His security guards appear to be minecraft characters. Richard E Grant plays Seward, the doctor who is looking after Renfield at the asylum. He’s rather taken by Harker’s photograph of Mina – because she looks remarkably like Dracula’s own dead wife. He’s not looking bad for a man who’s 400 years old. When Harker arrives, we finally meet Dracula. I don’t think I’m seeing this movie to its best effect on a muddy, pan & scanned VHS copy, though. I’m quite enjoying the deliberate artifice of a lot of the film’s effects, like this lightning that’s clearly hanging just behind the characters. I guess this isn’t bad, since the original novel was presented as journal entries, and this is purporting to be ‘faithful’ to the book, but it still feels a bit clunky, although a bit more honest than having exactly the same exposition spoken in redundant dialogue between characters.
Jonathan has to travel to Transylvania to help with the business dealings of the mysterious Count Dracula, a journey he undertakes by means of montage and journal entries read out. His fiancee Mina is played by Winona Ryder. He makes a game try at the English accent, but it’s off just enough to strike a very false note. Then, for contrast, we meet Jonathan Harker, played by Keanu Reeves. I’ve never liked Renfield as a character, but at least by getting Tom Waits to do it, you’ve got something out of the ordinary. I think he did the famous painting that ends Raiders of the Lost Ark, the huge factory full of crates, along with many others.įast foward four hundred years, and we meet the mad, insect eating Renfield, played by Tom Waits. They’re from Mike Pangrazio, one of the masters of matte painting, who worked a lot for Industrial Light and Magic before starting his own company, Matte World, and now, I believe, works for Weta Digital. It really does look like an ‘artful’ solution to a lack of budget to stage a decent ruck.īut there’s some gorgeous matte paintings on show – not that the Sky broadcast and VHS recording does it particular justice.
The shadow puppet representation of Vlad’s battle is slightly less successful, though. I do like Oldman’s armour, bright red and textured to look like exposed muscles. It starts with a prologue showing how Gary Oldman’s Vlad the Impaler turns his back on God after his wife dies. Then, we get a movie that everyone remembers, and got well reviewed, but which I remember not liking very much, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This tape starts with the end of an Armand Assante movie called Fever.
0 kommentar(er)
