Movies: Blood: How far will you go to get it?

According Bloody Disgusting, the horror news site, a director has been attached to the upcoming Dracula sequel currently titled Un-Dead. Un-Dead is being pitched as a direct sequel to the Bram Stoker novel. It picks up the thread of the plot 20 years after the novel closes and, as far as I can tell, ignores the famed Universal franchise and the innumerable "Dracula" pictures Lugosi and Browning inspired.

I think this project sounds like a great idea. After all, Coppola managed to provide the old vampire with some fresh blood by revisiting the original novel and making what, so far, is the closest filmic adaptation (and even that is pretty wide from the mark – adding the whole Mina/Drac backstory that is completely absent from the source text). Revisiting the original novel, even in such a roundabout way, might make for a solid script.

What gives me pause, though, is the choice of directors. According to B-D, Ernest Dickerson, who shot the post-Boyz in da Hood thriller Juice ("how far will you go to get it?"), will be helming the new pic.

Don't get me wrong. I actually kinda liked Juice. As far as the late 90's glut of neo-blaxploitation films went, it was a stylish, thoughtful, and remarkably restrained flick. Compare its slow build and carefully drawn character interactions to the over-the-top violence and repeated lectures of the more famous Menace II Society and you might be forgiven for thinking Juice was actually the better flick. But since then, Dickerson cranked out Surviving the Game (an Ice-T-centric reworking of The Most Dangerous Game), Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight, and skateboarding-meets-basketball sci-fi sports flick Futuresport ("starring" former television Superman Dean Cain, singer turned movie un-star Vanessa Williams, and Wesley "I'll be Blade one of these days" Snipes). After that short and unhappy decline, he's mostly done television stuff. Some of it, including stints on HBO's fine crime drama The Wire, is good stuff; but we know what they say about second acts . . .