Dark Shadows

This isn't from movie

Dark Shadows - loved it in a Royal Tenenbaums Go Gothic sort of way. Be warned though, it is a summary of about 1000 episodes of daytime tv soap opera so subplots appear and disappear as mysteriously as the characters.

Example : the completely peripheral psychiatrist character and her hypnotism? In the tv series that was the plot device that warped the story into long flashbacks to earlier centuries.

Consensus among us was that this new semi-comic film version was the best Tim Burton film since Sleepy Hollow.

Just for once Depp gets a cast that it right up there with him, in fact Eva Green almost spirits the movie away on her own. 

 

From the trailers Depp seemed to be following up his fascination for the Fast Show by doing Barnabas Collins as Rowley Birkin, but thankfully for most of the movie he keeps it relatively straight.  

It opens with the best use of Moody Blues' "Nights in White Satin" I can ever remember (and best use of an existing track in a movie since King Crimson's "Court of the Crimson King" in Children of Men), over a sweeping credits sequence that introduces us  to Collingwood and is worth the price of admission alone. The well chosen score swoops in an out of an achingly beautiful movie with early 70s soulless sheen (see also The Ice Storm, Zodiac), making Burton's previous effort, Alice in Wonderland, seem even even more of a pointless computer generated cartoon.

 

The sartorial comment to vampire Barnabas Collins, "That wierd swinging London thing isn't working", got a big laugh in our cinema on Baker Street. Must say the Everyman cinema is a great little place and the beer does flow well (I'm still sobering up)

Some pub ranting after the movie compared Dark Shadows to The Adams Family and the Munsters. Dark Shadows was originally of course supposed to be serious.  And as it comes later into the cynical 60s and 70s features a far less nuclear, more fractured family. Again Ang Lee's Ice Storm comes to mind.

It perhaps works best as a pilot for another Dark Shadows tv reboot, though with the new Munsters, Mockingbird Lane, on the way (with Eddie Izzard as granpa) that seems unlikely in the short term.

Dark Shadows the original tv series was never shown in UK, the nearest we got to characters in Dark Shadows was trying to suck some kind of second hand menace from David Selby's villian in Falcon Crest. I imagine we never saw it because the cheap fantasy thriller slot in the UK was filled by Dr Who, which had already mutated from childrens scifi show into weekly Quatermass-lite.

With no Dr Who would Hammer studios have been tempted to create their own version of Dark Shadows for domestic UK tv market? What would that have been like? 

Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde meets Acorn Antiques most likely;

<Miss Babbs, totally naked, explores her body in a full length mirror. Mrs Overall enters>

Oh Miss Babbs, your very mysterious twin brother was in very late last night

Yesss.. Mrs Overall...I notice you've gone all hairy again

Yes Miss.. it's that time of the month I've afraid.. would you like a macaroon?

HOLY FLYING CIRCUS vs COMIC STRIP PRESENTS : THE HUNT FOR TONY BLAIR review

Holy Flying Circus covers the storm of protest in 1979 Britain at the release of Christian bating masterpiece Monty Python's Life of Brian, culminating in the confrontation between ranting John Cleese, nice guy Micheal Palin and the Bishop of Southwark and 1970s renta-grouch Malcom Muggeridge.

The first bad sign is when you realise this hugely anticipated drama comedy is being premièred midweek, on BBC4,  opposite the Champions League games. It looks like its being buried.


Holy Flying Circus is presented right out front as surreal fantasy and includes Stephen Fry (briefly) as God, but the most surreal concept prompted by Holy Flying Circus is that they could be trivialising Monty Python. That is  ridiculous, as is my generations deification of them; but the reaction against Life of Brian was no joke. It demonstrated the gulf between British Christianity and treatment of religion elsewhere. At the time it seemed like religion had been dealt a lingering death blow by a few comedians. Looking back now it was a sudden dip on the road toward 9/11. Life of Brian is silly, but it's not trivial.

Initial exposure to Holy Flying Circus is jarring. Post Goon situation surrealism of the 1960s sits uneasily with post 2000 Mighty Boosh character based surrealism. The seriously showy performances by the mostly unknown comics starts to really irritate after a while, with the most obvious example being Darren Boyd playing John Cleese as Basil Fawlty, quite a daring idea that ends up insulting to all concerned. 

For all it's many faults Python treated it's audience with some respect. (As a kid I loved that a comedy show assumed I knew the Philosophers in the song without making an issue of it. You didn't get that on Benny Hill). Darren Boyd > as Basil Fawlty > as John Cleese is like being treated like a soap fan who doesn't know the difference between William Roach and Ken Barlow.

That said.. Holy Flying Circus is often funny and worth watching. It looks like a good script that was undermined by a producer and performers trying to recreate the 'imaginations' of 24 Hour Party People. Although virtually everyone else involved is bad, the team playing the Pythons are great to watch, with particular stand out performances from Tom Fisher as Graham Chapman and Charles Edwards as Palin. Also worth noting Micheal Cochrane as the insufferable Muggeridge, who was every bit the pompous twit that he looks in this surreal version. I'm sure second time round I would enjoy it more.

Worth noting that though the anti-Life of Brian protest was itself big at the time, the Pythons vs Bishops confrontation incident was hardly Bill Grundy vs The Sex Pistols. Most of the world knows of it from the brilliant send up on the cutting edge satirical tv comedy of the late 1970s :  Not The Nine O'Clock News.

This week we were also treated to the one of return of The Comic Strip Presents.. in The Hunt For Tony Blair. While Not The Nine O'Clock News had political tv satire sewn up on the BBC, Comic Strip Presents.. was an atempt by the then brand new 'alternative' Channel 4 to artificially create its own 80s Python troupe by hoovering up all the new 'alternative' comics resident in London's then super hip Comic Strip comedy club. Rik Mayal, Aidrian Edmunson, Nigel Planer, French and Saunders, Robbie Coltrane and co were all launched on Channel 4's first night in Five Go Mad in Dorset, just a week before their sitcom debuts in the BBCs The Young Ones, without the Comic Strip writer and director Peter Richardson.

The apex of Comic Strip is probably 1987s slapstick gangster masterpiece Mr Jolly Lives Next Door (currently 8.8/10 on IMDB) but the troupe, even more so than Python, is famously hit and miss, particularly on the big screen. The Supergrass and Eat The Rich hardly rate against the Python films.

Comic Strip Presents tv one-offs have been an occasional treat ever since. For 2011's The Hunt For Tony Blair some new faces have been added, most notably Stephen Mangan (Guy Secretan in Green Wing) as ex Prime Minister Tony Blair caught in a 1950s styled fugitive drama. There are others in this, notably Jennifer Saunders as Mrs Thatcher and Nigel Planer as Peter Mandelson, but if you find Mangan's version of Blair funny you'll love it. A  simpering idiot parroting content from his gospel/autobiography while protected by a halo of good fortune, it's possible this version of Blair would go down with Thandie Newton's Condoleeza Rice, Will Ferrell's George W and even Tina Fey's Sara Palin as the definitive portrayal, at least for me.