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I recently did a Season 2 Spoiler show for my Blogtalk radio show, where we looked at what we might know about the upcoming episode by examining the title song for that episode.
I can't tell you how many emails I received from folks saying they felt so stupid for not realizing that the True Blood episodes were named for songs. It's OK but I thought it might be a good idea to look back at the song, the artist and the lyrics for each of last season's episode title songs.
So let's look back to Episode one: Season one Strange Love' first aired 9/7/2008
Strange Love - by Slim Harpo ( we have another Slim Harpo song for Season 2 I think HERE)
Sometimes called electric swamp blues written by James Moore, aka Slim Harpo. Crowley, 
Louisiana, October 1965 Excello Records.
James Moore AKA Slim Harpo Born: January 11, 1924 in the parish of West Baton Rouge, Louisiana. As a figure in the post-war rural blues, his music is often described as Louisiana swamp blues. As a teenager, his parents died, leaving him to raise one brother and three young sisters.
Strange Love
Strange love, cutest thing I ever seen
Strange love, cutest thing I ever seen
You remind me of somethin' that I have seen in a dream
Can I take you out to dinner, some place where we can be alone
Can I take you out to dinner, some place where we can be alone
Tell you how much I love you, then let me hold you in my arm
(Harp solo here)
You asked me there's honey, love to be your honeycomb
You asked me there's any honey, I love to be your honeycomb
Then when the time is right darling there'll be some lovin' goin' on
You can hear a little sample of it here at Amazon or buy a copy for 99c
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
'Strange Love': the song title song for True Blood Season One Episode one
Anna Paquin stars in Hallmark Hall of Fame "The Courageous Heart of Irene Sendler" airs Sunday April 19th.
ACADEMY AWARD(R) AND RECENT GOLDEN GLOBE(R) AWARD WINNER ANNA PAQUIN STARS IN "THE COURAGEOUS HEART OF IRENA SENDLER," A NEW "HALLMARK HALL OF FAME" PRESENTATION TO BE BROADCAST SUNDAY, APRIL 19 ON THE CBS TELEVISION NETWORK
Based on the Courageous True Story of 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Irena Sendler, Who Is Credited with Saving the Lives of 2,500 Jewish Children during World War II
Academy Award Winner and Nominee Marcia Gay Harden ("Pollock," "Mystic River"), Nathaniel Parker ("The Inspector Lynley Mysteries") and Goran Visnjic ("ER") Also Star
Academy Award and Golden Globe Award winner Anna Paquin ("The Piano," "True Blood") stars in THE COURAGEOUS HEART OF IRENA SENDLER, a new "Hallmark Hall of Fame" presentation to be broadcast Sunday, April 19 (9:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. The drama is based on the courageous true story of Nobel Peace Prize nominee Irena Sendler (Paquin), who is credited with saving the lives of 2,500 Jewish children during World War II. Academy Award winner and nominee Marcia Gay Harden ("Pollock," "Mystic River"), Nathaniel Parker ("The Inspector Lynley Mysteries") and Goran Visnjic ("ER") also star. Harden plays Sendler's mother, Janina, and Parker portrays Dr. Majkowski, the head of Warsaw's Department of Health who helped Sendler obtain important resources for her mission. Visnjic plays Stefan, a former university friend of Sendler who was Jewish and with whom she fell in love when she started her clandestine work in the Warsaw ghetto.
As a Polish Catholic social worker in the early 1940s, Irena Sendler created and led a conspiracy of women who moved in and out of Warsaw's Jewish Ghetto disguised as nurses employed by Warsaw's Health Department. Though they worked under the guise of merely attempting to prevent and contain the spread of Typhus and Spotted Fever, Sendler and her brave cohorts emerged each time with the children of consenting Jewish parents. The children were sometimes sedated and hidden inside boxes, suitcases and coffins as a means of rescuing them from their imminent deportation to death camps. They were given new identities and placed with Polish families and in convents. Sendler kept a hidden record of their birth names and where they were placed with the hope that they would some day be reunited with their own families.
In 1943, the Nazis discovered Sendler's daring and dangerous ruse and arrested her. She was tortured by Gestapo agents and suffered broken feet. On the day of her scheduled execution she was rescued by "Zegota," the underground network with which she worked to save the Jewish children.
As a result of Sendler's efforts, approximately 2,500 children were smuggled to safety. Not a single child she rescued was ever betrayed or discovered by the Nazis.
The movie is based on the authorized biography of the heroine, Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Irena Sendler Story, by Anna Mieszkowska, published in 2005.
In 2007 Sendler was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. That same year, Hallmark Hall of Fame acquired exclusive movie rights to the book and negotiated life-rights with Sendler and her family members. Sendler died on May 12, 2008 at the age of 98.
Anna Paquin won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at age 11 for her role in "The Piano." Her additional film credits include her recurring role as Rogue in "X-Men" and its two sequels, as well as roles in "The Squid and the Whale," "25th Hour," "Buffalo Soldiers," "Finding Forester," "Almost Famous," "Hurlyburly," "She's All That," "A Walk on the Moon," "Amistad," "All the Rage," "Fly Away Home," Franco Zeffirelli's "Jane Eyre" and "Blue State." Paquin's television credits include a lead role in the series "True Blood," for which she recently won a Golden Globe Award, and an Emmy nominated role in the movie "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee." Among her theater credits are her stage debut in "The Glory of Living" at New York's MCC Theater, for which she received a Drama Desk nomination as Best Lead Actress. She was also in the first West End production of "This Is Our Youth."
Marcia Gay Harden won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for her role in "Pollock." Among her additional film credits are "Mystic River," for which she earned an Academy Award nomination, "Miller's Crossing," "The First Wives Club," "Meet Joe Black," "Mona Lisa Smile," "The Hoax," "Into the Wild," "American Gun" and "Used People." Harden's television credits include her current lead role in the series "Damages," a lead role in the Network series "The Education of Max Bickford," an Emmy nominated guest-starring role on "Law & Order: SVU," a role as Ava Gardner in the CBS mini-series "Sinatra" and a role in the "Hallmark Hall of Fame" presentation "In From the Night," also on the Network. Her theater credits include "Angels in America," for which she earned a Tony Award nomination and won the Drama Desk Award.
Nathaniel Parker's television credits include the title role in the BBC series "The Inspector Lynley Mysteries," which has had a 23 episode run between 2002 and 2007, the title role in the mini-series "David" and a starring role in the BBC mini-series "Bleak House." Among his film credits are "Hamlet," "The Bodyguard," "Stardust," "Beverly Hills Ninja," "The Haunted Mansion," "Flawless" and "War Requiem." Parker joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1986 and appeared in several of their productions, including "Richard II" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Subsequent West End stage credits include David Mamet's "Speed-the-Plow" as well as a recent U.K. touring production of Simon Gray's "Quartermaine's Terms."
Goran Visnjic is well-known for his role as Dr. Luka Kovac on the series "ER." He also starred in the mini-series "Spartacus." His film credits include "Elektra," "The Deep End," "Committed," "Practical Magic," "Welcome to Sarajevo" and "Rounders." His upcoming films include "Helen," which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and the anthology film "New York, I Love You."
THE COURAGEOUS HEART OF IRENA SENDLER is a Hallmark Hall of Fame production. Brent Shields ("Hallmark Hall of Fame" productions "Front of the Class" and "The Russell Girl") and Jeff Most ("The Specialist") are executive producers. John Kent Harrison ("Hallmark Hall of Fame" productions "The Water Is Wide" and "What the Deaf Man Heard") is the writer/director.
Darn, did you think you had missed Sam Trammell on Medium the other night?
No, you didn't you can watch past episodes on the NBC Medium web page
Medium http://www.nbc.com/Medium/
Just go here : http://www.nbc.com/Medium/video/episodes/#vid=1002801
True Blood behind the scenes: Gary Calamar, music supervisor
You love what Gary does with the music from True Blood.
Did you know you can hear Gary Calamar every Sunday night on his radio show?
Gary Calamar's Open Road takes listeners for a moonlight ride accompanied the sounds of adventurous pop music, both timely and timeless. He is a Grammy-nominated producer and music supervisor for his work on HBO's Six Feet Under and is now overseeing the music on three of the most acclaimed shows on television, House, Weeds and Dexter.
Schedule: Live
SUN 9:00P-12:00A
There is an archive of past shows where you can listen or podcast past shows include: Girls Group of the 60s, Jack Black, Danny Elfman George Harrison Remembered and tributes to John Entwistles and Warren Zevon and soo much more
KCRW at a Glance
KCRW, a community service of Santa Monica College, is Southern California's leading National Public Radio affiliate, featuring an eclectic mix of music, news, information and cultural programming. The terrestrial station serves Los Angeles and Orange Counties at 89.9 FM
http://www.kcrw.com ( You can listen online if you do not live in Southern California )
http://www.garycalamar.com/
The gift that keeps on giving ..? ( 4)
Who gave this gift?
Send me an email if you know the answer ...
(thanks, keep sending answers , I'll mention everyone. So many folks don't get to read the blog until they get home at night and they never get to guess ...this way everyone can guess.)
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
TV Guide Season 2 Scoop
not much of a spoiler from TV Guide but ...we do like the song.
DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS!!!
Any scoop on Season 2 of True Blood? — Whitney
MICKEY: I'm sorry to say that the person you were hoping wasn't actually dead is actually dead. Bill, Sookie and Jessica, who are now kind of a demented family unit, travel to Texas, where they'll meet this guy. (The stars at night... are big and bright.... everybody!)
Handsome Stranger? Be Careful. He Bites.
NYTimes from September 2008
By Alessandra Stanley
One of the older waitresses at Merlotte's, a dive bar in Bon Temps, La., doesn't dare refuse to serve her customer Trublood, but draws the line at true hospitality. The stranger orders O negative, but is told there is only A negative, even though the fridge is full of both synthetic blood types.
''And don't microwave it, neither,'' the waitress says to the bartender.
''He can drink it cold.''
The vampires on ''True Blood,'' a new series on HBO, have ''come out of the coffin,'' as one woman puts it, thanks to a Japanese substitute that supposedly satisfies their inhuman blood lust. They are seeking acceptance and passage of the Vampire Rights Amendment in a society that is still prejudiced against the life-threatening lifestyles of the living dead.
Vampires have Washington lobbyists, support groups and talk show pundits.
They also have their own louche bars, and the one closest to Bon Temps is Fangtasia, where reckless mortals, known as Fang-bangers, trawl for the intoxicating taste of vampire sex.
That sly sendup of American culture and pop politics is one of the more amusing features in this new venture by Alan Ball, the creator of ''Six Feet Under.'' It's not the only inversion.
Mr. Ball, who also wrote the film ''American Beauty,'' is known for imbuing the most humble and prosaic settings -- a Southern California funeral parlor, a middle-class suburb -- with complex psychological themes and stylish lyricism. He does the opposite with ''True Blood,'' leavening fantasy romance and perverse Southern Gothic with the petty preoccupations of small-town life: ''Dark Shadows'' with a splash of Mayberry.
Vampires have an eternal place in American entertainment. Every generation has its bloodsuckers, from Bela Lugosi and Anne Rice's Lestat to ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer.'' Love with a supernatural stranger, a soul mate with a dangerous edge, is a particularly resilient romantic fantasy. But the familiarity of the cliches -- garlic, silver crosses, Transylvania -- also abets playfulness. And there is fun to be found in bending the paranormal to fit into the most earthly, banal settings.
Festooned with Spanish moss and swampy Southern nostalgia, this twist on the vampire conceit is full of allusions to racism and homophobia, but the metaphors are hazily applied and don't go very deep. The tale gets more engrossing as it goes along, but the first five episodes, at least, don't quite live up to the fierce score and the amazing, hallucinatory opening montage.
''True Blood'' is based on the Southern Vampire Mysteries, a series of fantasy novels by Charlaine Harris that revolve around Sookie Stackhouse, a cocktail waitress who solves murders while playing hard to bite with a tall, handsome vampire. Mr. Ball has taken what is basically a quirky romance novel and turned it into an R-rated melodrama puffed up with erotic tension and campy gore. It's creepy, steamy and funny at times, and it's also a muddle, a comic murder mystery that is a little too enthralled with its own exoticism. ''True Blood'' is outre, but it's not nearly as eccentric and inventive as ''Six Feet Under'' or even ''Big Love.''
Sookie, played with a clipped Holly Hunter twang by Anna Paquin, is perky, blond and psychic -- she can read people's thoughts. Sookie calls her gift a ''disability,'' one that has left her something of a recluse as well as a virgin. She lives with a dotty, doting grandmother, Adele (Lois Smith), and hangs out with her best friend, a feisty black woman named Tara (Rutina Wesley) who can't hold her tongue, or a job, and is also something of a loner.
One of the more interesting and less stereotypical characters is Tara's cousin Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis), a short-order cook at Merlotte's by day, a gay hooker and drug dealer by night.
When a tall, pale and handsome stranger named Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) enters Merlotte's, Sookie knows at once that he is a vampire, the first to make himself known in tiny Bon Temps. She is tickled, not fearful -- nothing exciting ever happens in her small, redneck community, and she yearns for romance. Sookie finds him irresistibly seductive, partly because he is the first man she has ever met whose mind she cannot read.
Sex is on everyone else's minds, and it takes all of Sookie's concentration not to hear her friends and neighbors' crudest fantasies and lascivious musings. Vampires are predators, but they are also prey: it turns out that in small quantities, vampire blood has an aphrodisiac effect on humans, and there is a brisk illegal trade in V, vampire blood.
Sookie's strapping, dimwitted brother, Jason (Ryan Kwanten), is the town's Casanova, but unfortunately for him, some of the women he sleeps with turn up dead. He's an obvious suspect, but plenty of people in town prefer to blame the vampires for the crimes. Sookie's boss, Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammel), believes in segregation for the undead.
When Sookie chides him for seeking a return to the days of ''separate but equal,'' Sam says he doesn't care about equality. ''Give them more than we got,'' he says, ''just as long as everything is separate.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/arts/television/05bloo.html
True Blood behind the scene : Fangtasia sells Vampire Vodka
Vampire Vodka from England here
Welcome to the online home of Vampyre Vodka. The newest member of the vampire family.
This wickedly smooth elixir is the first red vodka in the United States. Triple distilled in England by one of the world's leading distillers of vodka and gin.
Check back for more information coming soon.
In the meantime, check out www.vampire.com or www.wickedwinesonline.com
( see it ? far left bottom shelf behind Longshadow)
Vampire Vineyards: I vant to drink your Dracula Pinot Noir !
Welcome mortal to Vampire.com, the ultimate beverage resource for vampires seeking alternatives to the mundane ways of this world.
Rumor has it that the Vampire Vineyards are actually owned by a circle of vampires, and the company’s founder, an entertainment attorney from New York, is actually just a front. (Whether he and his convertible were commandeered by a Vampire is still a subject for debate.) We do know however that after satiating themselves for years with their Transylvanian blood of the vine, the powers that be decided to spice things up and migrate westward like so many vampires before them.
Using meticulous advance planning, these vampires planted their rootstock at the dawn of the 21st century in the mountainous region of Paso Robles, California, where the ocean fog frequently rolls in off the coast providing the perfect cover to their hidden vineyards.
Having waited a full seven years, the vampires’ rootstock now has yielded wonderful tight small clusters of grapes that have been skillf
ully blended by vampire winemakers to produce phenomenal wines -- smooth and well rounded, with forward fresh fruit – that have been aged in both French and American Oak Barrels. Sip the Blood of the Vine and enjoy!
( letter from Dracula-click to enlarge)
Cool glasses and other gifts here
Matches the color of his eyes .....
No one guessed the last tie question ..
The question was "who wore this and when ?" and pictured a green print tie.
Hint: we already did another tie question -it's here and both of the ties are wore by suitors of Sookie and both the ties match the color of the eyes of the man. ( or shifter, I guess I should say )
Purple Paisley Tie - worn by Quinn the night they go to the play in Shreveport and it matches the color of his eyes.
Green Print Tie- worn by Alicide the first night he and Sookie go out in Jackson and again it matches the color of his eyes.
Lettin' down the ponytail for just a minute with @SookieBonTemps !
Our wonderful Twitter friend @SookieBonTemps writes more that just a tweet!
Check it out here and please post a comment for Sook !
http://sookiebontemps.posterous.com/lettin-down-the-ponytail-for-j
A cemetery by any other name is still a place where you bury dead people ..
We have at least 3 names for the cemetery that separates the Stackhouse property from the Compton property. (Sookie's house and Bill's house)
In True Blood we know this cemetery as Bon Temps cemetery but in the books we have it called two different names by Charlaine. It's either Sweet Home of Tall Pines ????
Bk 1
I was reviewing the evening as I drove to my grandmother's house, where I lived. It's right before Tall Pines cemetery, which lies off a narrow two-lane parish road. My great-great-great grandfather had started the house, and he'd had ideas about privacy, so to reach it you had to turn off the parish road into the driveway, go through some woods, and then you arrived at the clearing in which the house stood.
Bk 4
The graveyard was somewhat downhill from my house. Bill's house, the Compton house, was quite a bit more uphill from Sweet Home Cemetery. The journey downhill, mild as the slope was, was exhilarating, though I glimpsed two or three parked cars on the narrow blacktop that wound through the graves.
True Blood behind the scenes : Puppetry from MastersFX
Thanks so much to MastersFX for sharing all their magic - check out their website for their work on other shows and movies. http://mastersfx.com/
A puppeteer is a person who manipulates an inanimate object — a puppet— in real time to create the illusion of life. The puppeteer may be visible to or hidden from the audience. A puppeteer can operate a puppet indirectly by the use of strings, rods, wires, electronics or directly by his or her own hands placed inside the puppet or holding it externally. Some puppet styles require puppeteers to work together as a team to create a single puppet character.
There are a wide range of styles of puppetry but whatever the style, the puppeteer's role is to manipulate the physical object in such a manner that the audience believes the object is imbued with life. In some instances the persona of the puppeteer is also an important feature.
"Puppetry is a highly effective and dynamically creative means of exploring the richness of interpersonal communication. By its very nature, puppetry concentrates on the puppet rather than the puppeteer. This provides a safety zone for the puppeteer and allows for exploration of unlimited themes through a safe and non-threatening environment for com
munication."
Puppetry is a live medium and this distinguishes it from animation in which animators make a puppet appear to move by using a stop motion film technique in which the puppet is moved tiny fractions between each frame.
Puppets listed in various True Blood episodes include: Daniel Q. Rebert (Puppeteer), Bernard Eichholz (Puppeteer), Billy Bryan (Puppeteer)
Ep2 One puppeteer (Sookie is beaten)
Ep7 Two puppeteers (Lettie May exorcism w/possum)
Ep12 Three puppeteers (Sookie and "Dean the Dog" beaten)
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