To me, streaming isn't as good as watching a DVD on the player that is attached to my television set.  I have a friend now who just watches everything on his computer and he doesn't care.  When I stream, I often notice hesitation, or it stops and starts due to traffic or bandwidth or whatever the hell it is. 

I notice in our culture a tendency to think that our tech and our resources are at a place that we imagine they could be, but they really aren't.  Like the idea that we're getting rid of all our books and newspapers and mags and going whole hog digital.  Well, some of us don't want to be staring at glowing screens 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

I feel more fortunate than ever that I am privileged to own all the DS episodes on DVD.  Netflix track record around DS is not one of their finest hours as a company.  I think the consumer demand, and the volume of episodes, is simply beyond their capacity.

It's amazing and wonderful to me to see how popular DS continues to be after all these years.  I watch a lot of "vintage" television (am just catching up with a wonderful Bill Bixby series from 1973, The Magician, thanks to a generous and kind friend) and it's very rare for a series this old to be this widely followed.

G.

That was really fascinating to hear, Ed.  I'd read the print version of this long ago in one of your early publications.  Loved hearing the actual tape.

If you ever find the tape of your interview with Grayson Hall in one of those boxes, there are a lot of us here who would LOVE to hear that!

Best,

Gothick

Great Liz moments today in episode eleven and episode two hundred-something.  I particularly love the shot of a fearful Liz feeling Collinwood shaken to its foundations by what is transpiring in the cellar.  Just grand stuff.

G.

The Box for Count Petofi's Hand sits on a bureau in the hallway on the upper storey of the main fabric of Collinwood in 1966, the hallway along which the bedrooms of Vicki, David, and Carolyn are situated.  I like to think that the box was perhaps brought by Beth Chavez from Petofi's lair and left in her bedroom.  Perhaps one of the maids found it there and showed it to Miss Judith, thinking it might have been a valuable family heirloom.  Judith took a liking to the box and kept some of her jewellry in it.  After her death, Elizabeth decided to put it on the bureau in the hallway as a memento of a remarkable woman.


G.

Dear folks, by the standard definitions of "canon," the ONLY canon for the Original DS universe are the actual aired episodes of the original series.  Stuff that was in the "Marilyn" Ross novels, the Gold Key comics, the feature films, or even Sam Hall's (in)famous TV guide article isn't canon.  It either refers to its own iteration of the DS universe (yet another layer of "parallel time, " perhaps?) or represents commentary from "interested parties."  Sadly, even the wonderful video of a fabulously coiffed and gowned Joan Bennett filmed by a fan in the 1980s telling us that Elizabeth was indeed Vicki's mother does not count as canon.  (From the clues dropped in the 1966 scripts,  a very different solution to Vicki's parentage is implied, though had Art Wallace continued to write for the show, who knows what final twist he might have introduced had the matter been resolved in an aired episode.)

The Depp movie, and its potential sequels, will establish the characters and story in their own unique universe.  The storyline and revelations of that world already present a very different history for the Collins family from the narrative, fraught as it was, established for the Collinses we knew in the Sixties. 

G.

I guess Miss Hopewell's storyline is the first of many in DS history to simply drop out of sight.  I thought the scene (which I really hope is on MY DVD!) implied that we would be seeing more of Miss Hopewell, but alas, it was not to be.

G.

I was thinking about the current relay of episodes earlier today and wondering:  "Hmmm.... episode 7 ... wonder whether Vicki's taken her coat off yet?"

I was amused just now to look through the Robservations slide show and see a scene with her and Burke where, sure enough, she's wearing the coat.  (Although I do think she had it off at some point in episode 6.)

Wonder whether anybody's ordered a "container of coffee" yet?

G.

I don't mind your comments, borgosi.  I myself have reservations about the project, but have been surprised at how many elements that actually tickle me (in a GOOD way) have come to light about it.  It is a 2011 Tim Burton/Johnny Depp feature film with more money undoubtedly set to be spent on it than was ever budgeted in all five years of the original series--and then some.  So, we know going in that it is going to be a very different animal from the Sixties series we all adore.  I personally think including Alice Cooper is kind of a stylish way of commenting upon the media image of the series back in the day--which had a weird disconnect, if you think about it, from how the shows actually played.  The media image in the Sixties was all about fangs, trippy Gothique scenes, groovy ghoulies, monster rallies.  The actual shows were much more about the chemistry of the actors together and the scripts that were sometimes incredible literate and layered, especially when compared with other 1960s daytime dramas.  So, Alice Cooper in the Blue Whale with scenesters rolling joints kind of comments on that element of the DS success story.  Do you know what I mean?

I'm actually rather fond of Dracula A.D. '72.  A funny fact about that movie is that the rock band in one of the early party sequences was actually a US midwestern born-again Christian rock band that someone at Hammer found--I guess they were touring in the UK.  There is a whole big article on them, and other aspects of the movie, in an issue of Little Shoppe of Horrors from a few years ago--check out the Little Shoppe website for info.

G.