Vlads

As attention spans keep getting whittled down, intellectually impish Romanian satirist Radu Jude continues to go longer and longer, his latest act of cinematic disobedience the nearly three-hour mythbuster “Dracula.”

But you will not be getting a worshipful retelling of author Bram Stoker’s horror classic. For that, call Francis Ford Coppola. Rather, Jude has Frankensteined together a grab bag of notions about the vampire saga that is his country’s most well-known cultural export — originating with real-life medieval slaughterer Vlad the Impaler but most famously immortalized by a 19th century Irish author. Jude turns it into a vaudeville that, even at its most entertaining, is best described by a common bat-related term that’s more scatological.

For the last decade, festival favorite Jude has turned contemporary Romania’s fault lines into his own jangly, caustically funny microcosm of the world’s glaring sociopolitical hypocrisies, from the warping of the past (“I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians”) to sexual attitudes (“Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn”) to late-stage capitalism (“Do Not Expect Much From the End of the World”). Jude is especially trenchant about how these realities are sold to us, and what’s inherently funny and tragic about that.

Halfway between an endurance test and a mad romp, “Dracula” is still proof he’s cinema’s brainiest, raunchiest crank: Eastern European’s own X-rated Monty Python. “Dracula” was birthed initially as a jokey response to his anti-commercial tendencies — as if Jude could ever make a conventional horror movie. But it still managed to percolate (fester?) until he’d found a unifying idea across a dozen or so vignettes of prurient humor and social commentary: the twinned legacy of a bloodthirsty despot who still stirs national pride, and an invented, Hollywoodized legend. All of it is engineered around the brutality of capitalism, which bites, slurps, then discards. It’s economics and entertainment.

As for that sucking sound in Jude’s antic organizing concept, it’s artificial intelligence: His proxy narrator is a creatively blocked filmmaker (Adonis Tanţa, in one of many roles) turning to an AI chatbot to generate ideas for his vampire film. The film’s cheeky opening is a succession of AI-generated Vlads/Draculas of all genders, colors and ages. From there, the intermittent interludes of hilariously nonsensical AI slop visuals — whether inoffensively ugly, as when inserted into a doomed peasant love story, or pornographic, when the prompt is sexing up Coppola’s 1992 version — are a consistently funny middle finger directed at a grotesquely vampiric, art-leeching technology.

The various “generated” stories and sketches, meanwhile, break up a narrative about a sleazy Dracula dinner theater in Transylvania that, when its underpaid, slave-labor leads decide to bolt mid-performance, gives dissatisfied customers a (ahem) stake in the outcome. The punchy bits work best, as when a reincarnated Vlad interrupts a modern-day tour of his home to clap back at rumors (“I didn’t kill rats!”) or a very Jude-like scenario in which Dracula is a ruthless video game company head exploiting his workers. Less effective is an overlong adaptation of the first Romanian vampire novel, its phone-shot cheapness and amateur theatrics eventually grating, and a Chaucer-adjacent fable about a cursed farmer’s harvest of phalluses that is more obnoxious than clever.

With Jude, of course, vulgarity is often the point, and maybe, as two hours becomes three, the excessiveness is part of the point too. When will we all be worn down by stupid consumerism? It doesn’t make the devilish, insane and extreme “Dracula” any easier to take as a skewering of sensibilities and conventions. As often as you may be tickled by its fanged silliness, you’ll also be drained.

THIS is the moment a Ukraine naval drone strikes one of Vladimir Putin’s key fuel sites sparking chaos in Russia.

The Salavat factory was hit for the second time in less than a week amid Volodymyr Zelensky’s soaring campaign against Russian oil.

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Footage shows thick black smoke billowing out of the facility as an inferno rages on the ground.

A second explosion, meanwhile, is seen pounding the building.

Locals reported hearing a “loud noise” before flames ravaged the surrounding area.

The Salavat refinery, considered a linchpin in Russia’s oil industry, was last hit on September 18 – causing a “massive explosion”, according to local media.

It’s just one of a number of facilities Ukraine has targeted in recent weeks as it steps up its campaign on Russian energy infrastructure.

The strikes have sparked chaos in Moscow with petrol stations reportedly not able to stockpile fuel.

Widely used petrol – such as Ai 92 and Ai 95 – are often unavailable, according to reports.

One employee at a petrol station in the western Belgorod suggested the oil crisis had reached a tipping point, with stations forced to close “because there was no gasoline”.

She told Reuters: “The station in the neighbouring village also closed, and others simply ran out of gasoline.”

Moscow has been forced to ban fuel exports for six months, sacrificing vital revenue just to stop unrest at home.

Military intelligence expert Philip Ingram MBE previously explained how “Putin’s greatest fear” is “the Russian people rising up.”

Before the invasion, energy exports made up around 40 per cent of the Kremlin’s budget.

Even under sanctions, oil and gas still bring in 30 per cent of Russia’s income.

He showed how Ukraine has zeroed in on this “river of oil money” with pinpoint strikes hundreds of miles inside Russian territory.

Long-range drones have torched colossal refineries, exploded pumping stations and set storage tanks ablaze – systematically dismantling Moscow’s refining capacity.

The campaign has shattered Russia’s aura of invulnerability, exposed its sprawling oil empire as a fatal weakness, and brought the war crashing into the lives of ordinary Russians.

And as Ingram puts it: “It proves that in modern warfare, the most effective battle plans aren’t always about brute force on the tactical frontline, but about finding your enemy’s single point of failure – and striking it again and again with unrelenting precision.”

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It comes as Donald Trump announced in his keynote speech at the UN General Assembly that Ukraine could win back “every inch” of its territory with Russia.

In a major pivot from his previous stance on the three-and-a-half-year conflict, Trump also dismissed Russia’s military strength and mocked its inability to beat Ukraine in just a few days.

Posting on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump said Ukraine “may be able to take back their country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that”.

Trump’s Vlad-bashing follows months of growing frustration at Putin’s refusal to end the offensive in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov hit back at Trump’s insults, particularly those levelled at the Russian economy.

“The phrase ‘paper tiger’ was used in relation to our economy,” he said.

“Russia is more associated with a bear. And paper bears don’t exist.

“Russia is a real bear.”

Peskov did, however, admit that the Russian economy had faced “tensions”.

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