Leeloo Dallas. Mul-ti-pass.

I saw the movie when it first came out in 1997, but started referring to it as Il Quinto Elemento after a trip to Italy, where posters for the movie were plastered everywhere. My pet name seemed appropriately absurd, as much as the bright orange hairstyle of female lead Milla Jovovich or the outrageous character played by Chris Tucker, Ruby Rhod. Besson originally came up with his version of the future when he was just 16 years old. Years later, after he had quite a few successful films under his belt (Subway, La Femme Nikita, Léon: The Professional), he was able to move forward on his pet project and hire comic book artists Jean-Claude Mézières and Jean Giraud to work on the film's production design and help design his future version of New York City.

Taxicabs and police cars in the 23rd century

In The Fifth Element a perfect super being, in the form of a young woman called Leeloo (Jovovich), is sent to 23rd century Earth to determine whether humanity is worth saving. Helping her save the world is a cab driver (and former crack military man) named Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis), a priest who is in a long line of protectors of her alien race (Ian Holm) and a reluctant flamboyant DJ (Tucker). Up against them are a bunch of scary-looking aliens called Mangalores and Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg (Gary Oldman), a crooked arms dealer who also seems to be in league with a terrible evil force, a black planet which is hurtling towards Earth. They are all after four mystical stones, which represent the four essental elements of life.

Chris Tucker's androgynous Prince-inspired DJ Ruby Rhod is an either love him or hate him character. I love him.

DJ Ruby Rhod: And now we enter what must the most beautiful concert hall of all the universe. A perfect replica of the old opera house ... But who cares?

Bruce Willis as Korben Dallas, sporting a rubber Gaultier t-shirt that I still covet

Gary Oldman as Zorg. Clothes for bad guys in the 23rd century — pretty cool. Hairstyles — not so much.

Korben Dallas: Whoa, lady, I only speak two languages, English and bad English. [Leeloo speaks in divine language] 

Korben Dallas: Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for conversation, but maybe you could just shut up for a moment?

Besson fell in love with Jovovich during the making of the film and the two constructed the "divine language" that Leeloo speaks when she first meets Korben. They married, but were divorced in 1999. Jovovich is not the only fashion model in The Fifth Element who can show off the fabulous wardrobe created by Gaultier. Fans of fashion will recognize some favorite faces in the extras cast, including: Sibyl Buck (Zorgs secretary), Stacey McKenzie (VIP stewardess), and Ève Salvail (Tawdry Girl).

Willis is in his usual wry humor/hero mode and helps the (at least American) audience connect with the fast-moving adventure. I will always have a fond place in my heart for the original Star Wars film, and I love, love, love Blade Runner (especially Rutger Hauer), but if I was really pressed, I think I would have to say that Il Quinto Elemento, The Fifth Element, is my favorite science fiction movie. It's certainly the most re-watchable, and its visuals are hard to beat. It makes so much of the gray exploding CGI buildings that seem omnipresent in recent sci-fi films (The Avengers, Star Trek, etc.) seem dull and lifeless. To quote Ruby Rhod, The Fifth Element is "A hotel of a thousand and one follies, lollies, and lickemollies. A magic fountain flow of non stop wine, women, and coochie coochie coooo! All night long!"

Further Reading — an amusing post about movie:
How 'The Fifth Element' Predicted Lady Gaga And Everything Else About Modern Life—Back in '97

happy birthday, gary oldman

Everyone loves Gary Oldman, right? Whether he is playing a super-villain or ... a super-villain. There are so many great Oldman roles to choose from — from some high-ticket features to little-known gems. There are even a few that are appropriate to watch with the kiddies. Here are some of my favorite Oldman movies.

Sid and Nancy (1986) — Oldman played the Sex Pistols' Sid Vicious and made him both a caricature and human at the same time.

Nancy, "I hate my fuckin' life."
Sid, "This is just a rough patch. Things'll be much better when we get to America, I promise."
Nancy, "We're in America. We've been here a week. New York is in America, you fuck."

I have to admit that I found the much-lauded Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) a bit of a yawn (even with Benedict Cumberbatch), but there is no denying that Oldman's George Smiley is a brilliant performance.

The Harry Potter Series — Oldman brings both menace and poignancy to his role as Sirius Black. He also looks pretty darn cool in the beard and 'stache and longcoat.

1997's The Fifth Element is a love it or hate it movie for many. I love its crazy, over-the-top energy. Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, and Chris Tucker are all a lot of fun, but Oldman, as the villain Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg (with very unusual taste in hairstyle and headwear) steals every scene he is in.

1983's Meantime, directed by Mike Leigh, may be hard to track down, but it is worth it. Set in Thatcher's 1980s Britain, it tells the story of a struggling family, most of them on the dole. It is really Tim Roth's film, but Oldman is memorable as the skinhead Coxy.

Francis Ford Coppola's stylized version of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) is probably Oldman's most well-known film. The actor pulls out all the stops and makes his Vlad Dracula evil and frightening as well as seductive and sexy.

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you."

Oldman plays crooked cop Stansfield who is after Mathilda (Natalie Portman), who is under the protection of hit-man Léon (Jean Reno), in Luc Besson's wonderful Léon: The Professional (1994).

Honorable mentions:

Oldman plays Carnegie, a post-apocalyptic Wild West-style outlaw who goes up against Denzel Washington (bad idea) in 2010's The Book of Eli.

1994's Immortal Beloved is full of music and romance, a wonderful Oldman as Ludwig van Beethoven, as the film chronicles his prodigious amount of lady-loves.

Oldman brings both delicacy and menace to his voice role as the evil (of course) peacock Shen in 2011's Kung Fu Panda 2.

Playing another corrupt cop, Oldman matches wits with gorgeous assassin Lena Olin in 1993's Romeo Is Bleeding.

Tony Scott's True Romance (1993, written by Quentin Tarantino) hosts a very eclectic cast of characters (Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Christopher Walken, Brad Pitt, Val Kilmer), but Oldman manages to stand out as pimp Drexl Spivey.

Time for another movie marathon?

my favorite potter film ...

... is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Alfonso Cuarón gets everything right. Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, werewolves and other shape shifters, Alan Rickman's Snape, Harry's Patronus, the time-turner ...

gary oldman makes me laugh

Article first published as Gary Oldman Makes Me Laugh on Blogcritics.



I've always really liked Gary Oldman. But his career is a puzzle to me. He is most frequently cast as the "bad guy" in movies, but I think what makes him truly special, apart from the much-touted acting chops, is his sense of humor: Oldman, on True Romance, (1993): "I hadn't read the script, and knew nothing about it. Tony (Scott) and I had tea at the Four Seasons and he said, 'Look, I can't really explain the plot. But Drexl's a pimp who's white but thinks he's black'. That was all I needed to hear. I said, 'Yes, I'll do it'." The guy always brings a funny little twist, not just an accent, to his roles. One of my all-time favorite Oldman performances, and probably the first time I saw him, is as Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy. He is obnoxious and tragic and eerily like the Sex Pistols' doomed bassist. But he is also funny as hell.

Oldman can do anything—biopics (Prick Up Your Ears), period good (Immortal Beloved) and not-so-good (The Scarlet Letter), crime (The Professional). He has used so many different accents in his movies that I'm not really sure what his real voice sounds like. So why is he so often called in to do the same sort of role, over and over—the crazy bad guy? Case in point. I watched The Book of Eli the other day. It's not a great film, but it was definitely absorbing. It's a little bit western, a little bit Thunderdome, a little bit classic Twilight Zone-with-a-twist sci-fi. It's mainly a showcase for Denzel Washington, which is always a good thing. I got a huge kick watching Denzel be the coolest badass post-apocalyptic superhero samurai that ever walked the West.

And The Book of Eli had Gary Oldman as the villain Carnegie. There is a nice scene in the movie where Oldman washes his lover's hair. It's unexpected and adds a nice shade to his character. And then the script and the rest of the movie forgets about it and it's stock villain dialogue for the rest of the film. It's a shame, because the man could have made the character much more interesting, if he'd been given anything to work with.

Priest Vito Cornelius: You're a monster, Zorg.  Zorg: I know.

As I watched Oldman in this movie, I kept getting echoes of a far cheesier, but much more fun performance in The Fifth Element. It's the same set-up, with Oldman as the tyrannical bad guy in charge of the outpost—in this case outer space. But his villain is so much more fun here. Maybe I just love him best when he's over-the-top. The Fifth Element, one of the best under-rated-science-fiction-starring-Bruce-Willis-pictures ever (also with an amazing and colorful performance by Chris Tucker), is just plain silly a lot of the time, but you just won't care, because it's so visually enticing and damn fun to watch.

Thinking about Oldman and over-the-top performances, I can't help but mention one of the most OTT movies of all time, Bram Stoker's Dracula. It's got tons wrong with it (miscast Winona and Keanu and Anthony Hopkins in his usual cheesetastic mode), but also tons of wonderful effects and images, Gustav Klimt costumery, and Oldman, who throws himself wholeheartedly into the role of the original vampire. No sparkly teen fangsters here, thank you very much. Oldman manages to make all of his incarnations of Dracula—the bewigged Nosferatu, the Transylvanian warrior, the 19th-century dapper gentleman prince—appealing in some way. He loves his character and so do we, so we know by the end of the movie that Winona's Mina is in for a very dull future without him. Oldman said about his performance in the film, "I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's not Dracula crying, it's Gary Oldman, but using the technique of the character. The emotion is mine, because I don't know what it's like to be undead and live 300 years."

And that's just the first few minutes. It get's even more exaggerated from here ...

It's interesting that one of his best-known recent roles, as Sirius Black in the Harry Potter movies, may also be the best combination of Oldman's talents. It's too bad, by the very nature of the overstuffed films, that his time on screen is so fleeting. But in The Prisoner of Azkaban he was able to go from being introduced as the usual crazy-as-a-bedbug villain to the misunderstood outsider, to the warm and funny uncle. It's the power of Oldman that I always think that he's in this movie and The Order of the Phoenix more than he actually is. His persona makes that kind of an impact.

Oldman has said, "I don't think Hollywood knows what to do with me. I would imagine that when it comes to romantic comedies, my name would be pretty low down on the list." I know just what he means. His Dracula is a romantic hero. And a monster. And, and, and. But Oldman would be terrific in a romantic comedy, as long as his leading lady was up to his caliber.

In the meantime, he's got lots of interesting things on the horizon. Guns, Girls and Gambling sounds like it just might be a comedy. Here's hoping. I'm looking forward to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Red Riding Hood, as well as another Batman, which is in the works. There's always something interesting to expect from Gary Oldman.

Quotes imdb

scary monsters and super creeps

This is the time of year to indulge in scary movies, but which ones? There are so many, of all shapes and sizes it was hard to know where to start. I've thought that it might be fun to watch a film per classic movie monster—a sort of tribute to what used to keep me up late when I first discovered horror movies as a kid. Of course Halloween can be funny and fun, too, not just scary. I started watching some of these but my list has got longer and longer ...




Vamp out. When (grown-up) people think of vampires, Count Dracula usually comes immediately to mind, and not some shimmery teenagers from the Northwestern U.S. But which Count? Bela Lugosi was classic, but I'm not in the mood for a B&W barely-talkie. Frank Langella was beyond sexy. I admit it, I'm tempted. Gary Oldman was so over the top I'm afraid my movie marathon might get exhausted before it gets started. As much as I love Angel, I decided what I'd really like to see was Buffy vs, Dracula, with Xander quipping his way through his horror at how easily he became the next Renfield.




The Lycanthrope. There were  a lot of fun werewolves to chose from. Again, Universal horror offers up a classic, with Lon Chaney Jr. as the man who bays at the moon and the gypsies who love him. I remember being creeped out and fascinated by Albert Finney in Wolfen (and he was the good guy). Our local library has the complete She-Wolf of London television series. Admittedly cheesy, but I used to love to catch this series about a young female college student who gets bit by the wrong kind of dog and then becomes a sort of monster/superhero. But my first impulse in this genre is An American Werewolf in London, with David Naughton as the unfortunate title character and Griffin Dunne as his rapidly decomposing friend. I loved this movie when it first came out and watched it more than once in the theater, but haven't seen it in ages. It was hip and post-modern and referential. I may have to watch it and the T.V. show. This one may be a double-header.




I want my Mummy. This one was a no-brainer for me. It's The Mummy with Brendan Fraser and all the other cool guys, The Mummy all the way. Too. Much. Fun.




"It's Fronk-en-steen." Also an easy choice, Young Frankenstein is not only one of my very favorite movies, which I'm not afraid to admit that I can practically quote word-for-word, but it is still funny as hell. There are too many great moments to reference, but darts, neighing horses, rolling in the hay, and "putting on the Ritz" come immediately to mind.




Day of the Dead. I'm not a big fan of zombie movies. I guess because the idea of them really creep me out way more than the other monsters. My daughter was little when the recent crop of well-reviewed zombie movies came out—little enough for me to use her as an excuse to skip them in the theater (I told you, they creep me out!) so I'm going with the ultimate, the classic, Night of the Living Dead. It doesn't get much more scary or relentless than this. At least for me. And I think I can bring myself to watch it, with the lights on. I'll let you know what I think about Zombieland when I catch up.




It came from outer space. I know October is almost over, but this may have to be a double-header, too. There is nothing scarier than what happens to one of my favorite actors, John Hurt, in Alien, and female heroes have been trying to catch up to Sigourney Weaver ever since. On a more humorous side, Men in Black is a lot of fun, and the kid might actually be able to watch ... oh, Vincent D'Onfrio. Well, maybe not, but it's still a fun film, and this is MY list, anyway.




Ghost of a chance. I think Poltergeist is the way to go. It's not a perfect movie (I hate the guy in the bathroom scene), but it has such an easy relaxed vibe between Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams as the two parents, that once it starts, you really don't want it to stop. There are other great ghost movies to choose from, especially if you're in a more classic ghost story mood: The Haunting, The Others, The Frighteners and the wonderful The Innocents, with Deborah Kerr, based on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw.




A little Depp'll do ya.  Finally, in a category all by himself, is Johnny Depp, who is drawn to all sorts of crazy and offbeat films—some of them quite monstrous. I personally would skip Sweeney Todd—once was enough, but to each his own. And there are so many others to choose from. Sleepy Hollow, if you're not put off by my Sweeney Todd warning and want to keep the decapitation theme going. If you're feeling ghostly, Pirates of the Caribbean is a good bet. There's nothing creepier than his portrayal of Willy Wonka. From Hell is actually quite a good film about real-life monster Jack the Ripper. But my Depp pick would be Ed Wood, hands down—the lovely and loving portrait of the world's worst auteur. It brings together so many of these classic monsters—creatures from lagoons, outer space, West Los Angeles—even Bela Lugosi himself.

This list of movies has kept things spooky and ooky around here and looks to continue to do so pretty much through Thanksgiving.

Happy Halloween!