Twilight is killing at the box office, and True Blood just ended its first season on HBO: it's never been cooler to be among the undead. What are your favorite vampire movies and TV shows? Here are a few others that spring to mind. --David
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Joss Whedon's seven-season series that had Sarah Michelle Gellar battling fearsome enemies and teen angst at the same time.
Dark Shadows: Long-running series (it started in the '60s) starring Jonathan Frid as Barnabas Collins.
Dracula (1931): iconic horror film starring Bela Lugosi as the title character.
Bram Stoker's Dracula: Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 version is a little uneven (and has Keanu Reeves in it), but it' s a compelling watch.
Moonlight: CBS's series starring Alex O'Laughlin made its mark on fans during its single-season run.
The Lost Boys: 1987 modern classic starring a young Kiefer Sutherland and Jason Patric. Anyone see the recent sequel, Lost Boys: The Tribe?
Interview with the Vampire: 1994 adaptation of Anne Rice's popular novel starring Tom Cruise and with a pre-teen Kirsten Dunst turning heads as Claudia.
Casting Call - added 12.02.08 [SARAH NEWLIN] Late 20s - bright, pretty, cheerful wife of Fellowship of the Sun head Minister Steve Newlin (Michael McMillian), Sarah is an example of the new “hip” evangelical movement, hates vampires with a passion, deeply believes in her mission, her marriage, her country and her church. very feminine, but down-to-earth, also with a healthy appetite for life’s many pleasures… as she sees it, it’s all part of God’s gift to us. No actual nudity, but implied…SERIES REGULAR 7/13
[DAPHNE] Late 20s / early 30s - Daphne is sexy and down to earth, a real country girl, not the greatest waitress, but Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) couldn’t care less, once he gets to know her better. Common sense, no-nonsense, funny, definitely not neurotic. Nudity is preferable in this role…6 episode arc beginning with this episode.
[LUKE] A BIG HANDSOME, BEAR OF A GUY, around 25ish. All the energy Jason (Ryan Kwanten) has spent in his life getting girls, Luke has spent in the service of God. And growing. And being insanely competitive. Southern, Texan. no nudity required, although the guys at the church camp do spend time in their underwear…6 episode arc beginning with episode 202.
5-disc set should have every episode from the show's first season Posted by David Lambert True Blood™ chronicles the backwoods Louisiana town of Bon Temps...where vampires have emerged from the coffin, and no longer need humans for their fix. Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin, Academy Award®-winner for "The Piano") works as a waitress at the rural bar Merlotte's. Though outwardly a typical young woman, she keeps a dangerous secret: she has the ability to hear the thoughts of others.
Sookie's situation is further complicated when the bar gets its first vampire patron - 173-year old Bill Compton (Steven Moyer, "Quills") - and the two outsiders are immediately drawn to each other. Delivering the best of what audiences have come to expect from creator and executive producer Alan Ball (writer of Oscar®-winning Best Picture "American Beauty," creator of the Emmy® Award-winning HBO® series Six Feet Under™), True Blood™ is a dark and sexy tale that boldly delves into the heart - and the neck - of the Deep South HBO's hot new series True Blood is coming to DVD this Spring! While the studio hasn't officially announced it via the normal channels, one of our readers (who only left the name "Nick," but we thank him nonetheless!) spotted a listing for the release at HBO's online store. It shows that a 5-DVD collection will be available on Tuesday, May 12th. Now, that's a fair distance down the road, so it could be subject to change, of course. But right now that's what they're showing!
The price given is $59.99, but that might be a discounted "retail" cost and not the actual list price. Video is listed as anamorphic widescreen, and audio in English Dolby Surround Stereo. Running time given is 720 minutes. No extras are mentioned, nor is there any cover art.
As the studio description at the top mentions, the show stars Anna Paquin (X-Men films, The Piano) and Stephen Moyer (The Starter Wife, Quills). You'll also spot Lizzy Caplan (Cloverfield, Mean Girls, The Pitts), Stephen Root (NewsRadio, King of the Hill, Tripping the Rift), William Sanderson (Newhart, Deadwood, Blade Runner), John Billingsley (Enterprise, The Nine), Michelle Forbes (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Battlestar Galactica, 24), and William Schallert (The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Patty Duke Show, War and Remembrance), among others.
Stay tuned and we'll keep you updated about this exciting release, just as soon as any further developments occur! http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/True-Blood-DVDs-Planned/10966
I let myself into Bill's house and found the Bible exactly where he'd said.
Bill opened the book with gentle fingers and turned a page. He was looking at a family page, with entries infaded ink, made in several different handwritings. "I made these," he said in a whisper. "These here." He pointed at a few lines of writing.
William Thomas Compton,his mother had written, or perhaps his father.Born April 9, 1840. Another hand had writtenDied November 25, 1868. "You have a birthday," I said, of all the stupid things to say. I'd never thought of Bill having a birthday.
"I was the second son," Bill said. "The only son who grew up." I remembered that Robert, Bill's older brother, had died when he was twelve or so, and two other babies had died in infancy.
"Sarah, my sister, died childless." I remembered that. "Her young man died in the war. All the young men died in the war. But I survived, only to die later. This is the date of my death, as far as my family is concerned. It's in Sarah's handwriting."
"Here is the name of my wife," he said, his voice quieter and quieter. I bent over again to read,Caroline Isabelle Holliday. For one second, the room swung sideways, until I realized it just could not be. "And we had children," he said. "We had three children."
Their names were there, too.Thomas Charles Compton, b. 1859. She'd gotten pregnant right after they'd married, then.
Sarah Isabelle Compton, b. 1861.Named after her aunt (Bill's sister) and her mother. She'd been born around the time Bill had left for the war.Lee Davis Compton, b. 1866. A homecoming baby.Died 1867,a different hand had added.
"The other two children?" I asked.
"They lived," he said, the tension in his face easing a little. "I had left then, of course. Tom was only nine when I died, and Sarah was seven.
"My descendant Jessie Compton, from whom I received my house, was the last of my direct line," Bill told me. "My mother's line, too, has thinned down, until the remaining Loudermilks are only distantly related to me. But Jessie did descend from my son Tom, and apparently, my daughter Sarah married in 1881. She had a baby in—Sarah had a baby! She had four babies! But one of them was born dead."
"Look, Sookie," Bill said, pointing. "Look! My Sarah's daughter, named Caroline for her grandmother, married a cousin of hers, Matthew Phillips Holliday. And her second child was Caroline Holliday." His face was glowing.
"So old Mrs. Bellefleur is your great-granddaughter."
"So Andy," I continued, before I could think twice about it, "is your, ah, great-great-great-grandson.And Portia . . ."
HBO just finished a highly successful season for their series, TRUE BLOOD-- which is all about vampires legally living in America.
One of the top selling movies this past weekend was TWILIGHT-- about a family of vampires. It's a romance between a vampire and the daughter of the local police chief. Americans seem to be transfixed with blood sucking undead beings. And why not. There are many bloodsuckers walking the halls of the corporate world-- people who heartlessly and soullessly have sucked the life out of the American economy. These blood-suckers are, like vampires, killers. People are dying for lack of health care. Some kill themselves when they lose their homes. Some starve, Some freeze to death sleeping under highway bridges. And some, who don't die, lose their spirit and simply, metaphorically, crawl into fetal position, unable to deal with an economic collapse that is so much bigger than them.
We're being told, from every direction, that the economic crisis is going to get much worse before it gets better. And still, we watch AIG executives taking billions from the government and throwing lavish parties. We see banks taking the money and giving it out as dividends or bonuses to incompetent failures who think they deserve bonuses... for what? For continuing to drive their companies further into the ground?
We need some silver crosses, some holy water, some garlic, some SUNLIGHT, some stakes through the heart to do something about these corporate losers who brought the economy down. But guess what. In the new world of vampires, the old solutions don't work. The vampires don't die in daylight. Holy water doesn't phase them. Garlic... well these new vampires don't eat at all.
Americans seem to love their vampires. Is this some kind of death wish? In TRUE BLOOD and TWILIGHT, the living do wish to become vampires. And there are teens who pretend they are vampires. Meetup.com lists over 6000 of them ( http://teenvampire.meetup.com/ )
Perhaps Americans like the idea of the power of vampires, or the fact that, though dead, they "live" forever. Maybe they're worshipping the corporate vampires who live off average Americans. In the movies, vampires consider we humans food. I wonder what the corporate millionaires and billionaires think of average Americans-- suckers, fools, money suppliers?
Characters who get very friendly with vampires in TRUE BLOOD are called “fang-bangers.”Maybe we need to start looking at the people who associate with corporate vampires as people worthy of derision. Maybe we need to start characterizing the heads of these companies as worse than greedy, even criminal. Maybe it will take legislators on both sides of the aisle in congress to tell lobbyists where to go, so that finally, those elected officials will start representing and protecting we the people. I know. I’m talking wild and crazy fantasy fiction. Vampires are more real than that possibility.
Still, we have thousands of teens darkening their eyes, making their skin as pale and white as possible, emulating vampires. We have CEOs, mostly men, stalking and sucking the blood from our life savings, from our retirement accounts, our children’s college funds.One thing we know. Vampire stories always come with a lot f blood, at some point in the story. Our nation’s blood-letting has already begun.
Is there hope for America? Will the new administration be able to clean up the economy, sweep away the blood-sucking corporate predators who have been feeding on we average Americans? I'm not sure. When we look at the team Obama has assembled to deal with the economy, you can almost see their fangs. Me, I’m taking what’s left of my IRA and investing it in silver.\
David Simon, the writer-producer behind The Wire, explains how a 6-foot-5 Swede brought his Iraq war miniseries, Generation Kill, alive.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure that Alexander Skarsgard was the right man to play Brad Colbert in Generation Kill. I saw some of what director Susanna White saw in the early reads: a wry smile, a stoicism, a warrior rage carefully contained and muted. But I was worried about the Swedish accent, which was, at that point, too thick and certain to be looped. And Alex was too tall. The real Colbert was average size, skinny even. He led by character and example, not with physical presence.
But then Skarsgard went to work. Read by read he discovered the Recon marine sergeant we required. He shaved the accent. He buried more and more emotion. He embraced all of that brutal military nomenclature, one phrase at a time. In short, Susanna was dead right.
A year later the real Brad Colbert rode his motorcycle up from Pendleton to the Warner lot to see what Hollywood had done with his life. He watched as our make-believe Colbert berated our make-believe Ray Person as they invaded our make-believe Iraq. Colbert barely smiled.
“Not bad being played by a blond 6-foot-5 Swede,” I offered.
“I’ll live with it,” Colbert said, dry as dirt — a line read that Alex would have nailed.
This article originally appeared in the December 2008 issue of Men’s Journal. http://www.mensjournal.com/
Waitaminute — vampires don’t eat cake. (Photos by Ash Hopkins)
Cast members of True Blood spent Friday and Saturday at Prive inside Planet Hollywood Resort. So … that would make it a … Vampire Weekend? Puns! We’ve got vampire puns! Now, if you don’t mind, we’ll be spending the afternoon in a shame bubble.
Ryan Kwanten hosted on Friday night, drinking Snow Queen vodka until around 3 a.m. On Saturday, Kwanten was back with birthday girl Kristin Bauer and co-star Alexander Skarsgard who dined earlier at Strip House. The three of them went their separate ways inside the club. Vampires are so anti-social.
I have to confess that until I picked up the Sunday New York Times Book Review, I was oblivious to the wild popularity of Sookie Stackhouse. Stackhouse, in case you haven’t run into her, is the telepathic cocktail waitress who serves as the protagonist in a series of bestselling vampire novels by author Charlaine Harris.
Harris clearly knows the craft of writing. How else to explain the fact that five of her Sookie Stackhouse books are on the Times’ top 20 list for mass-market fiction paperbacks?
But doesn’t it strike you that in the midst of the holiday season, the current popularity of vampires is a little odd? Whatever happened to “Walking in a Winter Wonderland,” “Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly” and “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire?”
One of the most popular Hollywood movies this season is “Twilight,” the romantic tale of a teenage girl with a crush on a young vampire (one who prefers not to drink blood). The second film based on the Stephenie Meyer novels, “New Moon,” already is in production.
On Donner, on Blitzen, on Dancer and Prancer and Lestat! What would Santa’s elves say?
I’m not putting Harris down. In fact, I envy her. I’ll be able to tell you more about what I think of her prose by the end of the week — I just checked out “All Together Dead” from Bud Werner Memorial Library on Monday afternoon.
The books deal with Louisiana vampires who are out in the open and trying to co-exist with humans. The Times reports that when Sookie Stackhouse’s boyfriend is kidnapped in “Club Dead,” “she goes to Mississippi to find him with the help of an undead Elvis.”
Hold on just a second. Elvis was no vampire, was he?
.......
If you’re still hung up on vampires, you might dig up a copy of Nina Auerbach’s “Our Vampires, Ourselves,” published by the University of Chicago Press in 1995. Auerbach presents a history of societal views on vampirism and takes the sometimes controversial stance that each generation reinvents vampires to suit the needs of contemporary culture.
I just hope I don’t have a nightmare tonight in which Dancer and Prancer are vampires.
True Blood is not on right now, to the disappointment, not to say withdrawal symptoms, of the millions addicted to its veinous entertainment . HBO's vampire series is over for the season, not to return the Louisiana backwater where it's set until next June. Bill Compton, the "good" vampire who is in love with and tries to protect Sookie Stackhouse, the waitress who can extremely sporadically read people's minds, will have to wait six months to imbibe from her veins again. Meanwhile, the Stephanie Meyer vampire book and movie phenomenon, which is saving one publishing company and doing amazing box office with the movie "Twilight," is slaking popular culture's hemoglobin thirst very nicely.
I saw "Twilight" last weekend, in an audience on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in a theater filled with teens and tweens, a few of whom looked with suspicion at the mature gentleman in their midst. But mainly they laughed at the movie. They weren't scared or filled with ardor for the boy vampire--they just thought the whole thing was hilarious. Made me proud to be a New Yorker--I really do wonder if the film met with the same bemusement in Indianapolis.
But what is with the vampire craze right now? The vogue for them has ebbed and flowed over the last century, but at the moment the ventricles seem all the way open. A friend of mine suggested that this fad may represent our culture's unconscious efforts to depict in metaphorical terms the financial greed that has sucked blood money from the body politic--especially the subprime mortgage fiasco that started it. "Mortgage" is derived from the Latin word for "death," after all.
I'm sure Film Studies courses everywhere and serious books about sociology and cinema and television have examined this theory in greater detail and with more erudition than I ever could. But all on my own over the last four or five decades I've noticed what seems to me a fascinating co-incidence between popular screen themes and deeper social concerns and crises. Zombies and triffids during the Cold War, with its fear of the Red menace. Westerns a little later in which automobiles and machine guns and cameras began to conflict with the American frontier's rough justice and primal way of life. In the nineties, a great number of movies came out that expressed anxiety about the growing influence of technology--"The Matrix," "Pleasantville, "The Truman Show," almost all the Schwarzenegger futuristic features, to name a few. Then came the "Saw" series--which is still going on--and "Hostel" and other brutal torture movies, which seemed to mirror uncannily the awful news about Abu Ghraib. And now we have vampires preying on the innocent and ignorant, at the same time that corporate bloodsuckers are doing their best to avoid the light of day and scrutiny.
Seems to me that movies are, however unknowingly, projections in more ways than one. If I were to guess what might be the next such cinematic manifestation of social anxiety, it would be--in light of neuroscientific discoveries--movies that call into question what most of us believe to be free will.
david menaker -huffington post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-menaker/zombies-torture-bloodsuck_b_147269.html
Sookie to Bill outside her house: Oh come on, Bill. I may look naïve but I am not and you need to remember that.
Bill to Sookie: We are all kept alive by magic, Sookie. My magic is just a little different from yours, that’s all.
Sookie: Why on earth would I continue seeing you. Bill: Because you will never find a human man you could be your self with.
Malcolm to Bill: Honey, if we can’t kill people what’s the point of being a vampire?
Sam: Do you know who I would really wish to come to Marthaville? Buffy. Or Blade. Or anyone of those bad ass vampire killers to take care of mister Bill Compton.
Quotes Season 1 Episode 2 - The first taste
Tare to Lafayette on the phone: What do you mean if you get lucky? Your standards are so low, you always get lucky.
Sookie to Bill after he licked blood from her forehead: Do I taste different from other people?
Bill to Sookie: May I ask you a personal question? Sookie: Bill, you were just licking blood out of my head, I don’t think it gets much more personal than that.
Sookie to Bill outside her house: You might want to remember for next that that tornados hop, they don’t just land in one place.
Bill to Sookie outside his house: I can smell the sunlight on your skin.
Diane to Sookie at Bill’s house: Well hey there, little human chick.
Quotes Season 1 Episode 1 - Strange Love
Arlene at Merlotte’s: Do you even know what’s between a woman’s legs, Lafayette?
Sam about Tru Blood at Merlotte’s: Would you be willing to pass up all your favourite foods and spend the rest of life drinking Slimfast?
Bill at the parking lot after Sookie wraps the silver chain around her neck: oh, but you have other very juice arteries, there is one in the groin that is a particular favorite of mine.
Bill at Merlotte’s: They are staring at us because I am a vampire and you are mortal.
HBO releases the promo for subscribers who want to re-run the first season of 'True Blood' whenever they can.While the second season is still literally months away, the first chapter of "True Blood" can be watched again through HBO's "On Demand". A new promo of the popular Vampire series has been put up by the network, aimed to introduce those subscribers who haven't watched the show over the Fall season.
Starring Anna Paquin as a waitress named Sookie Stackhouse and Stephen Moyer as a vampire named Bill Compton who falls for Sookie, "True Blood" started off slow when it first hit the screen in September. It gained mere 1.44 million viewers on the first week, but steadily absorbs fans and caught up to 60 per cent increase in its viewing with 2.4million as the number for its season finale. The Associated Press marks the show as being watched by averagely 6.8 million people per week.
The second season will not arrive until the end of midseason 2009, reportedly in June since the filming will only take place in January. The DVD for first season will come out soon before the new chapter is aired on HBO.
The subscription for the first season is also picking up fast. Michael Lombardo, who acts as HBO's chief of West Coast operations said, "You see other networks putting on important programs on Sunday nights and you worry, 'can you bring them back?' What has been fantastic is to see the subscribers have been waiting for a Sunday night show they can make appointment viewing again."
In HBO's popular new series True Blood, vampires have officially come out of the coffin. The fanged ones have confirmed their own existence, and are even pushing for equal rights.
The vamps' emergence raises a slew of questions about the creatures' powers, strengths and weaknesses in the True Blood universe.
Luckily for viewers, and for the show's mortal protagonist Sookie Stackhouse (played by Anna Paquin), answers are being revealed. The third episode of Alan Ball's series, which was recently picked up for a second season, dove deep into vampire mythology and lore Sunday.
In addition to True Blood's typical horror fare -- vampire brawling and bloodsucking -- viewers got clued in to a few things Sunday, including delicacies that tempt the undead palate, drug dealers that sell vampire blood, and the scientific construct behind the show's night-prowling population.
(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points follow.)
The science of bloodsuckers: What animates the undead? We don't have the full answer yet, but Sookie's pale-faced paramour, Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer, pictured), lays out some specifics in Episode 3. Vampires have no brain waves, no heartbeat, no need to breathe and no electrical impulses whatsoever in their bodies. Unfortunately, that's about as specific as he gets. When Sookie presses him on the issue, asking him how he digests blood, he simply replies: "Magic."
Viral vulnerabilities: Within the True Blood universe, vampires can be plagued by such traditional banes as sunlight and silver. But they can also get sick: Vampires are susceptible to viral infection by a mutation of hepatitis, known as "Hep D." It's harmless to humans, but if transmitted to their night-walking counterparts, can weaken vampires for up to a month, leaving them vulnerable to being captured -- and possibly staked. Fearing unscrupulous humans might use this information to their advantage, vampires work to keep word of the virus out of the mainstream media.
Synthetic sustenance: The integration of vampires into human society in True Blood hinges upon one crucial element -- the breakthrough development of a synthetic blood substitute created by a team of scientists in Japan. Sold as a beverage called Tru Blood, the discovery is touted both by vampires and by humans who support the vampire rights movement as reason enough to legitimize the status of the undead. However, a comment made in Episode 3 by tattoo-sporting vamp Liam revealed a chilling detail: Tru Blood may not work as well as we've been led to believe, and is possibly not a sufficient substitute for human blood.
Underground drug trade: Forget smack and crack. Vampire blood is the latest underground narcotic to hit the streets. Viewers already got a glimpse of the seedy lengths to which some humans will go to capture and drain vampires to use and sell their blood; in Episode 3, audiences gleaned more information about the illicit substance after Sookie's brother Jason purchased a vial. Here's a quick rundown of what we know so far:
Generic name: Vampire blood Street name: "V" Street value: $600 for a quarter-ounce Duration of high: Unknown Dosage: 1-2 drops taken by mouth Short-term effects: Heightened libido, awareness and senses; delirium Long-term effects: Heightened aggression; increased chance of addiction (which results in severe withdrawal symptoms and cravings)
Bloody delicacies: Possibly the most gruesome detail unveiled in Sunday's episode were the delicate intricacies of a vampire's taste for various types of blood. It was revealed that the only treat more coveted than that of virgin human blood is the blood of babies.
Vampire hierarchies, powers and nests: In Episode 3, viewers got their first titillating glimpse inside a vampire nest: a lawless pleasure den inhabited by multiple vampires and, occasionally, a few subservient humans who provide a steady source of food. According to Bill, vampires who live in nests together tend to exhibit more vicious, cruel behavior than vampires who elect to live alone. Vampires can influence human will using a mind-controlling ability known as "glamoring." In addition to hypnotizing humans, vampires are also able to lay claim to humans in order to keep other vampires from feeding on them -- although vampires are more likely to only obey other bloodsuckers who outrank them in age and seniority.
Talk Blood Radio has ended for
Season 4. Thanks to all my great co- hosts and sponsors. All 12 episode podcasts are available for FREE from Blogtalk and itunes.
To bring back Blogtalk for Season 5 we will need episode sponsors, if you'd like to sponsor an episode for Season 5, please contact me !
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by David Horiuchi on November 30, 2008
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