Category: Books

Dracula’s Lament

Bela LugosiOn May 26, 1897, Bram Stoker‘s novel Dracula went on sale in London bookshops.  The vampire book would eventually spawn many versions in other media as well as other stories about the Count from Transylvania.

The novel originally only achieved moderate sales, so that Stoker’s obituary in 1912 did not even mentioned the name of the novel Dracula.  But a Broadway production in the 1920s started boosting sales of the book.  And the real breakthrough came with Universal’s 1931 film that starred Bela Lugosi and was directed by Tod Browning.

A Taste for Love

Many other TV and movie versions followed.  Although one of my favorite versions only appeared in part in the excellent comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008).

In that movie, the character Peter Bretter — played by the film’s writer Jason Segal — is working on a puppet play about Dracula. Below, Mila Kunis encourages him to perform one of the play’s songs, “Dracula’s Lament.”

We never see the whole play, entitled A Taste for Love. But at the end of the film we get a good taste of it, which only makes us wish Segal would film the whole thing in a new movie.

The music is surprisingly wonderful, the puppets created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop are brilliant, and actor Bill Hader adds a nice touch. Check it out.

Segel has explained that he really did work on creating the Dracula puppet musical to be its own production. But with help from director Judd Apatow, he concluded it worked better as a segment in another movie rather than as a production all its own. Too bad, but at least we got to see some of it in the very funny Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

I wonder what Bram Stoker would think?

Photo of Bela Lugosi as Dracula via public domain. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson Put Johnny Cash’s Poetry to Music

    Johnny Cash PoemsKris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson join forces to pay tribute to their late friend and former collaborator Johnny Cash.  In “Forever Words / I Still Miss Someone,” Kristofferson and Nelson take a final poem written by Johnny Cash and put it to music.

    Cash’s son John Carter Cash explained to Rolling Stone that after his father died in 2003, they found a folder of letters and poems.  Johnny Cash wrote the letters and poems in his old age after the death of his wife June Carter Cash.

    Among the sad poems was one called “Forever.”  The poem is about life going on and recognizing that “the trees that I planted are still young.”  Kristofferson and Nelson took the poem to create “Forever Words / I Still Miss Someone.”

    The track features Kristofferson’s reading of the poem and Nelson’s guitar.  In addition, they added an instrumental track from Cash’s 1958 song “I Still Miss Someone.”

    The video below shows Kristofferson and Nelson on the track.  And it also includes them talking about their deceased friend and former Highwayman colleague.  Check it out.

    “Forever Words / I Still Miss Someone” is the lead track on the upcoming album Johnny Cash: Forever Words. The album features Cash’s poetry interpreted musically by friends, family, and other artists, such as John Mellencamp, Rosanne Cash, Elvis Costello, Chris Cornell, Alison Krauss, Carlene Carter, The Jayhawks, and Brad Paisley.

    Forever Words hits stores and the Internet on April 6, 2018. An accompanying book, Forever Words: The Unknown Poems, has also been released.


    Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies (Book Review)

    Ann Hornaday Ann Hornaday, who is chief film critic at the Washington Post, recently wrote a book to help viewers understand what they are seeing on the big screen and how to think about what they see.  Her book, Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies (2017), is like a crash college course on appreciating film.

    Hornaday explains in the introduction that the book “Is designed to guide readers through a medium that, as it morphs into an ever more constant presence in our lives, has called upon everyone to be their own most trusted film critics.”

    The book chapters break up various aspects of movies, starting with The Screenplay and Acting all the way through Cinematography, Editing, and Directing.  Each chapter tells the viewer what to watch for to appreciate the good and bad qualities of certain movies.

    Talking Pictures likely will not radically change your understanding of movies.  But Hornaday is not trying to provide the definitive treatise on movie-making.  Instead, Talking Pictures is an easy and enjoyable trip through various aspects of watching and appreciating movies.

    Hornaday writes in an easy-to-understand manner.  One of the best parts of the book is her use of actual movies to illustrate her points.  Most of the films will be familiar to the average movie fan, so the reader will easily understand the examples.  Hornaday also mentions some movies you might not have seen, which will peak your curiosity to seek out those films.  Similarly, at the end of each chapter, Hornaday provides a list of recommended films related to the chapter’s topic.

    If you love movies and want to learn more about how to appreciate and how to talk about film like a movie critic, check out Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies.

    What is your favorite book about film?  Leave your two cents in the comments.

    The Wrong “American War”? (Book Review) (Guest Post)

    Omar El AkkadThe following book review is a Guest Post by Russ Miller, an expert on literature, film, and other things.  Russ grew up in the West and currently lives in Virginia.

    I just finished the absorbing and well-paced debut novel American War by Omar El Akkad.  It depicts a dystopian future centered on a second American civil war between the northern “blues” and the southern “reds.”  The war’s personal and national tragedy is related through the experiences of one ordinary southern family that ends up having a profound role in the conflict.

    American War’s Division

    The fissures leading to another fratricidal conflagration are mostly unexplained and unexplored.  We all know what they are – drawing as they do on the Republic’s historical, entrenched, accumulated animosities and resentments.  But the match that ignites the dry tinder this time (it is the late 21st century) is the southern states’ refusal to comply with a federal ban on the use of fossil fuels.

    The ban on fossil fuels comes too late in any case.  Global warming and the resulting rise in sea levels has left the North American continent submerged and scorched in equal measure.  Florida is already under water and the national capital has long-ago removed to Columbus, Ohio.  These conditions exacerbate the conflict.  But the cause isn’t climatic.  It is something deeper.

    American War: A novel is getting well-deserved positive reviews.  El Akkad is a Canadian-Egyptian journalist who makes terrific use of his foreigner’s objectivity towards the U.S. and the harrowing experience he’s made reporting from some of the world’s intractable conflicts.

    El Akkad brilliantly converts most of our contemporary pathologies into grist for the book’s plot:  drone wars and torture; refugee camps and foreign-supported insurrections; and the obvious nod to today’s seemingly irreconcilable hostility between “reds” and “blues.”

    Today’s Real Divide

    Still, the book’s crux – a revival of America’s north/south hostility – misses its mark.  As the last presidential election made clear, the real divide in this riven and disconsolate country centers on values and political perspectives.  The fault-line defies geography.  As Robert Kaplan reveals in his new book “Earning the Rockies,” red and blue American are not places but deeply-rooted states of mind keyed to questions of cosmopolitanism, identity-politics, and faith.  Central Mississippi now is aligned with central Pennsylvania and Central Idaho.  Similarly, New York now is aligned with Minneapolis and Lexington, Kentucky.  Mason and Dixon can’t explain Donald J. Trump’s victory, at least not as neatly as El Akkad hopes.  And besides, aren’t the northern fracking fields of Pennsylvania and North Dakota the heart of America’s new oil boom?

    To have served as a more effective critique (or cautionary parable) of our current desperate condition, El Akkad’s book would have done better to imagine a future of secular, progressive North American mega-city-states (northern and southern) that observe their own laws (Seattle may be marking the path for this) as part of a cosmopolitan, global, “blue” archipelago – a modern Hanseatic League.  The “red” rural rest should  have been portrayed as an exploited and disparaged class kept poor and at bay by brutal repression, walls, and humiliating check-points (in the way that Israel “manages” the occupied territories today).  The hinterlands would serve and resent the cities under the regressive, self-interested, and corrupt “governance” of sectarian chieftains or warlords (wouldn’t this be the Southern Baptist Convention).  Contemporary London – simply “The City” – on one hand, and present-day Syria and Iraq, on the other hand.  Those are the models for the conflict El Akkad imagines, not Charleston and Gettysburg.

    El Akkad has the right idea.  I also regret our internecine, seemingly incommensurable divisions.   But he dares too little with the truth of our current malaise.  To have seen the heart of that, El Akkad need not have traveled to Alabama.  The short trip from his home “just south of Portland, Oregon” to Oregon’s Grant County (Portland and Multnomah County were exact mirrors of Grant County in the 2016 presidential election results) – east and not south – would have done the trick.

    Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Trailer for “11.22.63” Stephen King Miniseries

    11.22.63

    Hulu is producing an eight-part miniseries based on Stephen King’s novel 11.22.63, a delightful time-travel novel that Chimesfreedom reviewed earlier. The new trailer for the miniseries features actor James Franco as the time-traveling Jake Epping.

    As discussed in our review of the book, 11.22.63 centers on Epping’s attempts to stop the John F. Kennedy assassination. Before acting decisively, though, he has to investigate whether or not Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing the president. I loved the book, and this trailer makes me excited for the miniseries too.

    The miniseries 11.22.63 is directed by Kevin Macdonald and also stars Chris Cooper, Cherry Jones, and Josh Duhamel. The miniseries hits Hulu on February 15, 2016, which is Presidents’ Day.

    What is your favorite Stephen King adaptation? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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