Word: draculas
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...Dracula. The name conjures a multitude of disparate images. Bela Lugosi. John Carradine. Count Chocula. Innumerable ghouls of the silver screen, and a muppet. Ever since F. W. Murnau's great 1921 silent film, "Nosferatu," Dracula and cinema have evolved together...
...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...
Enter Winona Ryder's character, Mina, an English schoolteacher and the nineteenth-century reincarnation of the Transylvanian princess. Dracula's glimpse of her photograph sets the stage for the love story which drives the film. Although a monster, Dracula is a rather compelling romantic hero--top hat, John Lennon glasses and all. Oldman successfully evokes the quirky, bordering on psychotic, vulnerability he brought to other peculiar roles in "Sid and Nancy" and "Track...
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...
...most striking displays of Warhol's work is 10 images of popular characters from a 1981 portfolio entitled Myths. On one wall hang pictures of Mickey Mouse, Howdy Doody, Santa Claus, Greta Garbo, Dracula, Superman, Uncle Sam, the Wicked Witch of the West, Mammy and a self portrait called The Shadow. With this series, Warhol has drawn attention to Hollywood's ability to create icons that the entire country recognizes...