Shadow Of The Vampire

Starring: John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe Director: E Elias Merhige Original UK Premiere: 2001 Dvd Release: 14th October, 2002 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: Anamorphic, PAL, Widescreen, Region 2 Encoding

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Shadow of the Vampire is a movie that opened in America on December 29, 2000. the Saturn Award, the Gran Angular Award, the International Fantasy Film Award, the President Award, the Golden Satellite Award, the Independent Spirit Award & the LAFCA Award for Willem Dafoe. Eine Symphonie des Grauens. Taking place in the 1920s, the story revolves around F,W. Murnau, who is making a film. As they travel into the middle of nowhere, he keeps assuring his cast & crew that everything will be fine & that the person who is playing their vampire, Max Schreck, is very professional & will only appear in full makeup & character. But once they start to shoot scenes with this new actor, people start to notice that everything isnt as it should be. The story starts to delve into deeper themes & startling discoveries as this comedy/horror film comes to its climactic end. Shadow of the Vampire   at the Internet Movie Database.

Shadow of the Vampire is a film full of good ideas that are only partially developed. Clever, engaging, & boosted by the sublime casting of Willem Dafoe as Nosferatu actor Max Schreck, its premise is ripe with possibilities but the movies too slight to register much impact: characters remain achingly underdeveloped & the whole lacks a sense of pace or structure. Whats left, however, is enough for anyone to get their teeth into: the delightful performances from a sterling cast & director E Elias Merhiges affectionately tongue-in-cheek homage to a landmark of German silent cinema. John Malkovich is aptly loony as the eccentric director FW Murnau, whose passion in filming the 1922 classic Nosferatu leads to the extreme casting of Schreck as the vampire, a vision of evil who, in this movies delightfully twisted imagination, actually is a vampire, sucking the blood of cast & crew members whove dismissed Schreck as an over-zealous method actor.

As these on-set maladies & accidents continue, Schreck wields greater control over Murnau, who descends into a kind of obsessive art-for-arts-sake madness until diva co-star Greta Schroeder is served up as the actors ultimate motivation. Merhige & his actors have great fun with this ghastly escapade, & the humour is kept delicately subtle to balance the movies artistic aspirations. To that end, Dafoe is just right, his bald pate & gaunt features a perfect match for the mysterious Schreck, his grimace & talon-like fingers suggesting a human vulture on the prowl. Likewise, the re-creation of Nosferatus expressionist style is both fanciful & brilliantly authentic. Too bad, then, that this movie suffers from a case of vampiric anaemia, with budgetary shortcomings apparently the cause of at least some of its shortcomings; if Shadow of the Vampire shared the depth & richness of, say, Ed Wood, it might have been a cult classic for the ages.

John Gavin Malkovich is an American actor, producer & director. As a youngster, Malkovich was reportedly heavy set. By High School, he had transformed himself physically & was a star athlete. He attended Eastern Illinois University with an interest in ecology. In 1976, Malkovich became a charter member of Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. He moved to New York City in 1983 & appeared in the play True West. He appeared on Broadway with Dustin Hoffman in Death of a Salesman. Malkovich won an Emmy Award for this role when the play became a television movie. He made his film debut in Places in the Heart for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. In 1994, he was nominated for an Oscar in the same category for In the Line of Fire. Malkovich has been based in France for many years but has recently announced he is ending his residency in that country. Posters Of John Malkovich

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Willem Dafoe is a versatile American actor. He is a founding member of the experimental theatre company The Wooster Group. Born William Dafoe Jr. in Appleton, Wisconsin, the seventh of eight children, he acquired the nickname Willem in childhood. He studied drama at the University of Wisconsin, but left before graduation in order to join the newly formed avant-garde group Theatre X After touring with Theatre X for four years in the United States & Europe, he moved to New York City & joined the Performance Group, where he met director Elizabeth Lecompte. Lecompte & Dafoe left the Performance Group together & became both collaborators & life partners; they are not married, but have a son. Dafoes film career began in 1981, when he was cast in Heavens Gate, but his role was removed from the film during editing. A year later he starred as the leader of a motorcycle gang in The Loveless, but his first breakthrough film role was as Sergeant Elias in Platoon. Posters Of Auto Focus

Editors Choice: Spider Man, Animal Factory, Auto Focus, Pavilion Of Women, Shadow Of The Vampire, The Ultimate Villain Showdown, The Boondock Saints, Clear And Present Danger, View DVDology

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