Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Dotsthavesp I wanted to but couldn't!

Cleveronix A different way of telling a story

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

jlharker This is the kind of movie that has a limited audience. It's what you'd call "artsy", maybe even "pretentious". It's not exactly a break-out-the-popcorn-and-huddle-on-the-couch movie. I can see why people would think it's overrated.But I love it. Anyone who loves Bram Stoker's novel--not just the movies--needs to watch this because it is the most faithful adaptation of the book. It's not a perfect adaptation, but it preserves the basic plot which every other Dracula movie has more or less butchered. Most of the text in the movie comes straight from the book.It also recreates the ethereal atmosphere of the old Universal movies but adds very modern cinematography and themes. The best part of this movie is that it is visually gorgeous but not excessive. You'll know that all the sets are made of cardboard, but you won't care. The film itself speeds up and slows down to create drama. It's simple but still beautiful, unlike the overwhelming decadence of Francis Ford Coppola's version. And ballet is a perfect medium for expressing both the emphasis on the body and the repressed sexuality of the story. The sex is satirized to an extent, too. Mina doesn't understand why Jonathan won't do things with her that he did with Dracula's brides. Van Helsing is kind of a fetishist. Seward and Morris seem to be flirting at one point. The film even features Dracula's hairy palm, which has never been done before on film.If you're more of a fan of the book than the movies, you really should see this. If you want a horror movie, well, this isn't it.

Brandt Sponseller Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary is a silent version of author Bram Stoker's Dracula that also incorporates many ballet-oriented scenes.My two principle reactions to the film were surprise and delight. I was surprised that the film is so traditional--the silent footage often looks like one is simply watching a film from the 1910s or 1920s. This is heightened by the score, which is extremely conservative, traditional classical music. This surprised me because the Sundance Channel promos for the film kept repeating, ". . . from avant-garde director Guy Maddin". There is not much avant-garde about this film, either in the literal translation of that phrase, as "new wave", or in the more popular sense of "experimental/uncompromisingly different and unusual". Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary is decidedly old wave, and never more experimental, different or unusual than a couple small production design touches that might have been gleaned by anyone who is a big fan of Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) and Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish (1983).Even citing those two influences might be misleading. The Brazil influence is primarily present in a single device--Mrs. Westerna's (Stephanie Ballard) ventilator, and the Rumble Fish influence primarily in the recurrence of red (and occasionally green and gold) within the context of mostly black and white photography (with occasional, very traditional silent film tinting for various scenes). But Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary is so traditional that Maddin frequently even went for German expressionist influenced set design. The sets are wonderful at that, however, and occasional they're more surreal.It's not that the film is bad for being so traditional, but it took me awhile to adjust my preconceptions, which were misled from the Sundance promo. However, the silent film aspect didn't exactly work well for me, either, and the ballet was a bit blase when it was present, which was less often than I expected. Most of the time I was wondering what the motivation was for the silent film aspect, aside from an exercise in nostalgia and/or cribbing a style of a bygone era, like trying to create a painting that looks almost exactly like Titian, say. On the other hand, it was effective in a couple instances, such as one decapitation-by-shovel (shot from an angle that allowed for minimal gore, to my dismay), where Maddin introduced foley "sound effects" that amped up the impact of the scene. The instances of bright red in the cinematography were also very effective, and not dissimilar to M. Night Shyamalan's The Village (2004), which postdates this film by 2 years.My delight reaction arose when I realized that much of Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary can be read as an anti-immigration parable. This help explains why Dracula is Chinese here, rather than East European. Under this interpretation, the immigrant Others are invading white Anglo-Saxon shores, usurping authority, "stealing" women and economic power, and so on. It's also notable that Maddin's means of dispatching Dracula in the film is very similar to punishments meted out by Dracula's real-life basis, Vlad Tepes, aka "Vlad the Impaler" (and aka "Dracula" by the way). One popular theory has it that Vlad the Impaler's motivation for his atrocities was primarily to protect the integrity of his Wallachian burg, against what he saw as foreign political and cultural invaders. This makes Dracula's finale in the film fittingly ironic in light of the anti-immigration subtext.Maddin's film is also interesting for presenting the story in two halves, the first solely centered on Lucy Westerna (Tara Birtwhistle), and the second on Jonathan Harker (Johnny Wright) and Mina (Cindy Marie Small). A pervert rendition of Dr. Van Helsing (Dave Moroni) was also unusual and amusing, but Renfield (Brent Neale) was mostly wasted.Of course a potential audience for Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary has to be amenable to silent films, and not averse to ballet or traditional classical music. If you fit that bill and you have a taste for horror or an interest in Dracula, this film may be just up your alley.

kintopf432 Despite the extreme, extreme familiarity of the source material and the stuffy associations of the ballet form, Guy Maddin's 'Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary' emerges not only as one of the best 'Dracula' movies ever, but also as one of the best films about the Victorian Era (ranking with 'The Elephant Man' and 'Topsy-Turvy'). Maddin achieves the first feat with his insight into Stoker's novel (it's exciting to see somebody touch on the misogyny and xenophobia for once), and the second through a fascinating and completely appropriate aesthetic synthesis. Combining a 19th-century novel with a 19th-century pop art form, and setting it to 19th-century music (Mahler's from the wrong country, but so what), is a good beginning, but what makes it work, of course, is shooting it all in a mock-19th-century style. OK, so the silent horror films we think of date from a little later; still, Maddin does what he can to give the film a primitive, experimental, moving-daguerreotype effect, and the result feels like an actual window to the past, even if it's all just an artificial aesthetic construct. If this all sounds a bit self-conscious and over-the-top, it sort of is, but viewers will almost certainly be surprised at how unpretentious the effect actually is. The more explicitly balletic moments occasionally slow things down a bit for non-fans, but Maddin wisely keeps the running time at 75 minutes, and this helps the film retain a surprising accessibility. Not for all tastes, of course, but worth the effort for just about anyone. 8.5 out of 10.

scarletminded May be spoilers. Watch out where you tread.This came to my local theater and I didn't see it. I could kick myself in the head for not seeing it on the big screen now.I have never seen the Dracula ballet, but this makes me want to run out and get tickets for it, if it is as great as it is made out to be in this movie.The film captures all the plot points of the novel and serves it up in only 75 minutes. I have read the book and seen countless movie versions, but I have never seen the reference to Dracula's coat being cut and money falling out of it. Amazing. I was so happy that was put in. Money had to be a silent way of conveying the menace of Dracula, who in a genius move by Maddin, is Chinese. Wow. A modern update on a classic, but it is, unlike other lesser movie updates, with a purpose. No longer are the "reds" the threat, it is the Asians who might take over the money systems of Europe and America. This metaphor also calls to mind the outsider baseness of Dracula, the evil animal who must be stopped before he consumes the land and white women! The subtitles were a riot. The one will Van Helsing that ends with Etc, was inspired. For those who didn't know the story from the novel of Stoker's novel (which was given good yet shoddy historical treatment by Coppola some years back, so more people should know most of its scenes, minus the Vlad Tepes bits not in the book) these words explained the characters, their intentions, places in the book, etc, so even the layman can't get lost, giving humor in the process.The techniques in the ballet and the film are brilliant. For example, when Dracula is staked at the end (did I give it away for some of you?) he ends up lying on top of it, much like in woodcuts of Vlad Tepes when he would put people on stakes to torture them. I can't see wires, so how this was done brings out the kid in me. The adding of color here and there (such in the green of money and the red of blood) added much to the movie and it looked hand done, even if it was done by computer. I am unsure if it was or not. The ballet itself was a good forum for Maddin, a man who loves dealing with imagery from the Victorian age to the Depression Era, using grainy film and making the films look bygone, but adding modern ideas and translations. He is one of my favorite directors. He is like a Victorian Lynch...in fact many of his films have an Eraserhead like feel. Empty, tense, with a lot of feeling. Tara Birtwhistle is wonderful as Lucy. There is a scene where her suitors and Van Helsing come to her grave and she rises up and towards the camera. It is lovely and disenheartening at the same time and is, again in my kid self, quite unnerving! It is beauty in horror, which Birtwhistle claims with honor and grace.Wei-Qiang Zhang is also full of poise as Dracula. I love watching him dance. His Dracula is seductive, taking along much of Stoker's characterizations, such as hairy palms. He even dances with a knife. Gorgeous! I rented this film and will watch it as many times as possible. I love that the DVD has many extras, including commentary. If you liked this film, I highly recommend Careful, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs and Archangel. I also recommend you go see The Saddest Music in the World when it is in theatres! Maddin's world is definitely unique, bringing the past into the present with a much inspired bloodtap!