Francis Ford Coppola’s Fruitful Old Crop 3 : “Twixt”

Horror writer Hall Baltimore, “the bargain-basement Stephen King,” arrives in search of inspiration to a small town where the clock on the church’s belfry has seven faces showing seven different times- which is to say that Francis Ford Coppola’s Twixt is about being ‘twixt past and present, twixt reality and dream, twixt good movie and …

Francis Ford Coppola’s Fruitful Old Crop 2 : “Tetro”

However mixed the results, Youth Without Youth clearly reinvigorated Francis Ford Coppola, and led to a far more grounded movie, a vigorous family drama made by an unquestionable master. Tetro (a typically volatile Vincent Gallo) is a writer who has abandoned his family, his art, and even his real name- Angelo Tetrocini- to hide in …

Francis Ford Coppola’s Fruitful Old Crop 1 : “Youth Without Youth”

In pre-WWII Romania, 70-year-old scholar Dominic Matei (played by Tim Roth) is struck by lightning and burnt to a crisp on Easter Day- a day when, we are told, anyone who dies goes straight to Heaven. Something even more unlikely happens: instead of dying, Dominic is endowed with seemingly supernatural self-healing powers. Charred skin heals, …

Thrice Bitten (Part 1): Chris McKay -“Renfield”

Poor Bram Stoker! He had no idea that the expanding popularity of cinema and the vagaries of copyright laws would turn a well-executed, well-received epistolary horror novel into part of the foundational, subconscious mythology of anyone born after 1897. And he never got to cash-in. It’s sort of impressive that a hundred years later people …