Dracula (1931)

Finally saw this and was struck by how quiet it was. For whatever reason, I expected to hear a lot of dark, gloomy music during the Transylvania scenes and really creepy stuff for when Dracula bites necks. But no, just about every scene without dialogue just plays out silently, and sometimes all you hear is wind, and maybe the floorboards creaking as Dracula slowly walks across a room staring at someone, which seemed to be happening constantly in this movie. This lack of music was really chilling.

Even though it's a total cinematic cliche by now, Bela Lugosi's performance truly is great. There's no need to describe it. He's the Count from Sesame Street, only scarier, less purple, and has his OCD under control. There's not much dialogue in this movie, but Dracula talks less than anyone, he just sort of lurks behind people while they're chatting at a table or something. And then when he does talk, it's always something about being an undead vampire, like "there are far worse things awaiting man than death.", and everyone looks at each other awkwardly. A lot of this movie is about how hanging out with Dracula is a huge buzzkill.

Anyway, this was filmed simultaneously alongside a Spanish version: same sets and production crew, different actors and language. I'll have to look out for that sometime. I've heard more than once that it's actually better than the Lugosi version. For me, though, I don't think anything tops Nosferatu in terms of classic vampire films.

My Blueberry Nights (2008)

Caught this at the Charles a few weeks ago with a friend who's also a big Wong Kar Wai fan. So we were both pretty excited for the director's first english language outing. Some foreign directors score big time with english debuts (Wim Wenders' The American Friend) and some don't (John Woo's Hard Boiled?) This was somewhere in between for me. My bud liked it and I was just kind of okay with it.

Something seemed off, and a lot of it was the dialogue between Jeremy (Jude Law) and Elizabeth (Norah Jones), which felt too self-consciously metaphorical. Like when he tells her that at the end of every night the apple and peach pies are totally eaten, but there's always an entire blueberry pie left. "There's nothing wrong with the blueberry pie. Just... people make other choices. You can't blame the blueberry pie, just... no one wants it.", Jeremy says. A lot of conversations were like that, hammering us over the head with introspect and symbolism. I liked it better when these kind of ideas were treated more playfully, as in Chungking Express and Happy Together.

But it could also be that Wong Kar Wai's dialogue feels better, like more poetic, when subtitled as in his other films. It didn't seem to have the same effect on me hearing it in English. The lines sort of felt incongruous to the character's mannerisms and actions, especially the David Straitharn/Rachel Weisz section. They played the parts to a T, but the script kept those scenes from being completely believable for me.

I liked all the acting, except for Norah Jones, who was pretty flat. There's also just something really wrong with watching Norah Jones make out with a guy while a Norah Jones song is playing in the background. Throw one more Norah Jones in there and we're in, like, some tunnel that leads to Norah Jones' brain or something.