So What Are you Reading?: Generations

[Mage]

So, this week the first Star Trek novels I bought in years showed up..... CODA.

I've missed a few in between, which are also hard to get by now. I was lucky to find the trilogy. I might catch up with the rest at some point. I stopped buying them for financial reasons for a while. Now I'm able to finally get back.
I adored the TrekLit universe and will be sorry to see it gone. But I'm happy I can finally read the ending of it all.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I just hope Andrews doesn't screw the shark . . . .

The correct phrase is jump the shark. It came from the Happy Day episode where Fonzie jumped the shark.

"Screw the shark." Is that anything like "Jump the pooch?"

Meanwhile, I'm now a chapter into Dracula. Right on schedule.

Dracula?!?
Dracula?!!
DRACULA??!!!
Shedule?

And yes, I was already aware that Mel Brooks had transferred Harker's trip to Transylvania over to a (still sane) Renfield. Yet he was remarkably true to the original with the villagers' reactions.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

And yes, I was already aware that Mel Brooks had transferred Harker's trip to Transylvania over to a (still sane) Renfield. Yet he was remarkably true to the original with the villagers' reactions.

Most Dracula adaptations play fast and loose with the characters, combining them, swapping them around, or discarding them, The only real constants are Dracula and Van Helsing. The rest are up for grabs depending on what the filmmaker wants to do.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

And quite literally the only Dracula movies I've ever seen are Nosferatu, by Murnau, and Dracula: Dead and Loving It, by Mel Brooks. Which are just about as far from each other in style and tone as possible.

Yesterday, I read something about Dracula: Dead and Loving It had quite possibly the best "open" of any Dracula movie ever, with its ominous music and its montage of old book illustrations and other art. On reflection, it occured to me that it was hardly the first time Brooks juxtaposed a totally straight open with a comedy film; consider Blazing Saddles, with Frankie Laine (as Brooks puts it) "singing his heart out," completely unaware that it was a comedy.

 

[Greg Cox]

And yes, I was already aware that Mel Brooks had transferred Harker's trip to Transylvania over to a (still sane) Renfield. Yet he was remarkably true to the original with the villagers' reactions.

The business with Renfield subbing for Harker is lifted from the classic 1931 Dracula movie with Bela Lugosi. Interestingly, the new movie Renfield (with Nicholas Cage as Dracula) presents itself as a sequel to the Lugosi movie, not the novel, with Renfield having once been a British solicitor who made the mistake of visiting Castle Dracula rather former lunatic in asylum.

Indeed, the movie literally Forest Gumps the new actors into the original footage from Lugosi film to make this clear.

 

[Christopher]

The business with Renfield subbing for Harker is lifted from the classic 1931 Dracula movie with Bela Lugosi. Interestingly, the new movie Renfield (with Nicholas Cage as Dracula) presents itself as a sequel to the Lugosi movie, not the novel, with Renfield having once been a British solicitor who made the mistake of visiting Castle Dracula rather former lunatic in asylum.

In much the same way that Young Frankenstein was a sequel to the Karloff movies instead of the novel.

Indeed, the movie literally Forest Gumps the new actors into the original footage from Lugosi film to make this clear.

I'm not sure you can use the word "literally" in that context...

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Literally Forrest Gumps them in. Hmm. Is that anything like Dead Men Don't Wear Plaidding them in?

Forgot about the Renfield movie. Can't quite picture anybody but Peter MacNicol in the role. Dracula seems to be hot in Hollywood this year.

 

[Greg Cox]

Literally Forrest Gumps them in. Hmm. Is that anything like Dead Men Don't Wear Plaidding them in?

Forgot about the Renfield movie. Can't quite picture anybody but Peter MacNicol in the role. Dracula seems to be hot in Hollywood this year.

For what it's worth, MacNicol is basically riffing on Dwight Frye's iconic performance as Renfield in the Lugosi film, which you might be interested in checking at some point since it's the source of much of the iconography of Dracula movies thereafter.

Hollywood has never really let Dracula cool down too much, although the last big Dracula movie boom was probably back in the late seventies, when we got the Langella version, the Louis Jourdan version, the Jack Palance version, the Klaus Kinski version, and the George Hamilton spoof within the space of a few years.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I fly. You don't.

 

[bdub76]

Shining and Name of the Rose.

 

[Smiley]

Star Wars: The Rising Storm
Star Trek: Foundations (reread)
Usagi Yojimbo Saga: Volume 6
Godzilla: King of the Monsters novelization
Batman: No Man's Land Volume 4

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I'm now four chapters into Dracula. And of course, naturally, the whole scene with the "Brides" brought back the Mel Brooks version.

"This is WRONG! . . . WRONG me. WRONG my BRAINS OUT!"

Let's see: didn't Murnau skip all of this, and start Nosferatu with Orlok running amuck aboard the ship?

 

[bdub76]

I'm now four chapters into Dracula. And of course, naturally, the whole scene with the "Brides" brought back the Mel Brooks version.

"This is WRONG! . . . WRONG me. WRONG my BRAINS OUT!"

Let's see: didn't Murnau skip all of this, and start Nosferatu with Orlok running amuck aboard the ship?

That’s a much harder read than I expected. We read it for book club last October.

 

[Christopher]

My favorite thing about Dracula is that the process through which Mina compiles the book from journals, letters, transcripts, etc. is itself a driving plot thread in the book, the way they gather information about Dracula and formulate their plans. It's the prose equivalent of a found-footage movie.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Star Trek: Foundations (reread)

I know this is an ollllddddddd joke, but...

Foundations should have been followed by Foundations and Empires (early tales of Scotty dealing with Klingons and engineering problems) and Second Foundations (other early Scotty tales involving a mysterious second engineering corps and/or Scotty). Foundations' Edge and Foundations and Earth would, obviously, be 24th-century Scotty tales culminating in an enigmatic Soong type android.

I guess the SNW finale is part of Prelude to Foundations, or maybe it's one of the novellas from Forward the Foundations.

 

[David cgc]

I've just started on Ann Leckie's Translation State, after rereading her prior "Imperial Radch" stories to brush up on everything (and I did notice something I'd never caught before). I've been looking forward to this one, the Presger Translators always left me wanting more in the prior books, and she did a great job of presenting very alien aliens but giving a reasonable elaboration on their way of life and worldview in the previous novel, Provenance.

 

[Greg Cox]

Let's see: didn't Murnau skip all of this, and start Nosferatu with Orlok running amuck aboard the ship?

Not really. He left out the Brides, but does begin with Harker's ill-fated business trip to Castle Dracula.

One shudders to imagine what Nosferatu-style Brides would look like!

 

[Reanok]

A Troubling tail by Laurie Cass

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

One shudders to imagine what Nosferatu-style Brides would look like!

Faces only a Reman could love!

It's been a few years since I saw Nosferatu (and I've only seen it twice, both with live organ accompaniment, both times by Robert York, on instruments that, while not exactly clones of the Harvard Flentrop, certainly weren't theatre organs, authentic or exaggerated).

Funny thing: the first time, the screening was at St. Luke's Episcopal, Long Beach, CA, where I was taking lessons at the time. And (without, so far as I can recall, having seen Dracula: Dead and Loving It prior to that screening), I managed to independently come up with the "Yes, we have Nosferatu; we have Nosferatu today!" pun.

 

[Greg Cox]

The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry. A murder mystery set in 1840s Edinburgh.