Thursday, July 9, 2009

True Blood from List UK: Dead good

With True Blood, Six Feet Under’s Alan Ball has found a series with depth, dark humour and bite in equal measure, as Suzanne Black discovers

The TV schedules have succumbed to a plague of bloodsucking parasites ever since Buffy staked her first vampire. But have vamps lost their bite? True Blood puts the allegorical power back into the fangs of the undead, and triumphs over the genre’s other offerings.

Starting life as a series of supernatural detective novels, True Blood hits UK screens this month. The second series is currently airing in the US, with its first episode hailed as the most watched programme on subscription channel HBO since the final episode of The Sopranos.

Published in 2004, Dead Until Dark was the first of Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mystery novels. It supposed a contemporary world where vampires had gone public and, thanks to a synthetic O-substitute called Tru Blood, renounced that pesky bloodsucking habit in favour of campaigning for civil rights and a legitimate place in society. With an interesting concept but a disappointing delivery, it had definite screen potential. Alan Ball, well-known from his deadpan funeral parlour show Six Feet Under and also the scriptwriter of that haunting portrayal of suburban ennui, American Beauty, was perfectly placed to realise it.

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True Blood Digital Kitchen: Creativity in the Blood

Techy article from Apple pro blog about Digital Kitchen ( they did the opening sequence for True Blood)

How do you market to a vampire? That’s the challenge interactive agency Digital Kitchen faced as they created a series of fang-in-cheek ads to promote HBO’s smash show True Blood. Using applications such as Final Cut Studio and Adobe Creative Suite, the all-Mac shop produced billboards and print ads for brands like MINI and Gillette, and a collection of darkly humorous online viral videos revealing that, after all, vampires are people too.

"The True Blood campaign is done on software and hardware that you can get at the Apple Store," says Mark Bashore, Digital Kitchen’s creative head. "The tools are easily accessible, which allows us to focus on being creative. That's why we use the Mac."


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Leave 'Dallas' a message or just make a comment !

You can now call Dallas and leave me a voice message or make a comment about a story that you've read on the blog and I might use it on the radio show !

(214 ) 302-7080

'True Blood' Comic-Con: Details on the vampire invasion


The "True Blood" panel at San Diego Comic-Con is likely to be one of the hottest tickets of the convention, which takes place July 23-26. And we've finally got the details on who'll be there.

The panel will take place at 5:15 p.m. on Saturday, and here's the rundown of who will be appearing on the panel: Executive producer Alan Ball, Charlaine Harris (who wrote the novels on which the HBO show is based), Anna Paquin (Sookie), Stephen Moyer (Bill), Nelsan Ellis (Lafayette), Rutina Wesley (Tara), Sam Trammell (Sam), Alexander Skarskard (Eric), Michelle Forbes (Maryann) and Deborah Ann Woll (Jessica).

Ryan Kwanten (Jason) will be shooting a movie in Australia, so he and his abs will be unable to attend.

One thing I'm double checking on, so don't take this to the bank yet: I believe the panel is in Ballroom 20, but will update this post when I find out for sure.

Stephen Moyer's love life ...

It's going to be everywhere since it's coming out in the Star today..


It was love at first, um, bite for Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer after the British hunk aced his True Blood audition opposite the Oscar winner in early 2007, but they kept their instant attraction a secret from everyone, including his girlfriend of seven years — the mother of his young daughter, Lilac.

That September, Stephen told a British newspaper that his move from London to L.A. for the series had resulted in the end of his relationship with British journalist Lorien Haynes, saying: "Nobody has left anybody for anybody else." But those words ring hollow now that Stephen and Anna — who now live together — have admitted that sparks flew the moment they first met!

http://www.starmagazine.com/news/15816

Are Gays Driving the Tremendous DVD Sales for HBO’s True Blood?

I don't know about the premise but the article has some interesting information..

It’s Not TV, It’s GAY-ch-B-O?

I’m sure this is definitely a somewhat old theory and old thinking for anyone who began watching True Blood when it debuted last September. But I just started watching last week, so I was late to the game.

For weeks now, I’ve been marveling at the DVD sales for HBO’s True Blood. It’s sold more units and made more revenue than any other TV show this year. The accomplishment is pretty phenomenal, and I’m going to hit you with quite a few numbers to showcase just how phenomenal it is before furthering the speculation on why it has performed so phenomenally. If you’re not interested in the numeric comparisons, skip down to “Why is it selling so well?” section below.

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A Comparative Look at Recent TV Show DVD Sales:

In six weeks of release it has sold almost 1.2 million units and grossed almost $41 million in revenue. It’s closest competition in 2009 so far this year comes from 24 season seven, which has also been available for six weeks but has sold less than 600,000 units and grossed just over $19 million. On a revenue basis, True Blood is the only DVD for the year in the top 20, top 30 or top 40 of DVD sales (it is currently 16th through the week ending June 28). 24 season seven is 46th by revenue.

To compare to some of its cable brethren, in four weeks of release Weeds season four (admittedly, not its best effort) had sold 432,000 DVDs and grossed almost $11 million.

Some will say it’s not fair to compare this year’s numbers because most of the 2008-2009 TV seasons have not yet been made available on DVD. That’s true, but it doesn’t matter. We can compare to the full calendar year of 2008 DVD sales when with about 17 weeks of sales (released on 9/2/08) The Office season four was the number one TV show DVD for the year selling 1.06 million units and grossing over $32 million. Because of the way we see data it’s not easy (or even usually possible) to see combined sales across multiple calendar years, but a show like Lost’s season four which went on sale with only a few weeks left in 2008 tracked closely with, but not quite as well as True Blood. After five weeks in release, Lost season four had sold over 976,000 units and grossed over $36 million. After five weeks, True Blood had sold almost 1.1 million DVDs and grossed almost $38 million in revenue.

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True Blood Music Video of the Day:



Thanks, melodyofafallentree