Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,528 
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Post by Confessor on Jan 5, 2020 23:27:39 GMT -5
For the record, I'm a big fan of Bram Stoker's novel, but the vast majority of adaptations and re-interpretations simply do not come close to capturing the creeping sense of fear and eroticism of the novel.
It's actually quite a hard book for directors and scriptwriters to adapt, partly because of its journalistic, scrapbook-like format, and partly because, away from the context of the written page, Jonathan Harker is an extremely dull male protagonist. Hence why in film, TV or stage versions of the story, things only usually start to get really cool once Van Helsing turns up.
That said, my go to live action adaptation of the book is Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula from 1992. While it's certainly not perfect, it's the adaptation that gets the most right and follows the book most closely, I think. There's a nice comic adaptation of it too by Mike Mignola of Hellboy fame.
However, my favourite comic adaptation of Dracula is actually Leah Moore and John Rippion's Complete Dracula from 2009.
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Post by berkley on Jan 6, 2020 1:17:34 GMT -5
No, none of them are good adaptations of the novel, though some manage to be worthwhile entertainment - or even works of art, depending on how you feel about that term - more or less loosely inspired by it.
I like certain aspects of Coppola's version, but on the whole it isn't a great film, for me. Oldman's one of the better actors of his era but I found him miscast in this, just to start there.
Like all but the very shortest novels, a limited tv series of some kind would be necessary to capture all the twists and turns of the plot. The opening sequence with Harker in Castle Dracula, for example, could be an entire first season of six or seven episodes. "The creeping sense of fear" is a good way to describe it, because there's really quite a slow build-up from the relatively ordinary - young lawyer on a business trip to exotic locale - to the increasingly disturbing and finally horrific. You can't do that in a film - unless you made a series of films, perhaps, with the first one devoted entirely to the Harker sequence, and so on.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 6, 2020 5:44:34 GMT -5
I'm not sure if it's on DVD or Blu-ray, but I really want to see the 1977 BBC adaptation starring Louis Jordan as the Count!
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Post by thwhtguardian on Jan 6, 2020 11:13:44 GMT -5
The 1992 film definitely gets the mood right, and I think it gets the whole trio of lovers bit the best, but I didn't care for Oldman as the Count. For my money Frank Langella was my favorite Dracula; he just has that innate sex appeal with an underlying sense of danger that's important to the character. And that's part of why I like Claes Bang in this adaptation, you can understand why people would fall under his spell, he has that sex appeal and charisma in spades.
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Post by berkley on Jan 7, 2020 0:02:23 GMT -5
I'm not sure if it's on DVD or Blu-ray, but I really want to see the 1977 BBC adaptation starring Louis Jordan as the Count! That's another one I've long meant to watch but still haven't seen. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 7, 2020 10:59:43 GMT -5
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 9,528
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Post by Confessor on Jan 7, 2020 17:25:16 GMT -5
Nice, I'm visiting Yorkshire with the wife in May and we'll definitely be stopping off in Whitby because of its Dracula connection.
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bor
Full Member
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Post by bor on Jan 16, 2020 12:34:22 GMT -5
I i have not seen it but I am going to. This is yet another example of a Danish actor playing a villian. If you are a Danish actor and you get an international role there is a veeeery good chance it is as a villian. Mads Mikkelsen in Casino Royal, Docter Strange and the Hannibal Lector tv series being prominent examples.
I promise you guys we are not all evil!
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2020 14:21:08 GMT -5
I i have not seen it but I am going to. This is yet another example of a Danish actor playing a villian. If you are a Danish actor and you get an international role there is a veeeery good chance it is as a villian. Mads Mikkelsen in Casino Royal, Docter Strange and the Hannibal Lector tv series being prominent examples. I promise you guys we are not all evil! I'm sure you're not!  Any other examples? It is a tad disconcerting (I say that in a humorous way). |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jan 16, 2020 20:54:08 GMT -5
I i have not seen it but I am going to. This is yet another example of a Danish actor playing a villian. If you are a Danish actor and you get an international role there is a veeeery good chance it is as a villian. Mads Mikkelsen in Casino Royal, Docter Strange and the Hannibal Lector tv series being prominent examples. I promise you guys we are not all evil! True, but stilll... better safe than sorry!  DANES!!! DAAAAAAANES! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES !!! |
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bor
Full Member
Posts: 238
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Post by bor on Jan 18, 2020 0:20:33 GMT -5
I i have not seen it but I am going to. This is yet another example of a Danish actor playing a villian. If you are a Danish actor and you get an international role there is a veeeery good chance it is as a villian. Mads Mikkelsen in Casino Royal, Docter Strange and the Hannibal Lector tv series being prominent examples. I promise you guys we are not all evil! I'm sure you're not! Any other examples? It is a tad disconcerting (I say that in a humorous way). Jesper Christensen as Mr white in the Craig Bond movies. Lars Mikkelsen, Mads Mikkelsen`s brother, plays the villian in season 3 of the BBC Sherlock series and Grand Admiral Thrawn in Star wars Rebels. There are other examples, but to be fair there are people like Nikolaj Coster-Waldau who also has more heroic roles. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 20, 2020 14:53:19 GMT -5
The more I think about this mini-series, which ran out of steam in the third episode, the more I realise its problem: it threw too much at the wall to see what sticks. Some of the more intriguing ideas, particularly in the third episode, were ignored, not developed, developed too little, etc.
It was all very "runaway train". It tried to be too many things to too many people. And the scenes that would not have been out of place in Eldorado (hi, Confessor!) tainted it even more. Who wrote the third episode, Vince Russo?
They should have stuck to just one or two intriguing ideas - and developed them.
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Post by thwhtguardian on Jan 20, 2020 16:39:38 GMT -5
The more I think about this mini-series, which ran out of steam in the third episode, the more I realise its problem: it threw too much at the wall to see what sticks. Some of the more intriguing ideas, particularly in the third episode, were ignored, not developed, developed too little, etc. It was all very "runaway train". It tried to be too many things to too many people. And the scenes that would not have been out of place in Eldorado (hi, Confessor!) tainted it even more. Who wrote the third episode, Vince Russo? They should have stuck to just one or two intriguing ideas - and developed them. That's my feeling as well, it's almost as if the BBC expressed a lack of confidence in the series so they tried to squeeze everything they intended to do into a single mini-series. The whole modern era episode should have been it's own season, and with that added time I think the concepts would have worked much better. |
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