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Shadow Of The Vampire 113

Posted by JonKatz from the -geeks-from-Hell- dept.
If you need to escape Hype Sunday, or even if you don't, go see Shadow Of The Vampire.The odd and the slightly twisted will go nuts over this film by E. Elias Merhige. William Dafoe is astounding as the vampire Count Orlock, and John Malkovich is his wonderful icky and obsessive self as the director whose only moral value is getting his film made at any cost. Spoilage warning: plot is discussed, no endings. A brief and useful Nosferatu primer is included, free of charge.

Shadow Of The Vampire is, along with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, one of the must-see movies of the current crop.

Although it purportedly depicts the filming of the masterpiece Nosferatu, Shadow's real target is filmmaking itself. The movie offers the creepy yet convincing argument that our popular culture is full of figurative blood-sucking, and that it excuses any means to reach an end, even if the process ultimately consumes the artist, pollutes the art, and exploits the viewer. There's a truth there that hits home, especially in the corporatized entertainment world. The real vampire here, almost from the opening shot, is Hollywood. Shadow Of the Vampire is thus simultenously frightening and relevant, as well as very funny.

It may increase your enjoyment of this movie to spend a few minutes reading up on the film that inspired it. A very brief history:

Nosferatu, made by F.W. Murnau in German in l922, is the grandaddy of Gothic horror films, having spawned at least 30 movies, along with countless books, TV shows and fables. The movie, like all great movies, has been shrouded in its own mythology, the most enduring piece of which is that the leading actor in the silent movie -- Max Schreck -- loved to partake in some occasional hemoglobin himself. Schreck was definitely odd. He was only seen on the movie set at night and slept in a coffin.

The conceit in Shadow (I'm not giving anything away, as this point is clear from the get-go) is that Shreck wasn't merely portraying a vampire but actually was one, and had made a Faustian bargain with his director. At first, the cast and crew buy the cover that Schreck is an unusually meticulous Method Actor (like Malkovich himself), who drinks blood for authenticity.

Gradually, however, other horrific possibilities present themselves. Unlike the horrified cast, the celluloid Murnau isn't upset by this turn; he's delighted. In fact, he's been counting on it; it's going to make his movie authentic and enduring.

Admist a few seedy scenes depicting the squalor of Berlin between the wars, and the general air of horror and foreboding, Murnau is fending off neurotic actors, clueless extras, dumb reporters, budget-crazed producers and anxious financiers back in Berlin. It's a brilliant stroke to shroud this old chestnut in the context of the American studio system and the insanity of contemporary showbiz. Murnau cranks happily away at his 35mm movie camera, never once even briefly deterred as casualties start to mount, necessary "sacrifices," as Murnau puts it, for getting a movie in on time and under bizarre circumstances - Murnau has a lot of crew members to replace.

Beyond its re-working of cinematic mythology, Shadow Of The Vampire somewhat poignantly foreshadows the fate of classical art and the revolution in popular culture that movies would help spark, not to mention the Net and Web. Murnau warns that that the screen and its descendants will chase literature, poetry and other cultural forms into the shadows, like vampires themselves, reality and culture getting all mixed up. His leading lady (Catherine McCormack playing Greta Schroeder) laments that while a live theater audience gives her life as an actress, the camera seems to take it away.

The original Nosferatu (for more info about it, see Cory Gross's excellent Web site on the film) Nosferatu was called Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, and made its debut over passionate objections from the estate of Bram Stoker, who wrote the novel Dracula which launched the contemporary version of the vampire myth. Stoker's family refused Murnau permission to make the movie. Murnau took much of Stoker's story anyway -- there's old, twitchy Jonathan Harker riding in his carriage towards the spooky, ruined castle -- but changed the Count's name and set the story not in Transylvania but in different parts of Europe.

Murnau, who left Europe for Hollywood and died in a car accident in California at age 43, is credited with three movies generally considered masterpieces, including The Last Laugh; and Sunrise.

But Nosferatu is his best known, most influential movie. It clearly shaped many of the horror movies that followed and helped make the vampire story one of the most enduring of the Gothic myths.

Aside from the changed name and locale, Nosferatu remains faithful to the story Stoker was trying to tell. Even more than the novel, Murnau's monster is the ultimate renegade and outsider, only nobody would dare to dismiss or taunt him.

Dracula lovers will feel somewhat at home, despite the striking differences in the way the vampire is presented. There's the Count traveling to Europe (in this case Germany) on a doomed ship, the belief that crosses and stakes might kill him off. Only this monister is also a canny negotiator, acting as his own ruthless agent to wheel and deal for favorable terms from the over-eager Murnau.

Murnau's vampire is nothing like the poised, elegant, sometimes erotic vampires in American films, from Bela Lugosi to Tom Cruise. Count Orlock is the pre-sanitized version, a bitter, loathesome plague, a repulsive creature who's not superhuman but a half-dead thing you couldn't stand to be anywhere near, let alone have feast on you in the dead of night. Once powerful and rich, he's reduced to the occasional rodent and vial of delivered blood. His hunting days are over. He has pallid skin, talon-like fingernails, and a dessicated face. There is nothing erotic or charismatic about him.

For all that, The Shadow Of The Vampire never stops laughing at itself, or at us. There's a great scene where the movie's producer is flattering the creepy Shreck for his rabid attention to detail, when the Count grabs a bat out of the air and scarfs it down like a Milky Way bar. As he lumbers off, wiping his bloody mouth on his sleeve, the producer turns to another member of the crew: "What an actor!"

As primitive as Nosferatu is by contemporary standards, it gets into your head (So does Shadow... ). It somehow seems to capture what makes the vampire story the world's most haunting yarn: roots in Christian European folklore and superstition, blood rituals, the evil-against-science theme, the ultimate geek-from-hell against the world; the fear engendered by conjuring up things that might slip into people's rooms at night. Strange that with their relatively primitive, pre -digital special effects, Murnau's staff was able to invoke this creepiness more effectively than anyone before or since.

Film scholars have long pointed out the sexual premonitions and suggestions in the vampire myth, the warnings about sex and sexual liberation. Vampires are mostly portrayed as powerful men who steal past locked doors and barred windows to ravish helpless and beautiful women asleep in nightgowns in their beds. The Victorians were terrified of venereal disease in much the same way we fear AIDS.

But all that may overintellectualize the story; the vampire may be hypnotic simply because he's King of the Night, a lasting symbol for all-purpose unspeakable evil.
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  • Two slight errors (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28, 2001 @07:52AM (#475469)
    Jon wrote a good review, and the movie, from what I've seen from the trailer, looks to be worth a look.

    However, Jon has a couple of slight errors in his review. First, Max Schreck may have been a meticulous actor in a manner that would later be called Method Acting, but he predates what Lee Strauss formalized in "The Book" by a number of years. Schreck wouldn't have been a Method actor, because those acting techniques hadn't been developed into a complete system yet.

    Two, "roots in Christian European folklore": vampires predate Christianity by not years, but millenia. They were a part of Roman, Greek, Semitic, African and even Egyptian folklore. Practically every culture has had a vampire of some sort in their folklore. Hints of vampires can be found in Inca and Aztec folklore. The basis at least in part might come from the endemic amenia that our ancestors often suffered: serious amenia can make a person look damn near dead, and drinking blood (human or animal) is a good way to get a quick dose of iron.
  • > Also Christean European folklore doesn't
    > pre-date the millenia at all, does it?

    A lot of "Christian European" folklore has pre-Christian and occasionally non-European roots. On the subject of vampires, read the material on vampire legends of India at this URL:

    http://www.zyworld.com/vampirelore/Gallery6.htm

    and consider the fact that vampire legends in southeastern Europe were introduced with the Rómany migration in 1000-1300 AD. The ancestors of the Rómany migrated from India to Persia and thence to Asia Minor and Europe. They observed a number of traditional taboos relating specifically to blood and bodily fluids (e.g. not wearing bright red cloth).
  • "However, in the US & other countries, the only way adults can get AIDS is by sharing drug needles or promiscuous/unprotected sex.

    Careful here. Are you presuming that screening out of HIV-infected blood is 100% effective? Even if it is 99.9999% effective, that still leaves 0.0001%. If I were you, I'd be leery of presuming that there was absolutely no possibility of getting HIV from a blood transfusion.

    "Therefore, I have absolutely no sympathy for adults in the US that get AIDS now as a result of their unhealthy behavior."

    Ok, how about this scenario. Say a husband goes off on a business trip, has, um, an indiscretion, with someone who turns out to be infected with HIV, and unknowingly gets infected himself. Husband comes home and makes love to his wife, who in turn gets infected with HIV.

    Now are you saying that you have no sympathy for the wife here? Would you honestly consider unprotected sex between husband and wife to be unhealthy or irresponsible behavior?
  • er.

    :% s/lucy/mina/w
  • So I don't know if I buy your analysis of Dracula. Perhaps the vampire was the embodiment of the dangerous *male* sexuality, rather than the awakening of the dangerous female sexuality

    You really don't seem to have read the book carefully, if at all. The theme of the "fallen woman", who are bitten by Dracula and become sexually awakened, is a recurring one throughout the novel. And to the main protagonist (Harker), it is virtually an obsession. None of the male characters in the book are bitten by Dracula; none of them are transformed by events in the way that the women are when they become Dracula's prey. The female characters are the ones who are transformed from paragons of virtue to wanton wenches, and it is they who are destroyed -- not by Dracula himself, but by the Victorian men who are horrified by their transformation.

    It is true that both men and women were sexually repressed by Victorian society. But as in all such repressive societies, the burden of repression fell mainly on women; when a transgression occurred, even though two people are necessarily involved, it was usually the woman who suffered for it. And Dracula the novel does a pretty good job of following that double standard.

  • Sex and the Single Vampire (Score:5)

    by Phaid ( 938 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @07:18AM (#475474) Homepage
    Film scholars have long pointed out the sexual premonitions and suggestions in the vampire myth, the warnings about sex and sexual liberation. Vampires are mostly portrayed as powerful men who steal past locked doors and barred windows to ravish helpless and beautiful women asleep in nightgowns in their beds. The Victorians were terrified of venereal disease in much the same way we fear AIDS.

    Ah, Jon. So verbose, yet so factually incorrect.

    The Victorians may have been terrified of venereal disease, but that's hardly the message in Bram Stoker's Dracula.

    In Victorian England, female sexuality was considered extremely taboo. The notion was that women were there only to be desired and conquered, never to be sexual beings in their own right. There were all kinds of terrible medical and psychological horrors inflicted on girls who displayed sexual interest in any way.

    No, the real terror that Dracula represents is the awakening of female sexuality. The women in Dracula's castle grab Harker and basically ravish him; he views them as intolerable monsters when in today's world most men wouldn't see much of a problem with the situation. And poor Mina is bitten and turns into a raging sexual predator, so of course the men have to destroy her. And likewise, Harker's great fear is not really that Dracula will kill Lucy, but that Lucy actually wants to go with Dracula now that she's seen what she is capable of being. The vampire's bite is just a metaphor for the awakening of sexuality, the vampire himself just an embodiment of the demon of sexuality which must be curtailed and destroyed.

    By the way, what's a "sexual premonition" ?

    Oh well. Vampires are neat because they dress in black, turn into bats, defy social conventions, and live forever. Throw in some heaving bosoms and ripped bodices and it doesn't matter what the movie is really trying to say, people will go see it because it's (huh huh) cool.
  • While theirs look more stylish and polished, the goggles look a lot like the (U.S.) Civil Defense eyewear I have. The box doesn't state it explicitly but I think mine are to protect the wearer's eyes in the event of a nuclear blast. They're dark as hell, you might as well be blindfolded if you wear them at night, but look pretty cool. They were the perfect addition to my Barbaque Chef of the Apocalypse costume one year.

    As for where to find such stuff, I'd say Army surplus stores and whereever posh welders shop.
  • You're supposed to be able to write... You've been writing for how long? No I'm not a born anglophone.

    Oh fuck it, I'm dead tired. Ignore that post. Sorry.

  • Actually, there was a bit of folklore that sex was itself "debilitating", and stories were told of women who had succumbed as the result of "not having loved wisely but too well".
    Funny, no one's told Madonna...
  • I wonder if the cineplex where you saw it was running the projector bulb at a lower wattage to try to get more life out of it. According to Ebert it's unnecessary as well as unhelpful, but that's the way it is. As for the graininess, maybe that's a deliberate, atmospheric effect. ISTR that The Elephant Man, in a addition to being shot in B&W, had that same sort of visual texture. JonKatz, glad to see we can expect regular reviews from you. You're an interesting foil to Ebert et al. You go, guy.

  • As many of you know, the point here is to do a weekly movie topic in which we all offer reviews, comments on movies, etc., and other kinds of tech and screen culture.
    My review just gets the conversation started. Yours are welcome, read and appreciated. The idea is to get a broad range of opinion on this stuff..

  • ..that's a useful guide. But if you can do better, here's your spot.


  • I agree about Dafoe and the Oscar. I loved the opening sequence though..thought it was haunting and spooky...beautiful too.. I wonder what it depicted? Actually there's not much of a plot to give away..I mean it is a vampire movie..

  • Yes I did see Snatch and liked it a lot..found it very entertaining (the review was last week) but not in the same league as these other two.
    thought there was lots of cinematic technique and laughs but they sort of forgot to throw in the movie..


  • I don't think they are targeting the geek audience at all, though I'd love to see what other people think. I think the connection between the vampire and the geek, if any, is in the sense of outsiderness, but the vampire is a lot more powerful of an outsider than the geek, don't you think?
    I couldn't agree with you more about the vampire being a metaphor for all outsiders. But the movie isn't being marketed that way so far as I can see. Really terrific post though, if you don't mind some unofficial moderation.
    But also is the vampire sexually impotent? Nosferatu is, but the other film versions aren't and Stoker's sure wasn't..wives all over the place.

  • I guess this is the real point of the movie, and the reason why I liked it so much, apart from the fact that I'm a Nosferatu and vampire hobbyist/freak ..Murnau was definitely an artist, but he seemed to making deals left and right for his art..financiers, producers vampires..Now that kind of marketing and deal-making is endemic in Hollywood s the movie becomes the vampire. I think many movies offer more than cheap thrills, but most are infected by this marketing problem and big money, no?
  • Is nobody here afraid of AIDS? That would be too bad..If I must be gay, then I am, right?


  • ..I promise...


  • Personally, I always related to vampires, especially in the context of outsiders...

  • Buy what do you have against pseudo-intellectual undergrad film students?

  • The Russians practiced Method Acting as well As Lee (I don't think it was Strauss, but maybe). Shreck studied it in Moscow. Also Christean European folklore doesn't pre-date the millenia at all, does it? Stoker drew heavily from it..


  • ...did you like it?


  • If they would help me enjoy the Super Bowl, I would...Now the Yankees..that's worth watching. As to leaving you alone, why are you here?

  • Alas, no..I have no living Katz relatives, many of you will be relieved to know..I wonder what else he's done though..this was a pretty neat movie. Does anybody know?


  • ...go for it, dude..

  • No, no...this IS bad news..But don't worry, it will pass..Probably tomorrow..Fortunately I have never experienced broad agreement..wonder what it would be like..


  • I'm not sure what you mean by surrealism here..Could explain here or e-mail me? Intersesting thought..I thought Orlock's negotiating skills were meant to make him the Ovitz from Hell..would like to hear more from you about that, if you have the time..Thanks for the neat post.


  • You actually couldn't say anything to me that I would take as a greater compliment than that I'm anti-mainstream. Maybe you ought to stick to CNN, which is inherently mainstream.
    I'm actually quite a boring, mainstream guy..drive a mini-van, live in Jersey, pretty dull stuff.. I don't like corporatism much, but I might watch the Super Bowl..good ads..And after all, I am crazy about the Yankees..doesn't get much more mainstream than that, no?
    But I hope you realize what you're writing here. It's a sort of fascist notion, hating ideas and people you disagree with. Not really healthy. If you don't like my work, just don't read it, or set your prefs. The fact that you're here suggests something else is going on, since you may have noticed that there are people who want to have conversations that aren't hostile, and they have rights as well.
    But if the charge against me is that I am not a mainstream person, and if that is a crime in your view, I'm sure guilty.

  • Thanks Mart, I appreciate your post and the growing number of smart movie posters and posts. This thing is going to work, and I'll be doing reviews every Sunday. Please keep coming and posting.
    Obviously, if these people really disliked my work in a rational way, they'd skip it. The fact that they don't (this isn't confined to me, but to just about anybody who writes on slashdot) suggests it isn't really about my work at all.
    As somebody who is a paid critic and commentator, I will always get a certain measure of hostility, which has always been the case in a decade of writing online. Unfortunately the hate-writers tend to drown out the very smart messages..this discussion is the best one we've had yet.
    I feel I have the best job on the Web writing for Slashdot, and plan to be around a long time. I've made a ton of friends in this community, and have a zillion friends here, online and off.
    If people have trouble reading me, Rob has given them to tools to block me out. Or they can just skip it. If they don't, then they have other motives, and it's their problem. I don't have a strong need to be popular, and never have really. I'm very happy writing here, though and am quite comfortable with the people I work for and with the great feedback I get, pro and con. The haters will get sorted out in time.

  • Yes, I think I need to write shorter..But it's hard for me, especially as one trained as a magazine and book writer.
    I also feel there needs to be someplace for pieces with some depth...But I hear you and will try and trim it down. Stay on me.
  • I think I was definitely on a geek crusade when I started writing for the site three years ago but that's not the case in this review..
    Nosferatu was a geek (not in the computer sense) but in the original sense..a freak, a totaly outsider..I think people might be taking the term too literally here...It's definitely a geek movie, but computer geeks aren't the only kinds.
    Thanks for the other words. I get healthy doses of praise and criticism here, and I appreciate both. The trolls...eh..can't say I spend much energy thinking about people with that much empty time on their hands..


  • I'll be here every week posting reviews no matter what the response (and btw, the page hits on the reviews have been very high, I'm told). Please send me your ideas. Some of the posts here about the movie are great..This is definitely going to work..Don't worry..anybody who thinks a few teen flamers are going to discourage me or shut me up is really on strange stuff..I live for feedback of all kinds..If they ignored me..well, that would kill me..
  • Some of these posts..this one, for sure..are great, and we ought to try and find a way to get them published online especially.
    I was mulling the credits over and over, and couldn't quite get what they were doing..I think you nailed it, especially with the suspension of disbelief..thanks..

  • Thanks..not so brief yourself (Score:3)

    by JonKatz ( 7654 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @07:30AM (#475502) Homepage


    But I don't think it's that simple. The Victorians invented the whole idea of pornography, which didn't exist until archeologists from the British Museum dug up stuff from Pompeii with all sorts of sexually explicit material on it..
    I'm not sure about the sexual liberation vs. repression stuff, but the notion that women had to be protected from sexual imagery was invented by the Victorians. The Romans and Greeks had dirty pictures all over the house.
    The "sexual preminition" foresees the very liberation you're referring to (economically, of course)

  • Katz Bashing.. (Score:3)

    by JonKatz ( 7654 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @12:19PM (#475503) Homepage
    First off, you can see from the posts that some people agree with my POV, and some don't. You really think that's bad? That you should only read posts that agree with you, critics that feel the same way you do?
    Only one or two people really know how people view me on /., or how many people read me or not..I'm sure they're not sharing that with trolls. Obviously enuf people read me and like me for me to be here ,and to get paid to be here.
    The trolls are not discriminate in their hostility. You don't have to do anything to be a target except exist, as any /. writer knows.
    But I ought to make something clear, since the topic was opened. I really am not interested in being popular. Never have been popular, and have gotten stuff for my writing from the get-go, beginning with when I wrote a piece in Rolling Stone saying the Net was important..Took a lot of shit for that.
    Also when I wrote for Hotwired. The cypherpunks were a lot more hostile than the trolls, and much more literate.
    I hate to break the news, but I don't write to be popular. It just isn't important to me. People who hate people because they don't like their ideas are inherently creepy, and I'd prefer that they dislike me.
    Every writer or other person I admire in the world was despised at one point or another. I'm not running for mayor, and I get more than enough praise.
    In fact, I get through the night quite comfortably. Most of the criticism I get in e-mail is very polite and thoughtful..and useful. I really pay attention to it. But this kind of unreasoned hostility isn't about me one way or the other. The feedback that scares me isn't from teen jerks acting out, but from people who actually know what they are talking about. They can really rip you one...

  • Good advice.. (Score:4)

    by JonKatz ( 7654 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @07:32AM (#475504) Homepage


    If you can get to see Nosferatu, I'd highly recommend it...It will make this excellent movie twice as enjoyable..
  • >In Victorian England, female sexuality was
    >considered extremely taboo. The notion was that
    >women were there only to be desired and
    >conquered, never to be sexual beings in their own
    >right. There were all kinds of terrible medical
    >and psychological horrors inflicted on girls
    >who displayed sexual interest in any way.

    You're right, but you've got half the picture. *all* sexuality was taboo in Victorian English speaking countries. What they did to women, they also did to men. Men's sexuality was considered very dangerous, so dangerous that the step of removing part of the penis was taken, to diminish the dangerous sex drive. In fact Americans still circumcise their babies to this very day, without realizing how the (barbaric) practice was popularized.

    So I don't know if I buy your analysis of Dracula. Perhaps the vampire was the embodiment of the dangerous *male* sexuality, rather than the awakening of the dangerous female sexuality?

  • The point is that people harass the weird kids because they think they're going to become mass murderers. Harris and Klebold were the weird kids, and as a result of being harassed, went on a rampage, killing people for revenge against society.

    While I think Chuck Flynn is extremely blowing it out of porportion that society is trying to cleanse the world of geeks, you seem to have it mixed up.

    Harris and Klebold weren't targeting geeks, or jocks, or preps, or snobs, or dorks, dweebs, goobs, nerds, etc., etc., etc. They targeted whomever was available. They shot at, or killed, anyone unfortunate enough to be in their way. They may have bragged to one another about who they were going to kill while they planned the massacre, but when the events actually transpired, they just shot at anyone they could, with the express purpose of killing. Not to make a social statement, not to oppress or eliminate geeks, just to kill. All of your analysis and theories about their motives don't change that simple fact.

  • He was 'discovered' when Nicholos Cage's wife rented an old underground art film of his from a video store in Santa Monica (CA, USA). Nick Cage saw the film, and decided he had to have the director work on his production company's next film. Kind of a cool story I think - which comes from a reliable source.

  • Hey, you replied in the postings section. *grin* And you reply is so dry I can't tell if it's a joke or not. :-)

  • who will die alone and unloved

    But I'm cuter than cerebunny!!!!!

  • Jon,
    Years ago, when it was still possible to get AIDS through blood transfusions, a fear of AIDS might be justified.

    In third world countries, where people aren't as educated/informed about AIDS, I can understand why it's still spreading & we should make an effort to educate them.

    However, in the US & other countries, the only way adults can get AIDS is by sharing drug needles or promiscuous/unprotected sex.

    Therefore, I have absolutely no sympathy for adults in the US that get AIDS now as a result of their unhealthy behavior.
  • OK, I looked for statistics on HIV/AIDS transmission, and here's what I found:
    A CDC Report on HIV and Its Transmission [cdc.gov]. It doesn't give any numbers, but says "now very rarely in countries where blood is screened for HIV antibodies." I guess it's still possible to contract HIV thru a blood transfusion. But, according to the American Red Cross [redcross.org]:
    It cannot be stressed enough that the American Red Cross and the FDA consistently agree that the current blood supply is safe and no patients have been harmed.
    That's since a 1993 consent decree between the FDA & ARC. The ARC does 3 [redcross.org] separate tests for HIV, plus 9 other tests for other diseases.

    On the second point, it's not unhealthy behavior on the wife's part, she's an innocent victim. This is similar to the hypothetical situation of contracting HIV from being raped.

  • Hrm (Score:1)

    by Damion ( 13279 )
    Did anyone else misread the title as "Shadow of the Empire" and think it was something about Star Wars?

  • LOL! Wish I had mod points, or that the moron that marked this "Flamebait" hadn't...

    "consuming the red blood of wizened pizzas" - Bwaaahh hah hah hah! A true metaphor for life, indeed.

  • I had read somewhere that Shreck may have been a sort of PR trick for the original Nosferatu, because a last name of Shreck meant "terror" or something like that in German. This would be like seeing "Lolita Jugs" in the credits of a porn film - you would immediately assume that that wasn't their real name. So maybe there's yet another layer of indirection here - perhaps Murnau had to get someone to act the part of Shreck who was acting the part of the Count, as publicity for Nosferatu. After all, it's not like Shreck was really a vampire, regardless of his purported weirdness on the set, right? (Scully: "Because they don't exist?!")

    Of course, I can't pin down where I read that now, but it's interesting to think about.

  • I hadn't even heard of this movie, but now I will probably try to see it this coming week. Thanks for a good review-

    Steve

  • Fortunately I have never experienced broad agreement

    No man can ever expect a broad to agree with him!

    :-)
  • Nosferatu is clearly the same story as Bram Stoker's Dracula. Replace Dracula with Orlok and Renfield with Knock and story is the same.

    The story [geocities.com] is here.
  • Murnau's monster is the ultimate renegade and outsider, only nobody would dare to dismiss or taunt him.

    Fuck, that's what I did wrong in high school. I joined the debate team instead of drinking the blood of the innocent.
    I never really thought of Vampires as being geeks before.

    a bitter, loathesome plague, a repulsive creature who's not superhuman but a half-dead thing you couldn't stand to be anywhere near, let alone have feast on you in the dead of night. Once powerful and rich, he's reduced to the occasional rodent and vial of delivered blood. His hunting days are over. He has pallid skin, talon-like fingernails, and a dessicated face. There is nothing erotic or charismatic about him.

    Wow, this really does sound like the average geek. Especially after the dotcom collapse left so many unemployed and desperate.
    After you
    s/dessicated/bloated/;
    and
    s/blood/pizza/;
    it becomes a perfect description.

    Thank you Jon Katz, I never would have discovered the parallels between geeks and vampires without your help.

    --Shoeboy
  • I saw this in the fall at the film festival here, and it was absolutely excellent. I highly recommend it, Willem Dafoe was almost unrecognizable, and John Malkovich did an superb job. However, it does pay to have seen the original Nosferatu beforehand. I believe it's currently available on DVD.
  • I actually thought it was an excellent movie, and a pretty good review of it. ;)
  • Oh, give me a break! Where did you come up with this load of tripe? You had to dig pretty deep for this.

    All of these "theories" about vampires representing repressed sexuality are complete bullshit. Vampires had nothing to do with sexuality until lurid pulp novelists of the likes of Anne Rice came along.

    Vampires are mythological creatures created by many different cultures, using many different names, to explain various manners in which people mysteriously died. Chances are these people were dying of such ailments as the Bubonic Plague.

    The vampire myth exists, in one form or another, in every culture on the planet. The Chinese have it, the Egyptians have it, the Greeks, Roman, French, Zulu, Aztec, Inca, and American Indians all have vampire myths. So, are you saying that they *all* existed to represent the repressed sexuality of Europe?

    Oh, sorry, sexuality didn't become truely repressed until the rise of Puritanism, and even then didn't reach the point of mass hysteria and repression until the Victorian era. The Puritans were more obsessed with witches than with nookie. The vampire myth existed long before these groups / cultures arose.

    As for your little comment about Columbine, let me say this: SHUT UP! You have no idea what you are talking about. Harris and Klebold weren't targeting geeks, or jocks, or preps, or snobs, or dorks, dweebs, goobs, nerds, etc., etc., etc. They targeted whomever was available. They shot at, or killed, anyone unfortunate enough to be in their way. They may have bragged to one another about who they were going to kill while they planned the massacre, but when the events actually transpired, they just shot at anyone they could, with the express purpose of killing. Not to make a social statement, not to oppress or eliminate geeks, just to kill. All of your analysis and theories about their motives don't change that simple fact.

    Oh, and in the "cultural pantheon" (whatever the hell *that* means) geeks aren't the homosexuals. Homosexuals are the homosexuals. Geeks aren't even recognized as a separate sub-culture. So take your "geeks representing homosexuals" garbage and blow it out your ass.
  • Hmmm... you're right. I hadn't thought of it in that manner.

    I don't believe that Harris and Klebold planned the massacre solely because of being outcasts, or as a reaction to being harrassed. As we've seen from personal experiences shared during the Hellmouth series, many of us we're harrassed outcasts, yet none of us went postal like Harris and Klebold. There was something more that caused them to plan and perform the attack, another, deeper reason that we will never know, because it died with them.

  • I had read somewhere that Shreck may have been a sort of PR trick for the original Nosferatu, because a last name of Shreck meant "terror" or something like that in German.

    Yup. "Max Schreck" is certainly a pseudonym. And, apparently, a pseudonym used only for that one film. The question remains, though, who was the real actor behind the name? One book I looked into (while working on a paper about another great silent film, "Metropolis") suggested that "Max Schreck" was probably Alfred Abel in prosthetics and makeup. Alfred Abel was the gaunt, stern-looking actor who protrayed Joh Fredersen, absolute monarch of Metropolis.
  • I actually saw this in Boston about a year ago with the director on hand. It was a pretty entertaining experience (with the exception of an extraordinarily slow openning credit sequence which I suppose could have been altered before it was released to the general public, I don't know).

    Anyway, just let it be known that DaFoe most asssuredly deserves the Academy Award for best supporting actor and if he doesn't win it it's only because enough people didn't see this movie. He's an absolutely tremendous vampire and all aspiring vampires should look to imitate him.

    Malkovitch, also wonderful, was a slightly more confusing charachter. But that's fine, I won't talk about it because it gives away the plot, but he's great as well. But hell, he always is.

    That is all.
  • "Shadow" is painfully pretentious and overwrought. Worse, its one of those meta-movies (like "State and Main") that's about the making of movies.

    How Katz could assume it was about anything else is puzzling. (NYTimes: "the picture's dubious central metaphor, which is that moviemaking is, at bottom, a form of vampirism"). But maybe its one of those "If your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like nails" things. Maybe Katz' only form of analysis is geek pride.

    Willem *is* actually quite good in his role. Even though his dialogue is crap, he manages to play it well.

    Malkovich, on the other hand, is LOL bad. His lines are just as bad as Dafoe's, but his overblown, cartoonish delivery manages to make them even worse. Ten minutes into the movie, I'm watching Malkovich superimposed over the steam coming from the top of a train (I kid you not), and saying something to the effect of "We are artists engaged in the creation of memory...".

    Even worse, after picking his cast and goofy premise, the writer/director somehow forgot to make an interesting story. The movie goes out of its way to advance its predictable storyline in the most dull way possible, and you always get the sense that the story is really irrelevant, its just a backdrop from yet-more melodramatic quotes about the "art of filmmaking".

    If you want to see a movie about making movies, see The Player or Sunset Boulevard. If you want to see a movie about vampires, see the Nosferatu itself. If you want to see a movie about marginalized geeks, see Welcome to the Dollhouse.

    But, unless your a pseudo-intellectual undergrad film student, I certainly wouldn't see Shadow of the Vampire.
  • IF this movie was an exploration of geekdom, which it's not, and IF it were telling the story of the making of Nosferatu, which it's not, then maybe you're thoughts might have some parallel course with the intentions of the movie.

    The big secret here, and the reason the movie is most definitely NOT the story of the making of Nosferatu, is that FW Murnau was a perfectionist, and a German perfectionist at that. Nosferatu ended up the way it did because the man whipped and pulled and scraped and cried every detail of the movie until it was just the way he wanted it. He was a master of his craft who knew exactly what he wanted, and wasn't afraid to ask for it.

    If there were a geek in the story, it should be he; instead, this meticulous genius is reduced to what basically amounts to a pornographer: he's not there to create anything, not terror, or vampires, or art, he exists in the film merely to record these things. Murnau was not a pimp, he was an artist; and if this movie purports to be about art, then it should give the visionary behind this seminal work more credit than that of a snuff film producer.

  • Jon,
    If you keep responding to them, they will keep trolling you...
    That, or join the dark side and become one of us. :-)

    Fawking Trolls! [geekizoid.com]
  • I just went and saw this movie last night. It was definately worth the cash to go see it in the indie theatre.

    My friends and I wound up having an interesting discussion of the film on the way to the pub. My theory was that the film was not a horror, nor, despite the amusing parts, was it a comedy. It was a tragedy.

    The vampire read Dracula and realized how low his unlife had come. His commentary about how sad a novel Dracula was really highlights this. He's mourning the loss of his golden years and sees himself as fallen farther than Dracula had. As well, he falls in love with the romantisized ideal of an undead as presented by Stroker. He agrees to do the film, as it allows him to, however briefly, live this romantic ideal of what a vampire is to be.

    -Dexx
  • Hollywood isn't even about advertising. It's about making money. Advertising helps this, but it's not the end goal.
  • Shadow Of The Vampire is, along with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, one of the must-see movies of the current crop.

    Er.. I assume you haven't seen Snatch yet?

  • The geek, in the cultural pantheon of post-columbine era, is the modern homosexual. Columbine itself was an attempt to purge the nation of geeks, just as Eastern Europe attempted to do with vampires and homosexuals in the imported version of the Inquisition.
    Eesh.... I just couldn't let this one go. First of all, get over your own language: geek, the cultural pantheon? The post-columbine era? Christ, sorry, but I don't buy for a second that anyone anywhere near the production of this movie had Columbine on his mind; barring people who read a little too much of Jon Katz's more, well, convoluted posts and take them as gospel, I don't think anyone buys that we are in the post-columbine era. It was a trajedy, but by no means was it an about-face of anything. Geeks have always been on the fringe, and recent events have done nothing to change that. Hell, I just read a piece comparing Carrie to the Columbine killers. Enough of this post-columbine bullshit: it's just like malitia folks talking about the post-Waco (and don't forget, post-Ruby Ridge) era. Hell, I suppose everyone has to have a point of reference, but, man, the world doesn't revolve around yours.

    Oh, and Columbine "was an attempt to purge the nation of geeks," eh? Huh? Columbine was an action carried out by geeks, provoked by the status quo... where does the purging come in. Ok... maybe you're trying to say that after Columbine, the country, the education system (etc.) has tried to purge the geeks. Wrong. No way. The powers that be were not actively trying to "purge the nation" (how do you purge 'em anyway... kill em, deport em?), it was a (simpleminded, perhaps misguided) attempt to avoid the deaths of children. I can't imagine how that would possibly appear to be a witchhunt for gays.

    Simpleton@atari.net [mailto] (ignore the email address below... haven't bothered to change sig yet)

    Jose M. Weeks
  • By the way, what's a "sexual premonition"?
    If you're referring to Katz's passage that
    Film scholars have long pointed out the sexual premonitions and suggestions in the vampire myth, the warnings about sex and sexual liberation. Vampires are mostly portrayed as powerful men who steal past locked doors and barred windows to ravish helpless and beautiful women asleep in nightgowns in their beds. The Victorians were terrified of venereal disease in much the same way we fear AIDS.
    I think Katz was interpreting this passage from Roger Ebert's review of Nosferatu [suntimes.com].
    The Victorians feared venereal disease the way we fear AIDS, and vampirism may be a metaphor; the predator vampire lives without a mate, stalking his victims or seducing them with promises of bliss--like a rapist, or a pickup artist. The cure for vampirism is obviously not a stake through the heart, but nuclear families and bourgeois values.

    The Victorians pretty much mastered the art of sexual repression, particularly in women. They even believed that syphilis was caused by sexual excess, not sexually transmitted infection. So yeah, Stoker probably sublimated the sex urge into a lust for blood. The analogy would have appealed to Victorians. So of course their Dracula is a hideous monster--the idea of a woman being attracted to this symbol of sexual urge was as unthinkable as a woman being attracted to a lobster. However, once a woman has been bitten (e.g. deflowered), she becomes full of blood lust (sexual urges), and can no longer see what the audience sees--that the source of her desires is a revolting, dangerous, socially unacceptable creature.

    --

  • Maybe you ought to stick to CNN, which is inherently mainstream.
    Oh, I dunno. Paul Tatara seems to have pretty free reign with his movie reviews. He's been a source of many good leads, and has amused the hell out of me with his advice on what movies to avoid [cnn.com].

    --
  • By the way, what's a "sexual premonition" ?

    You might call it a wet dream.

  • Re:Katz Bashing.. (Score:3)

    by babbage ( 61057 ) <cdeversNO@SPAMcis.usouthal.edu> on Monday January 29, 2001 @02:51PM (#475535) Homepage Journal
    :)

    The thing is, you write as if your audience were readers of, say, Salon or Atlantic Monthly, when actually it's more like the audience of some weird hybrid between a Unix system administrator's journal and, say, Mad Magazine. You keep writing all this leisurely high level analysis of the subculture as you see it, and the readers either don't get it or don't agree.

    It's not that you're wrong in your anthropological analysis, or that the typical Slashdot reader isn't interested in that sort of thing (e.g. consider what a manifesto "The Cathedral & the Bazaar" has been), but that readers either don't see things enough that way that they would want to want to read about it all the time, or they don't look at things in such a high level way and it's annoying to hear some member-of-the-staff-no-less pundit babbling about it all the time.

    But to hell with those readers, right?

    Having an in-house essayist isn't such a bad thing. It's a nice tradition to be a part of -- we could do a whole lot worse than to have a Thomas Paine around, right? As long as there isn't too much "mountains out of molehills" stuff in your essays, there (hopefully) won't be so much "tempest in a teapot" reactionism to what you have to say.

    Fact is, I've been annoyed by some of your rants myself, but now that I think about it, I think you have the job pretty much any Slashdot regular would love to have -- Ranter-In-Chief. After all, isn't that what Slashdot is all about?

    Incidently, it was nice to hear you on The Connection last week. I was hoping the show would have been linked to Slashdot, but oh well. I think this audience could do for some exposure to that kind of reasoned discussion forum...



  • It's Willem...
  • I know of at least one place to watch Nosferatu online [thesync.com], although the quality is pretty bad. Since this film is in the public domain, I'm sure there must be others.
  • If I understand correctly: by "cinematography", you mean framing and composition, and by "photography" you refer to film exposure... so where does lighting fall; under cinematography or photography? That's a bit of an arbitrary distinction though, since the same person, namely the director of photography, is responsible for both (yes, yes, he/she has to answer to the director, but so does everyone else working on the film ... my point is just that it's the same person's job).

    The entire screen is almost totally black except for the barely-visible floating heads

    I remember that scene. It would have been great ... if the shadow areas had actually been black, but instead they were a very dull, washed-out grey. The whole movie had that underexposed, "push" look that I really hate. I understand the idea of going for a murky, dark atmosphere, but it seems like it could have been done without those problems.

  • I wonder if the cineplex where you saw it was running the projector bulb at a lower wattage to try to get more life out of it.

    No, I regularly drive a good 30 minutes out of my way just to see movies at this theater [centurytheaters.com], simply because they do such a good job with the projection and sound. They usually seem to hit the SMPTE recommended brightness level without too much trouble. The showing of "Shadow" that I saw was no exception. The parts that looked too dark were not really black, but rather an underexposed, washed-out grayish black. It was clear that it was actually printed that way on the film, and not just a problem of projector brightness. I'll bet the filmmakers probably did make it look that way on purpose, even though there are other ways to create "atmosphere" that don't involve throwing away color, contrast, and shadow detail.

    I agree that brightness is a very big problem with most theaters today, but the Century 25 (as well as most other Century-owned theaters) seems to actually take the time and spend the money to do it right. For that, they get my business, even if I have to drive a long way. I should point out that people who are excited about Texas Instruments' new DLP projectors are in for a disappointment if those machines ever see widespread use. They also use xenon lamps to provide light, just like film projectors. Spendthrift theater managers looking to save a few pennies on electricity and bulb replacements will likely underpower the bulbs on DLP projectors too. So this digital "revolution" will just give us the same old crappy, dimly-lit pictures, only with lower resolution and compression artifacts to boot!

  • No, I'm fairly sure what I'm complaining about was what was actually on the film. As I pointed out in an above comment, the theater I go to does an excellent job of providing bright projection. The bright parts of the movie were very, very bright. The previews were also very bright. The problem was the dark parts just weren't dark enough. Instead of a deep, rich black, they had a sort of greyish appearance. If anything, that means the projector's bulb was too bright (i.e., it made the parts of the film that were supposed to be black look non-black).

    I guess what I'm getting at is that the film had very low contrast. There's nothing the theater can do about that -- if they turn down the brightness of the projector lamp to make the blacks nice and dark, then the bright parts of the movie won't be bright enough. And if they turn it up so that the bright parts of the movie have proper brightness (as the theater I went to did), then the blacks end up looking greyish. You make it sound like the print you saw had good contrast, so I wonder if what I saw had something more to do with bad printing at the film than the intent of the filmmakers.

    That's what sucks about movies these days. When done right, film produces beautiful images, but when the printing labs or the theaters get sloppy (which they tend to do a lot more now than in the past), things start to look crappy. Moving to electronic projection might alieviate some of those problems (such as bad lab work), but only if it's done the Right Way(tm). I'm afraid that the people who are working on such systems are aiming for "good enough" rather than "great", so we'll end up with images that have low resolution, poor contrast, a small color gamut, lots of compression artifacts, and so on. Hell, that's already started happening. Just wait until "Star Wars Episode II: The HDTV Menace" comes out. Ugh.

  • I don't know about most other folks who saw it, but the print I saw of this movie (Shadow of the Vampire that is, not the original Nosferatu) looked horrible. It was unbelievably grainy, much more so than most movies made in the Super-35 [imdb.com] format (which often ends up looking somewhat grainy, but not this bad). There was almost zero shadow detail. It may have been due to bad lab work in making the release prints, but it almost looked like all the photography in the movie was severly underexposed for some reason. This may have been done on purpose, but I can't imagine why the filmmakers would do that, since they already had a seperate way of simulating the "old" style of movie making with the grainy, "iris in" look that always showed up when Malkovich and his team were shooting. It looked like the "real" parts of this movie were meant to be done in that grand glowing, golden style that you see in most historical fiction. I wonder why it turned out looking as bad as did?

  • Re:Broadband Nosferatu (Score:3)

    by Wag ( 102501 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @11:05AM (#475542)
    Nosferatu broadband [filmspeed.com]

    Knock yourselves out.

  • Willem Dafoe's real name is William Dafoe. Willem is a stage name he chose early in his career, becuse it was cooler than "William."

  • That is pretty odd (in light of the situation).

    maru
  • =
    ...William Dafoe is astounding as the vampire Count Orlock
    =

    Unlike the actor, whose name is Willem, William Dafoe is my father.

    badtz-maru
  • Most reviews of this movie that I've read so far seem to be missing out on the surrealistic aspects in the story. IMO, most of the film had more to do with reflections on the absurd than with a critique of Hollywood/Art, although the critique does play a role. Examples of this are the obvious joy that Count Orlock gets out of playing an actor playing a vampire, the vampire attempting to negotiate with the director over which cast members are not really needed (so he could eat them), and the fact that the director is obviously more irritated that his crew is being killed off than frightened (he treats the situation as if it is a problem with an inexperienced actor misbehaving himself rather than a killer on the set). There were also some interesting comparisons made between opium addiction and vampirism, which is a nice twist on the vampire mythology.

    If you have a good sense of the absurd, you will love this movie.

  • are you referring to Nosferatu the serial animation [museoffire.com] or something else?

    link = http://www.museoffire.com/Nosferatu/index.htm for the goatse.cx weary
    --
    Peace,
    Lord Omlette
    ICQ# 77863057
  • > Could it be that Katz is not in line with the general /. readership?

    I'd say that jonkatz is not in line with the *vocal* /. readership, which definitely is not the majority.

    While you post to say "I don't like the movies jonkatz likes", I didn't planned to post saying "I liked Shadow of the Vampire".

    Cheers,

    --fred
  • I saw the same film that the reviewer did and I think he gives it _way_ too much credit. The idea that the guy playing the vampire actually _was_ a vampire is a clever plot twist. Unfortunately, the plot never seemed to suck me in (pun intended). The acting is good, but the script was pretty bad - a friend of mine and I actually burst out laughing at a particularly corny line near the end of the movie and I might have walked out had I though my friend wouldn't have objected (it turns out she wouldn't have objected, but I don't like talking during a move (even a bad one) so I didn't ask.) \n Honestly, do yourselves a favor and give this one a miss.
  • One thing all my friends and I are wondering: wear can we get those really tight sunglasses/goggles that Malkovitch wears (you can see them in the trailers too)?


    You are more than the sum of what you consume.

  • The Sync [thesync.com] has a streamable version of the original a href="http://thesync.com/features/">Nosferatu in all its black-and-white glory available on their website. Best of all, its in Real Media, so it will run under Linux.
  • The Sync [thesync.com] has a streamable version of the original Nosferatu [thesync.com] in all its black-and-white glory available on their website. Best of all, its in Real Media, so it will run under Linux.
  • perhaps you mean Carrie Fisher [imdb.com]?

    But you knew that, right?

  • "Nosferatu" is a German corruption of a Rommanian word (unless I've been badly misinformed); much as Trasylvania is in Rommanian, and the legend was brought from that general region of eastern Europe.

    I can't find my German dictionary, but "Utarefson" ("Nosferatu" backward) doesn't look very German. Die would be toten, and dead is very similar, so I don't think so. It seems odd that anyone would bother playing such spelling trick in this case anyway, though my German is not good enough to be sure what the word for "Undead" would be.

  • AIDS is still much more common in gay men, but straight people can get it. Last I heard it was rising fastest in straight women, though that could have a relative increase, thus inflated by the that more men have it already.

    BTW: "Nosferatu" does not literally mean "vampire" (at least not originally), but is derived from a word for "disease carrier," and was a title vampires shared with others -- though it was not specifically aimed at sexual diseases. Evil spirits and the walking dead make great explanations for plagues (think of the mideveal black death). Note also that garlic has some antivirulent properties, and also wards off vampires (coincidence, maybe, but maybe a part of the myths development).

  • I agree with Katz... Some weird Planet alignment? LSD in the water supply? I dunno, but my world is crashing down around me...
  • I interpreted the opening as a sort of mini-statement on films as they relate to reality. As the credits begin we see the outside of what could be an opulent movie house, and scratchy movie-soundtrack music begins to play. We begin to move towards the front door of the theater. As we pass it, the music loses its scratchiness and becomes real. We begin to see realistic faces, but they are horrible and twisted. The credits climax with a man on horseback killing a helpless naked man. After that, we begin to pull back, until we finally emerge from the front door of the theatre and the music becomes scratchy and "fake" again.

    The credits are roughly analogous to the movie Nosferatu if we take the events in Shadow of the Vampire to be true. Whenever we watch Nosferatu we are amazed at how real Shreck's performance is and how surrealy creepy everything is. But we still think it's a movie (hence the scratchy movie-soundtrack music outside the theatre represents the belief that we're just watching a production). But if you really look inside what happened (travel inside the theater) you see that everything is horrifyingly real (music loses its scratchiness).

    OR, Merhige could be making an observation on the suspension of disbelief that occurs while watching a movie. Outside the theatre you know it's just a movie (scratchy music) but once you get inside and the movie begins you are completely transported inside the movie, and believe, if only for 2 hours, that the events occuring are/were real. Murnau's final speech in Shadow of the Vampire also suggests this theme: (paraphrashing) "No longer will people say, 'You had to be there,' " thus suggesting that those who see a movie will have actually been there in some capacity.

    So there's my little analysis of the credits. What does everyone else think?


    ---
  • I was actually amazed at the some of the cinematography (separate from photography) used in the film. As for the photography, I was pretty puzzled about the graininess myself. But I believe that the lack of detail in the shadows was both intentional and brilliant. One scene in particular struck me, when the crew is bringing back the first photographer after his collapse. The entire screen is almost totally black except for the barely-visible floating heads of the main characters, vieweed from slightly below.
    The end result is a huge amount of the screen that could contain anything. Monsters, things that go bump in the night, etc. Creeeepy.

    A few people I saw the movie with me commented on the same thing, but didn't like it. So I'm going to guess that it's all a matter of personal preference. *shrug*

    ---
  • Hmmm....now I'm starting to doubt the theatre that you saw the movie in. The blacks were well-balanced when I saw the film. So well-balanced, in fact, that whenever you (rarely) saw actual sunlight in the film, it hurt your eyes because you were so used to pitch black.


    ---
  • No wonder everyone thinks the Matrix was so good.
  • No wonder they're so terrible -- they're engineered, but not by engineers, by marketers. Nowhere do artists enter into the equation. And the engineering work is atrocious.

  • Come come,

    This is just about the first JK feature in ages where Jon doesn't draw a parallel with geekdom. Hell, he even stated that much in a comment a little earlier. Give the guy a little credit, and don't put words in his mouth.

    Mart

  • I've just read through the discussion here and it really astonishes me, the amount of anti-Katz trolling. There's everything from calling him gay, to people deliberately misconstruing this piece.

    What's wrong with you people? If you don't like Katz, don't read him! Or are you just jealous that he appears to be making a living at something you guys can't: express yourself in an entertaining manner?

    For the record: I rather like the Katz pieces, the only niggle I have is that Jon doesn't seem to know how to cut down on unnecessary verbiage, but once you are aware of that it becomes easy to filter out.

    I'd say that Jon might not need any defense, especially not mine, but regardless: Hang in there Jon, some of us like what you do (but do try to be a little more concise please).

    Mart

  • Ok, I'll bite:

    • I said 'some' of us like Katz. We may be a minority, true, but among us you'll find quite probably the /. editors, otherwise Katz wouldn't be posting his stuff here anymore.
    • I tend to view Katz as a columnist. His job is not to conform to some public standard, he writes on what he thinks is important. Like all good columnists this will mean that you can agree not to like his stuff, as long as it makes you think. Katz does seem to be able to do that for me, and from what I've seen I am not the only one.
    • Finally, my gripe is not with people like you that legitimately attack Katz based on the content of his articles, but people that lower themselves to factually incorrect statements and ad hominem attacks. That IMO constitutes trolling

    Thanks for a civil reply nonetheless,

    Mart
  • How much free web content, technical, cultural and otehrwise, is available just by reading slashdot...? so many people bitch about this site but it is quoted everywhere.

    Jon: stop by #trolls on irc.slash.net and we shall give you some 31337 trolling tips. Or maybe you already know cause YOU are Anne Marie!

    *duck*

    -perdida

  • I hate to disagree with such a fine mind as yours, but you fail to realize the true depths of geek-centricity of the vampire meme.

    Vampires, throughout history, have not been so much a metaphor for that which is outside but for that which is inside but reviled. In particular, the homoerotic nature of the male-vampire/male-victim interplay presents perhaps the first example of Eastern Europe's peoples' hopes to confront their inner-sexual turmoil. Rather than doing so, they chose to segregate it and deride it as the work of demons.

    The geek, in the cultural pantheon of post-columbine era, is the modern homosexual. Columbine itself was an attempt to purge the nation of geeks, just as Eastern Europe attempted to do with vampires and homosexuals in the imported version of the Inquisition.

  • SotV engages with geeks (Score:3)

    by Chuck Flynn ( 265247 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @07:12AM (#475576)
    Shadow of the Vampire is the latest movie to appeal directly to the geek demographic, as I see it. Katz alludes to this here:
    Murnau's vampire is nothing like the poised, elegant, sometimes erotic vampires in American films, from Bela Lugosi to Tom Cruise. Count Orlock is the pre-sanitized version, a bitter, loathesome plague, a repulsive creature who's not superhuman but a half-dead thing you couldn't stand to be anywhere near, let alone have feast on you in the dead of night. Once powerful and rich, he's reduced to the occasional rodent and vial of delivered blood. His hunting days are over. He has pallid skin, talon-like fingernails, and a dessicated face. There is nothing erotic or charismatic about him.
    The vampire is a metaphor for the geek, lost in a sea of sexually potent others, his sexual impotence imprinted on his face like the mark of Cain. Rodentlike, he scurries from printspool to printspool, only partaking of carnal desires voyeuristically through his mouth (consuming the red blood of wizened pizzas), with all fleeing from his presence.

    This movie will make a bundle precisely because it knows how to target its audience: geeks who will never get laid in their life, and who like to pretend they have super powers (hence the comic-books and magic-the-gathering obsessions) but who will die alone and unloved.
  • It is well known that Hollwood is not what it used to be. At one time, it was a centre of innovation and produced many films of astounding artistic depth and quality. Now, however, many films emerging from Hollywood do not, IMO, qualify as Art. I say this because they are made according to a robust procedure, every last detail id predtermined. The average flick that emerges from Hollywood has been made by a committee of marketing directors according to a formula. They decide on the demographics that will be interested and do their best to produce a formulaic film that will appease the average 21st century corporate drone's simple and unchallenging appetite.

    For this reason, I would say that the average Hollywood film no longer qualifies as an Artform - there is no personal input, no striving for beauty or challenging thought. It is all about cynically appealling to a certain target audience and bringing in the money.

    True Art is omething that gives the Artist, the maker, pain and which stretches the boundaries of thought and emotion in the viewer to places that they have never been before. Modern Hollywood films merely offer cheap thrills. I think it would benefit Hollywood if it were to go bust, and be rebuilt by a community of Artists. The Artist and his Art is at the centre of film. Hollywood seems to have forgotten that.

    You know exactly what to do-
    Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-

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