I was "forced" to read Dracula by Bram Stoker in junior high school (it was the least unappealing book to me on the list we had to choose from) and was actually surprised by how much I genuinely...
I was "forced" to read Dracula by Bram Stoker in junior high school (it was the least unappealing book to me on the list we had to choose from) and was actually surprised by how much I genuinely enjoyed it at the time. The story is told in a really unique way, not through "standard" third or first person narration, but instead in an epistolary format; Journal/diary entries of the main characters, newspaper articles and various other scraps of relevant texts, like entries from ship captain's logs and psychiatrist assessments.
I highly recommend people give it a read if they haven't already. And don't let the fact it was written in 1897 intimidate you, unlike most other novels I have read from the time (e.g. Bronte Sisters, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, etc) that are often a bit of a slog to get through, I was thoroughly engrossed the entire time I was reading Dracula... so much so I polished the book off in a couple of nights despite having several weeks to read it before my book report was due.
I also watched the Francis Ford Coppola movie shortly after I read the book and, while Keanu Reaves was a horrible choice for Jonathan Harker, most of the cast (especially Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins and Tom Waits) were great and I remember it being remarkably faithful to the book for a Hollywood blockbuster as well, so it taking second place on this list is not surprising. I was not aware of the 1977 BBC version though, and will have to try and track it down now!
Dracula really is one of the few, few books from that era of literature that aged well. Too much fiction was bogged won by the pay-per-word scheme set up by journals and magazines at the time,...
Dracula really is one of the few, few books from that era of literature that aged well. Too much fiction was bogged won by the pay-per-word scheme set up by journals and magazines at the time, which is why is feels like every book from then takes 100 words to say what we could in five.
Absolutely. If by 'era' they meant the 19th century it's not like few great books came out of it: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/45-novels-written-19th-century-deserve-place-modern-bookshelf/
I had a similar positive experience with the book. I haven't watched the video yet, but am about to. My first thought of what movie matches the book the best was the Coppola movie but the original...
I had a similar positive experience with the book. I haven't watched the video yet, but am about to. My first thought of what movie matches the book the best was the Coppola movie but the original Nosferatu is also a very close match, maybe even closer if we give some allowances to the restrictions inherent in film making in 1922. I also recall watching a Bella Lugosi version but I'm having trouble remembering the details. Now I'm going to go watch that video and report back :)
EDIT: Alright I finished watching it. I was very wrong about Nosferatu! It was least like the book according to the video!
I was in 5th or 6th grade when I got my hands on the book. But my mum didn't let me read it at the time, since it had this scary looking cover and she thought it was inappropriate for my age....
I was in 5th or 6th grade when I got my hands on the book. But my mum didn't let me read it at the time, since it had this scary looking cover and she thought it was inappropriate for my age.
Films shown in the video: Nosferatu (1922) Dracula (1931) Dracula (1931, Spanish version) Dracula in Instanbul (1953) Horror of Dracula (1958) Count Dracula (1970 - Jesus Franco) Bram Stoker's...
Films shown in the video:
Nosferatu (1922)
Dracula (1931)
Dracula (1931, Spanish version)
Dracula in Instanbul (1953)
Horror of Dracula (1958)
Count Dracula (1970 - Jesus Franco)
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1973, starring Jack Palance)
Count Dracula (1977 - BBC)
Dracula (1979 - Frank Langella)
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992 - Francis Ford Coppola)
As much as I enjoy the AVGN videos, I feel James is really at home discussing movies. He breaks them down in a casual manner, never talks down to his viewers, and best of all, he never injects any...
As much as I enjoy the AVGN videos, I feel James is really at home discussing movies. He breaks them down in a casual manner, never talks down to his viewers, and best of all, he never injects any kind of political opinion or agenda into these reviews. It's mostly about the movies.
I don't watch the James & Mike Mondays, I've only watched a handful of the Cinemassacre Video store roundtables (I really enjoyed the ones he did with Doug Walker and Brad Jones), but if I had to choose a series outside of AVGN, it would have to be his chill movie discussions.
God, if James ditched Mike and had some quality control on the channel, I bet he could capture a new audience separate from the Nerd and have a really healthy place going for things like this that...
God, if James ditched Mike and had some quality control on the channel, I bet he could capture a new audience separate from the Nerd and have a really healthy place going for things like this that are clearly his passion projects and are genuinely fresh and exciting things to see. What he's been doing for a while now is clearly paying the bills, but I think leaning into this relatively high effort non-filler stuff could really get him to be a name that stays around beyond just the influence of the Nerd.
I love seeing James do good work, though, I always want to see him succeed.
Huh? They already have a pretty sizeable audience outside AVGN with the Monster Madness, Movie Reviews, James & Mike Mondays, and Talk About Games series. Virtually every non-AVGN video of theirs...
Huh? They already have a pretty sizeable audience outside AVGN with the Monster Madness, Movie Reviews, James & Mike Mondays, and Talk About Games series. Virtually every non-AVGN video of theirs still consistently get over 150k views with many reaching over a million, even ones with just Mike and Ryan in them.
And saying Mike should be "ditched" to improve the channel strikes me as pretty remarkably callous. Just because you don't like him doesn't mean others feel the same way. I personally really dislike the AVGN persona and never watch those videos, but all their other content is what originally drew me to the channel and keeps me coming back even after all these years. And Mike was (and still is) a huge part of that. I even watch Mike stream on Twitch fairly regularly.
I agree about the quality control though... of all the big oldschool Youtube channels that are still going, Cinnemassacre is pretty much the only one still stuck in the mid-2000s in terms of video, audio and production quality. The new group movie discussion series in particular has absolutely horrible audio quality and is barely watchable as a result. They should really take a lesson from Red Letter Media in that regard and try harder to up their game.
Like I said, it's still paying the bills, my point wasn't that what they're doing isn't working but that they could capture a new audience that doesn't even remember AVGN if there wasn't so much...
Like I said, it's still paying the bills, my point wasn't that what they're doing isn't working but that they could capture a new audience that doesn't even remember AVGN if there wasn't so much low effort filler and the strength of their best work now could carry them further. But more than that, I just think they could have a body of work that's genuinely impressive and worthy of respect if they picked what they upload more carefully. And for what it's worth, I don't mean the trash is the non-Nerd stuff, I think basically anything that's James solo or sometimes with that other group of guys I don't know the names of is good stuff that I'd love to have a direct feed of. It's just hard for me to justify letting my sub box get filled with a million other low-effort filler things to be able to see those. Of course, my personal wishes for me are the main thing here, but I do think they could catch on more with "the kids" if they followed suit.
Also I'm far from the only one complaining about Mike. I always thought he didn't add much of value to the channel, but when I found out about his racist comics and all that I started having no qualms at all about wishing he was gone. He's remarkably unfunny and uninteresting and everything we know about his character suggests he's an awful person on top of that or at the very least completely unapologetic for when we was. It's uncomfortable having him on and it makes it so I don't even want to watch the casual stuff that does look a bit interesting.
I'm not super interested in convincing anyone else this is the case, but the channel is overrun by boring low-effort filler and the uncomfortable presence of Mike and I would like to have it not be that way.
Well, shit. I was not aware of those comics, and they are troubling, to say the least. If Mike were in his teens when he drew them I might at least be able to chalk it up to just teenage...
Well, shit. I was not aware of those comics, and they are troubling, to say the least. If Mike were in his teens when he drew them I might at least be able to chalk it up to just teenage immaturity and the poor judgement that goes with that... but it appears he was in his mid-20s when he drew them so he definitely should have known better by then. And the fact he has now gone out of his way to remove his old site from waybackmachine suggests he is simply trying to sweep it under the rug rather than own his mistakes and apologize. :/
I don't really know how to feel right now, but I have certainly lost a fair bit of respect for him because of this revelation. This feels like JonTron all over again. :(
Heh, it's not your fault. You didn't draw a bunch of racists comics... and I would much rather be informed than not. So despite it being a bit depressing and incredibly disappointing to learn...
Heh, it's not your fault. You didn't draw a bunch of racists comics... and I would much rather be informed than not. So despite it being a bit depressing and incredibly disappointing to learn someone whose content I enjoy may be a racist shithead, I am ultimately glad I learned about it. So thanks for letting me know.
I don't know how I missed the comics (trust me, I'm not complaining), but I've read some disturbing accounts of Mike acting out on streams, even going so far as to expose his genitals. I'm not...
I don't know how I missed the comics (trust me, I'm not complaining), but I've read some disturbing accounts of Mike acting out on streams, even going so far as to expose his genitals.
I'm not looking for screencaps or videos for proof, so it's one of those deals where I'm sitting on the fence as to whether it really happened.
I have watched a lot of his streams on Twitch, many of them live, and never seen anything even remotely inappropriate like that. Twitch is also remarkably strict when it comes to that sort of...
but I've read some disturbing accounts of Mike acting out on streams, even going so far as to expose his genitals.
I have watched a lot of his streams on Twitch, many of them live, and never seen anything even remotely inappropriate like that. Twitch is also remarkably strict when it comes to that sort of stuff, so if he had exposed his genitals on stream, he would have been banned for it... and yet he hasn't been.
I am also incredibly wary of the accusation of him using shills on reddit since it's way too easy to make it look like someone is shilling to definitively say if it was really him, and once the hate train against someone leaves the station these days, it's rarely rational, measured or based on truth... it just turns into a witch-hunt.
However, with all that said, I don't think there is any denying he actually did draw those incredibly racist comics (apparently in his mid-20s, no less) and is now attempting to hide the evidence by opting his old site out of waybackmachine... and AFAICT he has not owned up to creating them or apologized in any fashion, so regardless of if there is any truth to the rest of the claims being levied against him, I am pretty much done supporting him because of that. :(
I was "forced" to read Dracula by Bram Stoker in junior high school (it was the least unappealing book to me on the list we had to choose from) and was actually surprised by how much I genuinely enjoyed it at the time. The story is told in a really unique way, not through "standard" third or first person narration, but instead in an epistolary format; Journal/diary entries of the main characters, newspaper articles and various other scraps of relevant texts, like entries from ship captain's logs and psychiatrist assessments.
I highly recommend people give it a read if they haven't already. And don't let the fact it was written in 1897 intimidate you, unlike most other novels I have read from the time (e.g. Bronte Sisters, Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, etc) that are often a bit of a slog to get through, I was thoroughly engrossed the entire time I was reading Dracula... so much so I polished the book off in a couple of nights despite having several weeks to read it before my book report was due.
I also watched the Francis Ford Coppola movie shortly after I read the book and, while Keanu Reaves was a horrible choice for Jonathan Harker, most of the cast (especially Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins and Tom Waits) were great and I remember it being remarkably faithful to the book for a Hollywood blockbuster as well, so it taking second place on this list is not surprising. I was not aware of the 1977 BBC version though, and will have to try and track it down now!
p.s. <3 Cinemassacre
Dracula really is one of the few, few books from that era of literature that aged well. Too much fiction was bogged won by the pay-per-word scheme set up by journals and magazines at the time, which is why is feels like every book from then takes 100 words to say what we could in five.
Shelley's Frankenstein is one I'd include in that list as well.
Absolutely. If by 'era' they meant the 19th century it's not like few great books came out of it:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/45-novels-written-19th-century-deserve-place-modern-bookshelf/
I had a similar positive experience with the book. I haven't watched the video yet, but am about to. My first thought of what movie matches the book the best was the Coppola movie but the original Nosferatu is also a very close match, maybe even closer if we give some allowances to the restrictions inherent in film making in 1922. I also recall watching a Bella Lugosi version but I'm having trouble remembering the details. Now I'm going to go watch that video and report back :)
EDIT: Alright I finished watching it. I was very wrong about Nosferatu! It was least like the book according to the video!
I was in 5th or 6th grade when I got my hands on the book. But my mum didn't let me read it at the time, since it had this scary looking cover and she thought it was inappropriate for my age.
Should probably pick it up again :P
Films shown in the video:
Thanks!
As much as I enjoy the AVGN videos, I feel James is really at home discussing movies. He breaks them down in a casual manner, never talks down to his viewers, and best of all, he never injects any kind of political opinion or agenda into these reviews. It's mostly about the movies.
I don't watch the James & Mike Mondays, I've only watched a handful of the Cinemassacre Video store roundtables (I really enjoyed the ones he did with Doug Walker and Brad Jones), but if I had to choose a series outside of AVGN, it would have to be his chill movie discussions.
God, if James ditched Mike and had some quality control on the channel, I bet he could capture a new audience separate from the Nerd and have a really healthy place going for things like this that are clearly his passion projects and are genuinely fresh and exciting things to see. What he's been doing for a while now is clearly paying the bills, but I think leaning into this relatively high effort non-filler stuff could really get him to be a name that stays around beyond just the influence of the Nerd.
I love seeing James do good work, though, I always want to see him succeed.
Huh? They already have a pretty sizeable audience outside AVGN with the Monster Madness, Movie Reviews, James & Mike Mondays, and Talk About Games series. Virtually every non-AVGN video of theirs still consistently get over 150k views with many reaching over a million, even ones with just Mike and Ryan in them.
And saying Mike should be "ditched" to improve the channel strikes me as pretty remarkably callous. Just because you don't like him doesn't mean others feel the same way. I personally really dislike the AVGN persona and never watch those videos, but all their other content is what originally drew me to the channel and keeps me coming back even after all these years. And Mike was (and still is) a huge part of that. I even watch Mike stream on Twitch fairly regularly.
I agree about the quality control though... of all the big oldschool Youtube channels that are still going, Cinnemassacre is pretty much the only one still stuck in the mid-2000s in terms of video, audio and production quality. The new group movie discussion series in particular has absolutely horrible audio quality and is barely watchable as a result. They should really take a lesson from Red Letter Media in that regard and try harder to up their game.
Like I said, it's still paying the bills, my point wasn't that what they're doing isn't working but that they could capture a new audience that doesn't even remember AVGN if there wasn't so much low effort filler and the strength of their best work now could carry them further. But more than that, I just think they could have a body of work that's genuinely impressive and worthy of respect if they picked what they upload more carefully. And for what it's worth, I don't mean the trash is the non-Nerd stuff, I think basically anything that's James solo or sometimes with that other group of guys I don't know the names of is good stuff that I'd love to have a direct feed of. It's just hard for me to justify letting my sub box get filled with a million other low-effort filler things to be able to see those. Of course, my personal wishes for me are the main thing here, but I do think they could catch on more with "the kids" if they followed suit.Also I'm far from the only one complaining about Mike. I always thought he didn't add much of value to the channel, but when I found out about his racist comics and all that I started having no qualms at all about wishing he was gone. He's remarkably unfunny and uninteresting and everything we know about his character suggests he's an awful person on top of that or at the very least completely unapologetic for when we was. It's uncomfortable having him on and it makes it so I don't even want to watch the casual stuff that does look a bit interesting.I'm not super interested in convincing anyone else this is the case, but the channel is overrun by boring low-effort filler and the uncomfortable presence of Mike and I would like to have it not be that way.
Well, shit. I was not aware of those comics, and they are troubling, to say the least. If Mike were in his teens when he drew them I might at least be able to chalk it up to just teenage immaturity and the poor judgement that goes with that... but it appears he was in his mid-20s when he drew them so he definitely should have known better by then. And the fact he has now gone out of his way to remove his old site from waybackmachine suggests he is simply trying to sweep it under the rug rather than own his mistakes and apologize. :/
I don't really know how to feel right now, but I have certainly lost a fair bit of respect for him because of this revelation. This feels like JonTron all over again. :(
Oof I'm sorry about that, finding that out about someone you enjoy or respect is always a shitty experience.
Heh, it's not your fault. You didn't draw a bunch of racists comics... and I would much rather be informed than not. So despite it being a bit depressing and incredibly disappointing to learn someone whose content I enjoy may be a racist shithead, I am ultimately glad I learned about it. So thanks for letting me know.
I don't know how I missed the comics (trust me, I'm not complaining), but I've read some disturbing accounts of Mike acting out on streams, even going so far as to expose his genitals.
I'm not looking for screencaps or videos for proof, so it's one of those deals where I'm sitting on the fence as to whether it really happened.
I have watched a lot of his streams on Twitch, many of them live, and never seen anything even remotely inappropriate like that. Twitch is also remarkably strict when it comes to that sort of stuff, so if he had exposed his genitals on stream, he would have been banned for it... and yet he hasn't been.
I am also incredibly wary of the accusation of him using shills on reddit since it's way too easy to make it look like someone is shilling to definitively say if it was really him, and once the hate train against someone leaves the station these days, it's rarely rational, measured or based on truth... it just turns into a witch-hunt.
However, with all that said, I don't think there is any denying he actually did draw those incredibly racist comics (apparently in his mid-20s, no less) and is now attempting to hide the evidence by opting his old site out of waybackmachine... and AFAICT he has not owned up to creating them or apologized in any fashion, so regardless of if there is any truth to the rest of the claims being levied against him, I am pretty much done supporting him because of that. :(