Sunday, April 5, 2009

True Blood behind the scenes: Coby ( Arlene's son) Fowler played by Alec Gray


Coby Fowler played by Alec Gray II

His previous roles here : IMDb here

The actor Kent Zbornak is Alec Grays's father.

Here he is in episode 8, the Bill and Sookie babysit episode.


His sister Lisa Fowler (Arlene's daughter ) is played by Laura Weber

I also saw him last night on MadTV: His skit can be seen at [11:29 min]

There will be blood

From the Sunday Herald -funny the didn't notice the runaway popular TV series, True Blood and the NYTimes best selling Sookie Stackhouse books.


Suddenly you can’t move for vampires ... but forget the capes and coffins. The 21st century undead wear jeans and own iPods. Susan Swarbrick looks at the ultimate fatal attraction

VAMPIRES SEEM to be everywhere at the moment. You can't throw a stick - make that a stake - without hitting legions of the undead. There's Twilight, the hugely successful film based on Stephanie Meyer's Bella Swan series of books, which outsold both Quantum Of Solace and High School Musical 3 in its opening weekend; the dreadful Lesbian Vampire Killers, in which glamour-model women run amok bearing fangs (and breasts) in rainy Wales; and upcoming Swedish flick, Let The Right One In, already a darling of film festivals worldwide.

Meyer may be the current queen of vamp-lit, but other serious contenders for the bookshop crown include Laurell K Hamilton, creator of Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, and mother and daughter writing team, PC and Kristin Cast, who recently published Hunted, the fifth book in their House Of Night series. The latter went straight to No 1 on the Wall Street Journal's fiction bestseller list.

Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican-born director of Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy, also has a series of novels, chronicling the origins of vampires, in the pipeline. The first book, The Strain, co-written with Chuck Hogan and about a vampire virus that infects New York, is due to be published in late May.

Even mainstream television is getting in on the act. Already this year there's been Demons, a Saturday teatime vampire epic resurrecting Van Helsing, on STV; and Being Human, in which a vampire, ghost and werewolf share a flat (cheerily billed as This Life meets Cold Feet and Buffy The Vampire Slayer), on BBC3.

In the US, television network CW - which is behind hit shows such as America's Next Top Model, Gossip Girl, 90210, Smallville and Supernatural - has capitalised on the burgeoning trend by commissioning a pilot called Vampire Diaries about a love triangle between two bloodthirsty brothers who fall for the same woman.

All this begs the question: why do these revenant creatures fascinate us so much? Well, for a start, vampires have undergone a major image overhaul. Far from being clinical, cold-hearted monsters motivated by an insatiable appetite for human blood, vampires have found their heart. Now they're all about the love.

Take Twilight. Vampire Edward Cullen, played by Robert Pattinson, has waited 90 years to find his soulmate before Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) turns up. Like all vampires, Cullen is immortal - he hasn't aged a day since 1918 - although, and here's the twist, he doesn't have fangs or drink human blood. Yes, modern vampires can make lifestyle choices as well as own iPods and wear jeans.

Vampires have also become somewhat declasse. There was the time when you had to be at least a count or baron (Dracula, Erzsebet Bathory, Gilles de Rais); now, it seems, anyone can get in on the act. They are also a far more unisex species. Both Lesbian Vampire Killers and Let The Right One In centre on - in very drastically different ways - the notion of female vampires.

Indeed the latter is a film which neatly turns the common portrayal of vampires on its head. Set in the suburbs of Stockholm in 1982, it tells the story of bullied schoolboy Oskar who is befriended by Eli, a 12-year-old outwardly normal girl who is actually a vampire. Although more of a poignant love story than a classical horror, by the same token it tackles those age-old burning questions such as what happens when a vampire encounters direct sunlight or crosses the threshold of someone's home uninvited (as it transpires, neither end-scenario is pretty). Enchanting and chilling in equal measures, the film is beautifully shot against a bone-achingly cold, snowy backdrop and likely not only to change your perception of vampires, but leave you feeling moved.

The local doyenne of the vampire genre is Glasgow-based Arlene Russo who, for the past decade, has edited the popular Bite Me magazine. Her passion dates back to childhood: aged 10, Russo would beg her parents to be allowed to stay up to watch Hammer Horror double bills on television.

Author of the book Vampire Nation, Russo doesn't give much stock to the latest clutch of vampire-themed literature, films and TV shows. "If more people opened their eyes, they would see that the vampire craze has always been there," she says. Rather than real aficionados of the genre, it is teenage girls, says Russo, who have latched on to the Twilight phenomenon. "Certainly I haven't noticed one new reader getting in touch as a result of Twilight," she says. "The producers would have you believe otherwise, but the reality is, no matter how good the film is - and I haven't seen it - it really isn't significant in the grand scale of things in vampire filmdom. Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee and Gary Oldman are hard acts to follow."

Asked how people's ideas about vampires have changed, Russo says it depends on existing perceptions. "If people want to see them as beautiful, they will," she says. "Of course, if they are good looking that always helps. If we saw more cinematic representations of corpse-like vampires, then maybe our fascination with them would wane. I certainly don't think people are as frightened of them as they used to be. Most people are desperate to meet one. I am forever being asked to introduce them to one."

Read on

http://www.sundayherald.com/arts/arts/display.var.2499895.0.0.php

True Blood Music Video of the Day: Innocence by Avril Lavigne



Innocence by Avril Lavigne LYRICS

Thanks, bgorejus