Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 3, 1993 TAG: 9307030049
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Mike Mayo
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The film arrived in video stores last week in three forms: conventional cassette and laserdisk, and the Criterion Collection disk from Voyager. It's the most expensive version, and it's worth every penny.
Those who missed the film in theaters or who want to re-experience it can simply put the disks in the player and enjoy. More serious fans can listen to the filmmakers' commentary on a separate audio track. (More about the extra features presently.) The careful transfer of the image from film to disk does justice to Coppola's densely layered, crowded screen.
With the exception of one backlot shot, the film was made on elaborate sets where Coppola and photographer Michael Balhaus had full control of the frame. In almost every shot, there's something going on beyond the simple narrative flow. The background may contain an unusual twist to the action, or an odd arrangement of shapes. The simple act of stepping over a threshold may seem strange and hesitant because the action has been filmed backward, then run forward through the projector.
Writer James V. Hart stuck close to the original novel in terms of plot, but he and Coppola breathed new life into the familiar characters. First, they strengthened the religious underpinnings of the vampire legends, and then they veered away from the traditional approach. Instead of telling this as a horror tale, they played it as a romantic love story taken to an operatic extreme.
Despite all the changes in makeup - many of them hideous and grotesque - Gary Oldman is perhaps the most Byronic Dracula ever brought to the screen. He's handsome, exotic, dark, larger than life and a prisoner of his own helpless love. As Mina, the object of his affections, Winona Ryder is fine, but she's regularly upstaged by Sadie Frost, as Lucy, who has one of the messiest and most outrageous death scenes you'll ever see.
But Oldman's real competition comes from Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing, and that's an even match. In his comments, Coppola notes that in many versions of the story, the action slows to a crawl when Van Helsing shows up. Not this one. Hopkins' vampire hunter is a masterful combination of eccentricity, authority and almost Pythonesque humor.
On that same soundtrack, Coppola, his son Roman, who worked as special effects supervisor and second-unit director, and makeup supervisor Greg Cannon talk about their work and their intentions. They reveal how many of the special effects were accomplished. (Some of them are so simple, you'll be surprised at how easily you were tricked.) Coppola also explains why he gave the film such baroque depth. He's able to analyze his own creative processes as well as any director since Hitchcock.
One word of warning, though: Don't switch over to that explanatory soundtrack if you want to enjoy the film in its own right. Save the commentary for a second viewing. It's so interesting, you'll miss some of the details on screen. Also included on this three-disk, full-feature (CAV) set are extra chapters devoted to editing, effects, costumes, storyboards and more.
In short, the film lives up to the Criterion Collection's high standards. Very few movies that come out of the contemporary Hollywood cookie-cutter system deserve this careful treatment. "Bram Stoker's Dracula" does. Film students are going to be watching these disks for years.
Also new to laserdisk (and tape) are two releases from the band Dire Straits. "On the Night" is a concert tape recorded at a large outdoor stadium. There's nothing particularly noteworthy or inventive about the camerawork, and that's as it should be. The band never has done much with flashy theatrics. On this tape, they do 13 numbers, most of them with the long slow introductions that leader Mark Knopfler favors.
The second disk, "The Videos" is much more interesting visually. This band was working before the term "rock video" had been invented. Then the video of their hit "Money for Nothing," with its bright simple computer animation, became one of the first benchmarks of the young genre. Many of the 20 numbers on this disk are probably familiar to devotees of MTV, but a lot of them were new to me. Puppet animation from the British TV series "Thunderbirds" is used to good effect on "Calling Elvis," and three numbers by Knopfler's crossover/country group The Notting Hillbillies are included too.
There's considerable musical overlap on the two disks, which is fine for the group's fans (including me) but probably won't make any converts.
No video image - no matter how sharp or faithful to the original - could hope to recapture the full experience of a full-sized IMAX theatrical presentation. But the laser release of "Blue Planet" will, at least, give you some idea of what the film would be like on the oversized screen at the Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
The short film presents various views of the home planet, many of them taken from the space shuttle. All of them are dramatic - particularly the night shots where lights reveal boundaries and coastlines. If, as a whole, the film comes across as a commercial for Lockheed and NASA, well, they paid for it and, times being what they are, both outfits need all the help they can get.
Next week: Back to tape; Why Your VCR Has a Fast-Forward Button.
The Essentials:
Bram Stoker's Dracula:**** Columbia Tristar/Voyager. 127 min. Rated R for graphic violence, bloody special effects, brief nudity, strong sexual content.
On The Night:**1/2 Warner Reprise. 90 min. Unrated, contains no offensive material.
The Videos:*** Warner Reprise. 98 min. Unrated, contains no offensive material.
Blue Planet:**1/2 Lumivision. 42 min. Unrated, contains no offensive material.
New releases this week:
The Crying Game:****
Stars Stephen Rea, Miranda Richardson, Jaye Davidson, Forrest Whittaker. (LIVE)
People seem to be either wildly enthusiastic for or repelled by this thriller that earned six Oscar nominations including best picture. Rea plays a fugitive from the terrorist Irish Republican Army who becomes involved with the girlfriend of a kidnapped British soldier.
by CNB