pj1228

I saw Nosferatu this week in the movie theatre and thought I'd share my thoughts about it here.

Nosferatu is a remake of the first ever vampire movie, the 1922 silent movie directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (who happened to be born in the same town as I). The silent movie is quite scary for its time, achieving chilly effects by use of shadows and a lovely music score. The new version used similar effects. And if you know the old movie by heart, you recognise similar camera angles.

The story is basically Bram Stoker's Dracula, but since Murnau didn't get the rights to film the novel, he exchanged the names. So we have Count Orlok instead of Dracula. As a nice nod towards Murnau and the producer of the 1922 version Albin Grau, in the new movie, the young man who travels to Transsylvania was called Friedrich and the Professor (the van Helsing equivalent) was called Albin.

The latter was played by Willem Defoe who happened to play the vampire in a funny movie called "Shadow of the Vampire", which tells the ficticious story of filming the 1922 movie Nosferatu. In that movie, the actor Max Schreck who was hired to play Count Orlok is a real vampire and chaos ensues on the set. It's funny to watch. F.W. Murnau is played by John Malkovitch and the producer Albin Grau is played by my favourite German actor Udo Kier.

So back to the new Nosferatu movie, it's a classic horror movie that adequately serves to produce shivers running down your back. The atmosphere and music score are great. Count Orlok is not a handsome vampire though. Personally, I prefer the seductive type that Bela Lugosi established.

Nigel Bennett made another Christmas movie: Christmas on 5th Avenue. Here's a trailer. You can catch a glimpse of him at the end.




The movie he did last year, Christmas in the Rockies, is now available on DVD.

There's a new movie out with Geraint Wyn Davies called The Scottish Play. It's available on Amazon prime in the UK, but I cannot access it from Germany. Haven't checked other countries. I hope it will come out on DVD eventually.

Here's a trailer. Looks like fun.

Finally I saw The Shape of Water in the movie theatre. What a delightful film! A nice change from today's action-packed movies. Instead it was wonderfully nostalgic with a lot of nods towards classic Hollywood. Ranging from Jack Arnold's Creature from the Black Lagoon over Betty Grable to Mr. Ed. The sentence "Bonanza is too violent for kids" was hilarious. Oh those good old times...

The end was totally awesome. And I liked the music so much (in particular Renée Fleming's "You'll Never Know") that I'm going to buy the soundtrack.

And then there was Nigel, speaking Russian all the time, with subtitles. He appears in several scenes. I was torn between watching him and reading what he was actually saying. I definitely need to watch that again.

John Kapelos was supposed to be in the movie as well, but I have to admit that I missed or didn't recognise him. Shame on me! Another reason to watch it again.

Other familiar sites included a teal-coloured Cadillac, although it wasn't a convertible. And I recognised several Toronto locations, such as streetcar tracks, Massey Hall, Cherry Street shore, Gardiner Expressway, and the beautiful Elgin Theatre.

Stage:

Geraint Wyn Davies is currently on stage in Liv Stein at the Bluma Apple Theatre, Toronto. The German play by Nino Haratischwili about a world-class concert pianist who gives up her career after her son's death had its English-language premiere last week, runs through Feb 12.

Nigel Bennett is currently on stage in The Audience at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, Toronto. The play about the Queen and her prime ministers runs through Feb 26. Nigel plays PM Harold Wilson.

Screen:

Nigel can currently be seen in 3D in the movie xXx3 - The Return of Xander Cage.
I've seen it last night, in 3D, but only in German. It's a brief appearance, but it's nice to see him on the big screen.