Wednesday, February 25, 2009

HBO: television will never be the same again

Critics, audiences and Barack Obama all agree that some of the most intelligent and trail-blazing entertainment in recent memory has come from one source: the US cable television channel HBO. But is there more to their magic formula than sex, violence and shopping? Sam Delaney finds out.

The executives at HBO took a year to make up their minds about David Chase's new drama. The pilot episode had been subtle, complex and dark. Were audiences really ready for a show about a mob boss in the throes of a midlife crisis? Then there was the name. The Sopranos? It sounded like a show about opera singers. They suggested some more explicit titles: Family Man, The Tony Files, Made In New Jersey. But Chase wouldn't budge. Eventually, against some of their better instincts, they gave the series the go-ahead.

When the first set of scripts came through, their worst fears seemed fulfilled. In one of the early episodes, protagonist Tony Soprano was described as taking his teenage daughter on a college road trip, during the course of which he beats then fatally strangles a former colleague turned FBI informant. The executives were aghast. 'We called David in and said, ''We can't have the hero commit a brutal murder this early in the series! Are you nuts?" ' says HBO co-president Richard Plepler. 'He said, ''That's what it is. That's the show I'm making.'' We thought about that for a while and said, ''OK, you're right. That is the show you're making. And it's a great show.'"

Read on Telegraph UK

HERE

Totally “In” In ‘09: Literal Vampires

* Dallas just slowly shakes her head*

OUT WITH 2008: People pretending to be vampires in True Blood & Twilight, pseudo-goth clothing associated with vampire subculture.

IN WITH 2009: Actual, literal vampires. As evidenced by these people from London’s Fashion Week:

http://www.bestweekever.tv/2009/02/25/totally-in-in-09-literal-vampires/

I saw another vampire inspired fashion article last week. HERE

I'll just let you guys be your own judge on this ...

Sookie Stackhouse book's dedications, acknowledgments and prologues for Book 5 Dead as a Doornail

Book 5 Dead as a Doornail

Dedication

This book is dedicated to a wonderful woman I don’t get to see often enough. Janet Hutchings (then an editor at Walker, now editor of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine ) was brave enough to take me on many years ago after I’d taken a long sabbatical from writing. God bless her.

Acknowledgments

I didn’t thank Patrick Schulz for loaning me his Benelli for the last book—sorry, Son. My friend Toni L. P. Kelner, who pointed out some problems in the first half of the book, is due a big hats-off. My friend Paula Woldan gave me moral support and some information on pirates, and was willing to endure me on Talk Like a Pirate Day. Her daughter Jennifer saved my life by helping me prepare the manuscript. Shay, a Faithful Reader, had the great idea for the calendar. And in thanking the Woldan family, I have to include Jay, a volunteer firefighter for many years, who shared his knowledge and expertise with me.

Must Love Hellhounds: a new anthology from Charlaine Harris

You can pre-order Must Love Hellhounds now on Amazon.
This title will be released on September 1, 2009.

Charlaine has said this one will contain a science fiction novella based on the Britlingens.

"I've already written a novella that's a sort of spinoff from the Sookie series, about the two female bodyguards that appear in All Together Dead . It'll appear in a three-in-one book called Must Love Hellhounds"

I posted more about this book here : http://lovingtruebloodindallas.blogspot.com/2009/02/charlaine-harris-is-writing-sookieverse.html

Fashion faux pas in Sookieville : Graceland t-shirt




Who wears this t-shirt, in what book and what is the scene ?

You have to email me with your guess..

Email: True Blood in Dallas

True Blood Season 2 Possible Title Song: Ep. 5 " Never Let Me Go"

This is exciting ! We now (might)know the titles of the first 5 episodes of True Blood for Season 2.
Now the one thing we know about True Blood is that the episode names come from the a song used in and that it is somehow significant to that episode.

Episode 2.01 - Nothing but the Blood
Episode 2.02 - Keep this Party Going
Episode 2.03 - Changed to Scratches from Scratch My Back
Episode 2.04 - Changed to Shake and Fingerpop from Let's Take a Trip Together

All we know about Season 2 spoilers, casting calls etc. can be found here
We know the amazing Gary Calamar puts great effort into musically curating True Blood !

Episode 2.05 - Never Let Me Go

Now, this is only my guess, I just research the various songs with the leaked title and come up with a song I think it might be.

The obvious choice here for the Episode 5 title song is probably the very famous Curtis Mayfield love song "Never Let Me Go" and I'll also include a video of it below too. I was digging around and I found another interesting song and it's from a crunk band and I thought it would be great to talk about crunk.

So another possibility for " Never Let Me Go " could be from the Family Force Five. Family Force 5 (often abbreviated FF5, formerly known as The Phamily and The Brothers) is a crunk rock band from Atlanta, Georgia.

The three leading members of the band are sons of Jerome Olds, a Christian artist from the late 1980s. Prior to the formation of Family Force 5, the brothers were also members of a "boy band" known as The Brothers.

I'm always looking for interesting southern connections for True Blood music and FFF is described as a crunk band. Crunk is a style of music which originated from southern hip hop and electronic dance music in the early 1990's.
Webster's Dictionary defines "crunk" as a "word of fluctuating meaning used during the 1990s in lyrics of the rap groups OutKast and Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz, a style of Southern rap music featuring repetitive chants and rapid dance rhythms."




OK, OK the song is probably really the lovely song below but this was fun...

男女主角假 : I think that means, Breaking news, Anna and Stephen are dating in Chinese!

Sookie and Bill a couple in real life ...huge news in Beijing, China. Hey, did anyone in the media have time to listen to Obama last night ??


HBO劇集《真愛如血》(True Blood)的男女主角安娜-帕昆(Anna Paquin)與斯蒂芬-莫耶(Stephen Moyer)假戲真做,在片場外也談起了戀愛“我們在一起了。”斯蒂芬-莫耶向《電視指南》雜志証實。在《真愛如血》中,斯蒂芬-莫耶扮演一名173歲的吸血鬼Bill Compton ,與能夠接受自己身份的Sookie(安娜-帕昆飾演)發展了一段羅曼史。斯蒂芬-莫耶坦言兩人在第一次為《真愛如血》試鏡時就彼此吸引,但兩人當時都決 定暫時不公開戀情 斯蒂芬-莫耶與前妻有兩個孩子,現在的他頻頻往返于自己在倫敦的家以及安娜-帕昆在洛杉磯的家










They kept things under wraps ...really ?

We had no idea......

They have been dating for about two years, if he fell for her at the audition. He was one of (maybe the last ) major character cast for True Blood and the writer's strike delayed the shooting that season so that means they would have met in March 2007.

Sam and Sookie kissing, humph !
Wait until Bill gets a whiff of Sookie and Eric's smoldering attraction, which we will get some of this season...

I guess Anna will just have to tell Stephen to stay off the set that day ...

Ryan Kwanten talks True Blood : A new-fangled take on blood suckers


VAMPIRES may not like the sun, but they certainly have no aversion to the limelight. The cultural phenomenon that stretches back to Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula has resurfaced in umpteen guises since. Lately, teens who like their vamps glitter-skinned and their heroines breathless have turned to Stephenie Meyer's Twilight novels and film. Those looking for something meatier, however, can sink their teeth into Alan Ball's new series, True Blood.

Yes, it has a vampire romance but this is no Mills & Boon with fangs: the violence is brutal, the sex sweaty, the dialogue salty and the humour dry. As with Twilight, it has its origins in a series of novels. Ball (Six Feet Under) stumbled across one of Charlaine Harris' books and became hooked on the sultry supernatural world set in the Louisiana bayous.

The first book focuses on telepath Sookie Stackhouse (played by Anna Paquin, who won a Golden Globe for her performance), her romance with a vampire, Bill Compton, and a serial-killer mystery. But after the first two episodes, Ball began developing new storylines for other members of the ensemble.

"I think Alan's very clever like that," says Stephen Moyer, who plays Bill. "He knows that it can't just be (a romance). I think that it ultimately is a love story, but it doesn't mean it can't be 20 other things as well. When I read the script, I couldn't believe how much he'd packed into it."

One beneficiary of Ball's approach is Australian actor Ryan Kwanten, who plays Sookie's brother, Jason. Once a Home & Away regular, Kwanten now lives in Los Angeles and was sought out by Ball.

"He'd seen a film of mine and saw characteristics of Jason Stackhouse in the character I was playing," Kwanten says. "Next thing you know, I was hired."

Ball expanded the character of Jason, giving him his own storyline and an hilarious episode involving a severe case of priapism. Kwanten, 32, has the task of making the self-centred, womanising Jason not seem like a lost cause.

"I threw away the textbook on everything I thought I knew about acting and just flew by the seat of my pants, because that's exactly how this guy operates," he says. "It's really liberating to play a character like that, because a lot of characters tend to be very brooding."

The brooding territory in True Blood is pretty much covered by Civil War vampire Bill, whom Moyer describes as "completely angst-ridden … your classic tortured hero".

From the Age Australia

Read on

True Blood Music Video of the Day; Trouble by Bubba



Trouble by Elvis Presley ( sung by Bubba)

Thanks BgBbyBluEys