A Caixa Cultural [sp] está exibindo a mostra Novo Cinema Alemão Anos 60-80: Fassbinder, Herzog, Wenders, uma reunião de filmes produzidos no pós-guerra que colocam em questão a vida alemã no período. Com curadoria de Ruy Gardnier, o ciclo apresenta produções (em 16mm e alguns títulos em DVD) de três grandes cineastas alemães representantes desta fase: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog e Wim Wenders.

Confira a programação dos próximos dias:

12.10.2008
- 15h - "Woyzeck" (idem, Alemanha, 1978)
- 17h - "O Desespero de Veronika Voss" ("Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss", Alemanha, 1982)
- 19h - "Movimento em Falso" ("Bewegung", Alemanha, 1975)

14.10.2008
- 14h30 - "O Medo Devora a Alma" ("Angst Essen Seele auf", Alemanha, 1974)
- 16h30 - "O Casamento de Maria Braun" ("Die Ehe der Maria Braun", Alemanha, 1978)
- 19h - "O Enigma de Kaspar Hauser" ("Jeder Fur Sich Und Gott Gegen Alle". Alemanha, 1974)

15.10.2008
- 14h30 - "Effi Briest" ("Fontane Effi Briest", Alemanha, 1974).
- 17h - "Por Que Deu a Louca no Sr. R?" ("Warum Läuft Herr R. Amok", Alemanha, 1969)
- 19h- "Movimento em Falso" ("Bewegung", Alemanha, 1975)

16.10.2008
- 14h30 - "Woyzeck" (idem, Alemanha, 1978)
- 16h30 - "Deuses da Peste" ("Götter der Pest", Alemanha, 1969)

A mostra ficará em cartaz até o dia 19.10.2008, com exibições diárias das 14h30 às 19h. A entrada é franca, mas é necessário retirar ingresso com até uma hora de antecedência.

A matéria foi encontrada neste link.

A programação completa do evento pode ser consultada no site www.caixacultural.com.br

Post relacionado: "SP: Novo Cinema Alemão Anos 60-80".

ya dig?

- watched NOSFERATU (and i didn't really have to, seeing as it's right here on youtube).
- writer's block re: STATUES (i'd give up, were it not for the vivid image of it in my mind)

COMING TO COCA-COLA LAND
is the silent film I'm making for Material Theatre. It should be great, and I'm excited because of all the amateur/DIY/dumpsterdiving/manually making things it involves. Also, shooting on super 8 film! BUT problem...

a 50ft roll of super 8 film is $14.
super 8 film is 72 frames per ft.
i will be shooting at 18 fps.
a roll has 3600 frames
= 3600frames/18fps
= 200 seconds!!

$14 for 3 minutes and 20 seconds!! And the film itself is about 7 minutes! But I'm post-panic attack and I've decided that a very detailed shot list & storyboard (including length of take down to the second) will be my saving grace. gah!

Every Halloween season, there's this big wonderful celebration downtown called "Fright Night". Lots of stuff goes on, it's always very fun. There's a magic show, a coffin race, a tour of haunted downtown spots, a showing of Rocky Horror Picture show (which I sadly have to miss to go to a friend's Halloween party), a zombie walk (which I also have to miss because of work).

Every year they show a silent classic in the beautiful old Embassy theater. The Embassy is well known around these parts for its beautiful, pristine antique organ. So every Halloween, they show an silent horror film with organ accompaniment.  It's always a really great experience. This year, they're showing Nosferatu.

The historic embassy theater is a really beautiful place. (And yay excitement! My brother's getting married in the Embassy theater in November.) It was built in the late 1920s as a movie palace and a vaudeville theater. Before it was the Embassy, it was the Emboyd.

So, if you're around Fort Wayne, IN on Oct. 25, you should head downtown for Fright Night. Admission is $7 for adult and $4 for children. I think they should totally try to recreate the silent film experience and charge what would have been the ticket prices in the 1920s. :D

My sleeping patterns have always been erratic. Since I was a child I have been a nighthawk. Growing up I would get in trouble because of it often, getting caught up at all hours and then sleeping in until the afternoon. But that’s background better expanded on in another post probably.

What I want to convey is my irregular relationship with sleep compared to the vast majority of people I’ve met. I mean, for most of high school, I only got four hours of sleep at night on average. Sometimes less.

I don’t tend to dream often. Or rather, I know that I am dreaming all the time, but I rarely remember them. I will sometimes spend periods of months without remembering any of my dreams. Most often when I do, it will more be a sense that I was dreaming, maybe about certain people, but rarely will I remember what has happened in the dream.

Perhaps it’s because of the content of my dreams. Often they are quite mundane. The overarching motif in them is a sense of foreboding doom, no matter what the situation is. If people I recognize are in the dreams, then more often than not they will be sort of vacuous shells that only look like the person. Characters tend to be fluid in personality or even form, often randomly shifting into other people, though with an insistence by my brain that they are still the same character. Basically, my dreams tend to be like David Lynch movies. Sometimes painstakingly mundane yet filled with dread, other times wildly surreal and filled with dread.

In fact, a brief tangent with that: the absolute closest external depiction that I can offer to say “this is what it is like when I dream” is David Lynch’s most recent film, Inland Empire. It’s ebbing and yet sometimes fractured structure, its tone, the random intersection of moments of visual terror – I’ve never seen anything that gets it quite so close. That was the reason I went to see it; a friend of mine who dreams the same way recommended it. I went and saw it by myself in a local arthouse theater and was shocked by how similar it was to the few dreams I remember. They tend to be long like that too.

When I talk about dreams with my friends I am almost always jealous. This is not to say that I don’t enjoy mine – despite how unpleasant they can be, I still really enjoy having them, because I find them fascinating. But I don’t have the fantastical dreams my friends have; I don’t get to be a superhero, I don’t get to fly, I don’t get to have sex with celebrities. To this day I can probably count on my hands the number of times I’ve had sex at all in a dream, and usually its just implied in the plot. The one time I had a lucid dream, I started flying first, but I was really terrible at it and kept falling and tumbling all over the place. Then I tried to manifest someone to have sex with, and as soon as I did, I started literally feeling myself being pulled out of the dream, sucked back up towards consciousness. I was literally yelling “No, no! Sex!” My brain hates me.

I had a recurring nightmare once when I was a child. I was a scientist in a giant underground laboratory. It was inside a cave, and the cave walls went hundreds of feet up. At the start, I would be looking around at this enormous room, watching all the other typified-white-coat-scientists milling about a giant operating table. On top of it was something living obviously, but it had a proportionately huge sheet over top of it. Suddenly, it would start to stir, and scientists all around me would start panicking and running around like frightened ants. I would be paralyzed by the sight and would watch as a dragon would rear up from the table, come stomping towards me at full pace, lean its head down and roar fire at point blank range.  I would then wake up screaming. My father would come and pick me up, soothe me back to sleep. At the time, my drawings of evil people always had two eyes and a zig-zag mouth. I would see this face all around me in the post-dreaming world, on lampshades and other inanimate objects.

My father ended up telling me that next time it happened, I should punch the dragon in the mouth. The next time I had the nightmare, just as the dragon opened its mouth, a sword appeared in my hand and I thrust it down the dragon’s throat. I never had the dream again.

I suppose I’m thinking of dreams right now because I had the most vivid one I’ve had in a long time the other day. It was even a bit more supernatural than usual, though not in any pleasant way. I’ve been fighting off a cold for the last month and it returned pretty viciously last week. I decided to let myself sleep as long as I needed one day, and that turned out to be a little over twelve hours. During my time sleeping in the day (after having been woken up by my girlfriend returning with McDonald’s breakfast) this dream occurred. When I woke up I forgot all of it. Then, in a completely random flash, I remembered it all while having a completely unrelated conversation with my girlfriend that evening.

The world had been invaded by these aliens that looked like futuristic Nosferatu vampires - they wore techy black onepiece suits, but their face and hands were grey and wrinkled, they had ugly bat-like features and pointy ears, that kind of shit. And I think they didn't go out into the open really, but they had these buildings all around the earth that were temples, sort of. They just looked like office buildings and other public places. Inside them human beings underwent torture sessions with overtones of ritual. The vampires did things or made people do things to eachother that caused them great psychological and physical pain, though not really any damage, and they sort of observed/participated and fed off the general aura of suffering. They weren't necessarily vampires in the blood-sucking sense, but it’s a pretty good metaphor for what they were doing. Similarly, they didn’t like to go into the sun, as they found it unpleasant, but I don’t think it killed them.  When what I remember of the dream was starting, I was escaping from one of these "temples" with a dark-haired, attractive women that sort of had a movie actor thing going on that made the whole thing feel movie-like. I remember surfacing from this fluourescent green goo substance, and while not seeing, understanding that various psychologically damaging acts like rape and torture were going on around me. My impulse as to escape, to refuse participation, and that’s what we did. But when we were roaming the streets trying to get away, the woman and I came upon this inconspicuous office building that we could recognize was one of the temples, but she was compelled to go into it. For some reason I was free of this compulsion, but I got the sense was that this was how it was happening - they had some device, or some technique involved in the torture sessions, that made it impossible for human beings to resist volunteering for further torture when they came within a certain range of these temples. There was actually a specific number of them, and people were compelled to visit each of them at least once. I believe they all had their own motifs of torture too. The point was that they were systematically breaking down human personalities and rebuilding them into docile servants with almost no identifiable-self. Once you had been through the series of temples, your personality would be completely destroyed and replaced with subservient base-level thought. Or even if you could retain your intelligence for some purpose, you no longer had any willpower, any sense of resistance.

The part that really disturbed me was the way the woman, and seemingly everyone else, was compelled to participate. Even though it was coercion, it gave them a sense that it had been voluntary. When we came upon the second temple, a look of despair and acceptance overcame her. She even apologized to me before walking in, knowing that she was leaving me to be alone within the world.

Anyways, not that I didn’t know already, and not that I really think dream-based psychoanalysis really has much to tell you about yourself, but christ do I have issues about people holding power over me.

Vampire myths disappear and reappear having existed for ages, much like their main proponent Dracula. Since ancient Persia, there have been characters throughout time that drank the blood of men (and babies) and often were members of the undead. They would evolve to be called Witches, Demons, and Vampires. Over the ages vampires became the “mythic reasoning” behind such events as the bubonic plague.

Vampires would soon have an identity in three crucial tyrants, the first of which was Gilles de Rais. Gilles was a Frenchman who searched for “the Philosopher’s Stone,” and had help from the blood of 200-300 children to do his experiments. Around the same time Vlad Tepes Dracula, Prince of Wallacia, came into power. When you have a name of Tepes (“Impaler”) and Dracula (devil or dragon, it was his dad’s name) ya gotta live up to expectations; he liberated the land from Ottoman invaders and then ordered thousands impaled for his pleasure.

The last of the three arrived in 1611 as Countess Elizabeth Bathory. Bathory’s husband was always at war, so her spare time was spent dabbling in black magic and the thought that the blood of the innocent (young girls) would keep her young and youthful. She was found out and her life spared, but was thrown in the tower.

The vampire mythos came back in the 1800’s through poetry, novels, and stage productions. “Vampyre” by John Polidori (1819) was the first vampire story written in English. Supposedly this came about the same night Mary Shelley concocted “Frankenstein.”

Not too far after came “Varney (Feast of Blood)” (1845) a full-fledged novel based off collected “penny dreadfuls,” inexpensive pulp pamphlets that used vivid imagery to describe Varney’s exploits. Varney influenced current vampire culture with the addition of fangs, leaving two puncture wounds in the neck, having hypnotic powers, and superhuman strength. However, Varney was immune to sunlight and wasn’t allergic to garlic.

“Carmilla” by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (1872) introduced the world to a female vampire. Laura, the protagonist of the story, is a young girl who has a dream in which she’s bitten by a figure who disappears. Fast forward and she becomes friends with a girl named Carmilla. After a series of incidents Carmilla is found not only to be a vampire, but Laura’s ancestor. She has to be killed by exhuming her body and destroying it by cutting off the head. This story was also the beginning of lesbian sexuality in vampire stories.

Taking 8 years, Bram Stoker delivered the eponymous epistolary novel, “Dracula,” in 1897. Taking ideas from previous novels (especially “Carmilla” and “Varney”) as well as the life and times of Vlad the Impaler, Stoker wove a story about Johnathan Harker, a real estate solicitor who travels to a remote castle in the Carpathian Mountains to do business with one Count Dracula. He barely gets out alive. Meanwhile, Dracula decides to do London hitting on Harker’s fiancée, Mina. When Mina’s friend Lucy begins looking pallid, Professor Abraham Van Helsing is called in. Van Helsing figures out what’s going on and is hot on Dracula’s trail. Dracula packs his bags and heads back to his castle but not before the Van Helsing faction traps and kills him.

With the advent of the motion picture in the latter portion of the 19th century, Dracula and other vampyric kin had a new world to conquer. Filmmaker Gustave Le Rouge made two movies about bat-winged, blood-drinking creatures on Mars in 1908 and 1909. Dracula himself first appeared on screen in 1922’s “Nosferatu.” German director F.W. Marnau asked permission from the Stoker estate. The Stoker estate said, “No,” and Marnau did it anyway. Changing the names of the characters, eliminating secondary players, and using a bona-fide weirdo named Max von Schreck to play Count Orlok, this film is the seminal “Dracula” movie, inspiring take-offs and even a remake in the Seventies. Of note, the Stoker estate filed a copyright infringement lawsuit and won, sinking the newly-founded Prana production company.

“Children of the night… what beautiful music they make.” The infamous Bela Lugosi “Dracula” movie was released in 1931. Now a staple of American cinematic mythos, “Dracula” cast a hypnotic spell over audiences, leading to sequels and remakes. Lugosi, a Hungarian stage actor who played Dracula in the theatrical production, was spot-on with his film delivery of the character. Of note a Spanish version was shot at the same time using the same sets.

There’s still probably the lingering question of: what about not being able to see his reflection in the mirror? Or a stake through the heart? Or being afraid of religious symbols? These ideas came mainly from various filmmakers, TV directors, and authors who would pick and choose what traits a vampire would have in regards to the story.

“Children of the night, shut up!” –“Dracula: Dead and Loving It”

The first/only Vice Presidential Debate drops tonight. A dozen crucial issues in our lives spawn a thousand key questions we should be posing to anyone running for office in 2008 . . . but you know we won’t hear them posed to our candidates. No, no—it’ll be all about the bailout, Iraq, looking at Russians from your house. Pittances!

. . . When we all know the questions we really need answers to. Herewith, what every American should be asking of his or her candidates:

1. During a state dinner at the White House, you finally meet your first foreign head of state. Who turns out to be . . . a mummy! Do you shake the mummy’s hand, or do you risk an international snafu by refusing to for fear of being infected with the mummy’s 4,000-year-old curse? Governor Palin, first answer to you.

2. A small town in Middle America’s hundred-year-tradition of displaying a nativity scene on the lawn of its city hall has been challenged. The Church of Satan, a legally recognized nonprofit faith-based organization, is suing to have its own “Black Nativity” displayed next to the traditional one. Would you support the equal rights of the Satanists, or would you move to have all nativities removed as a clear violation of the constitutional separation of church and state? Senator Biden, you’ll field this one first.

3. Residents of Laguna del Negra, a posh resort community, are being terrorized by a mutant fishman. While the National Guard moves in, reliable reports indicate the dumping of toxic chemicals into the lagoon caused the creature’s mutation. However, the guilty pharmaceutical company was your campaign’s top financial contributor in the last election. Where do you stand on this issue, Governor Palin?

4. A nosferatu is suing his local blood bank for denying him employment on what he claims are discriminatory grounds. The blood bank responds that it can clearly not trust a vampire to work the night shift, during which it would be left alone with hundreds of quarts of fresh, succulent blood. Does the blood bank’s stance violate the Equal Opportunity Act, Senator Biden?

5. Zombies have overtaken the White House! Conventional weapons are useless against them; the only way to ensure their destruction is by burning the White House down--destroying hundreds of priceless antiques and the symbol of American power in the process. Do you do it? Bonus question: can you name the first group of pasty-white Anglo-Saxons to burn down a White House? Governor Palin, to you.

6. Incarcerated supervillain/mad scientist Dr. Lava presents a plan to end global warming via a super-laser of his invention. He will construct this contraption on the condition that he is unconditionally released from his top-secret, maximum-security supervillain prison. Knowing the odds are great that Dr. Lava will instead build some kind of death ray to use against America, is the reward of ending global warming worth the risk? Senator Biden?

Have some questions of your own? Submit them to the Evil; he’ll see what he can do. In the meantime:

Enjoy the weekend. If possible, keep an eye on those pesky Russians.

Wie schön, dass ich den Original Film in voller Länge (!!!) auf youtube gefunden habe. Bitte sehr!

I said in my acceptance speech that you're only as good as your materials and I think I was right.  It's important to acknowledge Stanton Wood's outstanding script for The Night of Nosferatu as well as the oustanding ensemble of actors in the production: Emily Hartford, Matt Cody, Tatiana Gomberg, Ned Massey, Danny Askenasi, and Paul Daily.  Without Stan there'd be no play and without the actors I'd have no one to direct.

And without light we wouldn't see a darn thing.  Luckily, we're not the only ones who appreciate our resident lighting designer.  Kevin Hardy's invaluable contribution to the production was recognized as well and he earned the award for Outstanding Lighting Design.  We were thrilled to be nominated at all, let alone for six awards.  To actually win two of them is something beyond special.

Also beyond special was the distinguished company we were in.  Congratulations are in order to all of our fellow winners and nominees, especially Judith Malina (winner of the Artistic Achievement Award) and Martin and Rochelle Denton for the work of The New York Theatre Experience (Stewardship Award).

"There's the commercial theatre and the theatre that matters.  Tonight we celebrate the theatre that matters."  The final presenter of the evening, Edward Ablee, said that.  An inspiring statement to close an inspiring evening.  Now what?  We go back to doing what we do.  Full speed ahead, as usual.

Det är så man kan gråta, men måga av mina filmer har försvunnit under de senaste fyra årens närmare 8 flyttar (galet jag vet!). Hoppas att några finns i det magasin där exet och jag fortfarande har några kartonger.

Av gänget jag köpte igår är det naturligtvis vissa jag längtar mest efter, till exempel:

Night of the Living Dead

Hur kan man INTE älska denna rulle? Kolla bara varningtexten från när den visades i biograferna 1968:

Lite svårt att läsa där till vänster... men det står att biografen tar på sig att betala $50.000 till den som dör av en hjärtinfarkt under filmvisningen! :D

Stor nytta man har av cash då!? Haha! Om man inte blir en zombie själv i och för sig... jag har aldrig hört om en zombie med kontanter på fickan. ;)

Det är länge sen jag såg denna, så det ser jag fram emot att göra snaaaart!

Galet att jag älskar zombie-/skräck-/splatterfilm när jag är så lättskrämd. Undrar varför jag tycker det är kul att bli skrämd? Tossigt..

Ett annat måste är ju Nosferatu från 1922! En film man bara måste ha om man gillar klassiker inom skräck - i detta fall vampyrfilm. *bohahaha*

Jag längtar tills slutet av kommande vecka när jag som ett lyckligt barn på julafton ska öppna mitt paket från posten! :-P

O Cineclube de Joane está a completar o seu décimo aniversário. Para comemorar a data, realiza-se no próximo dia 25 de Setembro uma sessão especial com a exibição do clássico “Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror”, filme realizado em 1922 por F. W. Murnau. O filme será acompanhado em tempo real e ao vivo pela música dos BiarooZ.

“Nosferatu” é uma adaptação não autorizada do romance “Drácula” de Bram Stroker, que se tornou num clássico do cinema mudo. A filmografia de Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau perdeu-se com os anos, mas o alemão tornou-se num dos marcos da história do cinema mundial. A realização do próprio filme viria mais tarde a ser ficcionada através de “Shadow of the Vampire” realizado por E. Elias Merhige, filme protagonizado por John Malkovich no papel de F.W. Murnau.

A banda-sonora do filme estará a cargo dos BiarooZ, banda que junta atmosferas sonoras com origem em suportes electrónicos e em instrumentos tradicionais numa banda rock (guitarra, baixo e bateria).

A sessão terá lugar na Casa das Artes de Famalicão, sendo que a entrada tem o preço de 5 euros. Na mesma ocasião, será inaugurada a exposição “10 anos de imagens” evocativa do décimo aniversário do Cineclube de Joane.

[site] Cineclube de Joane
[MySpace] BiarooZ

Not that that's happening as much as it should. I totally blew off sending a submission to Craftforms yesterday 'cause I was too damn knackered to think. But! Here is something thinky about art in a round-about way. My Comp I class is writing a Visual Analysis Paper about music videos and this is some information that I put together for them as an example of the types of readings possible.

Hopefully, they'll use the information.

There are another 3 vids that I need to collect information for, but that's waiting 'til tomorrow 'cause I'm a mean, old lady that's only had about 4 hours of sleep after a nearly 60 work week.  I'm being purposely vague 'cause I don't want to give them all the answers or anything; I just want them to think a little.

Enjoy!

Amos, Tori. "Sleeps with Butterflies." The Beekeeper. Epic, 2005. Music Video. Dir. Laurent Briet. VH1. 19 Sept 2008.

Although Laurent Briet's main influence for this video was illustration, the illustrator that he most cited is the Japanese, superflat artist Aya Kato. Until recently, the majority of Aya Kato's work has been lush and vibrant referencing Art Nouveau and merging it with Japanese popular art forms such as manga and anime, which originate in the Edo Period and was added to by the introduction of "pie eyes" by Disney post-World War II. The subject matter of Aya's work often focuses on fairytales creating through her interpretation a recursive metanarrative that includes elements of all possible versions of a fairytale with her own twisting, transforming images which turn Little Red Riding Hood from a scared girl in the woods into a highly sexualized girl who appears to be trysting with the wolf.

The aesthetic of "Sleeps with Butterflies" is as much about a musical style that is reminiscent of the 40s, jazz clubs, and Big Band music as it is Aya's illustrative work and the pieces that are directly, visually quoted. For Tori Amos, "Sleeps with Butterflies" and the rest of the songs off of The Beekeeper are about religion and spirituality, mythology and political manipulation ("The Beekeeper"). Particularly in "Sleeps with Butterflies", there seems to be a distinct connection between the imagery and narrative and the myth of Eros and Psych, especially since Amos herself seems to become a neo-Psyche in conjunction to her absent Eros who has flown away from her because he is "having regrets about last night" (Amos, "Sleeps with Butterflies").

blink-182. "I Miss You." Blink-182. Geffen Records, 2003. Music Video. Dir. Jonas Akerlund. VH1. 19 Sept 2008.

The imagery from "I Miss You" is an amalgamation of horror movie and silent movie motifs such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show's lightening illuminated castle, the ubiquitous Frankenstein's mansion-laboratory that produced the Monster and The Bride, the Bram Stoker's Dracula-esque garden mazes and orientalized, predatory women; a coloration and texture similiar to Nosferatu, and Gothic's surrealist nightmares. In addition to Director Jonas Akerlund's chosen imagery, blink-182 appears as a kind of 50s-60s pop band--clean cut, in suits, and mostly acoustic--while the lyrics reference Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas characters Jack Skelington and Sally.

REM. "Losing my Religion." Out of Time. Warner Bros., 1991. Music Video. Dir. Tarsem Signh. VH1. 19 Sept 2008.

Director Tarsem Signh, who also directed The Cell, seems to draw much of the imagery for "Losing my Religion", which is a Southernism for "at my wit's end", from art and literature. The Daedalus-like winged, old man is drawn from the Gabriel Garcia Marquez short story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" while the tableaux that are created around him are based upon Carravagio's paintings Deposition from the Cross and The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, sometimes called The Doubting of Saint Thomas. In addition to Carravagio, Signh borrows imagery from Soviet propaganda posters, putti, and Hindu art, in particular imagery of Parvati and Shiva, as well as stylistic concerns from the French photographers Pierre et Gilles. While Signh's interpretation of Pierre et Gilles' work inundates this music video, Signh seems to be directly quoting their Sebastien in the scenes that depict Saint Sebastian. Although Saint Sebastian is often depicted as pierced with arrows, this seems to be an interpretation of Renaissance artists and may be connected with his status as the patron saint against plagues (Löffler, "St. Sebastian). This connection to plagues creates a possible link between Saint Sebastian and the Greek god Apollo who was a god of medicine, which also meant that he was a god of plague. Like Saint Sebastian, Apollo's imagery and symbols included the arrow, yet where Saint Sebastian was pierced by them, Apollo wielded them in order to bring death to mortals as he did to Niobe's sons (Leadbetter, "Apollo").

Jada. Så var det gjort. Jeg har sett de to første episodene i Alan Balls ("Six feet under" og "American Beauty") nye HBO serie "True Blood". Og jeg vet ikke helt om jeg er hekta eller ei. For det første så var jeg sikker på at jeg kom til å like serien ene og alene pga Balls tidligere meritter, og for det andre vampyrtematikken i denne nye serien, just love those vampires. Men så kom Stranger og sa at hun syntes den første episoden var kjemperar og kjedelig. Og da ble jeg litt trist fordi jeg biller meg inn at vi to har nogenlunde samme smak hva gjelder kvalitetsfjernsyn og at løpet nå var kjørt. Men jeg senket forventningene til et minimum og startet tittingen uten et snev av beundring for Mr. Ball og lot det stå til. Stranger ba meg å komme tilbake til hva jeg syntes om serien, så here we go:

Here`s the deal: To år har gått siden vampyrene bestemte seg for å fortelle menneskene om sin eksistens, etter at det ble kjent at kunstig blod ble fremstilt i Japan. Istedenfor å sette tennene i hederlig folk, kan vampyrene nå skaffe seg den nødvendige væsken på flasker som selges over disk. Men å tilpasse seg til menneskenes samfunn er likevel problematisk. I likhet med mange andre minoriteter blir de møtt med avsky og motvilje, og derfor finnes det rettsorganisasjoner som skal ivareta vampyrenes interesser. Vampyrene må også være på vakt, siden deres blod har blitt et ettertraktet dop., hverken mer eller mindre :-) Anna Paquin ("X-Men", "Piano") spiller servitrisen Sookie Stackhouse som ikke er vampyr, men som likevel skiller seg ut - hun er tankeleser, må vite. Dette har gjort henne ensom og mange tror hun har en skrue løs. Når den  173 år gamle vampyren Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) dukker opp på baren hvor Sookie jobber er han den første av sitt slag i dette området. Sookie blir umiddelbart betatt av ham når hun oppdager at de telepatiske evnene hennes forsvinner i hans nærvær. Men Bill viser seg å være et risikabelt bekjentskap som trekker Sookie inn i trøbbel.

Det første som slo meg var at jeg syntes det hele gikk saaaakte. Sånn i forhold til Buffy og Angel foregår alt i et mer Carnivalè-tempo. Men etter hvert blir jeg forholdsvis vant til den litt trege fortellerformen og får et snev av Twin Peaks følelsen fra 90 tallet. Ikke fordi de ligner noe spes, mer det at det hele er mystisk og at det er uventet hva som skal skje, hvordan karakterene oppfører seg, dialogen osv. I tillegg er den temmelig morsom innimellom også. Ikka sånn HAHAHA-slå seg på knærne- men mer He! *humrehumre*

Serien er basert på Charlaine Harris sine bøker i serien Southern Vampire Mysteries (har ikke lest). Og det er kanskje derfor alt går litt sakte? Det at det hele foregår i sørstatene mener jeg. Stemningen i filmen minner om stemningen i Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (dir:Clint Eastwood) hvor handlingen er lagt nettopp til de samme stater, uten at jeg kan være mer spesifikk. Jeg er ingen ekspert på Amerika men jeg mener at det ligger litt i sørstatenes natur å være litt trege og pussige. Det er vel her vi også finner USAs bibelske sentrum? Litt bibelbeltet i Sør Norge ganger 1000, mener jeg.

Det er en artig detalj i åpningsvignetten om nettopp dette. Et stort skilt langs veien sier "God hates Fangs" (hoggtenner). Det hersker allerede en teori på nettet om at dette er en metafor for homoseksualitet iom at dersom du tar bort "n" så blir det, ja nettopp, "God hates Fags". Teorien videre er kanskje litt søkt men den sammenligner vampyrene med HIV-positive menn. Og at de som ligger med vampyrer ("Fang-bangers" i serien) representerer såkalte Chasers i det homofile miljøet, dvs menn uten HIV som vil ha sex med menn som er HIV positive fordi de vil bli smittet, eller "bitten" som de kaller det. Men jeg synes denne teorien blir far-out, litt sånn snørr og bart, blod og hiv, vampyr og homo, kanel og skitt og jeg detter av på hele resonnementet.

Men saftige sexscener er det iallefall nok av i de to første episodene. Ikke homosex enn så lenge, men mellom de to kjønn/arter; mann og kvinne, kvinne og mannlige vampyrer. Temmelig saftige, men ikke porno. Eller saftige er kanskje ikke ordet, mer det at fortellerteknikken også i disse scenene er ganske sakte virker det potent fordi det ofte kun er en eller to kamerainnstillinger.

Flere seere har hengt seg opp i at hoggtennene er på vampyrene er feil plassert. De sitter ikke på hjørnetennene som de gjør i de fleste moderne utgaver i sjangeren, men på tennene ved siden av fortennene. Men når dette er sagt så er det en filmakers kunstenriske frihet å plassere tennene hvor hen det måtte passe. F eks i filmen Nosferatu fra 1929 satt hoggtennene på Dracula på fortennene; nesten som en rotte.

En annen frihet seriemakerne har tatt seg er at vampyrer ikke tåler sølv. Dette stemmer jo absolutt ikke med hva vi "har lært" fra før; det er varulver som ikke tåler sølv, vampyrer har det litt ugreit med hvitløk, de. Men i serien så må en vampyr bli bedt inn av husets eier før han gå over dørstokken. Det er vi jo lært opp i fra Buffy og Angel.

Som jeg skrev innledningsvis så er jeg ikke 100 % overbevist. Jeg skal se flere episoder før en endelig dom kan falle. Det er alltid artig med variasjoner over vampyrtemaet, bevares, og dersom jeg kjøper premissene, tror på karakterene og liker fortellingen, så ser jeg ingen grunn til at jeg ikke skal kunne falle for True Blood.

Serien starter på Canal+ 22 oktober klokken 22.00. Det ryktes at NRK skal sende serien også, men intet sikkert fra den fronten.

Her er seriens åpningvignett + de 4 første minuttene av episode 1.

Enjoy! :twisted:

so, at the place this all went down, there were two women who were completely-bat-shit-out-of-their-minds-on-lord-knows-what and they had a little child (not much older than an infant really) with them. one thing led to another and eventually the fact that they were in no condition to be the guardians of the kid came shining through (chain smoking while infant is in their arms, almost dropping the kid from laps numerous times, laughing hysterically at nothing while saying loudly "can't you see? they're all dead! hahahaha!" etc etc). the authorities were called, and as we were leaving, we found that the ladies seemed not too bothered by the possibility that the child in their custody was likely to be removed for at least the night... they were casually chatting with the policeman holding their kid while, i presume, he was waiting for social services to send someone along...

to bring it all back home: the live accompanist dude was playing a theremin.

related note:

The rest of the gang is a bit splintered as well. Nicole is either at work or playing with the bunny, and Smoothie is on the fence about whether to watch show this cycle. He is disappointed that Isis the pre-op transsexual is not hotter than she is, and he also feels that the show may have "jumped the shark" with all the time-travel and gender issues and whatnot. I argue that it's kind of ridiculous to bail out now, because the show has been one long continuous shark jumping from the get-go. Tyra is nothing if not the Fonz waterskiing.

Where is Gort? Good question. I have no idea. I have not seen hide nor hair of Gort in quite some time. Maybe she is boycotting the show because of Tyra's terrible portrayal of a robot last week. Robots can be sensitive about their image in the media. So we will have to soldier on without some of our core members of the viewing panel. Pour yourself a drink and get ready for the models.

7:58 - "Get down with the pasta dude." Domino's Pizza is now selling pasta, and their spokesperson for the product is a piece of fusilli who thinks he's a rapper. This is my first encounter with the wigger pasta fellow, but Ross and Benny are familiar with him. He is not beloved.

8:01 - New opening for the show. Hip-hop flower child sort of theme, and the transportation vehicle for this cycle is a jitney that says "ECO IS FIERCE!" instead of "AIRPORT HILTON" or whatever. I'm not sure if we have to drink every time the fierce jitney shows up. If so, we may be in trouble.

8:03- Nikeysha says that she is not going to talk as much during the judging panel this week because she got in trouble last week for yammering on and she can't help talking but maybe she should tone it down but figure out a way to still be herself because being herself means talking which is pretty much normal but still they didn't like it so she's going to think about being quiet.

8:05 - Isis the pre-op wants to concentrate on keeping her face soft and pretty. Probably a good idea. Benny thinks she should concentrate on keeping all her parts soft if she wants to stay in this contest. She may also want to think about filing down her needle-like fangs. Isis looks okay as long as she doesn't smile, but when she shows her teeth she looks like Count Orlok.

8:06 - Benny Ninja is wearing a green outfit. Okay, we get it; the show is green. Eco is fierce. Benny Ninja has crammed Bree, a "model and entertainer" (not to be confused with Lauren Brie the contestant), into a drawer of an Ikea coffee table. Benny Ninja explains that Bree doesn't mind being crammed into coffee tables because she is an extreme poser. The girls all say that Sheena is an extreme poser. Ha ha on Sheena.

8:07 - There are giant sheer stretchy sacks of red nylon hanging from the ceiling. Benny Ninja and Bree climb inside two of the sacks and start posing inside them. Then all the girls have to get into the sacks. Nikeysha is getting tangled up a lot in her sack; she looks like a cat in pantyhose. Benny Ninja asks her if she has gas. Benny the non-ninja, Ross, and I all think she's going home this week.

8:08 - Benny Ninja to Isis: "Fix the face."

8:08:30 - Tyra mail! We have no idea what the Tyra mail is about because even though only one girl is reading the message out loud instead of like last cycle when they let all the girls yell it out at the same time, the girl that they have picked to read the Tyra mail is Joslyn. Joslyn is from Lucky, Louisiana and talks like she has marbles in her mouth.

8:09 - Sheena doesn't see herself as hootch. She does a little neck thing to indicate she finds the characterization offensive.

8:10 - Truth Or Dare in the hot tub. Clark has to kiss Elina. Benny says, "Hannah's all jealous." Then some sort of ruckus happens. Maybe somebody touched Isis' penis by accident. No, wait. Hannah got freaked out when Isis accidentally touched her, so she shoves Isis. This doesn't sit well with the other girls. Interesting. Last week they all hated Isis but this week they're defending her. I wonder what happened to change the climate in the house so much.

8:11 - Hannah says some things about being a typical white girl and not liking hip hop or people who move their necks and want her to talk to their hand.

8:12 - TeaHat arrives at Ross' home, and she has brought little pigs in blankets. Pigs in blankets! Ross picks one up from the plate with his grabber that he has because he's not supposed to bend over yet with his new hip. He's getting really good with his little grabber.

8:16 - Isis has to give herself a hormone injection, and doing it kind of makes her queasy, so Analeigh distracts her with a chicken impression.

8:17 - Benny Ninja is now wearing a tiny hat and a giant necklace. It's like Benny Ninja lives with a giantess who leaves red pantyhose hanging from the ceiling, and sometimes she lets him borrow her jewelry. Designer Tarina Tarantino arrives to see how the girls pose with accessories. All of the girls are given tiny hats and purses.

8:18 - Michel and Perfesser Shirtmuffin have now arrived at Ross'. I am a little concerned that this viewing party is going to get out of hand with all of these non-ANTM fans in the mix. Benny turns up the volume.

8:19 - Tarina Tarantino is puzzled that all of the girls are putting her tiny purses on their toes. Nikeysha announces to everybody that she might not be able to hold her pee during her turn at posing.

8:20 - Sheena wants to employ feng shui during her turn. She puts her feet behind her ears and places a purse in front of her vagina. Tarina is displeased at the proximity of her product to Sheena's vagina.

8:21 - Tarina doesn't understand why everybody is now grabbing the chandelier. First they all had to put purses on their feet, and now they're all hanging from the chandelier.

8:22 - The black girls in the house confront Hannah and ask her if she's racist. Hannah says no and thanks them for their critique. She feels this is all very third grade.

8:27 - McKey feels bad for Hannah and feels she was ambushed by the black girls. Hannah feels she has had "gang violence" inflicted upon her by the confrontation. She was gang raped with words. A hot air balloon arrives.

8:28 - Mr. Jay is in the hot air balloon and says they are going to have to do a photo shoot in the balloon. He announces that Microweez is going to be shooting them today. Oh. Mike Ruiz.

8:29 - The girls don't really have to hang from the ladder of the hot air balloon. They are hanging from a rope ladder attached to a forklift instead.

8:30 - Close-up of a charred mannequin head. Hannah is tired of being labeled a racist.

8:31 - Mr. Jay to Analeigh: "Use the skater in you." Sheena is able to hold on to the rungs of the ladder without using her arms. Isis struggles and forgets her face.

8:32 - Nikeysha complains a lot and is all over the place. "My underwear is out! My panties is out!" She is definitely out.

8:33 - Clark is told to do something but I don't know what because there is a lot of jibber jabber in the kitchen right now. Shush, people. Mr. Jay tells Hannah that she looks too straight. Samantha is not aware of the garment. McKey can't hold a pose. The fierce eco jitney comes to pick them up.

8:35 - Sheena is in the confessional booth talking about how she is not hootchie. She is crouching in the confessional booth with her legs spread so that we can see her vagina.

8:37 - We briefly discuss whether it's rude to call a pitbull a pig. The wigger pasta is back.

8:41 - The girls are now at the judging panel, looking at a terrible picture of Tyra holding a bunch of balloons. Hey. Balloons, like miniature versions of the hot air balloon the girls posed with. Or maybe the balloons aren't miniature hot air balloons; maybe they're normal sized and Tyra is a giantess. I wonder if she knows Benny Ninja borrowed her necklace yesterday.

8:42 - Miss Jay has bought some metal numbers at the hardware store and made a necklace out of them. This week his necklace says "13." He says he wishes one of the girls was a little more broken.

8:43 - Tyra asks Nikeysha if she's anorexic. Tyra then says something about cheeseburgers, Nikeysha mumbles a response, and Tyra is satisfied that Nikeysha is not anorexic. Paulina is not: "You look like a paper bag with pipe cleaners sticking out of it."

8:44 - Tarina likes that Lauren Brie was very broken doll. Drink whenever somebody refers to broken dolls. Drink, people. Nobody is listening to me.

8:44:30 - Miss Jay calls McKey Poison Ivy and the Joker.

8:45 - Tyra starts bragging about how she had a photo shoot with Steven Meisel yesterday. Drink. She calls Isis "elementary school" and tells her that she looks too much like a normal girl. Tyra praises Marjorie for looking confident in her shot. Marjorie has very short hair, and she starts twirling her scalp nervously.

8:46 - Tyra wants to faint from the wind that is blowing from Hannah's photo.

8:46:30 - Miss Jay tells Sheena, "You look like Victoria's Secretions." Tyra tells her that if she doesn't get kicked out this week, she has to cover up and not stick her boobs out so much.

8:47 - Either Brittany or Joslyn is "high end catalog" and isn't aware that this is an insult. I can't concentrate because everybody in the kitchen is yakking too much. I entreat them to shut it and they all laugh at me. Jerks. Tyra makes a crazy face. Drink.

8:48 - Hootchie Sheena comes forward in the middle of everything and announces that her breasts aren't real. Tyra applauds her for her courage.

8:51 - Miss Jay thinks Analeigh has a lot of ice skating potential. What did I miss about Analeigh's ice skating past? Did they explain this last week while they were time traveling? I think I may have missed a lot last week; frankly, I was blindsided by the arrival of the Tyrabot and it kind of took over my brain.

8:53 - Miss Jay thinks he can box something out of McKey. Nigel thinks Isis is falling apart. Tyra thinks Elina looks like she's in Top Model Advanced School. I do not agree. Elina looks like she comes from Westworld.

8:54 - Final judging. They show a shot of Los Angeles City Hall. What? Why are they at City Hall? Benny says Hootchie Fake Titties will be in the bottom two, and Nikeysha is going home. I concur.

8:55 - Nope. Sheena's name gets called. "Maybe Gang Rape is in the bottom two," says Benny. Nope. Hannah The Racist's name is called as well.

8:56 - Brittany and Isis are holding hands. Brittany's name is called. The bottom two are Nikeysha and Isis. Now they are holding hands. Michel believes, "They're gonna get rid of Cheeseburger." Nikeysha. I agree.

8:57 - Nikeysha's nose is all pinky red and shiny from crying. Her lip gloss matches her nose.

8:57:30 - Isis gets called. Nikeysha is out because an important rule of modeling is to not match your lips with your nose. Nikeysha starts babbling. Tyra tells her to be quiet and also be aspirational. Also not to say she wants to be an anesthesiologist.

8:58 - Nikeysha is crying and saying she wishes she could go back and not talk so much. She continues crying and talking through the credits. Ha ha.

8:59 - Makeovers are next week.

I am going to have to work something different out next week. It's best to watch this show with a lot of people making wisecracks while focusing on the show. This week I learned that the mountain can't concentrate around all of Mohammed's friends that don't care about the top models. Maybe I can hijack Ross from his friends and put a Rossbot in his place to entertain his friends while the real Ross is watching the top models with us. I must also find out where Gort has gone to, and try to get Smoothie and Nicole back on board. I've got a lot to do before next week. Wish me luck.

Now let it be known that I am a huge fan of vampires, dating back from the late 60's when I was a Dark Shadows fanatic (I own the VHS movie of House of Dark Shadows and I still watch it at least once a year). I even watched the first few seasons on Netflix last summer until I realized that I was getting a bit obsessed, and not in a healthy. I love Bram Stoker's Dracula (the novel) and I even like the Coppola film, flaws and all. I like the Frank Langella's (see what he has to see about acting here!) sexy Drac from the seventies, and even though she can be a horribly meandering writer I have read just about every Anne Rice novel she's ever published (and it's a lot). I've watched "The Lost Boys" too many times to count and I have even caught a late night showing of John Carpenters Vampires on TV and have enjoyed its guilty pleasure. I can do sexy vamps, campy vamps, scary vamps (the best), decrepit vamps, but please don't give me stupid redneck vamps, which is what True Blood did. I was encouraged by the opening credits with its references to Cajun style voodoo and eerie shots of lonely roads and dripping Spanish moss, but the show failed to deliver what makes a good vampire story intriguing. First of all, the characters were obnoxious. I felt like it was an insult to the good people of Louisiana to portray them as so stupid. Has Alan Ball (apparently a Georgia native) never heard of Southern gothic? Maybe it's just me but if I wanted to watch a show about a bunch of dumb hicks I'd watch Dukes of Hazard reruns. Maybe it's cute to make vampires a part of the general population and have them interviewed by Bill Maher (oh, he's on HBO too, I get it), but doesn't that rob them of their mystery? Also, vampires are supposed to be sexy (hard to imagine it but Bela Lugosi made the ladies swoon), but the actor playing the "hot guy" vampire just seemed bland and bored. Sexy in this show is all about the gratuitous/HBO style graphic sex which shows boobs, butts, and thrusting (yawn!). Give me slow seduction please. Give me a little mystery and danger (Frank, I forgive the hairstyle, you're hot!).

I understand the desire to change the old cliches a bit, to attempt at creating new takes on the vampire myth, but to lose the mystery, the sexiness, and the ability to frighten on some level is to lose what makes it good to begin with. Even if it enters into the camp territory (as Lost Boys definitely does) it still should give a few good chills along the way, and that's what True Blood was most lacking. I haven't read the novel series on which this is based, but I'm curious to see what they're like. But as a vampire connoisseur I must insist that in order for it to be successful it has to freak us out a little. That's what makes it fun, no?

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922)

[wpvideo 5jpKjoqS]

Immer wieder fündig in der via uwe.

Dort findest Du auch eine Beschreibung des Filmes.

Top! do Leitor:

Fábio Rockenback

Tops! da Equipe:

Sílvio Tavares

01. Um Cão Andaluz (Luis Buñuel, 1929)
02. O Encouraçado Potenkim (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
03. A Greve (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
04. A Corrida do Ouro (Charles Chaplin, 1925)
05. Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
06. O Gabinete do Doutor Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)
07. A Criança (Charles Chaplin, 1921)
08. Outubro (Sergei Eisenstein, 1928)
09. Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau, 1927)
10. A Paixão de Joana D'arc (Carl T. Dreyer, 1928)

Daniel Dalpizzolo

01. Aurora (F. W. Murnau, 1927)
02. A Morte Cansada (Fritz Lang, 1921)
03. O Encouraçado Potemkin (Sergei Eisestein, 1925)
04. O Homem Com a Câmera (Dziga Vertov, 1928)
05. A Turba (King Vidor, 1928)
06. O Gabinete do Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)
07. A General (Buster Keaton, 1927)
08. O Garoto (Charles Chaplin, 1921)
09. Um Cão Andaluz (Luis Buñuel, 1929)
10. Metrópolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)

Pedro Kerr

01. Ouro e Perdição (Erich Von Stroheim, 1924)
02. Um Cão Andaluz (Luis Buñuel, 1929)
03. Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922)
04. A General (Buster Keaton, 1927)
05. Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
06. Aurora (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
07. A Corrida do Ouro (Charles Chaplin, 1925)
08. O Garoto (Charles Chaplin, 1921)
09. O Encouraçado Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
10. O Herói do Rio (Buster Keaton, 1928)

Marcelo Dillenburg

01. O Encouraçado Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
02. Em Busca do Ouro (Charlie Chaplin, 1925)
03. Metrópolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
04. O Gabinete do Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)
05. O Homem das Novidades (Buster Keaton, 1928)
06. Fausto (F.W. Murnau, 1926)
07. A Greve ( Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
08. A Paixão de Joana D’Arc (Carl T. Dreyer, 1928)
09. O Garoto (Charlie Chaplin, 1921)
10. A General (Buster Keaton, 1927)

One of the more intersting programs i have been working on is Nostferatu(1922). i'm currently trying to put together a movie night at my library for Halloween.The advantage to using the 1922 verison of the film is that it, and its original poster are in public domain. Also, this movie gives a good opertunity to talk about public domain materials and copy right. I have been doing a lot of research on this film so that when i presented the idea to the powers that be (powers that are usually not in favor of vampire related library programing) so that i would not get automatically turned down. This film has a facinating history of legal battles with the Bram Stoker family. The biggest hurdle I have incountered so far has be obtaining one of the copyright free versions of the film that can be shown on a large screen. This movie is avaliable on google films, but the resolution is horrid. it seems like my only option is going to be a peer to peer public domain site. When i began this program, i had hoped that there would be several websites dedicated to shairing public domain films, but thus far i havent had much luck. if you know of a good one, i would appreciate it. I have found the film on the Internet Archive which offers a good number of public domain materials and video clips.

This is the version avalible through goolge video. If you have seen this film before, you will probably notice right away in the opening credits that they names used are the mostly the names used in Stoker's Dracula with the exception of Mina being Nina in this version. In the version of the film that is on DVD, all of the character's names have been changed probably due to the copyright issues that this film encountered. Thus far, i have yet to find a truly reliable website that has relavent cited historic information on this film, but i'm still looking.

 [googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6185283610506001721]

Ini juga salah satu film incaran saya sejak SD, dan baru berhasil menontonnya satu setengah tahun yang lalu, berkat internet, dan torrent tentunya. Dan ternyata setelah bermain-main di Youtube, saya berhasil menemukan versi panjangnya juga disana.

Nosferatu sendiri adalah sebuah karya saduran dari Dracula-nya Bram Stroker, dan disutradai oleh F. W. Murnau. Murnau sendiri sebenarnya berusaha mengangkat karya Stroker ke layar lebar, tetapi dikarenakan tidak mendapat izin dari janda mendiang Stroker, Murnau terpaksa merubah semua nama tokoh di cerita ini, termasuk mengganti nama Dracula menjadi Nosferatu.

Selamat menonton...and mind the opening picture...

For those who wanted to get hold of the scary Nosferatu character we used in our V4 shadows preview video, now's your chance. He's available in the Characters Horror 01 pack, along with Frankenstein's monster, Dracula and a Mummy.

The characters are fully interactive and can be dropped into any Antics scene. Some come with their own special walk animations. As you can see in the V4 preview video, Nosferatu has his very own Mr Burns-esque shuffle.

The packs retail for £3.95/$7.95/€5.45 and of course are free for Antics Professional users.

Characters Horror 01 (Premium)

Characters Fantasy (Premium)

Characters Medieval 01 (Premium)

Characters Medieval 02 (Premium)

Characters Casual Female Adult 08 (Premium)

(You'll need a fair damsel or two to rescue from Nosferatu's clutches!)

If you're a BasePack user and were thinking of taking the $95 upgrade offer to get V4 Professional then now's the time to do it as you'll get all 5 packs for free. Be quick though, the discount code is only valid till the end of August.

If there’s any content packs that you would like to see in future then please let us know over in the Content Wishlist area of the forum.

I hope you enjoy the new characters, be sure to share your horror and fantasy inspired videos on the forum.

Gary

The odd partnership between German director Werner Herzog and Polish actor Klaus Kinski is one of the more unknown actor/director duos, but is in my opinion the best, even arguably surpassing the more celebrated collaborations of Akira Kurosawa/Toshiro Mifune and Martin Scorsese/Robert DeNiro. The Herzog/Kinski duo made 5 films together, not including Herzog's documentary on Kinski, over a 15 year span, all of which are widely acclaimed.

The duo's off-screen chemistry is just as interesting as their finished films. Kinski was famously considered to be both a genius and an insane ego-maniac, pegged as impossible to work with by most everybody, including Herzog. Right at the start of filming the duo's first film, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Kinski became notorious for his seemingly random tantrums, one of which resulted in Kinksi firing a gun into one of the crew's tents, shooting off a crew member's finger. Later on in the shoot, Kinski decided to suddenly quit, and only returned to the set after Herzog pulled a gun on the actor. Though the duo had an extreme love/hate relationship, Herzog is constantly quoted as saying that it's not how well they got along, but "what they see on the screen that matters."

For an example of one of Kinski's fits, here's a short clip taken during the filming of the 1982 film Fitzcarraldo, which appeared in Herzog's documentary on Kinski, My Best Friend:

During the filming of Fitzcarraldo, Kinski's insanity frightened natives to such a level that they actually approached Herzog offering to murder the actor. It's been said that at multiple points both Herzog and Kinski had planned to kill the other, but somehow always ended up collaborating for another film.

Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) was the pair's first film and possibly their best. I strongly believe it's one of the greatest films ever made, and has been credited as the inspiration for Apocalypse Now as well the work of director Terrence Malick (Badlands; Days of Heaven; The New World; The Thin Red Line). Like in all Herzog/Kinski collaborations, Kinski plays the title character, a man who's hopelessly obsessed with an unreachable goal, in this case, the search for El Dorado.

Despite an extremely low budget of less than $400,000 (Aguirre was filmed with a stolen camera), Herzog came up with something epic. Unlike any Hollywood film, Herzog and his crew film entirely on location without the use of special effects or stuntmen. The crew climbed mountains, lived in the jungle with the natives, and actually rode the Amazonian river rapids with rafts built by the natives to shoot the film's river scenes. Though this resulted in obvious production problems (flooding) and quite a few injuries, including snake bites, the authenticity shows.

The pair would next work together on Woyzeck and Nosferatu: The Vampyre (a remake of the 1922 original), both of which were released in '79. Kinski's performance as the suspicious soldier in Woyzeck is now considered to be one of the greatest, and the film features that unforgettable slow-motion murder sequence, which has been copied countless times.

Fitzcarraldo, their next film, is about an opera obsessed man (Kinski) trying to transport a steamship over a mountainside to build an opera house in the jungle, and it rivals Aguirre for the duo's best. Fitzcarraldo took 4 years for Herzog to make, as the original production was cancelled due to the health of Jason Robards, who was originally cast in the lead role. Mick Jagger was also in the original version, but had to pass on the film's re-shoots to tour with The Rolling Stones. In addition to these problems, the film's production was marred by plane crashes, Kinski's ravings, more problems with filming scenes on river rapids, and the actual logistics of hauling a massive steamship over a mountain, again with no kind of special effects.

1987's Cobra Verde would be the last Herzog/Kinski collaboration, as Kinski would die in 1991. It's a solid way to end an amazing but baffling partnership.

A box-set was recently released featuring all five films, plus Herzog's documentary. Kinski has also published an autobiography documenting his relationship with Herzog, but the book is said by many to be an almost complete work of fiction.