Word: transylvanian
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When a commentator holds up a wicked man to righteous indignation, a good photograph can do wonders in setting the right moral tone. Your picture of Connally is admirable for this purpose: his glistening, protruding canines beautifully evoke the Transylvanian candidate. My question is, does the writer have to supply his own picture, or do you keep a file on deserving public figures...
This is the expensive Dracula that the gang at Hammer films must have dreamed of making back in the '50s and '60s. The legend had fallen out of general favor back then, and only B-picture makers and their fans still cared about the ineffable Transylvanian count and the strange folkloristic ways of fighting off his baleful influence (garlic on the windowsills, stakes through the heart, that sort of nonsense). Like those old programmers, the new Dracula is shot in the high gothic-romantic tradition, lushly scored and terribly serious about itself and its subject matter...
...potential Achilles heel is the ethnic minorities question--three-quarters million Hungarians and one half million Germans, living mainly in Transylvania. Their direct contacts with Hungary and East Germany are severly restricted by the regime: for although these countries may be Communist also, their nationalist affinity with their Transylvanian kin is too close and potentially separatist for comfort. It is highly significant that the most serious recent opposition to Ceaucescu was the Transylvanian miners' strike, where most of the leaders arrested were Hungarian speaking...
...title role is in the hands of the great flamenco dancer Jose Greco, who has never interpreted a speaking character on stage before. Not surprisingly, he moves on stage exceedingly well; also not surprisingly, he is vocally deficient. His diction often lacks conviction, and the combination of Latin and Transylvanian accents and some scanted syllables does not help intelligibility. He brings to the role neither the hypnotic power of Lugosi nor the sensuous elegance of Langella...
...equivocation, doublethink and simultaneous talking out of both corners of his mouth as took his predecessor, Clive Barnes [now at the New York Post], years of painstaking practice to master." Colleagues are quick to pan Simon in return: "The Count Dracula of critics!" (Andrew Sarris, the Village Voice); "The Transylvanian vampire!" (Robert Brustein. Yale Drama School); "Personally offensive!" (Brendan Gill, The New Yorker). Many of Simon's critics, however, would not dispute his immense erudition and frequent fairness. Says Harvey Sabinson, a director of the league that banned him: "He's an extraordinarily brilliant man when he sticks...