Friday, December 5, 2008

True Blood's Nelsan Ellis On Sexy Season Two & His Dad Hating His Character

We've all fallen in love with a drug-dealing, vampire-loving, burger frying, flamboyantly gay man. Or at least someone who plays one on TV. Nelsan Ellis, Lafayette on the HBO hit True Blood, is speaking up about the shaky future of his outspoken character.

Before heading inside to attend the Junior Hollywood Radio & Television Society holiday party Wednesday night in Hollywood, Ellis chatted about True Blood and his character's possible departure.

Will we see Lafayette on Season Two? "Naturally I love working on the show, so I want to come back," he said. "But it's up to the powers that be. So we'll see."

Ellis is referring to show creator and all-around genius Alan Ball, who has based the show on a popular book series. Spoiler alert: Lafayette dies in the first book. Ball has taken a few liberties and strayed from the books at times to fit with his vision. But with so many people rooting for a return on Lafayette, will Ball listen? Ellis said he feels proud to work on the show, which he promises is going to be much sexier in Season Two. As if that's even possible! He admits that his eccentric character is fun to play because it's such a departure from himself.

"It's fun. To be a heterosexual man and wear the lipstick and the makeup—I love it."

[Watch clips of True Blood on Fancast]

One thing we do know for sure is that Ellis plays one of the most popular new characters on TV. Surprisingly, he had no idea.

"Tell my father that," he joked, "because he hates my character! I didn’t know it, so it makes me blush a little bit."

If you need further proof about the popularity of this scene stealer, check out this online petition to save the character.

http://thebiz.fancast.com/2008/12/nelsan_ellis_story.html

Perfect holiday gift for your Stephen Moyer Fan ?


NAME a BRICK for them at BRENTWOOD THEATRE!

Who needs another sweater? For £50 (appx USD $80) you can name a brick for your True Blood / Bill Compton fan! Each Brick will be placed on the theatre’s Donor Wall — Plus your gift recipient will receive a thank-you certificate signed by Stephen Moyer himself! One or two lines (16 total spaces/letters per line) http://www.brentwood-theatre.org/donations.htm

NOW For a limited time for the holidays – Two individual donors who wish to share a Brick together – Only £29.5 (appx $45) per person, and each will get a signed certificate of their own!!

The ultimate gift for the ultimate fan also helps the final phase of construction at Brentwood Theatre – Essex, UK’s professional community theatre serving dozens of local non-professional performance groups – where Stephen Moyer is Patron.

Please contact Mark at mark @ brentwood-theatre.org or Jean at LaProv @ optonline.net for more information.

All contributions are voluntary; citizens of the USA and other countries are aware by this notice that any gifts will not be tax deductible in their own countries by law.

True Blood or Vampire inspired Christmas cards




Maybe you don't want to send out the same old Nativity scene or Santa Claus Christmas cards this year. You can really make your family think you've gone over the deep end by sending everyone one of these cards this year

Garrison Keillor once said "A lovely thing ab out Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together."


I found these here: SHOP


But you can also create your own
http://cards.cafepress.com
or
http://www.zazzle.com
clrobertson on the wiki has already done one(above) ...hahahah
Wait, I mean ho- ho- ho



A Fatal Attraction

.....

But the vampire legend hardly needs substitutes. It is strong enough to sustain itself for a while yet. While Shales was correct to warn against unthinking exploitations, he also admitted that the True Blood series was reason enough to go back to the haunted well. Funny, addictive and at times horrifically violent, in a very funny and addictive way, True Blood is proof that Russell T. Davies, the executive producer of the latest and hippest incarnation of Dr Who, wasn't blowing smoke up our collective fundament when he said that "writing monsters and demons and end-of-the world is not hack work. Joss Whedon [Buffy] raised the bar for every writer - not just genre-niche writers, but every single one of us."

In True Blood, set in the deep-south backwater of Bon Temps, the bloodsuckers are the least of the grotesqueries. Freed from the need to snack on humans by the invention of synthetic blood, they now move among us, "living" their alternative lifestyle surrounded by caricatures of Red State America, knuckle-draggin', tobacco-chewin', Lynyrd Skynyrd wannabes with pick-ups full of weapons, watermelon and moonshine. The same humming aura of sexual threat and promise surrounds the vampires but an acute sense of identity politics is also prominent as America's culture war is reprocessed through the story of their "coming out of the coffin".

"I love the fact that these creatures are struggling for assimilation. I can relate to that in certain ways," the show's creator, Alan Ball, told The New York Times. Ball's work, including Six Feet Under and the screenplay for American Beauty, has often dealt with the notion that people are not always what they seem.

"It's very easy to look at the vampires as metaphors for gays and lesbians but it's very easy to see them as metaphors for all kinds of things. If this story had been done 50 years ago, it would be a metaphor for racial equality. But I can also look at the vampires and see them as a kind of terrifying shadow organisation that is going to do what they want to do, whether they have to break the law or not. And if you get in the way, they'll just get rid of you. So it's a very fluid metaphor."

The genre might be getting a little, ahem, long in the tooth but the creatures themselves remain so versatile that a new variation on the theme is never far away. Witness author Charlie Huston's bringing life back into the oldest and tiredest of genre tropes, the private detective story, by the simple trick of making his tough-talking, two-fisted shamus one of the living dead. The gothic setting of Manhattan is more than well suited to a crossover between the two noirs - crime and horror - and Huston has the writing chops to pull off the stunt where others don't.

When perceiving the growing hordes of vampires crawling towards us across the landscape of pop culture, I suppose the question must arise: why?

In part there is a simple element of reinforcing success. As Russell Davies pointed out, Joss Whedon set a challenge that a lot of creatives found impossible to ignore. More importantly, he also reminded studio executives that the undead do pay, sometimes handsomely.

Beyond the pragmatic, however, there is always something else working. The 1950s obsession with UFOs and alien invasion movies almost certainly had its roots in Cold War fears and the Russians' early lead in the space race. So why vampires, rather than, say, ghosts or werewolves or man-made monsters in the style of Frankenstein?

"When I pitched the show to HBO, they asked me what it was about," says Ball of True Blood, "and I said, it's about what it really means to be disenfranchised, to be feared, to be misunderstood. It's a metaphor for the terrors of intimacy. That's one of the reasons vampires have been such a potent metaphor and mythological motif for centuries. They show up in pretty much all cultures. It's the notion of separating that part which keeps us safe and separate from another person, both emotionally and physically. And how there is a certain loss of self that takes place when there is true intimacy. And I think that's really healthy. But it doesn't mean it's not scary."

The sexual power of our toothsome predators is undoubtedly a factor. "We did a focus group," Ball says, "and it was great because the women loved the romance and the relationships and the men loved the sex and violence. And I thought, well, that's kind of a cliche but I'm glad. There's something in there for everybody."

Beyond the merely prurient, however, lies the terrible attraction of the vampire, the feeling that while it would be awful to lose one's soul upon rebirth as one of the nosferatu, it would also be, well, kinda cool. You'd "live" forever, with superpowers and unnatural beauty, and your nightlife would really kick up a gear. The mundane concerns and frustrations of mortal life would no longer be yours. Of all the monster archetypes, none remain as intellectually appealing as the vampire. They seem to gain so much and give up only their immortal souls, and in a secular, materialist world that hardly seems to be any kind of loss at all.

Twilight opens on Thursday. True Blood screens on Showcase from February 10.

From the article A Fatal Attraction Sydney Morning Herald Australia

http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/film/a-fatal-attraction/2008/12/04/1228257208366.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

We love Pam's safari look dress from the tribunal/Jessica episodes



...and you just gotta love a vampire wearing sunglasses


DIANE VON FURSTENBERG
Trinia shirt dress
Was $398 Now $278.60

Colonial-chic is a classic day wear look which exudes sophistication. This shirt dress is perfect for a luxe take on the safari look and works as a chic foundation layer. Go ethnic with wooden embellishments and tribal accessories or think polished perfection and trim with metallics. . 100% cotton. Dry clean. US sizing.

To see more from the line go here : http://www.net-a-porter.com/Shop/Designers/Diane_von_Furstenberg

Make Babies: what your baby would look like with a celebrity?


Nope, I'm not kidding ...this person tried it it with a photo of Eric/Alex
Enjoy

MakeMeBabies' unique technology will show you exactly (well... almost exactly...) what your future child with another person will look like!
We take both your photos, do some magic calculations, and congratulations! You have a new baby!

they brag that they have "made" over 6 million babies http://www.makemebabies.com/

True Blood Music Video of the day; Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis



I believe this is Leona Lewis singing Bleeding Love
( this video was recommended by Rachel as a blog comment )
Keep em comin' and I'll keep posting them