Janet, I am so very sorry to read of your loss.  May your memories of Niki bring you comfort.  What a fine, remarkable individual she was.

best wishes,

Steve (aka Gothick)

And here's a perfect example:

Barnabas (looking on with palpably aching desire at comatose Roxanne, obviously fitted with bullet-bra from Grayson's Playtex gig):  "Oh! ... she is ... so beautiful!"

Julia (rolls eyes): *multiple expletives deleted*

My hat's off again to our Darling Mysterioso, el Benefactoro (pardon my hideous mauling of Spanish),

for featuring one of my all time favorite guest players today--the beautiful, flamboyant, fabulous Cavada Humphrey!  When I went to IMDB just now to make sure her surname did not end with an s (my memory is in tatters these days, alas), I was startled to see that Cavada passed away on July 11, 2007.  Was there an obit posted here?  I don't recall seeing it, but I am often away out in the woods and fields doing my Nature Boy routine in July, so perhaps I missed it.

One of my all time favorite moments on all of DS is Madam Findlay's arrival at Collinwood, when she strides imperiously around the drawing room and waves her arms and sways and speaks cryptically of the battle waging within these walls--truly classic stuff.

She also got one of the most melodramatic "farewell" scenes in the series' history. 

Interestingly, her role as Madam Findlay wasn't Cavada Humphrey's sole DS connection.  For awhile she shared rooms with novelist Madeleine L'Engle, who penned the classic children's novel A Wrinkle in Time.  Madeleine L'Engle married Hugh Franklin, who appeared as Collins family lawyer Richard Garner in the 1966 episodes of DS.

Thanks again for featuring such a distinctive, memorable presence from our Dark Shadows memory-hoard!

cheers, G.

MB, I just LOVE today's screencapture!  Julia looks as if she has HAD it with a certain reluctant vampire!  Just love how mean and eee-vil she looks here!

thanks for the holiday cheer!

A Fan 4ever,

Gothick

Hey Robin, Happy Birthday!

and if you see this, may your holidays be filled with fun and frivolity!

hugs, Steve

Hi Nancy,

Thanks!  If they go forward with what has been announced as the schedule (and of course, it could change radically at any moment), just when they will decide to release it is a toss-up. I remember when Serenity, the movie spinoff from Joss Whedon's Firefly series, was going to be released at Xmas one year, when it was discovered by the suits that it would be hitting the tarmac at the same time as some other pet blockbuster or other.  As a result, the release was postponed--by SIX MONTHS. 

Their release schedules are so shoehorned these days that I could easily see the movie sitting on a shelf for a couple of years post-production while they try to angle it into the optimum minimal-competition weekend.  Hooray for Hollywood.

cheers, G.

I personally think it would improve the chances of Depp Shadows being a decent movie in its own right if both the conceptualization of the characters and the casting of the actors to play them goes "outside the box" of trying to find types to match up with who we originally saw onscreen in the 1960s series.

Let's face it--they broke the mold when Grayson Hall took birth.  Trying to find someone somehow "like" her for Julia is a waste of time.  The Kelly Hu casting *could* have given an interesting slant to the character because thinking of her as an Asian American female professional immediately gives a very different context to the character's action in the Barnabas-out-of-his-coffin phase of the story.

Similarly, I would love to see a black, or mixed-race, actress in the role of Angelique.  In fact, I was thinking about it this morning and thinking how interesting it would be if the story was told so that more audience sympathy was on the side of Angelique because she was not white and doomed to perpetual servitude and therefore had more of an axe to grind beyond Barn not wanting to marry her.  In the original portrayal of the character in 1795, they gave her LOTS of dialogue about her own perception of her lot and how she was going to "show them all."  I thought that made her much more interesting than the 1991 version where she's some kind of bat out of hell who is completely psychotic from the get-go.  It wasn't at all nuanced or layered and frankly, I found her ridiculous rather than terrifying.

Unfortunately, American pop culture is now obsessed with narratives of apocalypse and ultimate evil (for obvious reasons), so I'm not sure that a three dimensional Angelique is on the cards.  But I amused myself this morning imagining Angelique as the anti-heroine and Josette as a haughty, frigid bitch loved by Barnabas and cosseted by her family but not terribly attractive to the 21st century viewer.

I could write more but I'll stop.  I could see Philip Seymour Hoffman having a great presence as Stokes, if that character is on board (seems unlikely).

G.

I think the beginning of this episode (if I'm remembering correctly) may have been the best thing in the entire production.  FAAAbulous.

Love Jean Simmons in that hat.

G.