News of Dark Shadows Recently Overshadowed...

Over the last few weeks, Hollywood has mainly been buzzing with all kinds of new information about the upcoming release of the first installment of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Simply scrolling through all the posts on the MTV Movies Blog is enough to illustrate my point.

But there's one story I'm a little distraught that didn't raise a bigger fuss. (Don't get all judgy on me, claiming I'm not excited about one of the final HP films finally arriving in theaters; I totally am, but it shouldn't need this much publicity. After all, it is Harry Potter.) No, I'm upset that nearly none of my friends have recognized or even heard about the announcement of Johnny Depp and Tim Burton's latest project, a film adaptation of the '60s TV show Dark Shadows.

Depp & Burton on the set of their last project Sweeney Todd 

Maybe I'm just weird like this, but ever since I'd heard the rumors about the project, I've been anxiously waiting for official confirmation. So when I saw the post on MTV Movies Blog called "Johnny Depp Sinking His Teeth into Vampire Role for Tim Burton's 'Dark Shadows'," I pretty much flipped out. With the vampire's sudden popularity, I was just waiting for the day when Tim Burton would undertake a vampire project. Which is largely due to the fact that his spin on vampires probably won't be as romantic or sex-driven or cliched as most of the vampires in recent popular character.

Not to mention Johnny Depp would probably make one of the coolest, most badass vampires.

But when it comes down to it, I don't really know a whole lot about the original TV show. So I went over to good ole IMDB and checked out the summary they had, which wasn't all that helpful: "Dark Shadows is a gothic soap opera, which follows the strange happenings to the Collins family and their surrounding friends. The show features everything from Vampires, to Witches, werewolves... you name it." But I have since done a little bit more research, just shy of watching the show somewhere online, and the most important thing I've learned so far is that the show circled mainly around the vampire Barnabas Collins (who will be Depp's character in the movie adaptation) and his supernatural friends who live in and around the small Maine town of Collinsport. And this doesn't tell a whole lot about the central plotlines of the TV show, but I did find the original opening credits to the show. You can check it out below:



The general storyline certainly seems like a good one for Burton to sink his claws into: A small town with some kind of supernatural beings haunting it. (Hmmmm...Sleepy Hollow, Nightmare Before Christmas, or Corpse Bride, anyone?) And of all the major Hollywood actors who could possibly get roped into the vampire scene, who better than Johnny Depp? Maybe he can do to vampires what he ended up doing to pirates.   

Talk About A Throwback to the Old Days...

I guess I'll be honest. Instead of working on the massive amounts of homework I had, I chose to procrastinate and watch one of my favorite TV shows on DVD. And the one I picked over the weekend was one of my childhood favorites, Dinosaurs, the sitcom starring none other than dinosaurs.

Courtesy of Sharetv.org

Because I was only a year old at the time Dinosaurs premiered, I'm guessing that I just always caught the reruns. But I can remember watching the show and always spouting off the trademark line, "I'm the baby, gotta love me!" (For the longest time, though, I could never remember the name of the show and could only call it "that show with the dinosaur family and the baby with the big purple eyes.")

Now, however, I can watch it and see and/or appreciate so many things I hadn't when I was younger. For instance, little me probably never would have cared that the Sinclair family and all their friends existed only thanks to the Jim Henson Creature Shop, which had also been responsible for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (another of my childhood favorites). In recent years, though, it completely blows my mind how awesome those dinosaurs looked in the days before CGI took total control over the industry.

And I know for a fact that little me also never would have gotten any of the very-grown-up references or morals. At five or six, there is no way I would have understood the jokes about the mating dance or even the drug abuse episode where dad Earl and siblings Robbie and Charlene go a little overboard eating a plant with side effects similar to those of marijuana. But, like so many of my childhood favorites, I can laugh at all those jokes I'd never gotten when I was little.

Not to mention I now remember exactly how hysterical the family baby -- fondly named Baby Sinclair -- was. In case you don't have any idea, you can check the Youtube video below of some of Baby's best moments from the first and second season:



Considering how much I loved this show growing up, I was so excited when I found all four seasons on DVD (on sale here from Amazon). And given that I've actually never seen the series finale for the show, I was a little devastated to find out that it had nabbed the number 6 spot on Cracked.com's List of Most Soul-Crushing Series Finales in TV History. But I guess a TV show starring dinosaurs couldn't be guaranteed a happy ending.   

Same Basic Plotline, Three Different Series

Lesson #226 - Vampirism, courtesy of SurvivingtheWorld.net

The fact that Halloween was yesterday combined with the fact that I am grossly behind on some of my favorite TV shows makes me realize exactly the nearly-disgusting overabundance of vampires in our culture lately. (I'll openly admit that I help contribute to this gross overabundance, but I'll have more on that later.) Seeing this picture over the weekend did little to change my mind.


Vampires are freaking EVERYWHERE. And I hate to admit this, but they're kinda starting to really bug me.

That said, I can't really complain too much. I am desperately trying to catch up with two of my favorite TV shows, one of which is currently in an off-season and the other which is currently in its second season, both of which are about none other than vampires. Not to mention, I'm also a little ashamed to admit I own the entire Twilight series and have already seen the three movies that have already been released.

But let me explain.  True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, and the Twilight franchise are my guilty pleasures. Maybe even not that guilty. But they all entertain me to some extent. With True Blood, it's the fact that a lot of the romanticism is stripped away from the vampires, which may or may not be attributed to it airing on HBO. I mainly watch The Vampire Diaries for the character Damon; his smart-ass, don't-get-in-my-way-or-I'll-kill-you attitude rarely fails to deliver. (Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so, according to this article on IO9.) And Twilight, well, it's just so bad it's almost good. Almost.

Courtesy of Photobucket.com

My biggest pet peeve about all three of these, though, is that you could basically strip away all the character names and personal backgrounds and all three story lines will still be pretty much identical, as the chart can explain. Granted, each series has its differences, but those are very few and far between.

Thankfully, vampires finally have some competition in pop culture obsession with classic horror movie characters. AMC's new zombie show, The Walking Dead (you can check out the show's site here) is certainly a forerunner to help zombies knock vampires off their pop culture throne. Which is becoming more and more likely, according to this article from Comcast.

Well, now I have another TV show I'll have to keep with every week. And I hope this one won't have a love triangle or a werewolf lurking around.