Dracula The Un-Dead: review

Not too long ago I posted about the upcoming release of Dracula The Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker and the fact that he was coming to Dublin to hold some talks on the book. Sadly I couldn’t make it to the talk but I have just finished reading the book. Having only recently read Dracula for the first time I was really excited to read this ‘official’ sequel, approved by the Stoker family. In my previous post I had mentioned that the format was the same as the original, a story told through a series of letters, telegrams and diary entries. However, this is not entirely true. Although letters, documents, diaries and telegrams do play a part in Dracula The Un-Dead, the story is told through the authors narrative. The story picks up twenty five years after Dracula has been defeated by our band of heroes in Transylvania. Mina and Jonathan … There’s more

Two Sheets to the Wind: Top 5 Vampire Movies

For the month that’s in it our Top-5′s are all scary ghoulish themes. Last week we had the Top 5 Zombie Movies and some disagreements about the exclusion of The Evil Dead series from our list. This week it’s all about the Vampires. I am a huge fan of the Vampyre, from the classically kitsch to the bloodcurdling frightening. I enjoy the movies that follow the formula of the legend as much as those that defy convention and say damn the “rules” shunning cross, garlic and even the sunlight. The genre is so varied - there’s the gore, horror, terror, drama, sensuality, romance and comedy to be had. I rate Joss Whedon’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer as one of the best TV series of all time and my number one movie on this list as one of the greatest films that I have ever seen. You won’t find Vincent Price … There’s more

Dacre Stoker talks about Dracula The Un-Dead

So it would seem that Dacre Stoker, great nephew of Bram Stoker, has written a sequel to the immortal classic, Dracula along with writer Ian Holt. Happily the sequel, Dracula The Un-Dead, has received the Stoker family seal of approval. The plot and characters have been taken from handwritten notes made by Bram Stoker during the writing of Dracula, with the book beginning in 1912, twenty five years after Dracula had ‘crumbled into dust’. The book is centred around Quincey Harker, the now grown up son of Mina and Jonathan Harker. Having left law school Quincey heads to London to take to the stage. But he stumbles across a stage production of Dracula, being directed by Bram Stoker, and from here Quincey is plunged into the awful secrets of his parents past and the awful truth that something is still out there trying to kill off the original band of … There’s more

Dracula lives

After my brush with Bram on Thursday last, I decided to head to Dublin City Council’s Walk and Talk session centred around Dracula’s Dublin. Arriving at 6pm at the Wolfe Tone statue outside the gates of St. Stephen’s Green, a huge crowd had already gathered-much larger than I had anticipated in fact, and I wondered how we would all be able to hear just one person above the din of the buses and other traffic rushing by. I mused to my friends that maybe we’d have been better off meeting behind the large stone wall to the back of Mr. Tone but they had chosen that exact site for a reason…it was the site of the Dublin gibbet, where those sentenced to death by hanging met their grisly end on a gallows on St. Stephen’s Green. Great place to start!

Romance, scandal and cake

The month of April is the time when the city of Dublin engages in One City One Book. The choice for 2009 is Bram Stoker’s Dracula! I’ll confess I have yet to read the book (or see the film) but for some reason the event still has captured my attention. Purchasing a copy of the book yesterday in Easons I also picked up a leaflet about the festival itself and had a read - lo and behold the fun and games were to start that evening with a reconstruction of the wedding of the author himself, Bram Stoker. He was wed in 1878 to Florence Balcombe in St. Ann’s Church on Dawson Street and this, of course, is where the re-enactment was to take place at 6pm. By 5.40pm there were people queuing outside, there were wedding guests hovering in the locality and I decided to part take in the … There’s more