Vampire Cafe

'True Blood' Vamps Up for Season Five

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 23:30:39 GMT

'True Blood' Vamps Up for Season Five
spoilers

True Blood Catch-Up: Where the Characters Left Off

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 13:33:39 GMT

True Blood Catch-Up: Where the Characters Left Off

Season 5 is coming, are you ready?

Tue, 29 May 2012 12:13:42 GMT

"True Blood"'s 30 Greatest Moments

Posted by
Brian Juergens

In a few short weeks HBO will unleash a new season of its supernatural soap True Blood on an eager audience, and we'll be here to recap it, as ever. Sadly, the amaaahhhhhhhzing Steven Frank, who has been recapping the show brilliantly for several seasons, will not be returning this year. So I will be stepping into his shoes - and having had the pleasure of meeting Steven several times, let me assure you that they are very spiffy shoes, indeed. I hope I can do them justice.

Back when True Blood was still a fringey phenomenon and not the massive hit it is now, I was actually AfterElton's resident Truebie: I recapped the show in a weekly vlog called Blood Work!, even luring the charming Nelsan Ellis to appear in one of the early episodes. After leaving AfterElton I continued the series on my own gay horror website, CampBlood.org, and have been chronicling every sticky, sexy. and sick twist the show has thrown at us since.

Those readers newer to AE may know me from my recaps of American Horror Story or Game of Thrones - two other fantastically twisted genre shows that I have enjoyed recapping immensely. But if not, please allow me to demonstrate my obsession with the good people of Bon Temps with a hand-picked list of my favorite moments from Seasons 1-4.

Enjoy - and if you don't see your own personal fave here, share it in the comments! I can't wait to make some new memories with y'all starting on June 10.
...

1. Tina's Ceiling Fan Ride (Episode 1.9)

Sure, Gran's death a few weeks earlier was the more dramatic moment, but the twisted sense of humor behind poor little Tina's farewell tour around the foyer was a glimpse into True Blood's truly twisted soul.

2. Eric Kills Claudine (4.3)

For readers of the Charlaine Harris novels, Eric's making a midnight snack of Sookie's fairy godmother was quite the shock (she sticks around much longer in the books). Thankfully, it at least freed up Lara Pulver to star in the first Series 2 episode of Sherlock, where she kicked major butt as a clever dominatrix.

3. Bill and Sookie's Graveyard Hump (1.8)

I hope Sookie had a Stain Stick handy! The scene where Sook - thinking Beel to be dead - finds her lover buried in the graveyard and gives him a welcome home to remember is probably one of the series' most awesomely wrong moments ever. I don't even want to think about where some of that grave dirt ended up ... but such is life dating one of the sexy undead!

4. Vampire Steve Newlin (4.12)

I seriously screamed when the Fellowship of the Sun's preppy little turd of a leader reappeared in the Season 4 finale - with a little something extra at the gumline and an unexpected appreciation for Jason's wedding tackle. Can't wait to see where they're going with this one.

5. Bill and Eric Kill Nan Flanagan (4.12)

Ah, Banana Flanagan ... you were one of my absolute favorites, but watching you fall apart at the seams both emotionally and literally (along with her "gay stormtroopers") was pretty amazing. You will be missed!

6. Tara Gets Shot in the Head (4.12)

The big question mark going into Season 5 is whether Tara is alive, dead, or something in between. I'd take any of the above, really - as long as she quits whining. And am I the only one who wishes she'd stuck with the short 'do she gave herself before splitting at the end of Season 3?

7. Lafayette Kills Jesus (4.12)

Alas, poor Jesus (Kevin Ale-Ale-Alejandro) - we hardly knew ye! Like, seriously - did you even have a last name? An apartment? Help us out here.

8. Eric Goes Gay for Talbot (3.8)

I think this one speaks for itself. No? Then here's another!

Thanks for the assist, Talbot! Now get back in the decanter where you belong.

9. Sam's Bill Sex Dream (3.1)

Slashfic come to life, this Season 3 kickoff sexy-time fantasy (fueled by Sam's drinking Bill's blood after defeating Maryann) was pure genius.

10. Ginger Rides Pam's Coffin (4.7)

Praise the premium cable gods for keeping Ginger - Fangtasia's screamy cocktail waitress - around for four seasons and giving her scenes like this one, where she jumped on top of the amazing Pam's pink quilted coffin to keep her from breaking out and meeting the sun. Debra Winger couldn't have ridden it better!

11. Tara's a Lesbian Cage Fighter (4.1)

Atta girl!

12. Bill is Bonking His Own Descendant (4.4)

I don't anyone particularly liked the Bill/Portia romance storyline, so finally getting the confirmation that she's one of his direct descendants (after they boned, of course) was pretty sweet.

13. Bill Goes Bad (3.12)

Folks who read the books couldn't help but wonder if the creative minds behind the show would really go there with Bill - and when they did, they didn't pull any punches. Granted, they then rewarded his ratty behavior by making him King ... but that's politics, right?

14. "And now for the weather...Tiffany?" (3.9)

Best scene of the best villain - Russell Edgington - played by the best guest actor the show has featured yet (Denis O'Hare). Pure twisted camp brilliance.

15. Lorena's Chocolate Fountain Demise (3.8)

Quick, Sookie - get the Bounty!!

16. Lafayette's Talking Voodoo Doll (3.11)

This voodoo doll - which speaks to Lafayette in the wake of his V trip with Jesus - totally cracked me up. Love the hair and the off-the-shoulder look!

17. Bill and Lorena Twist and Shout (3.3)

The very definition of water cooler television, this scene is already legendary. It's also super-gross for a number of reasons, but let's just leave it at that.

18. Lafayette's AIDS Burger Moment (1.5)

One of the few moments on this list that doesn't involve a death, a supernatural occurrence, or Lorena getting the crap kicked out of her, Lafayette's encounter with a dickish, homophobic customer was the first real glimpse we were given of just how effing amazing his character is. Churrrrrrrrch!

19. Amy Flies Away (1.11)

Jason and Amy's drug-fueled escapades were insanely imaginitive, even when his wet undies left very little to the imagination. The moment when Amy is murdered in their bed and she flies off into the sky is beautifully weird.

20. A Woman and Her Pig (1.10)

I unfortunately can't show the actual moment in question here because it involves full frontal ladyparts and this is a family site - but I hope the above image reminds you of just how WTF it was when a very drunk Tara caught the sight of a nude lady walking a huge-ass pig down the road in the middle of the night. Unless that kind of thing happens to you all the time - in which case, I'll have what you're having.

21. Hunter's Souffle (2.8)

When Maryann served Eggs and Tara Daphne's heart (with some sauteed Holy Trinity and a little white wine, of course!), it was enough to put me off Hungry Man pot pies for at least an hour or two. (Seriously, do NOT get me near those pot pies.)

22. Luke Goes Boom (2.8)

Poor Luke! Passed over for Jason at the Fellowship and then given dreaded Suicide Bomber duty. Sad to see him go, and to take that hot guy from Eureka with him!

23. Sookie Gets Stuck with/out the Bill (2.12)

What's worse: Sookie getting proposed to by her vampire boyfriend and coming back from the bathroom to find him gone, or the fact that she totally had to pick up the tab after?

24. Bill Cries Blood (1.5)

It's sometimes easy to forget that True Blood is actually doing some interesting things with its vampire mythology (and none of them have anything to do with sparkling in sunlight). The moment when Bill tears up at Gran's Descendants of the Glorious Dead meeting and we alone see that his tears are blood is a great little moment highlighting his humanity and his monstrousness at the same time.

25. Jerry and Hep D (1.3)

Poor Hot Pants Jerry and his ill-fated quest to get back at the vamps for getting his boyfriend hooked on V by giving them Hep D, a blood-bourne illness that only effects vampires. For one thing, it was an interesting complication to introduce (... and then Hep D is never mentioned again. Ever.); for another, it was an encouraging sign that True Blood wasn't going to shy away from making gay characters and stories (this one was a thinly-veiled meth metaphor) part of its tapestry.

26. Bill Hits Lorena with a Flat Screen (2.8)

And you thought hotel room televisions were only good for porn!

27. Bill Stakes Longshadow (1.9)

In its early days True Blood was an unknown quantity (not so much now, when the quantity is known: LOTS), and no one was sure how far the show would go in terms of its horror elements. When Bill staked Longshadow and Sookie found herself on the receiving end of a vamp bloodbath, we got our answer.

28. Jessica's Odor Problem (3.2)

One of my favorite storylines has been Jessica's - she's a brat, and a deadly vampire, and a sheltered little girl, all at the same time. When she killed a trucker and kept his body in the crawlspace under Bill's house - and then tried to mask the smell with Lysol - it was coming-of-age heaven.

29. Jesus Gets His Brujo On (3.11)

Sure, we were all sick of this whole storyline by the time the season ended, but remember the first time Jesus showed his dark side to Lafayette? It came out of fricking NOWHERE, and is still one of the best jump-scares the show has ever attempted.

30. Alcide Sexes It Up (4.7)

I don't know about you, but I counted the days until Alcide got down to business. Sure, it was with Debbie, but I wasn't exactly looking in that direction. It could have been with Cloris Leachman, for all I care.

http://www.afterelton.com/tv/2012/05/true-blood-30-greatest-moments

Mon, 28 May 2012 21:12:25 GMT

Mon, 28 May 2012 21:10:26 GMT

“A 3,000-year-old vampire wants to suck my blood… Must be Thursday!” Actually, Sookie, it’s more like Sunday, June 10, when True Blood finally returns. The second trailer for season 5 (watch it below) shows more of the drama that will unfold when Russell Edgington (Denis O’Hare) is back from his cement grave. One thing is for certain: There will be blood.

http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/05/28/true-blood-russell-trailer/

TV Guide Video: Anna Paquin and Christopher Meloni!

Sun, 27 May 2012 12:25:59 GMT

TV Guide Video: Anna Paquin and Christopher Meloni!

Watch The ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ Red-Band Trailer

Fri, 25 May 2012 01:50:36 GMT

Watch The ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ Red-Band Trailer

NEW ‘Breaking Dawn-Part 2′ Bella , Edward & Jacob Characters Posters

Thu, 24 May 2012 23:35:16 GMT

NEW ‘Breaking Dawn-Part 2′ Bella , Edward & Jacob Character Posters

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:38:58 GMT

True Blood author can suck no more out of vampire series
Charlaine Harris has announced that the final novel in her Southern Vampire Mysteries series will be published next year

Alison Flood
guardian.co.uk

Mourning has broken out among fans of the telepathic Louisiana waitress Sookie Stackhouse after author Charlaine Harris announced that next year would see the publication of the final novel in her Southern Vampire Mysteries series.
...

Harris, whose bestselling books about vampires, werewolves and other supernatural beings in the small southern town of Bon Temps was made into the popular True Blood television series, has previously hinted that she was planning to bring the story to a close. But she made the definitive announcement on her Facebook page yesterday, telling readers that the 13th and final Sookie Stackhouse book, Dead Ever After, would be on sale next May. She immediately drew more than 5,000 "likes" and hundreds of comments from her fans, from: "Say it ain't so!" to "How can you do that to us!"

"I don't have anything left to tell. After the last book, I'll have said everything I have to say about Sookie," Harris said last week. "Really, I think it would be doing readers a disservice to continue writing a character when my heart wasn't in it. I've loved writing Sookie, but if you see the end of the road, you see the end of the road."

Harris's other series include the Harper Connelly books, about a woman who can tell the cause of death for any dead body, the Shakespeare mysteries, about amateur sleuth Lily Bard, and the Aurora Teagarden books, about a mystery-solving Georgian librarian. Her next project will be a graphic novel, Cemetery Girl, a collaboration with author Christopher Golden in which an amnesiac awakes to find herself living in a graveyard.

But for now Harris is mainly concerned with tying up loose ends in Bon Temps for the cast of characters she has followed for 12 years. "I don't know if I can get everything wound up. It just feels like a very big challenge," she told the Houston Press. "It's so hard. I find myself wanting to bring back random people, just so I can say, 'Here they are. Here's what happened.' And then I think, it's not going to be a very cohesive book if I have all these guest appearances. I really have to stick to the core of the book; I can't just throw people in there to give them a wave of the hand. Maybe there'll be an addendum on my website or as an ebook, something where I say, 'This is what happened to Harry Bellefleur!' or 'This is what happened to Tanya.' I don't want to leave anybody frustrated."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/may/16/true-blood-southern-vampire-mysteries

True Blood: Season 5 trailer

Mon, 14 May 2012 07:11:56 GMT

Dark Shadows new movie

Sun, 13 May 2012 12:59:05 GMT

Please consider boycotting the new 2012 DARK SHADOWS movie. It is terrible. Dan Curtis never wanted his show to be laughed at and said as much. Boycott means don't go see it.

Season Three, Episode Twenty Two Recaps/Reviews

Fri, 11 May 2012 11:48:43 GMT

HeyDon'tJudgeMe , HuffingtonPost , BuzzSugar, TVGuide, WSJ , EW .

True Blood Season 5 Character Posters

Fri, 11 May 2012 00:13:34 GMT

True Blood Season 5 Character Posters

Wed, 09 May 2012 19:40:39 GMT

Dark Shadows (2012)

Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman

When you go to see Tim Burton's Dark Shadows, a baroquely droll and Burtonized update of the gothic oddball vampire soap opera that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971, it seems a fairly safe bet that Johnny Depp, as Barnabas Collins, will be the freakiest person on screen. He is, but not in the way I expected. Barnabas, born in the 18th century, shows up in the fishing village of Collinsport, Maine, in 1972 after having spent 200 years in a coffin. Even amid the dope-happy, wilted-flower-power decadence of the early '70s, he cuts a distinctive figure. For openers, he's a bloody killer: The first thing he does is to slake his thirst by ripping into the throats of the workers who found his coffin. He's also an incongruous aristocrat. In his regal long coat and ascot, balancing himself on a wolf's-head cane, he walks with stiff, stately formality, and his chalky skin and sunken eyes are set off by a hairdo of staggered bangs that makes it look as if he'd just come from a Vidal Sassoon salon in Transylvania.
...

Yet Barnabas, at heart, is really rather conservative. He's sweet, a touch recessive, and not ultimately very threatening. He's a courtly dandy, a gentleman. After arriving at Collinwood Manor, the moldering 200-room mansion that his descendants still occupy, he meets Victoria (Bella Heathcote), the governess who's the reincarnation of the girl he once loved, and he can't believe that she's known as Vicky. ''A name like Victoria is so beautiful,'' he purrs in his plummy British accent, ''that I could not bear to part with a single syllable of it.'' And he means it! In 1972, Barnabas is an archaic romantic nobleman out of Jane Austen. He's not just undead; in the hippie-gone-glam era, he's mind-bendingly uncool. Which, ironically, is what sort of is cool — and freakish — about him.

Depp's performance is more than just funny — it's ghoulishly endearing. He caresses each line with great care, as if it were a piece of candy he's unwrapping, and he gives Barnabas, in his very ''demonic'' intensity, a quality of almost elfin innocence that recalls the characters Depp has most memorably played for Burton: Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, and Willy Wonka. But Dark Shadows, entertaining as it is, is a milder echo of those earlier collaborations. Burton references cheeky time-capsule artifacts (lava lamps, Troll dolls, macramé plant holders, the board game Operation). He piles on period pop chestnuts like the Moody Blues' ''Nights in White Satin'' and the Carpenters' ''Top of the World,'' and he stages a trippy grand ball presided over by Alice Cooper. I found a great deal of this stuff irresistible, but Dark Shadows is likably skewed fun that, at times, is a little too knowing about being a piece of kitsch.

The original Dark Shadows, a tale of bloodsuckers told in the slightly depressed, badly lit style of Days of Our Lives, has fostered a cult over the decades, but when I was a kid catching glimpses of it on TV, I never knew quite what to make of its fusion of horror and banality. Burton, working from a script by Seth Grahame-Smith that's stronger on dialogue than story, devises his own goofy riffs on the material. Barnabas finds a home with his relatives, who are basically one-note walking quirks: Chloë Grace Moretz as an insolent teen brat, Jonny Lee Miller as a dweebish scoundrel dad in a mod plaid jacket, Helena Bonham Carter as a neurotic whiskey-swilling shrink, and Michelle Pfeiffer as the levelheaded matriarch. The plot? Barnabas attempts to save the family fishery business — which means that he must once again face down Angelique (Eva Green), the witch whose advances he spurned two centuries ago and who got her vengeance by placing the curse of vampirism upon him. She now runs the rival cannery in town.

Green, who had such a complex allure in Casino Royale, here turns herself into an S&M vixen with a crooked leer of a smile. She and Depp have a supernatural sex scene (which gets a bit too gymnastic), but mostly she looks at him as if she wants to devour him, and Green makes that seem like a sick version of romance. By the last act, however, her performance literally becomes a special effect, her skin cracking like porcelain as she spews her toxic passion. Barnabas' heart, you see, is too pure for Angelique. He's saving himself for Victoria, the otherworldly governess. Dark Shadows, a kinky love triangle, is true, in its fashion, to the spirit of the old soap opera. Yet its real love affair is between Johnny Depp and the audience who's still hooked on seeing him get his freak on. B+

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20483133_20587645,00.html

Actress India Eisley Discusses Underworld 4 and More

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:13:58 GMT

Actress India Eisley Discusses Underworld 4 and More

Probably spoilers, didn't read because Underworld 4 comes out today and I haven't seen it yet. Yeah, I know, I'm a slacker...

Sun, 06 May 2012 18:58:09 GMT

The Vampire Who Came Out in the Afternoon

By TERRENCE RAFFERTY

IT was “Satan’s favorite TV show,” according to a religious tract of the time. Tim Burton, 8 years old when the Gothic daytime soap opera “Dark Shadows” came into the world and not quite 13 when it breathed its last, was clearly untroubled that his viewing preferences were similar to those of the Prince of Darkness.

“I should probably have been doing homework or playing sports after school instead of watching ‘Dark Shadows,’ ” he said. “But seeing that show every afternoon, at home, in Burbank, it just doesn’t get much weirder than that.” And for Mr. Burton, the director of “Edward Scissorhands,” “Sleepy Hollow,” and now a splashy silver-screen “Dark Shadows” (opening Friday), “weird” is a term of the very highest praise.
...

Some pop culture phenomena are easy to understand, he said, like “Star Trek,” which had its premiere just a couple of months after “Dark Shadows” began, in 1966. “Even if you’re not a ‘Star Trek’ fan, you kind of get the dynamic,” Mr. Burton said. But “Dark Shadows,” he continued, is “an acquired taste, and it’s really hard to describe it to people who never saw it.”

He’s right about that. There’s been a lot of supernatural drama on television since the demise of the original “Dark Shadows,” in 1971, but even under the influence of a powerful spell you would have a difficult time coming up with another show that roamed so freely and so recklessly through the underworld of horror pulp. Though nearly forgotten now, the series’s conflicted vampire, Barnabas Collins (played by Jonathan Frid, who died last month), was its biggest draw — at the time, he was more popular than the comparably peculiar Mr. Spock of “Star Trek”— but he was hardly the only unlikely denizen of the soap-opera town of Collinsport, Me. Over the course of 1,225 half-hour episodes Collinsport, a demographic anomaly even by the standards of New England, rolled out the Welcome Wagon for a staggering number of witches, warlocks, doppelgängers, mad scientists, werewolves, and, of course, ghosts, who seemed to descend in waves, like tourists in foliage season.

This satanic soap was Dan Curtis’s baby. Curtis, who had been a successful producer of golf telecasts, had the idea that a Gothic-romance kind of daytime drama — something on the order of “Rebecca,” with an innocent young woman rattling around in a gloomy old house — might appeal to the soap operas’ stay-at-home audience, and ABC gave him a shot. The show didn’t catch on right away, though, so Curtis, with nothing to lose, decided to throw in a ghost. One of the show’s directors said to him, “We’ve crossed the line with this, you know.” But the ratings went up. And they rose even higher when a few months later, in the 211th episode, Barnabas Collins emerged from his grave after almost 200 years of involuntary confinement.

In the context of late-’60s daytime drama these choices were, to put it mildly, counterintuitive. A few years later we would learn to call such desperate moves “jumping the shark,” but what “Dark Shadows” proved at the moment Barnabas’s cold, pale hand reached out of his coffin was that soap-opera narrative is in its essence an act of desperation, like the telling of bedtime stories by weary parents to wakeful kids: the stories just seem to go on and on and on, and the longer your audience stays with you, the more sharks, inevitably, will have to be jumped.

Seen from this point of view what Curtis did in “Dark Shadows” wasn’t all that different from what other, more ostensibly reality-based, soaps did when they found themselves hard up for story lines to hold their viewers’ attention. The traditional daytime dramas have always required a fair amount of willing suspension of disbelief too, what with their amnesia plots and evil twins, their periodic recasting of familiar roles and bizarre reversals of character. When an actor introduced as a villain becomes popular, the producers generally contrive to turn that character into a more sympathetic figure. (See Luke the rapist from “General Hospital.”) In soaps, pretty much anything goes.

But “Dark Shadows” sure felt different. “It kind of created its own universe, had its own weird vibe that wasn’t like anything else,” Mr. Burton said, admiringly. (He used some form of the word “weird” no fewer than 17 times in a 20-minute phone call.) “The fact that it was a soap opera, on TV every day in the afternoon, in itself made it strange. But the tone it had made it even stranger.” Part of that stranger-than-strange tone has to do with the acting style, which inhabits some odd no-creature’s-land between drab soap solemnity and the over-the-top histrionics of Hammer horror.

For Mr. Burton that made casting a challenge. Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer, who play Barnabas and Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the matriarch of the cursed Collins clan, knew the show, but other cast members — like Eva Green, Jackie Earle Haley and Mr. Burton’s partner, Helena Bonham Carter — did not. “I felt like I was using a kind of ‘Dark Shadows’ filter, which I could never quite verbalize to the casting director,” Mr. Burton said. “Somebody was either part of the ‘Dark Shadows’ club or not, and I could never say why. It’s something personal.”

Before the soap opera ended its run Curtis managed to crank out a couple of theatrical features, “House of Dark Shadows” (1970) and “Night of Dark Shadows” (1971), which doubtless put unseemly pressure on a cast and crew whose creative blood was already draining fast. Even with the extra narrative latitude allowed by the horror genre, the show ran out of ideas, and died a (more or less) natural death. (The entire saga, all 400-plus hours of it, will be available Tuesday in a 131-disc DVD set, boxed in an attractive coffin.) Curtis continued, through the ’70s, to put horror of some quality on the small screen. The contemporary vampire thriller “Night Stalker” (1972) remains one of the most terrifying things ever to creep into American living rooms. (“That was cool,” Mr. Burton said. “I loved that.”) The series “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” was spun off from it, and Curtis, who died in 2006 and is now perhaps best known for the “Winds of War” mini-series, also produced or directed very respectable television adaptations of several of the literary classics whose plots he had plundered for “Dark Shadows” story lines: “Dracula,” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”

Mr. Burton chose to set his movie in 1972, not long after the original “Dark Shadows” met its timely end. “For me doing this movie was about re-experiencing that time in your life when you feel weird all the time, that age when you’re in transition from being a kid to being a teenager, and it’s all so unpleasant.”

The soap opera Curtis created, with or without the powers of darkness, helped create the culture in which a sensibility like Mr. Burton’s could thrive, and it is still, after all these years, indelibly, unkillably weird. If “Dark Shadows” had never existed, even Tim Burton might not have been able to invent it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/arts/television/tim-burton-brings-tvs-dark-shadows-back-as-a-movie.html?_r=1&hpw