Monday, May 24, 2010

True Blood Season 2 DVD review from the Washington POst

Anna Paquin has a great Southern accent. The actress, who was born in Canada and grew up in New Zealand, manages to incorporate a regional twang in her dialogue as Sookie Stackhouse, the heroine of the HBO series "True Blood," without it sounding labored or exaggerated. In fact, it sounds less like a Hollywood version of a Southern accent than the real thing itself.

That's just one of the reasons why Paquin makes such a good heroine for this deep-fried soap opera, and why "True Blood" is so much more than simply another entry in the exsanguinated vampire trend. Better than "Twilight" (the movies and the books), better than "The Vampire Diaries," the series may trade on its Southern setting for a few laughs, but it never disdains its characters, their predicaments or any of its potentially silly fantastical elements, from vampires to the churches that arise to combat them.

The first season was a surprise hit for HBO, which had been struggling to find a show as popular as "The Sopranos" and "Sex in the City." On the surface, "True Blood" shouldn't work — or at least not as well as it does. Sookie, a chaste waitress who can read minds, falls in love with a 150-year-old vampire named Bill, whose Old South origins make him the model of a gentleman. And yet, it's not so much a love story as a story of love under unusual circumstances.

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