Last year, for a few nights before Halloween, my roommate and I enjoyed a brief, Dracula themed movie marathon. Nested on the saggy couch in our 100 year old Chinatown flat, the two of us watched Dracula after bloody Dracula, eventually lighting on a few nuggets of pure entertainment delight. By the end of our brief waltz through several cinematic portrayals of Transylvania we discovered that we'd yet to hear a satisfactory soundtrack to F.W. Murnau's silent and beautiful Nosferatu (we alternated between two musical interpretations that were ultimately disappointing), that we loved the excellent extras that accompany the recent, two disc reissue of Francis Ford Coppola's heady and deeply symbolic Bram Stoker's Dracula (the mini-doc about the in-camera, naive effects employed in the film making is absolutely amazing), and that we sat awestruck in front of the TV while a brilliant collaboration between Canada's Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Canadian cult director Guy Maddin tantalized our eyes with their film Dracula: Pages From A Virgin's Diary (a marriage of said ballet's interpretation of Dracula and Maddin's singular, super-charged visual style). I have seen and loved many dance movies, but this has to be one of my very all time favorites because the dancing is more than just a part of the film, it is the film! Add to this the touch of Maddin's hand and I swoon like Lucy ready to receive her eternal kiss. It's that entrancing.

A couple nights ago I had the great pleasure of attending a screening of Guy Maddin's new film Brand Upon the Brain! at the palatial Castro Theater as part of the 50th Annual San Francisco International Film Festival.  (The festival actually ends today....)

I can only bow to Guy Maddin's genius.  His films are totally idiosyncratic, totally dynamic, totally gorgeous.  This newest film was no exception.  Guy himself was there to introduce the film, and the screening included live Foley Sound Artists, a full orchestra, a castrato, and a narrator, Joan Chen.  Did i mention Brand Upon the Brain! is a silent film?  All the sounds for the movie were created live onstage in front of the audience. 

The film's plot involves a boy named Guy Maddin (natch) who lives on a bleak island off of Canada in a lighthouse which serves as an orphanage.  The orphanage is policed by Guy's overprotective, youth obsessed mother.  When she is looking for Guy, she turns the lighthouses' rickety huge lantern out and around the entire island while yelling for him to get home.  Guy's father works tirelessly and wordlessly in the basement inventing things and mysteriously producing some kind of strange nectar....

There's also this whole part of the plot involving Guy and Guy's sister ("Sis") both falling in love with the same woman, who leaves and then returns to the island masquerading as a man to try to win Sis' affection and also get to the bottom of the mysterious nectar.  Sis and "Chance" begin a hot and heavy relationship, all the while trying to keep hidden from the watchful and disapproving eyes of Guy and Sis' mother.  Guy tags along jealously, somehow drawn to and growing a "boy crush" on this new "male" figure on the island.