FIERCELY ANTICIPATING On Friday, Dark Shadows is officially opening and I’m going to be sitting in a theatre sometime that day, watching the big horror offering of the summer movie season. Probably on an Imax screen. My tiny bit of ambivalence is swamped by fierce anticipation. While quick to say I don’t like horror movies, is this really a horror movie? Seems to me, from watching the trailer a number of times – and reading up a bit to try to sort this out – that Dark Shadows is closer to another billing given it: comedy and fantasy. Isn’t this new production going to be more like Rocky Horror Picture Show? This suspicion is strengthened by learning that TV Guide lists Dark Shadows as one of the Top Cult Shows Ever. Come on. This is a Tim Burton movie which stars Johnny Depp. The trailer has that polished, campy look of current movies looking back to the 1960s or 1970s, a sheen of high production values, and a cast of beauties including Helena Bonham Carter, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green, Chloé Grace Moretz and Bella Heathcote. Surely these ladies will lift the tone, at least a little. All this is very seductive, never mind the faultlessly charming Mr. Depp, or should I say the vampire Barnabas Collins? Never saw the soap opera produced by Dan Curtis on ABC in the late 1960s. Reading now about the series, I recognize a classic setup, beginning an involved plot with a young girl on a train heading to a gloomy seacoast town in Maine and a mixed reception from residents and family. This blend of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Turn of the Screw, and plots increasingly driven by mystery and the supernatural were a perfect foil for paperbacks...

Fiercely Anticipating Please, tell me its going to happen soon – the end of the NBA Lockout. No, not football, the NFL season is firmly in place, not that I care. What I care about is basketball, specifically basketball playoffs. I love a good playoff series. However, to have a good playoff series, you must have a good season and so far it seems the NBA 2011-2012 Basketball Season is likely to be cancelled. Trouble started right after the end of last season in June. Despite a good revenue year for basketball, the NBA lost about $300 to $500 million for the season. The owners are howling. Renegotiating the contract between the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) David Stern, NBA Commissioner, and Billy Hunter, NBPA Executive Director, laid out competing positions. Neither has moved in more than a month. The NBA has filed a legal complaint claiming that the players aren’t negotiating in good faith. The players are starting to look around for overseas contracts to fill in their apparently inevitable “gap year”. FIBA – the world governing body for basketball has decided that it will allow NBA players to choose an international FIBA team to play for during the lock-out, but only during the lockout. A number of NBA players, from lesser known to superstars including Boston Celtics E’Twaun Moore and the Laker’s Kobe Bryant – are interested. This doesn’t give me a good play-off season to look forward to however. While I sometimes enjoy games during the season, by the playoffs, basketball has become an aggressive interplay of strong, assertive players, sneaky moves, and astonishing throws and catches – what’s not to like? Now that I’ve got you riled up, you can track the developments here:...