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.

I liked Blackburn's *look* as Carolyn.  I know nothing about her career but I suspect a lot that people find irritating about her performance has to do with how she was directed.  I would say the same about Fyfe.  I personally find Willie very annoying.  Fyfe, from what I can recall, was allowed to bring more gravitas to the role of Ben and although Ben did not seem to get much to do, I liked him much better in that part than as Willie.

Given how extremely compressed the story was, some of Willie's odd antics in the later shows feel like padding out the show to achieve the required 45 minute running time, which seems very strange as they were trying to fit in so much in such a brief space of time.

G.

Perhaps the new craze will finally spur Paramount (or whoever currently owns the rights) to release a restored cut of Roger Vadim's Blood and Roses (1962).  It may be the most moodily evocative vampire movie of all time--certainly one of the most poetic and enchanting.

The scene in the 1795 storyline where Angelique looks in the mirror and sees herself with a bloodied bridal gown may well have been inspired by a similar sequence in Blood and Roses.

G.

Joan Hackett was one of those who died way too young.  I remember her incredible bravura performance in Bobby even though it's been something like 35 years since my one viewing of the story.

DC in some ways really was a throwback to the old days of the big studio directors. Carbon copying entire sequences in remakes seems so Old Hollywood. Of course van Sant did the same thing in his Psycho retread.

G.