I love the movie but calling it eye candy is a big stretch.

This movie feature Monica Belluci's tits, it's definitely eye candy.

Is there any film where she keeps her clothes on? What is it with Europeans ?

Agreed. Fuck, and people want to compare the above screen caps with the BD? Really? I never go by screen caps, because they're not indicative of the final results, but those DVD caps are garbage compared to the BD that was released.

Yeah. I made a thread about films like this. Ones that are appreciated for their technical over their narrative. And this film is it. Amazing effects.

I'll take tits over explosions any day of the week.

The Blu-ray transfer is wrong. It just is. In the early scene where Harker is snooping around in Dracula's basement, Coppola overlaid the text of his journal entries onto the screen. That's a deliberate special effects shot that had to be composited by an FX artist. The text was perfectly visible in theaters, and it's been visible in every prior home video release, including the Coppola-supervised Criterion Laserdisc. But the Blu-ray is so overly-darkened and the black levels so crushed that the text is no longer visible. Raising your TV's brightness setting won't restore it, because that data is simply not encoded on the disc at all.

Why would Coppola have gone to the trouble of creating that special effects shot if he didn't want people to see the effect? What's the point of it?

That's not to say that the earlier DVDs were "correct." They have their own issues, and were too bright and too oversaturated. The actual correct color timing for the scene lies somewhere in between.

The Superbit DVD's color timing is the closest to the original theatrical look, which made sense as Dracula is as much a homage to Hammer's vampire films as anything. Lucy's crypt scene looks entirely wrong on the Blu-ray's timing. I have a feeling the person actually making decisions on the new color timing (it was not Coppola) had never actually seen the movie theatrically projected and made their own subjective decision.

The Harker snooping sequence is bathed in darkness and the journal entry no longer visible in the frame. That's true, and so far was the only accurate representation of the transfer from screen grabs posted online. But it's not a make or break moment, since the journal entries were still visible in the other sequences, and the dvd version of the scene is way to bright taking away the atmosphere.

I recall postings of stills from Dracula's castle as the carriage approaches from afar where the castle was engulfed in darkness and not visible much at all. Yet that's not the case on the blu-ray, it is perfectly visible and the roof of the castle is not obscured in darkness. Their is one later shot of the castle where it is much more obscured in darkness. But the shot when posted online was trying to paint the scenario as the entire film and all shots like this are way too dark. So I found the uproar over the transfer misleading.

I was literally blown away by the blu-ray transfer after expecting the worst from it's reputation. The green mist sequence never looked so good and the mist really stood out this time. And the sunset chase near the end bathed in a golden glow was gorgeous and really beautiful looking compared to past transfers. The audio was terrific as well. So color me impressed by this release, and I give it a huge thumbs up.

now that's a quote.

I love the Internet sometimes. Like Giles said, THAT'S a quote. Or you could go the HBO route and do both at once .

I thought that was Skinemax.

It's not the best of the Dracula films by any stretch, but I cannot fathom singling out Anthony Hopkins as the standout performance in that movie. Gary Oldman is spectacular, while Hopkins is busy chewing the scenery. Granted, Oldman goes over the top at points, but he's playing fucking Dracula. Hopkins seems to be trying to one up him. It's like the last laugh scene in Dracula: Dead and Loving It, except there Mel Brooks is trying to be funny. Hopkins is ridiculous in that movie. He's not boring, but he's going way too big for the role he's in.

Since Coppola spent his early career as an assistant to Roger Corman, Dracula, with it's spacious sets, garish costumes and colors, over-the-top villain, melodramatic hero, and boring common folk mixed in, seems like a love letter to Corman's Poe films with Vincent Price.

Never thought about that, but it totally makes sense. For all of his reputation as the kind of shlock, Corman sure knew how to get a lot of mileage out a very small budget, and long before the digital age was even in anyone's dreams.

Real world relevance? That's all I've got ?

Coppola has publicly acknowledged his love of Christopher Lee's Dracula and Hammer's horror films when making Bram Stoker's Dracula. He wanted to give the monster a happy ending.