DVD of the Week 03/05/2012 Dark Shadows

	Monday 3rd May 2012      Dark Shadows  - The Revival This week was a week with a few exiting DVD releases which made picking one quite difficult. First release that was considered was Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol. Directed by Pixar director Brad Bird this addition to the series actually split out team. Carse was not such a fan of the film but Waterman loved it. I will write up another blog about that as there is a good argument about technology advancing films.            The other big film that was released was The Iron Lady, That got a lot of its hype because of the oscar winning performance of Meryl Streep and more importantly the un mentioned masters behind the film J.Roy Helland, Mark Coulier and their team for the fantastic make-up applied to Mrs Streep that made her performance all that more believable. Unfortunately it was a slightly misjudged film that didn't have an opinion on her politics and forgets that she was successful enough to be in power for three Terms. The film focuses more on her now. It focuses on her distant relationship with her children and her with dementia whilst going back to a few moments in her politics days. The Film was actually very boring and Streep's performance was wasted.           Now I have got that out of the way lets get on with DVD of the week. No guessing from the Title i am review Dark Shadows. Dark Shadows origins are from a black and TV shows from the 60s of the same name. Dark Shadows was remade as a colour TV series in the early 90s by NBC but was cut after the first series. The thing is Dark Shadows series was a fantastic series and was watch by 1/4 people who owned a TV in america It had bits of Horror and suspense that made it something that would have no doubt influenced the original Buffy with Kirsty Swanson which was released a year later.               This TV show stars the great Jean Simmons from Guys and Dolls not Gene Simmons from Kiss it also has a young star in the making. It stars a 10 year old Joseph Gordon-Levitt in his first serious acting role. The cast is great i would go as far to say an ensemble and now days this series is forgotten about. The only reason this is getting a re-release is due to a remake  of this series in the form of  a film.            The film is being directed by Tim Burton and if we can take one good thing from this film it is that it allowed the higher gods to see enough financial sense to release the original on DVD. The remake has a very exiting cast so i am not dismissing it entirely. Being a Tim Burton film it of course includes Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter but surprisingly it has a nice mixture of others including Eva Green,Chloe Moretz,Michelle Pfeiffer,Jackie Earle Hayley and Christopher Lee.                 I would really recommend checking out the series before the new film as if you base your opinion of the series from your view new film you will probably not choose to watch the series as the series is very different to how the series is being advertised.                              D Waterman