Category: Uncategorized

Depp to Star in Remake of Dark Shadows

Keeping in the Halloween spirit, I’ll tell you that it’s been announced that the legendary, and slightly mad, director Tim Burton has signed Pride And Prejudice And Zombies writer Seth Grahame-Smith to adapt the late ’60s horror-soap-opera Dark Shadow into a film starring the slightly mad Johnny Depp. Apparently, Grahame-Smith was offered the job because Burton enjoyed his lesser known zombie-history novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. In fact, Burton liked it so much that he bought the rights and Burton is currently in pre-production on the film version of that novel.

In the movie version of the of Dark Shadows, the cult vampire daytime soap opera that ran from 1966 to 1971, Depp is set to play the lead Barnabas Collins, who throughout the show’s 1200 episodes experienced storyarcs including time travel, parallel universes, and encounters with many things that went bump in the night. Shooting on the film is slated to begin in January 2011 and this project will be the eighth collaboration for Depp/Burton, who last teamed up on Alice in Wonderland, a film not meant to be viewed without 3-D glasses and/or copious amounts of mind altering substances. Meanwhile, Depp is currently filming the next Pirates of the Caribbean installment.

Amazingly, actor Jonathan Frid, who played Barnabas Collins in the television show, is still alive and kicking and has his own website. And here I thought he’d only played a vampire.

Trick or Treat . . . . . .

Ha-Ha

One day, I shall have a Grade I listed home in England that will come complete with a typical English garden. This garden will include a multitude of roses, fountains, statuary, a maze, a grotto, a Ha Ha and even, perhaps, a hermit. Ha! Seriously, I always think a Ha Ha gives a property a substantial feel, as though it were absolutely necessary in order to separate your Georgian pile from the multitude of cows and sheep one is wealthy enough to allow to graze on one’s vast acreage. It is thought that their name, Ha-Ha, is derived from the sound persons made upon first encountering them. Ha-Has were both unexpected and amusing.

From Wikipedia: “The Ha-Ha is an expression in garden design that refers to a trench, in which is a fence concealed from view. Alternatively it can be used to mean a ditch the one side of which is vertical and faced with stone, the other face sloped and turfed, making the trench, in effect, a retaining wall (this is also sometimes known as a deer leap). The ha-ha is designed not to interrupt the view from a garden, pleasure-ground, or park, while maintaining a physical barrier at least in one direction.”

Here’s the Ha-Ha at Kyme Castle
And one at Leven Hall, below This is an arrangement of a sunken wall and ditch to allow views of the countryside beyond the garden and is the earliest recorded example of a Ha-Ha in England.
And (drumroll, please) the Ha-Ha at Burghley House

This is a sunken wall, which does not interrupt the views of a sweeping landscape, but which still does the job of keeping livestock away from gardens near a house. This feature began to form part of the English landscape in the 1720s. In 1770, Horace Walpole wrote: “No sooner was this simple enchantment made, than levelling, mowing, rolling followed. The contiguous ground of the park without the sunk fence was to be harmonised with the lawn within; and the garden in its turn was to be set free from its prim regularity, that it might assort with the wilder country without.”

A Ha Ha was also incorporated into the gardens at Kew, as descrived in Volume 10 of the Kew Bulletin, published by the Royal Botanical Garden in 1896: “The gardens of Kew are not very large, nor is their situation by any means advantageous, as it is low and commands no prospects. Originally the ground was one continued dead flat, the soil was in general barren, and without either wood or water. With so many disadvantages, it was not easy to produce anything tolerable in gardening; but princely munificence, guided by a director equally skilled in cultivating the earth and in the polite arts, overcame all difficulties. What was once a desert is now an Eden.

” The task could not have been easy. But there seems reason to believe that in the main features which still survive it was the work of (William) Kent, who has been termed the ‘founder of the school of landscape gardening.’ By the introduction of  the sunk fence or ha-ha (largely used at Kew) instead of walls or fences,” he brought external scenery into his landscape effects.”

In A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening by Andrew Jackson Downing (1855) the author elaborates: It is not too much to say that Kent was the leader of this class. Originally a painter, and the friend of Lord Burlington, he next devoted himself to the subject, and was, undoubtedly, the first professional landscape gardener in the modern style. Previous artists had confined their efforts within the rigid walls of the garden, but Kent, who saw in all nature a garden-landscape, demolished the walls, introduced the ha-ha, and by blending the park and the garden, substituted for the primness of the old inclosure, the freedom of the pleasure-ground.

Here’s a wonderful journal of the restoration of the Ha Ha at the Stow Landscape Gardens, above, where William Kent’s ideas about garden design were also implemented. In 1741, Lancelot (Capability) Brown was hired as head gardener, in charge of executing Kent’s designs. Ten years later, in 1751, Brown left Stowe and later became the most sought after garden designer in England.

The King's Speech

Colin Firth will be playing King George VI in a new film called The King’s Speech. Set to open in November, Geoffrey Rush plays royal speech therapist Lionel Logue, while Helena Bonham Carter will play the Queen Mum.
The King’s Speech tells the story of the man who would become King George VI, the father of the current Queen, Elizabeth II. After his brother abdicates, George ‘Bertie’ VI (Firth) reluctantly assumes the throne. Plagued by a dreaded nervous stammer and considered unfit to be King, Bertie engages the help of an unorthodox speech therapist named Lionel Logue (Rush). Through a set of unexpected techniques, and as a result of an unlikely friendship, Bertie is able to find his voice and boldly lead the country into war.

A handsome and rather shy younger son, George VI came to the throne after his brother, Edward VIII, abdicated the throne of England in order to marry Mrs. Simpson. George and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon were married in 1923 and had two daughters, Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret. The Queen Consort never forgave Edward VIII for his selfish action in abdicating, thus throwing the responsibility for the country upon her husband, whose health had never been the best. Within three years of his accession, King George VI found himself at the head of a country at war with Nazi Germany. Choosing to stay at Buckingham Palace in London through the worst of the bombing, the King and Queen garnered themselves legion of loyal subjects who praised them for their courage and for their selflessness in helping at air raid shelters and bomb sites and by standing fast through the blitz.

Charles, Prince of Wales, recently hosted a reception at Clarence House, his London home, to celebrate the work of the country’s only national stammering centre, The Michael Palin Centre for Stammering Children in Islington, north London. Speaking about George VI the Prince told his guests ”His stammer cut him off I think in so many ways from his parents and his brothers and sisters and drove him into himself as I suspect so many stammerers will understand. I think above all he experienced that awful fear of feeling different from others.”

The Prince joked with the audience about how the Monarch’s speech problem would be dealt with in the forthcoming film about his grandfather: “My grandfather was fortunate enough to receive speech therapist services which enabled him to overcome the condition.”

The Palin Centre was founded in 1993 and the comic actor and travel presenter agreed to the institution being named after him following his role as a stammering character called Ken in the hit movie A Fish Called Wanda.

You can watch an interview with Mr. Firth about his upcoming role here.

Thomas Lawrence Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery

Princess Sophia

 The National Portrait Gallery in London is staging an exhibition called, “Thomas Lawrence: Regency Power and Brilliance” from 21 October 2010 – 23 January 2011. Thomas Lawrence was the greatest British portrait painter of his generation., and this exhibition, the first to focus on Lawrence’s work in the UK for over thirty years, explores his development into the most celebrated and influential artist in Europe at the start of the nineteenth century. Featuring over fifty works, it showcases the artist’s greatest paintings and drawings alongside lesser known works, drawn from public and private collections around the world. When it closes in London, the exhhibition will move to the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut from 24 February to 5 June 2011. This will be the first exhibition in the United Kingdom since 1979 to examine Lawrence’s work and the first substantial presentation of this artist in the United States. It will present Lawrence as the most important British portrait painter of his generation and will explore his development as one of the most celebrated and influential European artists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By his untimely death in 1830 Lawrence had achieved the greatest international reach and reputation of any British artist.

A new book called Thomas Lawrence: Regency Brilliance and Power has been published in conjunction with the exhibition, edited by Cassandra Albinson, Peter Funnell, and Lucy Peltz, with essays by Cassandra Albinson, Peter Funnell, and Marcia Pointon.  This important book explores Lawrence’s political friendships and allegiances along with his exceptional role as witness to significant historical events, and contrasts these with his remarkable ability to depict the charm and innocence of childhood. Elected President of the Royal Academy in 1820, Lawrence was instrumental in establishing the status of the artist in 19th-century Britain.

Cassandra Albinson is Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art. Peter Funnell is the nineteenth-century curator at the National Portrait Gallery, where Lucy Peltz is the eighteenth-century curator. To coincide with the publication of the book (October 2010),

In fact, many of Lawrence’s works have become iconic and need no explanation as to the identity of the sitter, like these below:

And our favorites . . . . .

I can only hope that at least one of the Wellington portraits will be on view when I visit the Exhibition in London in December.

Do You Know About Midsomer Murders?

Midsomer Murders debuted on television in the U.K. on March 23, 1997 and to date there are about 85 episodes of the hugely popular series and counting. Midsomer Murders follows the investigations of Detective Chief Tom Barnaby (John Nettles) in the fictional English county of Midsomer. In the early seasons, his junior is Sergeant Gavin Troy (Daniel Casey), a mildly bumbling foil.  In later seasons, DCI Barnaby was assisted by DS Dan Scott, and currently by DS Ben Jones. Midsomer Murders is notable for its carefully crafted stories that revolve around the facade of a seemingly peaceful countryside that conceal all manners of vice and crime, including, but by no means limited to – blackmail, sexual deviances, suicide and murder.  The Queen herself is rumoured to be a fan of the show, while John Nettles was awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) this past June during the Queen’s birthday honours.

Jane Wymark (above right) plays Barnaby’s patient wife Joyce, who occassionally finds herself unwittingly near the scene of a crime. Laura Howard (above left) plays Barnaby’s daughter Cully, an aspiring actress.

Midsomer Murder is based on the novels by Caroline Graham, with scripts written by some of Britain’s best television writers. John Nettles said: “There’s something warped about the nature of our writers, they come up with extraordinary ways of killing people.”

The action in these decidedly tongue-in-cheek scripts takes place in cozy village locations, replete with stately manor homes and chocolate box cottages. Don’t let the bucolic settings fool you – you’ll soon be shown what evil lurks in the hearts of men. In an episode called Judgment Day, Joyce is chosen to judge a “perfect village” competition, but things are far from perfect in the village of Midsomer Mallow when womanising tearaway Peter Drinkwater (Orlando Bloom) is stabbed to death with a pitchfork. In Hidden Depths egotistical lawyer Otto Benham (Oliver Ford Davies) is drugged, trussed and made into a human target in the middle of his croquet lawn, then fired on with bottles of his favourite vintage wine from a replica Roman catapult.

Midsomer Murders benefits from a topnotch lineup of guest appearances, such as Richard Briers (Good Neighbors), Prunella Scales (Fawlty Towers), Timothy West (Iris), Anna Massey (The Pallisers), Una Stubbs (Till Death Us Do Part), Michele Dotrice (Vanity Fair), Trudie Styler (The Mayor of Casterbridge), Robert Hardy (War and Remembrance, All Creatures Great and Small) and Maggie Steed (Lipstick on Your Collar).

Guest appearances are also made by some of England’s most gorgeous scenery, a subject covered in a book called Midsomer Murders On Location by Sabine Schreiner and Joan Street – ‘The majority of the pretty villages that make up Midsomer country are actually strewn over four counties – Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire. Here for the first time is a comprehensive guide to the gorgeous locations used in the filming of the series.’

Recently Nettles announced he’d be leaving the series after thirteen years and will be replaced by Neil Dudgeon, who will step in as Barnaby’s cop cousin, John Barnaby. In an interview Nettles said, “I wanted to die in noble fashion in the service of my country and then be buried with full military honours in Westminster Abbey. In the event, Tom and his long-suffering wife Joyce will simply retire. It’s always better to leave when people want more.”

The show has garnered itself legions of diehard fans. Visit the Midsomer Murders comprehensive – and regularly updated – fan page here.