I could swear that Buzz was the original owner of at least one of Cassandra's lacquered black wigs.

The post about Edward's moustache reminds me of this episode where Edward and Quentin are having a verbal sparring match and the tape cuts and Quentin is laughing ... I always thought that Louis lost his moustache while he was making some epically pompous speech.

G.

Has the new season of the Lair aired yet?

Despite the awfulness of season one, I watched the whole thing in two sittings when a friend loaned it to me a few months back.  The ending was STRONGLY reminiscent of a certain storyline on DS--as were other elements in the story--such as that portrait!

G.

I don't agree with Vasquez, and it sounds to me as if he should be playing video games, not reviewing movies.

In the original Lugosi Dracula film, he had those wonderful lines:  "To die... to be really dead ... that must be glorious!"  The theme of the reluctant vampire with a ruthless streak continued in the underrated Dracula's daughter, and one could recite a long litany of vampire films that have spun out the notion of the vampire's divided nature with endless juicy variations.

I do agree that there has been a lot of ripping off of Miss Rice in recent years.  IMO that's not necessarily a bad thing--I thought  the 1990s show Forever Knight showed that her ideas could be incorporated in a modulated form to produce compelling story-telling, and from what I heard from friends, many folks thought the same about Moonlighting.  I'm not familiar enough with the Buffy/Angel franchise to comment upon that.  Despite its excessively pretty lead actor, Blood ties struck me as an example of watered-down Rice that badly needed an injection of fresh inspiration. 

Critiques such as the one Vasquez is offering up are very thick on the ground in the blogosphere these days.  While amusing (perhaps) to read, they hardly do justice to the films and shows with which he's making free.

I am not up on the new "Twilight" book series and films, so am not really commenting on that.  The notion of vampires as mindless killing machines seems to owe more to "Night of the Living Dead" and its endless barrage of sequels than it does to traditional literary or folk images of vampires.  (It's worth noting that the Romero franchise has had a sweeping impact upon how people think of zombies these days--the old zombies of the Val Lewton films and 1950s and 60s "voodoo melodramas" are seemingly gone forever.  In their place, we have a rather dull army of flesh-munching robots with eyeballs on detachable springs.)

cheers, G.

I was going to say that it's implied that there is backstory between Josette and Laura, but this is one of the many threads that never got explored.

The version of Laura's history given in 1897 would imply definitively that Laura and Josette never met, though mysteriously, Angelique knows exactly who Laura is--"one of the legendary Collins beauties."

I kept waiting and waiting for someone to meet Quentin, eye him up and down, and proclaim:  "Ah, Quentin!  one of the legendary Collins beauties!"  Yet, mysteriously, it never happened...

*wink*

Gothique

I agree totally.  Marie's work in the character of Eve was superb, even though the character herself was so poorly written and they kept changing her backstory, motives, etc.  I wish the original Danielle Roget/Philippe Cordier story had been explored, instead of that ridiculous tripe with Peter Bradford. Poor Marie!

I wish they had explained just what someone like Danielle was doing in Collinsport.  Why wasn't she in NYC with some of the other refugees from the Terror, if that's why she fled France in the first place?  It's really pointless to ask these questions because what seems to have happened is that DC had one of his legendary story conferences in which major storylines were trashed and the show was sent off on some completely different angle. 

G.

A number of fans have said that they think the original Laura Collins 1966/67 story was DS' finest hour, bar none.  At this point in the scheme of things, I prefer to think of each storyline having its own special merits (and faults), but there's no doubt that the Laura story represented brilliant storytelling for the series, fascinating characterizations (both Laura herself and the established cast), and a payoff that, for once in DS history, gave everything expected from the buildup and that extra bit more.

Vicki's special connection to Josette does become very important during this storyline.  One of the problems with the Barnabas storyline is that they do not bother to explain what happened to Josette's spirit.  Barnabas has one line of dialogue in one of his very first episodes where he sort of banishes the ghost of Josette, which may be why we don't see her during subsequent events--when, to say the least, judging from how she behaves in the Matthew and Laura stories, you'd expect to see her taking a strong role in things.

G.

Thanks for clearing that up, Ms. C!  You are absolutely correct--I confused the Coop with the Harvard Bkstore. 

I'm very impressed with your knowledge of our local booksellers!  Thanks again!

G.