»» About Tamara Obscura

TAMARA OBSCURA began humbly. It started out as a photo site on Fotopic.net and evolved into full blown site somewhere around 2005 or 2006. The domain tamara-braun.com was purchased on 06 March 2006 and went live on 18 April 2006. At that point I, your eponymous leader, created something that resembled a kiddie project much in line with a paper doll cut-out of what I thought a website should look like. Much to my chagrin, my attempts were only half-assed, though the gallery looked pretty nifty with all the images hastily added into a morass of non-sensical categories and albums. New to the Coppermine experience was I. But heck, I got something up! Sometime later that year, I began learning the basics of what the IFRAME could do in terms of making it easier to keep things updated. One file to rule them all, one file to find them, one file to bring them all, and in the file manager to bind them. Though for me, the IFRAME sucked in terms of attractiveness on a website. So I sought to further my webmaster prowess…er…um, experience and learned the art of erasing all knowledge I knew of HTML and embraced, rather amazingly, the concept of PHP. This was sometime in 2008. Happy with what I’d learned about CSS, PHP and other scripting formats, I then decided I’d try to grasp the art of Cutenews as a content management system. That served me throughout the better part of the further development of this site…buuuuuuuut, I still wasn’t happy. Why? Tamara deserved better. So after months of promising a new layout and graphics, this webspace dedicated to Tamara Braun, has finally evolved. How? By bringing in the pitch-hitter. Baseball parlance we have here. What is the pitch-hitter? WordPress, of course. Deciding that Cutenews was passe, WordPress came in and did the clean up. So now in this form, TAMARA OBSCURA has become the website you see before you. Though not perfect, it has become a work of art.

I should also mention the acquisition of the domain tamarabraun.org. This initially was what was known as carlycorinthos.net and belonged to Hurley. Hurley had begun one of the first websites dedicated to Tamara and her work. The original site evolved into what became known as EVE. Sometime in and around mid 2010, Hurley decided to put EVE to rest, having spent six years in her dedication to Tamara, due to time constraints and life’s dictates, Hurley contacted me and asked if I wanted to take over her content and domain. I of course said, “Yes!” How could I refuse? For the longest time, Hurley and I were on opposing sides of how best to represent Tamara, so when Hurley asked if I wanted her content, I was shocked. After buying up her domain and transferring her content to my computer, the journey going forward is now one of deciding what to do with all the images, clips, et al. So this is the way further.

— Dianne (webmaster) 05 December 2010

»»About the Webmaster…Your Fearless Leader

• Name: Dianne
• Age: Um, what’s that?
• Location: Circling Alpha Centauri.
• Where did I first see Tamara?: General Hospital as Carly Corinthos, though I vaguely remember having seen her in The Pretender as Claire Dunning and in The Sentinel as Stacey Neumann, having watched both these shows in the latter part of the 1990s.
• Favourite Tamara Roles: Carly Corinthos in General Hospital having loved her interpretation of the more mature and progressed Carly. Ava Vitali in Days of our Lives. Reese Williams in All My Children, Rose, the Baker in Freddie, Marie-Louise LeBauve in Little Chenier, Renee-Ellen in Saving Grace…..
• Favourite Actors: Mitch Pileggi, Hugh Jackman, Nick Chinlund, Christopher Meloni, Arnold Vosloo, Victor Garber, Stephen Nichols, Ian McShane, Brian Cox, Adam Beach, Michael Sheen, Billy Nighy, Frank Langella, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Karl Urban, Bernard Hill, David Strathairn, Daniel Craig, David Hedison, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Rufus Sewell, Oded Fehr, William Sadler, Peter Wingfield, Rutger Hauer, Eamonn Walker, Alexander Skarsgard, Stellan Skarsgard, Stephen Moyer, Mark Rolston, Jonny Lee Miller, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, James Marsden, Timothy Olyphant, John Hawkes, Ron Perlman, Martin Landau, Barry Morse, Prentis Hancock, Nick Tate, Tony Anholt, Robert Redford, Taylor Kitsch, Johnny Strong, Johnny Messner, Ted King, Sam Neill, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd, David Wenham, Eric Bana, Robert Patrick, David Duchovny, Nicholas Lea….
• Favourite Actresses: Diane Neal, Eva Green, Lena Olin, Angelina Jolie, Olga Kurylenko, Rhona Mitra, Jennifer Garner, Emily O’Brien, Jennifer Bransford, Famke Janssen, Anna Paquin, Deborah Ann Woll, Kristen Bauer, Sharon Tate, Gillian Anderson, Robin Weigert, Molly Parker, Kim Dickens, Anna Gunn, Catherine Schell, Zienia Merton, Torri Higginson, Rachel Weisz, Patricia Velasquez, Jenette Goldstein, Sigourney Weaver, Julie Gonsolo….
• Favourite Films: The Fountain, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, Frost/Nixon, Little Chenier, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, Smoke Signals, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, A Mighty Heart, Kung Fu Panda, Flushed Away, Happy Feet, X-Men: Origins Wolverine, X-Men, X2: X-men Unite, Spy Game, Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, Hair, All That Jazz, The Price of Milk, Out of the Blue, Rain, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, The Dreamers, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven, Good Night and Good Luck, The Bourne Trilogy, All The Presidents Men, The Deal, Music Within, Flash of Genius, Flashbacks of a Fool, The Fly (1958), Gojira, Mothra, Mothra vs Godzilla, Gamera: The Invincible, All in Godzilla and Gamera Series, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, Aliens, Titanic, The Abyss, The Bear, The Lover, 9 Songs, Vildspor, Wet Hot American Summer, The Souler Opposite, Sinner, Below, Amy’s Orgasm, Goodnight Joseph Parker, A Brother’s Kiss, The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, The Ocean’s Trilogy, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Rosemary’s Baby, The Ninth Gate ….
• Favourite Television Shows: Deadwood, Kings, Supernatural, Space: 1999, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (Seasons 1-9), The Pillars of the Earth, Eli Stone, New Amsterdam, Crusade, Alias, Queer as Folk, Vanished, FlashForward, Tour of Duty, Frasier, Dark Shadows, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Law & Order, Beauty and the Beast….
• Favourite Authors: Edvard Radzinsky, Robert K. Massie, David Breashears, Conrad Anker, Ken Follett, James Rollins, John Twelve Hawks, James Rollins, Anne Rice, Christopher Rice, James Oliver Curwood, Benita Eisler, Maurice Lever, Margurite Duras….
• Favourite Books: The Pillars of the Earth, The Vampire Chronicles, The Mayfair Witches Chronicles….
• Favourite Singers/Bands/Composers: Rush, Simple Minds, The Doors, The Who, Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music, Enigma, ERA, Delerium, Sarah Brightman, Loreena McKennitt, Tori Amos, Josh Groban, Clint Mansell, Cliff Martinez, Mark Snow, Moby, Alessandro Safina, Jose Cura, Colm Wilkinson, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Hans Zimmer, Chicago, James Horner, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Creedence Clearwater Revival, David Bowie, Queen, Sting, The Police….