Brandon Engel wants to explain why Coppola's version of Bram Stoker's Dracula is the greatest vampire tale to light up the silver screen

Today, my friend (and fellow author) Brandon Engel is guest posting. He's going to talk about why Francis Ford Coppola's version of Bram Stoker's Dracula is the greatest vampire tale to light up the silver screen. And if you have the time please be sure to check out these other articles written by Brandon in the past:

Today Brandon Engel remembers legendary writer Ray Bradbury for the magician he was

Today author Brandon Engel reminds you of why Arthur C. Clarke is considered one of the Deans of Science Fiction

And please check out my interview I did with Brandon's permission back in October 2014

Got twitter? You can follow Brandon @BrandonEngel2

Greatest Vampire Movie? You’ll Never Guess Our Pick!

Get together with any ten random horror geeks and the subject of vampires will inevitably pop up. But what about Dracula? When it comes to old fang-face himself, he's been done to death in film media. And somebody always starts the debate about which Dracula movie is the best. You can raise shocked gasps all around by simply dropping the title:

Bram Stoker's Dracula. Yes, the 1992 one. What could provoke such a claim?

In the first place, the star power has to count for something. This is Francis Ford Coppola directing and if The Godfather doesn't impress you, check out The Conversation sometime for an unknown gem. Coppola has even recently stated that both The Conversation and Bram Stoker’s Dracula were quite artistic films in an interview on The Director’s Chair on the El Rey Network (details here). This is evident in all aspects of the film, including the spectacular performances by the actors and actresses who portrayed the classic characters.

Legendary director Francis Ford Coppola

The big bat himself is played by none less than Gary Oldman. Take his Zorg from The Fifth Element or his Mason Verger from Hannibal and tell us he can't carry off a villain protagonist role. The rest of the cast is so stellar you almost forget Anthony Hopkins and Winona Ryder are in this.

But so much for name-dropping. What about the classic Dracula film canon? Surely Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee have claim to the best Dracula! Or even Klaus Kinski in Nosferatu, surely Gary Oldman can't hold up a cape to that infamous portrayal?

Yes, but stop and think about those films. We all love the poster but very few of us actually love the movie. As much as the Goth crowd has adopted Nosferatu on a T-shirt, very few of them can actually sit through the whole film. Try it sometime. You'll begin to realize after the first forty minutes that all the classic depictions of vampires are slow, plodding, drawn-out affairs paced like a chess match. The UK Dracula might be the most famous but UK horror films (especially of that era) tend to be dry affairs with long conversations in drawing rooms and not much biting going on anywhere. Classic Dracula is held back, restrained, and wrung out of every drop of passion.

I love Gary Oldman's unbelievably creepy wig.

Coppola's movie gets the story moving more in pace with modern audience expectations. At the same time, Coppola is one director who has done his homework. There's references to everything from Elizabeth Bathory (the bath-in-blood countess) to Vlad the Impaler (great fun at parties) here. Coppola follows the Stoker novel faithfully almost to a fault and yet captures it all with fresh intensity. This is important because it brings us back to what makes Dracula scary in the first place: the fact that he's a myth bred directly from the real life doings of famously savage people. Too often the classics of literature are performed with stiff respect by people who don't quite grasp why the material is important. Coppola starts with how legends of vampires hit people back when they first started and captures the spirit from there.

Dracula, here, has a backstory that makes sense, romanticism in his portrayal, a passionate motive for doing what he does, and ten times as much macho as the leading sparkly Twilight brand. With the exception of Keanu Reeves playing his usual drone, the parties concerned are confident with their job, almost panting with passion to bring their vision to the screen. And what does Gary Oldman get for his trouble? The fans complain that he's over the top.

Listen, if you think this is over the top, you'd probably also hate Al Pacino for his turn as Lucifer in The Devil's Advocate. When you're playing a larger-than-life mythic character who's been around for centuries, you'd better go over the top. Hammy is the only way you'll be remembered. Otherwise you're yet another dull high school drama club doing the stage version. The audience will politely clap at the end and move on to forget everything you said about the character fifteen minutes later. But if you pull out some stops and remind us that being an immortal bloodsucker who doesn't have to play by our rules is fun, you'll be remembered. Would the real-life Dracula care if we accused him of being a ham? No, he'll still be here a century from now when the rest of us are pretty much maggot chow.

Gary Oldman was the best Dracula. Try it on for size. He deserves some credit for at least making Dracula less wooden than the coffin he sleeps in for a change.

*****

Thank you, Brandon.

Folks I'm taking off until next Wednesday's Insecure Writer's Support Group post. Good luck with the launch of A to Z you blogging fiends out there!

Today Brandon Engel remembers legendary writer Ray Bradbury for the magician he was

Today Brandon Engel is remembering Ray Bradbury. If you're a fan of the late science-fiction great, please tell us your favorite Ray Bradbury story in the comments below. And also, please follow @BrandonEngel2 on twitter so you can network with him.

Wicked Reading: Remembering Ray Bradbury
When Blackstone the Magician visited Waukegan, Illinois in 1927, before it multiplied into a metropolis of 90,000, he met there a seven-year-old black-haired boy named Ray Douglas Bradbury. Seventy-five years later, a gray-haired Bradbury would write, “I decided at that time also that I wanted to grow up to become a magician.” And he did, in a way. He became an accomplished horror and mystery fiction writer of the 1950's, his work an unrelenting commentary on Cold War paranoia, and he remains one of the most celebrated American authors of his century.

The Halloween Tree
Pipkin is kidnapped. His eight friends must follow Mr. Moundshroud around the world, to the mummy tombs of Egypt and the gargoyles of Notre Dame, to learn the history of Halloween and, in doing so, save Pipkin. Begun as a screenplay for a movie that was never made (although a televised animated special was made decades later) and published as a refinished young adult book, The Halloween Tree won an Emmy Award for its gothic spunk. Like James Michener, Bradbury educated as he wrote, blending challenges of friendship with dark druids and gaping jack-o-lanterns.

Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 was written on a rented UCLA typewriter for $9.80. It was composed in two drafts across two 9-day periods. Set in a dystopian future, the story centers around Guy Montag, a fireman whose primary job is burning books. His wife, addicted to opioid pills, intoxicated by state-sanctioned entertainment, betrays Guy when he illegally peers into the book, Dover Beach, igniting a vicious manhunt. Bradbury’s award-winning, savage prophecy was written in the era of rabid McCarthyism. “I wrote this book at a time when I was worried about the way things were going in this country,” said Bradbury, who lived to see his book both censored and expunged by fearful parents and teachers.

Something Wicked This Way Comes
Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show visit Green Town, and two 13-year-old friends, William Halloway and Jim Nightshade, soon grow to fear the sinister carousel and supernatural Mirror Maze. Ray Bradbury’s seminal work puts a new spin on the sage advice, “Be careful what you wish for.” Unlike hollow gore, his hypnotic tale tackles themes of transition to adulthood and good versus evil.

The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury called it a “half-cousin to a novel.” Published in 1950, the book contains 28 stories with interstitial vignettes about the apocalypse of Earth and the ensuing colonization of Mars. Many science-fiction authors projected their imaginations onto Mars in the 1950s, but Bradbury was one of the few who followed people, not machines, and who tackled themes of imperialism and Manifest Destiny. “There Will Come Soft Rains” is the penultimate story in The Martian Chronicles. A secret homage to Sara Teasdale’s poem of the same name, Bradbury tells the biography of an automated house made empty by global nuclear fallout. Bradbury’s horror is in his prose, the tragedy set offstage. And it’s all the more eerie that home automation is now authentically part of the fiber of modern life (more details here). The short story is a master compilation of symbolism, allegory and personification, and is notable for its silent warning to 1950’s warhawks about the hazards of nuclear warfare.  Ray Bradbury considered himself more than a science fiction and mystery writer. He was a magician, too. “People call me a science fiction writer, but I don't think that's quite true. I think that I'm a magician who is capable of making things appear and disappear right in front of you and you don't know how it happened.”

*****

So I think I'll kick start the comments with this: My favorite Ray Bradbury story is "All Summer in a Day." It takes place on Venus, not Mars and it's quite good. If you're looking for a short story that will whisk you away for an hour, I recommend it highly.

An interview with fellow writer Brandon Engel on all things science fiction

Brandon and I met through the blogosphere and have been corresponding via email about science fiction for a little while now. He already wrote one post for my blog regarding the "Deans of Science Fiction" and you can find that post HERE. I intend to post his next article on Monday. However, I thought all of you might like to know a little more about Mr. Engel, and you're all in luck because he allowed me to interview him.

So if you have twitter, please follow @BrandonEngel2 and without further ado, let's get started.

Q: Brandon, please share with us that special moment in your life when a story really grabbed you and you had that "this is really cool" moment.

Brandon being inspired by The Cask of
Amontillado is just in time for Halloween.
Oh the horror of being buried alive!

A: One of the defining moments of my childhood was picking up an Edgar Allan Poe anthology and reading The Cask of Amontillado. I was spellbound. That book (along with One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish) made me recognize the escapist value of literature. Conan the Barbarian comics, and the work of Robert E. Howard, were also hugely significant to me early on.

Q: What kinds of things do you write? Someone as creative as you must have a pretty wild imagination.

A:  I write mostly non-fiction these days; typically analyses of vintage speculative fiction or films. I'm working on a few scripts for comic books now (with the goal of ultimately handing them over to friends who are trained illustrators) and I've also written a few plays. Ultimately, I'd love to tap out a novel, but it will be a few years before that happens.

Q: If someone were to ask you if Star Wars were science fiction or fantasy, how would you answer and why?

A: That is an excellent question. It's only science-fiction superficially. Science-fiction tropes and textures are integrated, but I've always had the sense that the primary focus of Lucas with this film is the mythology and his treatment of archetypes. Hard science, or musings about sciences in the future, seem to be largely absent or intellectually pedestrian when you measure that aspect of Lucas's work against say, Arthur C. Clarke's work. So much of his mythology is also so metaphysical, that it's hard to think of it as true science-fiction.

I was thinking of World War Z when I
asked the question about movies being
adapted from books. But there are many
others out there. Last Airbender anyone?

Q: If a movie is adapted from a book, how do you feel about the film maker taking liberties with the source material and changing the ending or altering the story significantly?

A: With film and literature you are dealing with two completely different forms. And what's more, because film integrates virtually every known artistic discipline there are more devices that can be employed. Music and imagery go a long way towards providing the tone that a reader might have to otherwise infer for themselves. The problem with film is that everything is basically being handed to you, having already been per-interpreted.  But with that being said, a filmmaker, who has an understanding of how to employ cinematic devices, is perhaps best equipped to understand what works on the screen as opposed to what works on the page, and should, therefore, have artistic input. I'm okay with it, so long as it serves the story.

Q: What is your opinion regarding young adult dystopian fiction (examples being The Hunger Games or The Maze Runner)?

Actor Reeve Carney plays my favorite Dorian
Gray in the Showtime series, Penny Dreadful.

A: Children will always have grim/macabre fantasies, and I don't have any issue on principle with contemporary authors pandering to that. That's one of the true values of escapist literature, in my opinion it enables us to confront real-world anxieties in a safe way. This is especially important for kids. With that said, though, I think younger readers would be better off reading something like Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room!

Q:What is your favorite story of all time (film or book) and why?

A: My all time favorite has to be The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. It's sharp, quotable, self-reflexive, and really calls into question both the role of art in modern society, and the struggle that creative people face to reconcile their ideas and perversions with the (often hypocritical and counterproductive) puritanical mores of modern society.

Today author Brandon Engel reminds you of why Arthur C. Clarke is considered one of the Deans of Science Fiction

"Fiction is more than non-fiction in some ways...you can stretch people's
minds, alerting them to the possibilities of the future, which is very important
in an age where things are changing rapidly."

Please welcome Brandon Engel who is doing a guest post for me today regarding Arthur C. Clarke and his amazing ability to predict future technologies. to give just a little introduction to Clarke, he is considered one of the "Big Three" that forged the genre of science fiction (the other two being Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein). Heinlein is kind of my personal favorite of the three because he was such a colorful character (hanging out with L.Ron Hubbard masturbating on a manuscript in Aleister Crowley's mansion while plotting to steal the fortune of the guy that made jet fuel is one reason). Another is that Heinlein simply wrote interesting books like Stranger in a Strange Land. "Grok" anyone?

Anyway, Clarke's career and life are equally extraordinary. I'll let Brandon explain it to you though because he's just awesome at it. However, I'm going to pick out illustrations from series of books that Mr. Engel talks about below because they are done by my favorite cover artist, Michael Whelan. AND IF YOU FOLLOW MY BLOG, you know Michael Whelan is my "Picasso." Seriously. *bows down before Michael Whelan...

If memory serves correctly, this is a piece called
"Star Child." Artist Michael Whelan wanted to
capture the mysteriousness of the monolith,
what was going on with the Discovery
spaceship as it orbited Jupiter, and give a hint
that the monolith, the spaceship, and Jupiter
would become a new cradle of life to an
intelligent species. I think it's rather well done.
Whelan accomplished the effect using an
airbrush on masonite.

The Phenomenal Foresight of Arthur C. Clarke by Brandon Engel

Arthur C. Clarke was an author who predicted many future events dating back to the mid-1900's. One of the most popular pieces of literature written by Clarke includes the script from Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" film, and the novelization of the script that was written concurrent with the script. In addition to the popularity of his books and literature throughout his career, Arthur C. Clarke is also known for predicting future technologies with amazing accuracy.

Popular Writings by Arthur C. Clarke

Among his most popular works are the titles from the 2001 series: "2001: A Space Odyssey" (written concurrently with his screenplay for the film directed by Stanley Kubrick), along with "2010: Odyssey Two", "2061: Odyssey Three" and "3001: The Final Odyssey", released in 1997. The Odyssey books highlight evolution and change throughout society and humanity, specifically dating 50 years back and predicting the future as it is now. They deal with humanity’s propulsion to grow and develop technologically, and the ethical issues that arise as humans becomes increasingly powerful in shaping the world around them.

“The Fountains Of Paradise” is another novel by Arthur C. Clarke that explores the possibility of humans finally finding their path into space with ease. Disregard the typical rocket ships, and instead, build an elevator to space. Following the drama and character development in this novel makes it one of Clarke's most enjoyable reads.

As Mr. Engel talks about in his article,
this book takes place when our sun is
dying. This cover by Michael Whelan
is meant to evoke a feeling of forlorn
-ness as young people stare
 into the distance at the only sun
humanity has ever known,
and watch it die.

After the sun has gone nova, “The Songs Of Distant Earth” follows humanity into its depths and basic emotions and survival tactics. Although this novel by Clarke also highlights and features plenty of tech and future-based material, it is also considered a romance sci-fi novel for those who are seeking a bit of a different genre from previous books.

Predictions Made by Clarke in the Past

Arthur C. Clarke has made numerous predictions involving science fiction and future technologies that are currently in use today. Clarke predicted everything from the very first human clone, sampling items from the planet Mars, launching space probes and even predicting nuclear weapon wars and destruction in the future years off from the debut of his writings. By 2003, Clarke predicted there would be a need for an alternative fuel source to help reduce the overall impact fuels were having on the planet's overall environment and atmosphere.

Clarke also had the wild idea that electronic tracking and monitoring would one day help to reduce and eliminate the amount of criminal activity in all areas of the world, regardless of country or region. Today, satellites, drones and intelligent computers have the ability to locate and access individuals within minutes and in some cases, within seconds of conducting a search. If not for the imagination of someone like Clarke, the world would not have satellites, or any of the modern luxuries which are a by-product of satellite technology like GPS, satellite tv broadcasts, internet plans, or cellular phones.

Towards the end of his life, Clarke made predictions about a myriad of other topics, including the first manned trip to Mars, and actual dinosaur clones. Clarke also mused about when artificial intelligence (AI) would likely meet the same level as humanity. Taking a deeper look into the world of Arthur C. Clarke, his writings and his predictions is a jaw-dropping experience, especially with the predictions involving technology include communication methods and abilities. With Arthur C. Clarke's predictions becoming more true each day, it begs the question: Is there another author out there trying to do the same for us now? We may never know, until 50 years into the future that is.

If you liked this article, please follow Brandon on his twitter: @BrandonEngel2