'True Blood' is draining experience to some
Not long ago I wrote about how much I like the new HBO series "True Blood," which premieres Sunday night. It turns out that not everyone was equally intrigued.
Mary McNamara, one of my favorite writers and the television critic for the Los Angeles Times, has a "True Blood" review that says the show, well, pretty much sucks, and not in that good vampire way.
Borrowing heavily from many genres, "True Blood" aspires to transcend them all but instead quickly deposits the viewer waist-deep in a literal and figurative swamp.
Vampire fantasy, murder mystery, star-crossed love story, political satire, "True Blood" is all and none of the above. Not quite funny, not quite scary, not quite thought-provoking, the show's attempt to question the roots of prejudice is continually undermined by its own stereotyping.
Seriously, isn't it time to stop portraying every small town below the Mason-Dixon line as populated by drunken, racist, testosterone-charged lunkheads? Apparently not. In Bon Temps, the tiny Louisiana town where "True Blood" opens, all the men seem obsessed with booze and sexual assault while their wives quietly devour fried foods and despise them.
Early in the review, McNamara expresses disappointment that executive producer Alan Ball ("Six Feet Under") has "decided to take Charlaine Harris’ light, fun series of Southern Vampire Mysteries and turn it into a heavy-handed political fable with vampires." I haven't read the books at all, maybe that is one of the reasons we had such different takes on the show.
Fang feud: 'Jennifer's Body' vs. 'True Blood'
There's sooo many vampires.
No, that's not a line from "Buffy," but there does seem to be a blood-suckapalooza in TV and film nowadays. It's not a new phenom, but "Twilight," "Underworld 3," "True Blood" and "Jennifer's Body" (which may not technically be vampiric, but she apparently eats people) have brought it back to the forefront. What's next, a vampire Mr. Toast? Is nothing sacred?!
Maybe it's too much for the creative marketing folks to handle. Look at the poster mash-up (that seems to be everywhere) for "True Blood," HBO's series starring Anna Paquin, and "Body," a film that once featured a barely clothed Megan Fox.
Of course!Why didn't I see it? One has a tongue with a trickle of blood going to the left, the other is going to the right. Guess that's different enough to not be confusing. Just remember -- "Body" = tongue to the left, "Blood" = tongue to the right.
-- Jevon Phillips
'True Blood' HBO's next great tribe
Snap Judgment: "True Blood" (HBO, airs Sept. 7)
As a genre, vampire tales are pretty long in the tooth — the “modern” idea of undead bloodsuckers dates back to the 1700s and before that practically every civilization under the sun had moonlight marauders who drank from the soft neck of humanity. But, hey, when you have a great premise, why not take one more bite?
I took a long plane flight east yesterday and made two important discoveries. One, is that US Airways now charges for coffee. (Dinging people for carry-on bags, maybe I can understand that, but for coffee?) The second revelation was “True Blood,” the new HBO series that premieres on Sept. 7.
I got an advance copy of the first two episodes from HBO and the show is simply fantastic. It’s the handiwork of Alan Ball, the Oscar-winning writer of “American Beauty” and the creator of “Six Feet Under,” and he will be asked a thousand times between now and the first episode whether he considers himself in competition with “Twilight,” the big vampire romance film on the dark horizon.
I have a suggested answer: “The Sopranos” came on the air a few months before “Analyze This” hit theaters in 1999 and a lot of people assumed that the little HBO show would suffer by going against a big film that, at first glance, seemed way too close for comfort, plot-wise. Hmmm. How’d that turn out?
This show, like every great HBO series, tracks a complicated tribe beset by the world around it, be it a Jersey mafia family, Utah polygamists, a quartet of single women in Manhattan or Depression-era carnies in a Dust Bowl war of good vs. evil.
This time the tribe members are vampires and the people who love them, all living in the not-too-distant future. Instead of villagers with torches, this time around the hordes at the castle gate are from Jerry Springer's America where groupies (“fangbangers”) covet vampires for their sexual prowess and cruel-eyed poachers try to catch them, drain their blood and sell it as the ultimate vitality drink.
HBO's 'True Blood' is a 'Twilight' for grown-ups
Maybe you've seen the bus ads for True Blood, a faux beverage that gives vampires an artificial substitute for the red stuff they crave.
It's a promotional stunt for "True Blood," the HBO series that launches Sept. 7 and, along with "Twilight," promises to make this fall an especially bloody season.
At the panel for the show, Alan Ball, the creative force behind the series, was asked if there would be an actual beverage bottled up to cash in on the curiosity about the advertisements.
"Yes," said the creator of "Six Feet Under," "and it's going to be a combination of V8, valium, vicodin and Viagra."
The show uses vampires as a metaphor for any "outsider culture," Ball told a packed ballroom, many of them fans of the "True Blood" novels of author Charlene Harris, also a panelist.
Relationships and sex are big aspects of the show, Ball said, and he said there were mortals who seek out the blood-suckers because of their prowess in the sheets.
"They're a pretty amazing catch," Ball said, pointing out that they are forever young but have hundreds of years of experience as far as satisfying their partners. "There's a name for the people who try to sleep with them: fangbangers."
On inevitable comparisons to "Twilight": "I think there's room for everything in the world. I don't feel any sense of competition at all."
-- Geoff Boucher
Photo: Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer from "True Blood," courtesy of HBO
