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)

Pic of the Day

Insert a kajillion exclamation points here -- how have I never seen this photo of Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski on the set of Nosferatu the Vampyre before? (click to embiggen) It is my new favorite thing -- I want it on t-shirts and greeting cards and chiseled onto my tombstone. Thanks to Mubi for sharing it on their Insta, where they've also got a couple other set photos included.

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?

The New Creatures of the Night

Robert Eggers has been trying to make a new version of Nosferatu for basically his entire career -- we've been documenting the teases we've gotten on that front since The Witch came out 2015 and we immediately began caring about what Robert Eggers made. Then came The Lighthouse and The Northman and now we really, really, really care. Like, really. Nosferatu was supposed to happen several times but things kept falling apart at the last minute, and the main problem as of late has been the actress he wanted to star in it -- Anya Taylor-Joy, who worked with him on The Witch and The Northman, has just become too damned busy. 

And so, the inevitable -- it sounds like he's moving on with the project without his muse. Deadline is reporting that Bill Skarsgard is going to play the lead bloodsucker, which is wonderful casting (and I guess Robert liked working with brother Alex and wanted to keep it in the family, a notion we deeply understand) while actress Lily-Rose Depp is in talks to play the "haunted young woman" at the heart of the tale. You know, the Isabelle Adjani role. I'll admit that the nepotism of Depp got on my nerves at first but I don't think she's actually a bad actress -- I liked her in the first thing I saw her in, which was Louis Garrel's film A Faithful Man, and she was good in Wolf with George Mackay last year as well. I wanna be clear -- she's never blown me away like ATJ has, and I mourn the loss of ATJ deeply. But Lily-Rose does have a face that will look good for the goth purposes required by this role, so we'll see. I trust in Eggers.

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!

Come and Get Me, Meteors

Werner Herzog making documentaries for Apple makes so much sense it feels like something right fitting into something righter -- it's like all those Tab A's and Tab's B's come home. Just perfect. The only thing perfecter would be if he hosted a weekly travelogue for Apple+ and excuse me while I get my people* and their people on a phone together. For now we've got Herzog's latest called Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds, which is about "how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future." Imagine those words in Herzog's voice, and now watch the trailer:

Apple will be releasing Fireball on November 13th!

* my people are my Golden Girls action figures

and they drive a real hard bargain

Take a Bite Outta Count

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Okay so sure here in 2020 we've seen the Carpathian Count more times than we can, you know, count, but I'm forcing myself to shrug off my shrugs about a new movie version of Dracula this morning because of who's been hired -- The Invitation and Jennifer's Body director Karyn "fuckin'" Kusama, that's who. She's a big who! We love her! Maybe we didn't love her last movie so much -- that'd be Destroyer with Nicole Kidman -- but everybody's allowed a whiff now and then, and it's not like Destroyer's not an interesting experiment with structure and tone even if I don't think it ultimately worked. 

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Okay but hear me out what if Karyn Kusama made a Lesbian Vampire Movie instead

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) March 11, 2020

Anyway back to the bloody business at hand -- this is the studio called Blumhouse doing this, who just let Leigh Whannell reimagine The Invisible Man in a way that really worked and made that nearly hundred year old franchise feel fresh, so let's keep hope alive. (Also props to Jason Blum for hiring another female filmmaker after his jackass comments from a couple of years back.) And I mean after all it's not like Plague Times aren't the exact right time for a Dracula resurgence...

Oh I seriously might have to watch Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre tonight, I might. That sounds perfect. (And it's on Amazon Prime to boot!) Anyway the conversation now of course turns towards the casting department. I personally think they need to stay far far away from the Count being played by a white man with black hair, as that's been done to literal death at this point -- there's one on Netflix right now, and Claes Bang is pretty damn good at it too. That said I don't know what ideas Kusama & Co. have got in mind for their take -- they could go the route of The Invisible Man and make Dracula a supporting character in his own story, focus on Mina or Lucy, who knows. Thoughts from y'all?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life.

... you can learn from:

My Son My Son What Have Ye Done (2009)

Brad: What do you mean by birds?
They're my eagles in drag!

One of my absolute favorite Werner Herzog movies came out ten years ago today, and I feel like nobody but me ever talks about this flick anymore. We cannot let that happen! I mean this thing could coast on its cast alone, which might just be my favorite batch of weirdos ever assembled in one place -- Michael Shannon, Grace Zabriskie, Udo Kier, Chloë Sevigny, Irma P. Hall, Willem Dafoe, Michael Peña, Lorette Devine, Brad Dourif... oh and apparently (I don't remember this, I'll have to check my disc later) Dave Bautista has a cameo as a SWAT member???

But it's not just a tremendous group of freaks... excuse me, risk takers... all gathered up in one place and let loose. Herzog and Shannon and all the rest manage to make an operatic new American Myth out of a random tabloid story they snatched from oblivion. Here's my original review of the film, and here's what I wrote up when I called it my 5th favorite movie of 2009. I recommend you see this if you haven't, or watch it again if you have!
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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Fitzcarraldo (1982)

Fitzcarraldo: What's he saying?
Don Aquilino: We must be quiet. He says whoever talks
will be swallowed up the evil spirits of the whirlpool. Shh.

Somehow it being Klaus Kinski's birthday on the same day that The Lighthouse is hitting theaters (read my review here) seems totally and tonally appropriate -- men and madness and all that muck. Werner Herzog totally could have made The Lighthouse with Kinski in Willem Dafoe's role 40 years ago, while I could see Robert Eggers making something like Fitzcarraldo now. In that vein I don't suppose it's a coincidence that Eggers also wanted to re-do Nosferatu! Which reminds me...

... that Lighthouse star Dafoe already played that role in Shadow of the Vampire; do you think Eggers would have -- I hate that I keep talking about his Nosferatu in the past tense but he really did seem to be speaking of it in the past tense when I saw him talk the other day -- cast Dafoe as his own Carpathian Count Orlok? 

I digress -- Eggers' well-documented obsessions with getting realistic realistic period details, right down to Robert Pattinson really jerking off again, and Herzog's own grueling obsessions that drove his actors and crew to near madness making Fitzcarraldo  and other films -- watch Les Blank's astonishing doc Burden of Dreams as soon as you possibly can -- do seem a neat fit. I'm glad this random confluence of dates made me think of them together.

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The Dark and Sparkling Night

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News broke last night that Robert Pattinson had been chosen to play Bruce Wayne and his alter ego Mr. Batman for The Batman, the latest aka the hundredth take on the darkest of knights from director Matt Reeves. Then news broke about thirty minutes after that that he hadn't actually been cast, he was on a list, a list of what sounded like two names, his name and the name of Sir Nicholas Hoult. The drama of it all! Well dun dun dun this morning it sounds like the original report was fairly on point, as Us Weekly (don't judge, they have a "source") says the former Twilight actor is close to snapping on Ye Olde Cowl. How do I feel about it, you ask?

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That jawline was built for that cowl pic.twitter.com/hBxR8XujmI

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) May 17, 2019

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Yeah if you thought there was even a whiff of petulant fanboy coming out over this you don't know me -- I've been giving Rob ripe hosannas for his acting work for just about eight years at this point, even since my second viewing of Cosmopolis when I realized what he was doing was working like gangbusters, and I've been Team Rob ever since. It helped that I didn't watch a single Twilight movie probably, but I don't begrudge that series its fans -- I always felt the snide side-eyes it got were sexist machinations anyway.

But in all seriousness Pattinson has done stellar work over the past decade -- he gave far and away my favorite performances in Werner Herzog's Queen of the Desert and in James Gray's The Lost City of Z. I didn't actually love either of those movies, but Rob's performances in both were wonders, enough reason to sit through both films on their own. Then came Good Time, which caught most people who pay attention to smart, independent films up to what he was capable of and then some.

I gave him an acting prize for his work on the Zellner Brothers' film Damsel last year, which otherwise got soundly ignored from what I saw but his work was goofy and weird and wonderful there too; I still recommend you seek it out. And then of course comes Pattinson's turn with internationally acclaimed auteur Claire Denis this year with the marvel that is High Life. Robert Pattinson doesn't need your approval! He's doing just fine.

In fact I think he's probably too good for a Batman movie, although I think Reeves is one of our best blockbusters movie makers so if you're gonna go big he's not a bad guy to trust. The main question becomes at this point for me -- does he really want to do this? It's a big commitment, he's going to be dragged back into the spotlight, and that all seemed to make him hella miserable last time around. I mean that's not my question to ask really -- I am sure he's asked it of himself and is perfectly capable of making a decision, as he is an adult. I've just grown so fond of the past several years of his career I want more of that. (PS see more of those beach pictures right here.)
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Taika 'Nother Little Piece of My Heart, Now Baby

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I noticed this weekend that the posters for Taika Waititi's TV reboot of his vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows have begun popping up in the subways of Manhattan, which makes sense since the thing premieres in less than two weeks on FX. But Taki's cup runneth over -- he's got his Hitler Comedy (yes you read that right) with Scarlett Johansson called Jojo Rabbit coming out sometime this year, and he's an episode of the Star Wars television series The Mandalorian filming right now, with Pedro Pascal and Omid Abtahi (one of the gays from American Gods) and, uh, Werner fucking Herzog (!!!) in the cast.

But even with all that he's just announced another another TV series -- he's going to make a series out of Terry Gilliam's movie Time Bandits for Apple's forthcoming streaming juggernaut. This show was announced last year but Taika's involvement is brand new news. Time Bandits, aka my boyfriend's favorite movie, is about a young boy who gets sucked into a battle with Evil itself, traversing through different time periods with a gaggle of salty dwarves. It's a lot of wacky fun, and I can only imagine the wonders that Taika could wring from all that. I'm in...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Where the Green Ants Dream (1984)

Miliritbi: You white men are lost. You don't
understand the land. Too many silly questions.
Your presence on this earth will come to an end.
You have no sense. No purpose. No direction.

A happy 76 to Werner Herzog today.

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5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1972

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Say goodbye to the 1970s, everybody! This morning when I asked my phone to give me a random number between 1 and 100 and Siri replied with the number "72" she chose the last year of the 1970s that we hadn't yet done for our "Siri Says" series here. The 60s and the 80s are both getting close to completion too, but the 70s - the decade that many straight white men people point to as the height of the cinematic form - beat 'em to it. And now for your clicking convenience I'll link 'em all up:

 Here are my five favorite movies of 1970 

Here are my five favorite movies of 1971

Here are my five favorite movies of 1973

Here are my five favorite movies of 1974

Here are my five favorite movies of 1975

Here are my five favorite movies of 1976

Here are my five favorite movies of 1977

Here are my five favorite movies of 1978

Here are my five favorite movies of 1979

So onto some talk about The Movies of 1972 now then. Or the context of the movies of 1972 first anyway - this was the year that Richard Nixon won re-election and the massacre happened in Munich during the Olympics so, you know, it was kind of a shitty time to be alive. It was a dark year. (It feels familiar in that way!) Seriously though, some of the great directors (Hitchcock and Bertolucci and Bergman) were putting out very dark films and horror films (like Wes Craven's Last House on the Left) were going very dark indeed. I suppose it was the Charles Manson Effect?

Anyway the biggest box office hit was also the year's biggest critical hit (when does that happen anymore?) with Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, which, sigh, I like just fine... but you're not going to see me writing any Muriel's Wedding type shrines to any time soon.

But speaking of the box office I was shocked to see two titles in the year's Top 10 - the fourth biggest movie of the year was the porn film Behind the Green Door starring Marilyn Chambers. I knew it crossed over in that sleazy 70s way (I use that "sleazy" with longing) but I had no idea it made 50 million dollars! And the second surprise on the box office of the year sits at number nine, where the "horror docu-drama" The Legend of Boggy Creek sits. The film is a low-budget piece of garbage (I found it nearly unwatchable when I reviewed it in 2009) but it supposedly scarred a ton of children at the time, and it made a whopping 20 million bucks (something like 130 million now). It's also the grandfather of the "found footage" genre, inspiring the makers of The Blair Witch Project.

So that's way more introduction than I usually do 

for these things - let's get to the meat of it!! Here are...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1972

Cabaret

(dir. Bob Fosse)

-- released on February 13th 1972 --

Pink Flamingos 

(dir. John Waters)

-- released on March 17th 1972 --

Aguirre, The Wrath of God

(dir. Werner Herzog)

-- released on December 29th 1972 --

Deliverance

(dir. John Boorman)

-- released on July 30th 1972 --

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant 

(dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

-- released on October 5th 1972 --

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Runners-up: The Godfather (dir. Coppola), The Poseidon Adventure (dir. Irwin Allen), The Last House on the Left (dir. Craven), Frenzy (dir. Hitchcock), Last Tango in Paris (dir. Bertolucci), Cries & Whispers (dir. Bergman), Tales From the Crypt (dir. Freddie Francis)...

... The Canterbury Tales (dir. Pasolini), Dracula A.D. 1972 (dir. Alan Gibson), The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (dir. John Huston), Baron Blood (dir. Mario Bava), Dr. Phibes Rises Again (dir. Robert Fuest), Frogs (dir. George McCowan), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (dir. Luis Bunuel), The Merchant of Four Seasons (dir. Fassbinder), Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex... (dir. Woody Allen)

Never seen: The Getaway (dir. Sam Peckinpah), What's Up Doc? (dir. Peter Bogdanovich), Jeremiah Johnson (dir. Sidney Pollack), Solaris (dir. Tarkovsky), Sleuth (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz), Play It Again, Sam (dir. Herbert Ross), Lady Sings the Blues (dir. Sidney J. Furie), Ben (dir. Phil Carlson), Fritz the Cat (dir. Ralph Bakshi), Fata Morgana (dir. Herzog)

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What are your favorite movies of 1972?

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