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Messages - Gothick

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4771
Current Talk '06 II / Re: Tarot Cards on Dark Shadows
« on: August 21, 2006, 04:08:54 PM »
She draws one in her first episode of 1795 that she calls "the Wicked Woman" but there is no such card in the Tarot.

I know it's just trying to make excuses for poor research by the DS writers, but my theory is that "the Wicked Woman" is Natalie's name for one of the traditional cards in the old Marseilles deck.  I think on DS they used the Swiss JJ deck (so called because it has Jupiter and Juno instead of the Emperor and Empress) which technically was not printed until, I think, 1808?  but again, perhaps the Countess had a friend who get hold of an early version of that deck for her.

I'm sure that's far more than you wanted to know on this topic!

G.

4772
RJ will be selling it at the Festival, and I do encourage those who will be attending to plan on buying it there.  You'll save on postage AND be able to get the author herself to sign it!

For those who are interested, I wrote a review of the book on the Barnes and Noble page for it.  There is a page for it now on Amazon, as well.

Best, Steve

4773
Well basically as far as I am concerned, NOBODY can play Grayson.  I just typed in Meryl because she actually knew and worked with the Divine One (they did a Broadway musical together, as chronicled in The Book!).

I could go with Cate Blanchett, or that cute redhead who played the best friend in that Todd Haynes 1950s race melodrama.  ANYBODY EXCEPT Nicole Kidman.  Please...

G.

4774
Congratulations!

And now my fingers itch to type "Soon to be a major Hollywood motion picture starring Meryl Streep!"

G.

4775
Happy birthday, you loveable doombuggy, you!

Fondly, G.

4776
Current Talk '06 II / Re: parts you can't re-watch?
« on: August 15, 2006, 07:29:51 PM »
MB, I think an excellent example of what you were talking about with less-than-stellar performers sharing screen space with excellent ones who then make an amazing moment of what seems on the surface to be unpromising dross is the sequence where [spoiler]Jeff Clark goes to Professor Stokes to learn how to regress back through to the Eighteenth century.[/spoiler]

I've been meaning to track that scene down again for years--I've only viewed it a couple of times, but my memory is that Thayer brought real magic to that moment.  His invocation to the powers of the herbs is one of the rare instances where DS came close to an accurate reflection of a serious magickal practice.

G.

4777
Current Talk '06 II / Re: parts you can't re-watch?
« on: August 15, 2006, 03:56:00 PM »
There are no entire storylines that I refuse to re-watch as a whole.  I seem to watch the series differently from most others because as far as I am concerned, the plots and scripts varied wildly throughout--there are marvelous moments, to my taste, right in the middle of the most ridiculous plot arcs, where somehow everything clicked on a specific day with the writing, the actors and the direction.

Basically any scene with Roger Davis challenges my nerves.  My finger starts to itch towards the fast forward button.  I'm getting the same way with poor well-meaning Hallie Stocks.  A lovely girl and no doubt a very nice person, but her voice makes me heave and her attempts at acting are very alarming.

cheers, Gothick

4778
To Ian and others who have never seen house of DS--

be aware that it's much more like a late Sixties low budget vampire flick (with a gore quota comparable to, say, Hammer's Taste the blood of Dracula, but far less stylistic finesse) than it is the series we all know and love.  The movie is populated by people with names like "Barnabas Collins," "Julia Hoffman" and "Eliot Stokes" who exist as characters only because of the superb non-verbal acting ability of the artists portraying them.  Nearly every scene, dialogue sequence or set-piece that actually established the people in the movie as characters was axed in favor of a higher gore content (slo-mo stakings, close-ups of blood running, etc.)  I well remember that as I walked into the theatre back in the Summer of 1970, I heard one person ask his friend "So, what'd you think?" and the other man's reply:  "Lots of teeth, lots of blood."  I still think of this single sentence as the ideal review of house of Dark Shadows.  They could use it in the New York Times television section.

Grayson does look fabou throughout, of course.  Love the bed-head do!  And the costumes in the ball sequence, though we see everything far too briefly, are the most lavish and exquisite yet.  The one for Barnabas was used on the show subsequently, and I think one or two others as well.

G.

4779
Just to chime in that whoever arranged for this to be shown deserves extra kudos.  The Great Ice Rip-Off is a very interesting movie--not a great picture, but well worth seeing.  I believe it was one of the last things Lee J. Cobb ever did.  Grayson's work in the picture is very plausible and toned-down--no throat-clutching or mugging here.  Her character actually has more dimensionality than the two male leads even though she has less screen time.  She does get to do a fair amount here, particularly in comparison with many of her other later film roles.

Bob Cobert's music is very UN-Dark Shadows, but at one moment, they do make a nod to the fans of their other, "legendary" project.

I'd love to see a decent print of this.  The copy I got from another fan is a bit on the grainy side.

G.

4780
Current Talk '06 II / Re: Grayson Hall--Better than Heroin!
« on: August 10, 2006, 09:42:50 PM »
Hey, Julia, I hope you include the dialogue when Peggy tells the Keach character that their meeting was "veddy Noel Coward."

After you get past the shock value of the rest of it, in some ways it's a brilliant moment.  I also love the short scene where he finds her on the beach (I believe this was actually filmed in Great Barrington, Mass.).

Best, Steve

4781
Polls Archive / Re: DS Religions
« on: July 30, 2006, 03:51:34 AM »
My first hint that Atheism was a religion in everything but name was the antics of this professor at U. Penn in the early 1980s who actively worked on converting his grad students to Atheism.  He would start arguments about it and refuse to let it go.

The remarks about Heathenism and heavy metal are why I try to avoid discussing my religion in public, whenever possible,  Can people please try to have some respect for minority religions here?

I am going on vacation tomorrow for a week and I suspect it's just as well.

cheers, Gothick one of "those people out there" who follows a polytheistic religion

4782
Connie dear, that's adorable!

Many thanks for all the good wishes! I surely do appreciate them.

G.

4783
Current Talk '06 II / Re: Vampire bat
« on: July 28, 2006, 04:21:41 PM »
Thanks!  It's nice to know that some of you find my more arcane ramblings of interest.

I'm reading one of Doreen Valiente's books at the moment and in a passage I read just this morning, she discusses some lore around the "Fetch" of the Witch.  She cites a tale by Dorothy L. Sayers, "The Cyprian Cat," which uses some of this lore as a springboard.  Valiente does indeed mention bat, cat and wolf as favorite forms a Witch would take when projecting her spirit out of body in disguise.  So there is an obvious link between Witchcraft lore and legends of lycanthropy.

G.

4784
Current Talk '06 II / Re: quentin in the "present"
« on: July 28, 2006, 04:18:37 PM »
Another stellar element of the 1840 storyline is Chris Pennock's work as Gabriel Collins.  By far Pennock's most nuanced, emotionally plausible characterization on the series, I think.

I also enjoy John Karlen's work as Kendrick Young in PT 1841 because it is so unlike anything else he did on the series.  He gets to play the young romantic hero--more in the vein of Jane Austen than Bronte (that's Frid as Bramwell--even his name is Brontean), I think.  His courting scenes with Nancy Barrett are adorable, and of course I love watching him cross swords with Grayson's acid-tongued Aunt Julia.

G.

4785
Polls Archive / Re: DS Religions
« on: July 27, 2006, 09:02:49 PM »
I personally regard Atheism as a religion in everything but name.  Technically, Atheists have DEFINITIVE views on the nature of reality every bit as ironclad as the metaphysical propositions of many of the world's religious systems.

Agnosticism, on the other hand, seems more to me a way of looking at the world and thinking about things.  Technically, it is too open ended to be codified into a system.  Just my view.  I haven't checked the all high and mighty Wikipedia which is the New Bible of the Holy Church of the Information Superhighway to see what it says on these topics.

I realize that many folks use Atheism and Agnosticism interchangeably but from my own studies I regard them as creatures of two very different world-views.

G.

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