'Vampire Diaries' and Hollywood's undying love for fang fantasy

This year marks the 40th anniversary of "Let It Bleed," the classic Rolling Stones album, and how perfect is that? There has never been more bloodsucking in pop culture that right now, and Gina McIntyre reports in this fun feature on Hollywood's vamping pursuits. Next we may ask her to consider the link between the resurgence in zombie cinema and the current condition of Keith Richards...   

Forget the garlic, the crucifixes, the security of daylight. Nothing is holding the vampires at bay these days. With the wild popularity of movie, TV and literary properties including "Twilight" and HBO's hit series "True Blood," the bloodthirsty undead are dominating the pop culture landscape in ways Count Dracula could have never imagined, and the trend seems unlikely to abate any time soon.

"The Twilight Saga: New Moon," the second film adaptation of the popular series of novels, is set for release in November, with the third installment to follow in June 2010. "True Blood," drawing some of HBO's largest audiences since "The Sopranos," concludes its second season on Sunday. Now, the CW network is taking a stab at the genre with "The Vampire Diaries," which premieres Thursday.

"Vampires are the bad boys," says series co-creator Kevin Williamson in trying to explain their popularity. "They're dangerous, but they're also just sexy and they can protect you. You can challenge them. There's so much there -- epic love, epic romance, epic epic! Everyone wants their life to be epic."

He admits, though, that he was somewhat skeptical at first, well aware that his new show will be compared to "Twilight." And there are plenty of similarities: Small-town girl meets good-guy vampire, falls head over heels, conflict ensues.

But Williamson said that it's where the action goes after that point that he found particularly intriguing, and the creative possibilities ultimately convinced him to say yes. Well, that and the fact that vampire stories are just plain cool.

And they appear to be here to stay, at least through 2012. Tim Burton is crafting a "Dark Shadows" movie starring Johnny Depp that is set for release in 2011, and there's also a talked-about cinematic reboot of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" aimed for the following year.

On the page, director Guillermo del Toro and his writing partner Chuck Hogan will produce the second and third installments in their vampire series -- the first book the pair co-wrote, "The Strain," was released earlier this year to solid reviews.

Of course, this is not the first time in recent memory vampires have captivated the pop culture consciousness. In the late 1970s and '80s, Anne Rice's novels sparked a resurgence in the popularity of the creatures, playing up the romantic and sexual aspects of the vampire myth more strongly than writers who had come before.

She created a dashing monster. These days, the vampire is almost always depicted as the handsome leading man (or at least the handsome, conflicted villain)...

THERE'S MORE, READ THE REST

-- Gina McIntyre

Here's a trailer for "The Vampire Diaries"...

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CREDITS: Photos, starting from top -- "Vampire Diaries" (The CW);  "True Blood" (HBO); "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" (Summit Entertainment) and the cover for "The Strain."

'Battlestar Galactica' and 'True Blood' finally get trophy love

Tom O'Neil, the entertainment awards maven at The Envelope, has this heartening report from the TCA Awards, where two favorites of the Hero Complex finally get some trophy recognition...

Wow! Members of the Television Critics Association actually put their awards where their big mouths are! Finally, the TCA Awards recognized "Battlestar Galactica" after voters beat the beans out of the Emmys for failing to give the show any major awards in the past.

Can this mean a break from the TCA Awards' hypocrisy? In years past, voters whined, fumed and harrumphed about the Emmys failing to recognize "The Wire" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," then they snubbed them too. TCA members never gave those shows real prizes — just handed them that bogus "Heritage Award" after they went off the air and failed to win best drama series or program of the year.

"Battlestar Galactica" didn't win a significant TCA Award in the past and now finally reaped one after sailing off the airwaves, but at least it's fared better than other great TV series cruelly snubbed by TCA and the television academy. And while TCA voters skunked vampires back in Buffy's heyday, they did just hail HBO's walking dead by giving "True Blood" their prize as best new program...

THERE'S MORE, READ THE REST

-- Tom O'Neil

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CREDITS: "Battlestar" images -- SyFy. "True Blood" images -- HBO

'True Blood' at Comic-Con: Yes, ladies, Eric really is that hot

Lest anyone forget, there is more than one vampire-themed entertainment phenomenon in the pop culture universe right now. 

"True Blood," HBO's hit adaptation of the Sookie Stackhouse mystery novels from author Charlaine Harris, has its own legion of devoted fans keen on the show's sexy, campy aesthetic, and plenty of them turned up Saturday to hear cast members Anna Paquin (on her birthday, no less), Stephen Moyer, Sam Trammell, Rutina Wesley, Nelsan Ellis, Michelle Forbes, Deborah Ann Woll and Alexander Skarsgard and creator Alan Ball talk about what's in store for Season 2 and beyond. It was Skarsgard, though, who might have earned the most enthusiastic reception -- he plays vamp heavy Eric Northman on the Louisiana-set series, and well, there just must be something about those centuries-old former Vikings who become powerful immortals. They make the ladies swoon.

After screening a brief teaser reel promoting the second half of the current season, the cast took turns answering questions posed by moderator Kate Hahn from TV Guide and members of the audience, several of whom focused on the tension between Eric and Paquin's Sookie, who happens to be romantically involved with Moyer's Southern gentleman vampire Bill Compton. (The couple are also an item off-screen.) 

Paquin said that after Sookie's experiences last season -- when she suffered the loss of her grandmother and was in almost constant danger of losing her own life -- she felt that her character had become stronger and tougher, but conceded that she still gets into trouble. "Good thing she has her vampire boyfriend," she noted. Moyer, for one, intends to make sure that Bill remains Sookie's beau. "I'm not sure Bill's just going to roll over and let that happen," he said of any potential developments on the Eric-Sookie front. "He might not be as polite."

Which means things could turn ugly, and fast, as Skarsgard said that Eric's most likely not going to drop his advances toward the plucky cocktail waitress any time soon. "Eric's been around for a very long time. He's kind of over humanity, then she comes along and there's something different about her. For the first time in a long time, he's curious."

Skarsgard went on to say that he's enjoyed working on the series' second season, as it's allowed him to develop the character: "Eric was misunderstood. People would say, 'You're the bad guy,' and I had to defend him. He is a bad ass, but as an actor, you have to have layers. . . . He doesn't care for a lot of people, or vampires either, but the ones he does, he's very loyal to." 

For those who thirst for something else related to the show, Ball announced that TruBlood (an all-natural blood orange soda sold in replica bottles that look just like the props on the show) will be available for purchase Sept. 10, just in time for the Season 2 finale. Fans will be able to place orders at hbo.com.

And there's more good news for those who read Harris' novels: She revealed during the panel that she's signed a contract to write three more, which should take her up through 2014.

-- Gina McIntyre

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Photo: "True Blood's" Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgard). Credit: HBO

'True Blood' chat tonight, 6 p.m. (PDT)

The vivacious Jessica Gelt will be moderating the second "True Blood" chat tonight after a nice turnout last week and some rollicking conversation, fiery debate and undisguised drooling (the ladies, it seems, looove hunky vampires). Tune in for the show, sign on for the talk -- sink your teeth into the full "True Blood" experience. You can find the chat at our mighty sister blog, Show Tracker. 

-- Geoff Boucher

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"True Blood" photos courtesy of HBO

HBO ratings pumped by 'True Blood'

This week, Denise Martin will be launching a Hero Complex countdown to "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" but today her focus is the "True Blood" season premiere and its ratings. While the numbers can't compare to network hit shows, the news was decidely good for the bayou bloodsuckers and the subscription-based HBO, Martin reports over at our sister blog, Show Tracker:

Some 3.7 million viewers tuned into the second season premiere of HBO's "True Blood" Sunday -- the network's biggest telecast rating in two years.

Another 1.4 million watched the 11 p.m. encore., and by the end of the night, 5.1 million viewers watched to see the conclusion to last season's bone-chilling cliffhanger — was that Lafayette's cold, dead corpse in the back of Andy Bellefleur's car?

That makes the episode HBO's most-watched program since the finale of "The Sopranos."

Altogether, the premiere delivered the network's single biggest audience since the mob drama's 2007 ending, which drew 11.9 million and still ranks its most-watched series

READ THE REST

-- Denise Martin

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"True Blood" photos courtesy of HBO

'True Blood' live chat tonight during Season 2 premiere

Red lights, grey morning

You stumble out of a hole in the ground

A vampire or a victim

It depends on who's around

I always loved those U2 lyrics and they flashed through my mind as I watched an advance DVD with the first four episodes of "True Blood" Season 2.

Don't worry, no spoilers here ... but I will tell you that the second season shows a lot of promise. The bright spots of the cast are again Rutina Wesley as Tara Thorton, Nelsan Ellis as Lafayette Reynolds and Stephen Moyer, who continues to add surprising layers to Bill Compton, the vampire with 19th century formality and conflicted feelings about his bloodsucking bretheren.  

Season 2 kicks off tonight with plenty of fangs and splatter and some especially nasty doings in a nightclub basement used as an abattoir for unfortunate humans. If you're a "True Blood" fan and you want to drink in every drop of the show, visit the live chat hosted by our sister blog, Show Tracker, where Jessica Gelt will be vamping and venting, beginning at 8:30 PDT ...

You can find the chat right here.

-- Geoff Boucher

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"True Blood" photo courtesy of HBO

'True Blood' sinks its teeth into Season 2

I'm a big fan of "True Blood" and was thrilled that HBO recently sent me the first four episodes of Season 2 on a special preview DVD. I've made it through two of the episodes already and they're great, especially the subplot about a self-possessed teenager who is now a newly created vampire. I'll be writing more on "True Blood" soon but in the meantime: Jessica Gelt, one of my colleagues at the Los Angeles Times, has a fun story on the show that I thought you might enjoy. -- G.B.

The bomb that shattered the living room left carnage in its wake. The floor is slick with blood, tattered bodies litter the room, entrails dangle from the ceiling and an unrecognizable mass of goo stuck to the wall erratically spurts jets of mauve blood.

"I'm gonna ask everyone to clear the set who is not actually dying on it," yells Scottie Gissel, a first assistant director for HBO's hit vampire series "True Blood," which launches into its second season of sensational Gothic gore and lusty, undead romance next Sunday. (Viewers will see the scene of explosive destruction that Gissel is stage-managing late in the season.)

On this sunny afternoon, the cast and crew work in overdrive on a gloomy, fog-soaked soundstage at the Lot on Santa Monica and Formosa. They labor with the assuredness of a project vindicated. After getting off to a rocky start critically last fall, "True Blood," based on the books by Charlaine Harris and created by Alan Ball, who created "Six Feet Under" and wrote "American Beauty," steadily built its audience to emerge as HBO's most popular show in recent years, with an average of 7.8 million viewers watching each episode by the end of Season 1.

With a fervent fan base, including nearly half a dozen fan-run websites that HBO -- in a forward-thinking approach to managing public opinion -- actively fosters, "True Blood" is hoping to prove with its sophomore season that even in the "Twilight" age of vampire overkill, it can maintain its success.

"True Blood" takes place in a world where vampires have come out of the coffin, so to speak, aided by the invention of a synthetic blood substitute called Tru Blood that helps keep their primal appetites at bay. Still, prejudice against the undead abounds, with many of the show's human characters motivated by a hate and fear that is as gruesomely destructive as that of even the most unrepentant bloodsucker.

Season 1 established the main action: "True Blood" is set in the fictional backwater town of Bon Temps, La., where a telepathic good girl named Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) works as a waitress in a raucous bar called Merlotte's. When a mysterious vampire named Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) comes to town, Sookie falls in love with him. A high body count and muddy graveside sex ensue.

Ball initially read "Dead Until Dark," the first in Harris' "Southern Vampire" series, five years ago. By the time "Six Feet Under" was filming its final season, he was interested in doing something with the books on television. Sitting on a couch in his bungalow office on the Lot, Ball says the cultural clout of his broodingly dark funeral-parlor drama left critics and the public unsure of what to think of the zany, Saturday matinee movie serial that is "True Blood."

"When people approach me about 'Six Feet Under' they say, 'Oh my God, that show meant so much to me, I lost my mother last year,' " says Ball, putting one shorts-clad knee up on the couch. "With 'True Blood,' it's more like, 'Dude, I love your show. It rocks!'"

READ THE REST

-- Jessica Gelt

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All images courtesy of HBO

 

'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