(from Sean's profile info)
Who am I?
My real name is Sean and I am an online cultural critic, who lives in Maine.
I'm a rather political and philosophical individual and I tend to be outspoken. I try to remain as independent as possible and avoid affiliating myself with any form of organized religion or politics. I am an atheist (albeit a spiritual one with some Buddhist ideologies), a "pro-life feminist", a communist (in the truest definition of the concept as laid down by Marx and Engels in 1848), a strict vegetarian and a supporter of animal rights. I have diverse tastes in media. I enjoy reading just about anything, writing short fiction, poetry, film & book & music reviews, listening to all kinds of music (particularly "old school punk", classic rock, hippie music, metal, rap, folk, and classical/opera) and watching films in general. I spend a lot of time at my local library, as both a patron and a volunteer. I also love to cook. I love to discuss politics, philosophy, sociology, and so on. I'm not very fond of people who formulate an opinion based upon another person's opinion. I am strongly against influence and celebrity and status. I don't believe in the class system and I loathe racial, sexual, and cultural profiling. So long as you're an open-minded and non-judgmental individual, then you're welcome here.





















You can read all of my reviews here on Lunch.com, Blogger, and on Amazon.com (earliest reviews only), and I can be reached at:
countorloksreviewforum@yahoo.com
You can also read a brief bio of me by the esteemed William (a.k.a. Woopak). Here's the link...
Count Orlok '22 Bio!

My worldview summed up:
There are three kinds of people on this Earth: those that think inside the box, those that think outside the box, and those like myself who know that THERE IS NO BOX.

Why do I call myself Count Orlok, you ask?

For those wondering why I have chosen the pseudonym Count Orlok '22, the reason behind this is simple: Count Orlok was the titular vampire character in the 1922 silent German horror film Nosferatu - Eine Symphonie des Grauens, which is my favorite film. The '22 is a reference to the year the film was released as well as to my age at the time of creating this alias.

Now back to the film. Nosferatu was an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula.  The film's director, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau uses the archetype of the blood-sucking vampire as a metaphor for the horrors of war and fascism. As the parasitic vampire, Orlok invades the small village of Wisborg, Germany, where he spreads a plague of death and destruction. This plague was a symbolic reference to the totalitarianism that was rising in Germany at the time the film was being made. Murnau, himself served as a pilot in WWI, but then after witnessing the senseless killing he condemned war and unnecessary death. Murnau left Germany just as the Nazi Party was beginning to rise in power. He went to America and there he shot a masterpiece (Sunrise), but after his next two projects were interfered with by studio executives, Murnau decided that the commercial interests of Hollywood conflicted with his own artistic aesthetics. Leaving America behind, he would next travel to Tahiti where he would direct his last motion picture (Tabu). Shortly before the film's premiere in 1931, Murnau would die in a tragic automobile accident.

By assuming this alias I am both paying tribute to a classic film and its brilliant director, as well as expressing my abhorrence for war and violence in all of its manifestations.