Tonight We Feast!

I never ever do this because I am always woefully running behind but my review of Robert Eggers' Nosferatu was burning a hole in my brain so I have it for you, today, at the exact second the review embargo has broken! The movie isn't out until Christmas Day but I just wanted to get the word out as soon as my purpled fingers could muster -- click here to read my thoughts on the film at Pajiba. To say I loved it would be uhhh fair, I would wager. (I've already seen it three times!) Go buy your tickets!

Bill Skarsgård Fourteen Times

I'll be seeing most of my most anticipated movies of the rest of 2024 over the next few weeks at NYFF starts up -- namely Queer and Almodovar's The Room Next Door -- but my Most Most Anticipated isn't hitting until Christmas and it doesn't appear to be hitting any festivals and of course I speak of Robert Eggers' Nosferatu. So it was nice to get a long chat between Eggers and Bill Skarsgard over the weekend in Another Magazine where they talk in depth about their process creating their monster...

... but if you want to avoid knowing how the film ends, maybe avoid reading it. I mean the film ends like every other adaptation of Nosferatu, because Eggers is smart enough to know that's the only ending worth ending it with. But still -- you could say it's a spoiler, especially if you've never seen Muranu or Herzog's versions. Anyway besides the chat I am also extremely thankful for this photoshoot of Bill that the magazine included, and I think you will be as well. Hit the jump for them all...

Ye Ancient Vampyr Approacheth

It's here! The first teaser trailer for Roberts Eggers' Nosferatu has arrived -- I know it screened alongside The Bikeriders in theaters this past weekend and I was pretty tempted to go just for the trailer and then leave but I'm not that much of a crazy person. Not when it's over 90 degrees outside anyway. But this is my number one most anticipated movie of the rest of the year obviously -- I've been following Eggers' attempts at getting this made ever since I saw The Witch and learned who Robert Eggers was back in 2015 -- and this looks perfect, absolutely perfect. There's a mix of the Muranu's original film, there's some of Herzog going on, and a hefty dash of Francis Ford Coppola I'd say too! 

But I think Eggers is a strong enough filmmaker to make this his own -- it's been his dream project since even before I knew who he was, after all. And he's got a maniacally sexy cast on hand with Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Lily Rose-Depp, and Willem Dafoe. This teaser is just under two minutes long and doesn't give much away save our first proper looks at many of the characters in movement -- except notably there is no direct look at Skarsgård's titular vamp. They be saving him! Anyway I won't be watching or posting any more trailers after this so enjoy this while you got it:

Nosferatu us out, hilariously, on Christmas Day! How merry!

ETA they also just dropped this new image of Nichols Hoult and Aaron Taylor-Johnson looking goddamned spiffy (click to embiggen)

5 Off My Head: Top Vamps

With André Øvredal's Dracula film The Last Voyage of the Demeter hitting theaters this weekend (which I wasn't able to see a screening of so no, I have no idea if it's any good or not) I've got Vampire Movies on the brain. Which is exactly where they should be, at all times. And so I made a list! Well I made it first on Twitter, but I figured this is the kind of thing that needed to be immortalized here on the site, and y'all could then tell me in the comments your picks. Anyway these were my picks today -- tomorrow I might choose differently, but today is not tomorrow. So without further ado...

My 5 Favorite Vampire Movies

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) by Francis Ford Coppola

Thirst (2009) by Park Chan-wook

Near Dark (1987) by Kathryn Bigelow

Let the Right One In (2008) by Tomas Alfredson

Daughters of Darkness (1971) by Harry Kumel

Runners-up: From Dusk Til Dawn, Blade and Blade II, Vampyr, Nosferatu 1922 and Nosferatu 1979, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Let Me In, What We Do in the Shadows, Once Bitten...

... The Fearless Vampire Killers, The Vampire Lovers, Twins of Evil, Byzantium, Shadow of the Vampire... and I am sure there are a million more that I'm forgetting. 

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What are your favorite vampire movies?

Call Him Nicky-ratu

After it was announced that Bill Skarsgard would be playing Count Orlok in Robert Eggers' new Nosferatu movie one week ago today it didn't even occur to me to expect any more sexy menfolk to board the film -- I mean how do you compete with that the sexiest of rat-vampires anyway? The role of Harker -- excuse me, the role of "Hutter" (don't sue me, Bram Stoker's estate!) -- is usually a bit of a dope. I think I will forever have trouble getting Eddie Izzard's melodramatic buffoon performance in Shadow of the Vampire out of my head -- I mean even Keanu in Coppola's Dracula film is a punchline (a punchline I think Coppola intended, which I think a lot of critics of the film miss).

Anyway today Deadline reports that Nicholas Hoult's is joining Robert Eggers' movie -- they say his role is unknown but I really don't know who else he'd be playing other than the Harker/Hutter character. And you know what? As Nicky's proven with great excellence these past few years in The Favourite and on The Great the pretty boy can do dim-bulb like nobody's business. So if he is indeed playing that role I can 100% see it. Can't you?

The Original Bat Man

While the motion picture of course existed for thirty-plus years before the year 1922 came around, I think there's a solid argument to be made that the vampire Nosferatu (via F.W. Murnau's film of the same title) is the oldest movie icon that would be recognizable to the broadest audience, right? The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in 1920 maaaaybe comes close but I think that one's strictly cinephile nerds -- if you said "Nosferatu" to most anybody they'd have an image in their head and the image would be the actor Max Schreck. Can you think of any earlier ones? Anyway if that is indeed the case then I think it's reasonable to say that The Movies, our modern iconography of them anyway, began 100 years ago this very day with the official theatrical release of Murnau's silent classic. And this seems like a big moment to mark! And so mark it I did with a little essay on all things Orlok over at Pajiba --  click on over for that. And even if I'm over-stepping by giving Nosferatu too much credit for All Things Movies I don't think you can actually underestimate the importance of the character and film to Horror, both Horror Film and to our general ideas of The Vampire, ever since. Pretty darn iconic, ya big toothed bat man!

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1926

May wonders never stop wondering, we're doing two editions of our "Siri Says" series in as many weeks -- what a spectacle! Who needs a Super Bowl when you've got this shit? It's a good time of the year for these posts because what the hell else is going on, movie-wise? We're post-Sundance and mostly only shit's being released in theaters, and everybody's sick of the Oscar conversations. So why not look back at movies-past? And this week we're going way way past, very nearly an entire century, to The Movies of 1926. (As explained last week I have too few years left for this series so I didn't actually ask Siri for a number between 1 and 100; I am now choosing the few remaining years from a hat, basically.) 

In fact we're going so far back that as far as I can come up with I've only seen five movies from 1926 total. My batting average with Silent Film is not great, Bob! So I put "Favorite" in quotes, which implies "Only" this go-round (although a few of these are straight-up masterpieces, to be sure.) And there are several films from this year I've always wanted to see, so do check out the "Never seen" list for more titles of note...

My 5 "Favorite" Movies of 1926

The General

(dir. Clyde Bruckman & Buster Keaton)

-- released on December 25th 1926 -- 

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

(dir. Lotte Reiniger)

-- released on July 2nd 1926 -- 

Faust

(dir. FW Murnau)

-- released on October 14th 1926 -- 

The Son of the Sheik

(dir. George Fitzmaurice)

-- released on July 9th 1926 -- 

Battling Butler

(dir. Keaton)

-- released on August 22nd 1926 -- 

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Never seen: The Winning of Barbara Worth (dir. Henry King), Don Juan (dir. Alan Crosland), Beau Geste (dir. Herbert Brenon), The Sea Beast (dir. Millard Webb), The Student of Prague (dir. Henrik Galeen)...

... Tartuffe (dir. Murnau), What Price Glory? (dir. Raoul Walsh), Tell It to the Marines (dir. George W. Hill), La Bohème (dir. King Vidor), The Johnstown Flood (dir. Irving Cummings), Bardelys the Magnificent (dir. Vidor)

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What are your favorite movies of 1926?

13 Rats of Halloween #13

Where else could my "13 Rats of Halloween" series of posts for this here Plague Year of the Rat ultimately take me besides right to the infernal king of the scuttling befanged beasts himself, the nightmare turned flesh Nosferatu. Twas always eventual! Whether it's Klaus Kinski for Herzog or...

 

... Max Schreck for Murnau, the scariest of all the vampires has always been associated with rats. It's been ages since I actually sat down and read Bram Stoker's book of Dracula (which of course Nosferatu ripped off and almost got erased out of existence because of) so perhaps one of you more literate types can remind me if rats play much of a factor in the original text? I assume so, I just don't feel like googling it. I do know that Stephen King, when he wrote Salem's Lot...

... he removed a truly disgusting sounding scene from its earliest draft where a character is eaten alive by rats. King's (and Tobe Hooper's) Mr. Barlow of course being a direct descendant of the horrifying Nosferatu lineage of vampire.

Of course as classic as Murnau's plague scenes are I think the best plague sequence belongs to Herzog -- I consider the fancy people eating their fancy final meal together at that table in the public square that's literally swarming with pestilence to be one of the singular images of Horror Cinema. And you can tell I'm being very serious, because I busted out the word "cinema"! That means I mean it! Art! Hey... did you ever notice if you rearrange the letters in "Art" you get "Rat"? Just sayin...

Happy Halloween, everyone!

6 Off My Head: Siri Says 1924

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My attempt to reinvigorate my somewhat slumbering "Siri Says When" series continues apace with a brand new episode here only eleven days since the last! This time around Siri slapped us with a toughie, since the number between 1 and 100 that she gave me was "24" meaning today we're going to go picking our favorite films from the year 1924. It must be said I have not seen a lot of movies from the year 1924! I've seen a few -- enough to do a list, which is why we're here doing just that. But the percentage of 1924 films that have been lost either unto time or unto my not nearly Silent Film educated enough ass is high, I warn you. As far as I can scout out it seems I have seen six 1924 films in total? And these are all of them. So please don't take this list as gospel -- we work with what we've got when we glance this far into the way-back-machine... 

My 6 Favorite Movies of 1924

Greed

(dir. Erich von Stroheim)

-- released on January 26th 1924 --

Sherlock Jr.

(dir. Buster Keaton)

-- released on May 11th 1924 --

The Thief of Baghdad

(dir. Raoul Walsh)

-- released on March 18th 1924 --

The Hands of Orloc

(dir. Robert Wiene)

-- released on June 4th 1924 --

Hot Water

(dir. Fred Newmeyer)

-- released on October 26th 1924 --

Michael

(dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer)

-- released on Novermber 17th 1924 --

(P.S. Dreyer's Michael, which is one of the earliest examples of homosexuality being depicted on-screen, has just recently gotten restored and Kino Marquee will be streaming the film online in July as part of their "Pioneers in Queer Cinema" series that also features Mädchen in Uniform and the original 1933 version of Victor & Victoria. See more about the series here.)

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Never seen: The Last Laugh (dir. Murnau), He Who Gets Slapped (dir. Victor Sjöström), The Marriage Circle (dir. Ernst Lubitsch)...

... Monsieur Beaucaire (dir. Sidney Olcott) Waxworks (dir. Leo Brinsky), Beau Brummel (dir. Hary Beaumont), Happiness (dir. King Vidor), His Hour (dir. King Vidor), Three Women (dir. Lubitsch)

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What are your favorite films from 1924?

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5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1927

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After last week's barn burner of a list (we did the year 2015, which we had needed to catch up on anyway) this week our "Siri Says" series returns us to slim pickins - we asked our phone for a number between 1 and 100 and she gave us "27" and so we're choosing from The Movies of 1927. Two big things happened in film this year: one, The Jazz Singer, the first feature film with sound, was released. 

And two, on May 11 Douglas Fairbanks (pictured right) created the  Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The first Oscars ceremony wasn't until May 1929 but that ceremony was to honor the films of 1927/1928, so the two films that won the top awards (which were only that first year split up into "Outstanding Picture" and "Unique and Artistic Picture" - do you thinks the folks who won "Outstanding Picture" were irritated that they were implying their movie wasn't "Artistic" and that's why the two categories were mashed together the following year? Anyway both of those films make my list below.

In a weird coincidence TCM is having a Alfred Hitchcock marathon this summer and I only just saw the two movies of his seen below in the "Runners-up" category last month for the first time. Since I've seen so few movies from 1927 pretty much anything I have seen from the year makes the "Runners-up" list but they're both interesting films... and Ivor Novello is incredibly swoon-worthy in Downhill.

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Why yes thank you @tcm
I could use a reminder
that Ivor Novello could get it pic.twitter.com/7SRgXMDKTt

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) July 6, 2017

Anyway, the list!
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My 5 Favorite Movies on 1927

Metropolis

(dir. Fritz Lang)

-- released on March 13th 1927 --

Sunrise

(dir. FW Murnau)

-- released on November 4th 1927 --

Wings

(dir. William Wellman)

-- released on August 12th 1927 --

The Lodger

(dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

-- released on February 14th 1927 --

The Unknown

(dir. Tod Browning)

-- released on June 4th 1927 --

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Runners-up: The Ring (dir. Hitchcock)

Downhill (dir. Hitchcock)

The Jazz Singer (dir. Alan Crosland)

Never seen: London After Midnight (dir. Tod Browning)

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What are your favorite movies of 1927?

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