RIC MEYERS: Bram Stoker’s Ninja
I’m sure you’ve noticed that the holidays are getting earlier every year. As an ex-mall Santa, I know that I had to report earlier and earlier every season, to the point I was in my big red throne practically the day after Halloween.
And speaking of Halloween, Rob Zombie’s needless remake of John Carpenter’s movie of that name showed up in theaters more than a month before the holiday arrived this year. So is it any wonder that it’s not even close to all hallow’s eve and the horror DVDs are already beginning to haunt shelves?
Thankfully, one of my favorites so far is the two-disc Collector’s Edition of Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula – a very cool package for the very theatrical 1992 movie. One of the reasons so many people liked it (and so many other people didn’t) is encapsulated by one of the very first things the famed director says in the first of four new behind-the-scenes docs. It also stands as one of cinema’s great Freudian slips.
“The whole question of ego…I mean, evil…,” Coppola says, trying to explain the attraction of the much-adapted, much filmed bloodsucker. That sets the stage for the whole ego-driven enterprise, which can be really enjoyed in retrospect once you see how many ideas and creativity they bathed it in. Following the half-hour “making of,” there’s fun ‘n’ interesting docs on Eiko Ishioka’s bold costumes, Roman Coppola’s imaginative special effects, and the entire production’s striking visual approach. You ever notice that the best Dracula movies have the strongest Van Helsings (my favorite’s being Hammer’s Peter Cushing and the BBC’s Frank Finlay)?
But I digress. Anyway, the real revelation for me were the more than half-hour of extended and deleted scenes, which I think improved the film mightily, especially the alternate opening, closing, and excised travails of the abundantly criticized Keanu Reeves. Although his limited acting is the film’s soft core – in a great cast which included Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, Cary Elwes, Winona Ryder, Bill Campbell, Richard E. Grant, Tom Waits, and Sadie Frost – his character’s struggles add an important weight to the tale.
The other major criticism at the time of the film’s release was that Bram Stoker’s Dracula clearly wasn’t, as Coppola and company folded in all sorts of other influences, not to mention his historical inspiration, Vlad the Impaler. Virtually every member of the cast and crew tries to rationalize the title, while, within minutes, admitting how many other sources they were cribbing from.
Finally, Coppola himself puts it to rest with a neat variation on the audio commentary the DVD calls: “Watch Bram Stoker’s Dracula with Francis Coppola.” He simply states that he liked putting the original author’s name above the title, no matter what he wound up doing with the script. That’s part of his filmed intro, which leads seamlessly into his entertaining and informative commentary that weaves Hollywood history, world history, and his encyclopedic knowledge of filmmaking.
Congratulations to Ted Rall on his election as incoming President of the 
Here’s the story – apocryphal, unsubstantiated, and questionable as it is. 
I don’t remember a lot about the first time I ever did a cable TV show. It must have been in the 1980s because I know I was working for Marvel, and it was probably on one of those public access channels which still exist but never seem to have anything on them. The evening’s host might have been Carl Gafford. I do recall, to a certainty, that my co-guest was Jo Duffy and we were debating a topic with, surely, international if not cosmic consequence. To wit: which is the better technique for producing comic book scripts, the so-called Marvel method or the full-script method.
“Sh*t runs d*wnhill.” Those words of wisdom/warning were first spoken to me back in the mid-1980s, at lunch on the first day I started consulting for CBS-TV in California. The statement came back to me several times while watching this week’s offerings (as well as many, many times over the decades as I watched businesses run by productive people flourish, and companies run by “flawed” folk perish). 
“Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” That deathbed sentiment, most often attributed to either actor Edmund Kean or actor/director Sir Donald Wolfit, was much on my mind as I enjoyed this week’s offerings. 
My only other quibble was with the idea of what constitutes “The Best.” I’m not sure in what stratosphere it’s okay that the obvious, redundant, predictable, uninspired “Julia Louis Dreyfuss being persecuted by an insane boom mike guy” sketch is included while the hilarious, beautifully performed Alec Baldwin/Kristen Wiig “Car Pool” sketch is omitted. I can understand it, however, given that, truth be told, the best of ‘06/’07 would simply be the Alec Baldwin and Justin Timberlake episodes alone (with one or two of the SNL Digital Shorts thrown in – especially Peyton Manning’s United Way piece and the “Dick in a Box” music video, which is shown uncensored on this DVD).
The latest is The Valet, coming out on DVD September 18th. The title and cover illustration display the awkwardness with which America approaches his work, given that the film’s original title could be better translated as “The Stand-in,” and whoever poorly photoshopped the picture felt the need to stick an gawky “Parking” patch on the title character’s jacket.
I love action movies. So does Korean film director Ryoo Seung-wan, which is made abundantly clear in the ample extras for the Dragon Dynasty two-disc Ultimate Edition release of The City of Violence. Originally I wasn’t going to review another Dragon Dynasty DVD so soon after my praise of their Hard Boiled and Crime Story remasterings, but I was overwhelmed by the sheer mass of action movie analysis available for this South Korean labor of love.
Way back in the late 1980s, a few film producers thought it was interesting that “comedians,” like the late Andy Kaufman, amused themselves rather than entertained their audiences. After all, if people would pay actual money to be goaded and/or irritated, that might create a much simpler genre of filmmaking. This sentiment set the stage for 1991’s The Dark Backward, a cult curiosity (rather than a cult classic) that a small percentage of viewers who prize the bizarre clutch to their breasts. 
To his credit, writer/director Adam Rifkin would probably be extremely flattered that this dismal little film is mentioned within the same stratosphere as even the worst of the aforementioned directors’ efforts. On the DVD’s special features, he repeatedly contends that the film was only financed because then-hot Judd Nelson was attached and the budget was so small. He figures that the production company probably didn’t even read the script.
Twenty-five years ago, the late, great Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, tried to beat Lord of the Rings to the cinematic punch by co-writing and co-directing a similar and derivative, yet pioneering and daring, “adult” fantasy. Four years after that, approximately twenty-one years ago, he tried to combine Star Wars, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Where the Wild Things Are, and M.C. Escher, among other things, to create a new coming of age teen tale.
He seemed to have little choice, of course, since his chosen medium was the puppet, and, back in the 80s he was limited to what those puppets could achieve, no matter how hard he pushed their envelope. What these new DVDs have over his old movies is that very knowledge. Once a viewer knows how hard he tried and how much work was put into pulling the difficult concepts off, new admiration for the attempts, if not the finished products, is hard to suppress.
Well, I’m back from the San Diego Comic-Con, and if you’ve been reading ComicMix’s coverage, you can probably guess that it was no place to actually write a DVD review column. Get info, acquire more product, see what’s happening, sure, but actually write reviews of other DVD special features? Fergettaboutit. 
So too late there. But since I was up to here as the “kung-fu guy” at the con, I can use this space to clue you in on some discs I should’ve mentioned weeks ago, as well as letting a monumental box set being released next week bring other recent travels into pretentious, self-absorbed focus.
