True Blood News - Season 4 news and spoilers

There it was in lights, “Griff the Invisible.”  I was one of the lucky ones that got to go see Griff at the Shattuck Cinema in Berkeley, California on August 19th. Like anybody else who’s obsessed with True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten, I scoped out the joint to see what I could get my grimy little paws on to share with my buddies at the Nest. First stop, popcorn.  And there it was.  A small and simple postcard of Griff, double sided and staring at me whispering, “Take me.”  Luckily there was a stack of postcards, from which I took a handful, which made me very happy.

Griff started off like a typical superhero movie. Griff running down a dark alley saving the woman in distress and doing a marvelous job at it, but soon you get to see Griff for who he really is.  A shy, exocentric guy by day who’s a bit of an outcast and gets picked on by one of his fellow co-workers (don’t worry he gets him back in the Griff way).  But by night, Griff transforms himself in to the superhero in the name of justice.  Having an elaborate tracking system setup in his apartment to watch the neighborhood, and to be able to rid his community of their criminals and waiting to hear from the commissioner on his Red Griff Phone, he sets forth every night dreaming of saving his neighborhood.  But at last, that’s all it is.  It’s only a dream in his mind. It seems like Griff has a very vivid imagination which his brother (Tim) played by Patrick Brammall, knows all too well. He doesn’t seem to mind at first, moving from Los Angeles to be with Griff.  He helps him get a job and visits him on regular basis.  On one of those visits he brings a girl over that he’s been telling Griff he’s been dating, and thinks she could be the one. Well Griff, not use to company, freaks-out a bit but then lets them in. Tim’s new girlfriend Melody, played wonderfully by Maeve Dermody, is a bit of an eccentric herself and sees something more in Griff. She actually finds a soul mate of sorts in him. Melody also has a unique perception on life and we watch her test her faith over and over believing at the right moment in time she could figure out how to become invisible to walk through walls hitting her head and falling every time she tries.  She sees herself in Griff and quickly becomes smitten with him. Read More »

I’ve always held a deep fear of Apocalyptic films, maybe because they tend to miss the serious basis the great science fiction literary works provide. If you are a bit bitchy, as I am, and tend to always look for inconsistencies, you’ll know what I mean. In this genre, everything tends to be done fast and looks like the only things that matter are the special effects. I’m somewhat relieved to find out that “Ice” is not like that, at least not exactly. “Ice” generates a kind of serene entertainment; even if the situations in the film are chaotic, you don’t get mad at storytelling blanks and you don’t find your intelligence insulted at every scene change. And some of the scenery in the film is beautiful, though, as you probably know, my favorite view is anywhere with Stephen in it.

“Ice” is an adaptation of James Follett’s environmental apocalypse thriller and it’s directed by Nick Copus. It was filmed in New Zealand in 2010 and stars Richard Roxburgh, Frances O’Connor, Tom Hern & Sam Neill, among others.

Read More »

A Taste of True Blood: A Fangbangers Guide, edited by Leah Wilson and published by SmartPop Books, will be available at bookstores and online on June 29th. I was fortunate enough to get an early copy to peruse and review for you lovely fan(g)s.

This collection of essays, like all collections, contains some offerings that are better than others, some topics were more interesting to me, and the organizational system left something to be desired (the order felt random).

That aside, the book was a lot of fun. It’s aptly titled for fangbangers, as it’s not pretending to be intellectual or academic. Rather, the essays tend to feel more like thoughtful (albeit long) posts, or a discussion that would occur between friends over vampire-kiss martinis during a True Blood marathon. I appreciate that honesty in the book’s definition and intended audience, and I think it makes for a better read.

Read More »

Salon.com has a wonderful take on “Beautifully Broken”‘s theme of what happens when “parents” abandon their “children”:

“The children grow up bitter and vulnerable, never having learned how to change quickly from a dog into an owl should they find themselves about to be hit by a Mack truck (Sam). Or they walk away from true love (Jessica) and when they have to dismember the trucker they accidentally killed and hid in the basement, they have no idea how expensive chainsaws are! Or they end up suicidally depressed, grieving the accidental death of their zombie serial killer boyfriend (Tara)… “Life is suffering,” Lafayette reminds Tara, on the way to visit the nasty, cold, grinch-hearted woman in the hospital who is apparently his mother. True. But it’s nice to know you can still rent chainsaws.”

Read More »

Personally, I enjoyed last night’s episode, “Beautifully Broken.” There were some things that I would’ve preferred to be different, but the ‘net abounds with some rather harsh criticism. If you’re interested in reading what non-fan(g)s are saying, here’s a well-written, well-reasoned example that rates Skin vs. Scare.

“Skin overshadowed scares last week, but Episode 2, titled “Beautifully Broken,” made up for it by pandering to the horror crowd with a chainsaw (wielded by the wonderfully immature young vampire Jessica, who will hopefully take on a larger role), a completely unnecessary reference to Stephen King’s Christine, and a flashback involving werewolf Nazis. This really was the Tarantino episode.”

“The show began and ended with a burst of excitement, but in between, it fizzled, burdened by a strained plot and too many long close-ups of very serious faces. Thus far, the major battle of the third season of True Blood is not between light and dark so much as between light and heavy. Heavy dominated this time.

Tara and Sookie were both in tears over lost loves. To which I say: Get over it, ladies. That was an entire episode ago, a lifetime in soap-opera years. Lafayette hardly brightened the mood with this groaner: “The Buddhists weren’t lying when they said life is suffering.” Did “the Buddhists” write this episode? And look, one plotline about reuniting with lost parents can slow a pulp soap opera down, but two? That’s dramatic quicksand. Moreover, when Sam sat down with his parents (Lafayette also visited his mother), his moody new brother stormed out of the room because … why exactly?

You know the writers are getting lazy transitioning from one heated moment to the next when they rely too much on the stomping-out-of-the-room gambit. When Sookie ran into the bathroom after Bill proposed marriage, you almost wanted him to take back his offer—that is, if you didn’t know enough about the conventions of the show to realize that storming out of a room is just True Blood code for Something Big Is About To Happen.”

Ouch. I have to say, he does make some valid points. There’s much more to this review – Eric’s tender side and some of the many new additions to the cast. Click on the link above for the entire article.

Entertainment Weekly reviewer Ken Tucker gave True Blood Season 3 a B+.

“How difficult it is to be sleek, sexy, and swift — all qualities True Blood displayed so effectively last season — when you’re straining to introduce new friends and enemies to your audience. That’s the challenge of True Blood‘s third season. There’s so much going on with the characters to whom we’re committed (Anna Paquin’s Sookie, Stephen Moyer’s Bill, Alexander Skarsgård’s Eric, Rutina Wesley’s Tara, and Sam Trammell’s Sam Merlotte, to skim the surface) that the first few episodes of the new season are crammed to bursting with plotlines — and faces — old and new.

The big addition this season is the introduction of werewolves to the true bloodiness of the show. Remorseless shifters with superstrength who get hopped up on vampire blood as though it were some combination of Ecstasy and crack, the werewolves arrive with a World War II backstory complete with flashbacks of Eric and Godric (Allan Hyde) posing in Nazi uniforms. In a show this stuffed with goodness, may I offer a small suggestion? Flashback scenes just take up valuable time we could be spending in the present.”

The crowded set has been mentioned by many reviewers and critics, although I have to respectfully disagree with Ken Tucker – in the previous season, the flashbacks have been parts of the show I’ve most enjoyed. With so many wonderful characters who’ve lived such long (albeit dead) lives, not tapping into their back-stories would be tragic. (Maybe Alan Ball and Co. can consider doing Biography-style hour-long specials?)

In conclusion, Ken Tucker wrote, “What show creator Alan Ball has brought to True Blood‘s pulp-horror trappings is a unifying theme of power versus helplessness: an insistence that victims are capable of toughening, of overcoming their powerlessness to become smarter and stronger. It’s a positive message that Ball and his writers and directors smuggle into a show that only seems to revel in decadence, gore, and duplicity. True Blood‘s dirtiest little secret is that it may be among the most ethical, even righteous, shows on television.”

Matt Fowler at IGN TV explains in hilarious detail the differences between the two series and why True Blood wins more ass-kicking points than Twilight: “It’s true. True Blood wins. Easily. On almost every single conceivable level. It’s hardly even a fair fight. It’s like watching a bed-ridden asthmatic try to knock down a sequoia. By huffing and puffing. True Blood is a salaciously sinister and fiendishly fun series featuring insane characters filled with life and color. Twilight is a sniffly-nosed, dew-covered mope-fest filled with silence and shame.”

Comparing Bill and Eric to Edward and Jacob is “… kind of like comparing an ice sculpture of a malnourished swan and a broken piece of treated back porch flooring to ferocious hell-demons with flaming d***s.”

And do not miss the letter to a magazine by a disgruntled Twilight fan who thought the movie “Werewolf” had stolen it’s entire plot from “Twilight: New Moon.” Make sure you pee first.

Source