David Tennant: Fright Night and Facelift. Whoooo!

Being rather a fan of David Tennant (who is my favorite of all the Doctors) I try to keep up with what he's doing whenever I have a spare hour ... which isn't all that often these days!

So, I search on "David Tennant" and ... well, I see this and I think to myself, "Good lord, they're remaking FACELIFT!!!"

And you're thinking to yourself, "What the bleep is Facelift, and why should I care?" Or else, "What the bleep is AG babbling on about now?!"

Well, it's like this:


And that's Martin Shaw as Zax in a 1984 Channel 4 SF musical called (!) FACELIFT. Zax was a magician ... a stage magician who had actual powers. It was a shoestring production, but it was amazing -- actually well worth remaking with modern technology. Get me going one day and I'll tell you about it!

But no, actually David Tennant is not actually starring as Zax in a remake of FACELIFT ... he's starring in a remake of FRIGHT NIGHT, in which Roddy McDowall played Peter Vincent, the vampire hunter:

And it turns out that Roddy McDowall is also one of my all-time favorite actors, so I'm happy as a clam here. Can't wait for the remake ... of FRIGHT NIGHT, that is. And you're so right, I'd love to see a remake of FACELIFT, and I wouldn't at all mind if David Tennant were to play Zax. Martin Shaw was very good in the part -- and what an oddball Zax was. Beautiful, but odd.

True Blood on the cover of the Rolling Stone

I'm probably not the only one that didn't find the recent teen-vampire romance movies either attractive or entertaining. Those vampires were just too vanilla. Too designer sculpted to be appealing to an audience of adolescents.

Okay, so here's the180-degree flip of the compass: the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, with three hot bods and a bucket of blood. That's Anna Paquin (from X-Men), her fiance Stephen Moyer (with the strategically placed hand), and co-star Alexander Skarsgard.

Right. Why didn't we think of this before? You get Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas and Winona Ryder in a studio, lay down half a dozen garbage bags -- those big orange ones, big enough to pack half the garden after you've been busy with the weed whackers and chainsaws), and two buckets of blood, and you chuck the buckets over them.

Uh huh. Notice how none of the blood got on Anna's makeup, or in her hair? Now, if we could only figure out how to chuck two (or three) buckets of blood all over Brad, Antoni and Winona, and keep it out of their hair, and off their faces...

Want more on this? Indulge yourself right here.

I have one more question to ask. Who cleans the floor when the session's finished and the rest of the crew have gone home?

Johnny Depp: vampires rock!

Is anyone here old enough to remember Dark Shadows? Yeah, that videotaped soapie that was made about 40 years ago, and was still running circa 1980 or so ... where the "twist" that made the soap opera "go" was ... vampires!

Thank heavens I'm not the only one old enough to remember Dark Shadows! And I've always had a weakness for vampires. (In fact, a contender for my favorite of the Mel Keegan novels is Nocturne, which is a vampire novel -- the "spin" on this one, making it different and fantastic, is that the vampires are gay. Haven't heard of this one? Have a taste for gay vampires?! You need to get over to MK's page, and check it out!)

Anyway -- kick me occasionally and get me back on track -- you can't fail to have noticed that anything and everything from the 1960s and 1970s is being revamped (pun intended) into major motion pictures, so, given that vampires are huge business just now --

How surprised are you likely to be if I tell you, Dark Shadows looks like coming back as (!!) a major motion picture...

Starring Johnny Depp!

And there's a rumor about Tim Burton directing it!

Now, Dark Shadows made its TV debut when I was about four, so I was utterly oblivious. But by the time I was about 16 or so, it was screening on daytime TV in Australia, and I remember it vividly, from the 1980 era...

Soap opera, right? With vampires ... and unless memory is playing tricks, I remember were wolves, voodoo, zombies, and time travelers. And they managed to do this inside of a real, genuine soapie template. In other words, it was monstrous fun. (Pun intended -- again!)

Now, add in Johnny Depp, and Tim Burton to direct this movie, and ... where do you advance book tickets?! The original soapie show taped well over 1000 episodes, so it was a huge success. A major movie --? It's a no-brainer. The only mystery is why it hasn't been done before...

And speaking of Johnny Depp, here's a very good interview, at Contact Music.