Posterized: Keanu Reeves

by Nathaniel R

Whoa. Keanu Reeves turns 55 later this year and he's made roughly that many movies, too. Time sure does fly since he's still implanted in our consciousness as that stoner-like raven-haired looker of convenience store, surfing, and bus adventures. Figuring him out has always been an impossible trip. Keanu means "cool breeze over the mountains" in Hawaiian but, that geographically specific well-known trivia aside, he's always been hard to visually or sonically place anywhere on the map OR within the pantheon of contemporary stars; Born in Lebanon and raised in Canada, though he's of Hawaiian/British/Chinese/Portuguese descent, and with a voice that conjures the early 80s and California. Who/what/where is he even other than on his own planet and his own unique star? 

Though it seems hard to imagine now, when he first came to fame he was a very unlikely candidate for longevity...

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Beauty vs Beast: Total Eclipse of the Drunk

Jason Adams from MNPP here with this week's dose of "Beauty vs Beast" fun. The great Kathy Bates is turning 70 on Thursday, giving you a couple of days to craft your love letters to her on Twitter - until then let's celebrate one of her great roles, the other Stephen King one, 1995's Dolores Claiborne. The film was underrated when it was released and the film remains underrated today if you ask me, but I think it's got a diehard contingent of fans - it's top-shelf King, mainly due to its two leading ladies, Bates as Dolores and Jennifer Jason Leigh as her estranged daughter Selena. And now I am the jerk who makes you choose...

bike tracks

PREVIOUSLY Last week we climbed on the city bus with Keanu Reeves and Sandy Bullock and then we quickly proceeded to run right the hell over Dennis Hopper - Keanu won the Speed poll with 74% of the vote! Those biceps... I totally get it. Said Tom G:

"Jack ends up with Sandra Bullock. He wins."

Beauty vs Beast: Pop Quiz, Hot Shots

Happy Monday! Jason from MNPP here with your weekly "Beauty vs Beast" fix - we're celebrating 1994  leading up to the Supporting Actress Smackdown and I figured I'd focus in on another great big hit from the year today (to compliment the Interview With the Vampire poll two weeks back), namely Jan de Bont's Speed. Which still holds up! I caught it on TV a couple of weeks ago and man, it still revs and roars. It's also got a stellar hero and villain pair - Keanu's buzzcut and biceps were The 1994 Fetish Du Jour, and Dennis Hopper is Dennis Hopper, the end.

polls

PREVIOUSLY I really thought that Jeff Goldblum's Finest Hour might put a dent in your acctressexual predilections but no, nope, not gonna happen, Laura Dern's Ellie Sattler still triumped in last week's Jurassic Park poll to the tune of 71% of your vote. Said chasm301:

"This movie is basically perfect and I would never pick against Laura Dern."

I'm Your Biggest Fan! - Reeves, Gerwig, and Chance

By Salim Garami

What's good? Apologies because I don't have much to say or talk about this week, except remark on how I'm still in a pretty pleasant mood moving out of Thanksgiving weekend and into the holiday season.

And part of what prolonged my pleasant mood was to find an admittedly 2-year-old video of movie star Keanu Reeves on promotional tour promoting John Wick in Japan discussing his admiration for martial arts film legend Sonny Chiba (of The Street Fighter or Kill Bill fame), influencing his physical choreography and style. Lo and behold, Chiba was in the studio ready to meet with Keanu and the Matrix star is suddenly starstruck to meet him and begins waxing rhapsodic over Chiba's work. Seeing such a household star in the industry be taken aback by the presence of figure that certainly isn't as well-known internationally as Reeves brought a smile to my face...

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The Furniture: 25 Years Trapped in Castle Dracula

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail. 

Bram Stoker’s Dracula turns 25 years old today. It is, appropriately, not dead. Not that a film can die, exactly, but this one has held onto its toothy vigor with particular success. Even the ridiculous way Keanu pronounces “Bewdapest” still charms. Eiko Ishioka’s Oscar-winning costumes seem simultaneously ancient and way ahead of their time. The same goes for the Oscar-winning makeup, which transforms Gary Oldman across centuries with bewildering commitment. The visual effects, which went unnominated, remain thrilling, a dizzying phantasmagoria of cinematic shadow-puppetry.

But I’m here to rave about the only nominated category that the film didn’t win. Production designer Thomas E. Sanders and art director Garrett Lewis were nominated, but they lost to Howards End. Hard to argue with that, of course. Yet their work on Bram Stoker’s Dracula is just as worthy in its complexity, engaging with the material deep within the extravagance and color. Sanders and Lewis demonstrate a creativity well beyond the Gothic castles and thick cobwebs of the genre’s lesser films, shining a newly bloodstained light on this most famous of vampire stories.

The home of the monstrous count itself is a perfect example. Dracula lives in a decaying tower, but a fraction of his former seat of power. It hovers over a cliff in a remote corner of Transylvania, all but removed from the eyes of the living. It cascades upwards, every story more mangled than the last...

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