Word: coppolas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Dracula the screen role is more seductive, protean, and undead than the legendary Transylvanian himself. In Francis Ford Coppola's resurrection (exhumation?) of the character, we see Dracula in his most romantic incarnation to date. Gary Oldman plays Dracula as a Byronic hero, a Slavic warrior prince who slaughters Turks in holy war. When his wife, Elisabetha, hears a false report of his death, she commits suicide, and the Church pronounces her soul damned. In a fit of rage and sorrow, the prince vows to join her in damnation and becomes a vampire. Essentially, the torture of his vampirism derives...
...Coppola skillfully plays his actors off of the typecasts we've come to expect of them. For instance, Dracula seems all the more seductive for the fact that Keanu Reeves, the would-be romantic lead, is such a milquetoast. Ryder, after whetting our appetites in "Beetle-juice" and "Heathers," is the vamp we've always wanted her to be. And Anthony Hopkins, who claims not to have brought Hannibal Lecter to bear on his role as Dracula's off-kilter nemesis Dr. Van Helsing, nevertheless gives us a few sparkling moments of Lecteresque macabre humor...
Likewise, the film itself comments on the very process of filmmaking. The aesthetic of Coppola's Dracula reaches into the past for vintage camera tricks like motion reversal and in-camera multiple exposures, smoke and mirrors from a bygone era of cinema. Roman Coppola, cinema scion and visual effects director, explained, "There were a lot of Victorian parlor amusements that were optical tricks that developed into film. A lot of stage magicians were the first to buy projectors and cameras. Our inspiration was the fact that it would be unique to use techniques that are inexpensive and fresh and that...
Harrison is forcefully present on every page. Although she treats subjects as diverse a Francis Ford Coppola, Nadia Comeneci, a Vermont religious cult, racial tensions in New York and ethnic conflict in Yugoslavia, her book retains a logic and cohesion through Harrison's distinctive voice and sensibility...
Singleton has found encouragement in the experiences of other onetime ; wunderkinds who have weathered the vicissitudes of a Hollywood career. He recalls that when he first met Coppola, the older director was screening Jean Cocteau's Orpheus in an attempt to learn how filmmakers achieved special effects in the days before high-tech computer graphics. "What real filmmakers do is they study films, they study their craft," Singleton observes. "No matter how much success they encounter, they are always in the process of studying." Singleton himself watches at least one film a day, a practice he equates with taking vitamins...