Two influential films

Last night I had the pleasure of watching Lost in Translation and Bram Stoker's Dracula. I don't know what it is about that Coppola gene, but it's a fine filmmaking one.

For some reason, Lost makes me feel really positive whenever I watch it. I don't know. I guess it's really easy to begin to feel misanthropic when you're in the business I'm in, so to see a fictional representation of what we are capable of as human beings somehow brightens my day. I think the subject of isolation in a foreign land is especially familiar to me. When I watch Scarlett Johansson wandering around Tokyo and environs, I get this pins-and-needles feeling... like she is on the brink of making a great discovery. I can't really describe it, other than to say that the reaction I have is intensely personal, related to memories of friends long gone and to the anticipation of places I have yet to see.

Dracula blows my mind every time I see it. I remember the first time I watched it, I was 12 years old, and I thought back then that it was special. As I learned more about film history and editing, I began to appreciate Coppola's choice to use the iris effect in his transitions, and I noticed the reoccurrence of the crescent moon image throughout the film. What strikes me most about the story is the attempt to humanize the Count. There was a line towards the end of the film that I had not noticed before, in which, Dracula (having taken the form of a bat-demon in the presence of Van Helsing, Harker, and co.) curses a cross-wielding Van Helsing, shouting that he was once a servant of God, but he was betrayed by the Cross, and as a result lives a half-life as a monster. I had forgotten during the course of the film that Dracula had been a Crusader, and that his evil was a direct result of the bitterness he felt having had to fight a war on the behalf of an entity (he believed) had forsaken him.