Walking Dead TV Series: First Two Episodes Reviewed IN A VIDEO!! YAY!

Enjoy ladies and gents!

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True Blood Season Three: Thoughts of a Vampire Freak



Yes.



No favorite friday today because I've got a bone to pick.

Okay as I'm sure it has become blatantly obvious (unless you're blind, deaf or just have been ignoring me when we're around each other which is really mean btw) I like vampires. 

So. Please excuse my ranting for the next few pages--if anything it may amuse you.

So. WHAPOW! Season 3 of True Blood.

One word to describe this season...........different.

I've always been very clear with...well...anyone who would listen really....that vampires are not whimpy emo kids full of drama and glitter. They are real (well. not really ) creatures with actual feelings, most of them involving a desire to suck attractive people dry all the while having perfect hair and hopefully kicking some butt whilst doing it.

That being said, I'm not inferring that True Blood does not satisfy that description. However. I can't help but feel slightly robbed by this past season......particularlly the finale.

 I feel like I just got Sopranoed. Like the episode ends and......credits.

dot dot dot.....

Seriously? There's like 20 different things going on and there is no resolution? I mean....nothing? And you with your slow camera slides to creepy props lying nonchalantly on the floor .....or your mysterious (and gaudy...geesh) disappearance of main characters.....PSHT! LAME! Riding off into the sunset...metaphorically, still vampires people...of characters without saying where they'll go. I realize that a cliff hanger was inevitable and that there was sure to be drama in there somewhere (vampires and skanks and murderers oh my!) and I'm not saying that I wanted 100% of the show to be wrapped up tight with a bow...but....I just feel...

I feel like I didn't get enough to eat at dinner. And I'm like....mad that my sister took 3 rolls instead of 2. That's how I feel. And I want that roll!

....I want to be the prop master on that shoot

It's not really excitement for next season since I know I'll have wait until next YEAR to see the new season. Which is not cool, btw HBO....not cool. And its not like I won't watch the season next year, because I will. 

I mean, I wanna know what happens but I'm really just full of pissed right now. Because of the stupidity of the ending. Seriously.

As far as the season as a whole goes, I'll reiterate here: it was different. Not bad different....not good different. Just.....like your mom changed the recipe to the Thanksgiving Stuffing she's made every year and you've yet to decide if you liked it or not. I can't help but feel like there is something amiss, that the show took on too much at once and something got lost along the way. While I thoroughly enjoy the press that the show has been getting (as a freakishly obsessed individual I like it when my obsessions are jusitified, if not made completely normal by popularity....like furbies and/or beanie babies.....don't judge me), I feel that the show has lost some of its zip in efforts to gain a broad audience and outdo itself.  Again. For the most part I like the direction the show has been going in (though it has officially gotten waaaaaay off track from the novels...I'm sure Charlaine Harris is all pissy that the show is better than her books...), especially with introducing new characters and embellishing events to make a better television experience. 

It's just ..... someone messed with my Thanksgiving Stuffing! And I don't know whether I want seconds or if I just want to keep eating it until I like it. Or (sad music) say...no seconds for me thanks.... :(

I don't know. Maybe I'm just pissed about the finale. I'll let you know later.

Anyway. Have a lovely day!

Walking Dead Update!

Oh yeah. That's downtown Atlanta. Cool huh?

The trailer for the Walking Dead AMC series was released this week and I feel it is my duty to inform all of you who are not constant Internet hounds such as myself to inform you!

I really like that the show was actually shot on location in Atlanta. Oh yes, it was---during THIS summer, in THIS heat. So I totally don't envy the actors on the set, but I assure you--that sweat is real.

I totally approve of Andrew Lincoln as Rick Grimes in this series. He just really looks like the character in the comic book and judging from this freshly released trailer and all the set pictures I've seen, he is a good set for the part.

Andrew Lincoln (hat and gun) as Rick Grimes

From what I've seen of the rest of the cast, they're all chosen with the specific intention of creating a following for the series from the people who've read the comics--which is a godsend because I'm sick of film-makers turning popular comics into movies or shows without listening to the people who made the comics popular in the first place.

I don't know about you....but that's disturbing

See what a lot of people who have recently gotten into zombie comics/movies (such as myself) don't realize about this kind of media is how dichotomous it is--meaning that there are a couple different facets of what makes it so addictive. There is the gore factor--that squelchy level of awful that makes you "WHAT!? DID YOU SEE THAT" as you turn to grab the person sitting next to you. Admittedly this is very important, because at least at the surface it is very hard to like any zombie movie, vampire movie or pretty much any horror flick without there being a reasonable amount of blood-flying action. However! With the guts come the glory, after the blood stops running comes the story. (hey that rhymed!) And while the story doesn't necessarily have to be Citizen Kane or whatever, it has to be cohesive and it has to affect the audience in a way that the gore couldn't. The story either has to be super sick (Hostel, 3 Extremes) or super scary (The Shining or Dawn of the Dead or *shudder*  The Grudge). The reason some of these movies are so awesome (and just as reasonably some of them are so atrociously bad) is because of the double layer. You've got the blood and you've got the mind-messing. Look at how bad Cloverfield was. That movie had so much potential, it even had some totally awesome gore and stuff in it (girl blowing up.....awesome) but it was ruined by this really lame love story folded in and the fairly dumb pithy dialogue and the annoying camera (that made me car sick). I mean its really hard to mess up a giant monster story. And they did because the characters were unrelateably separate from the audience and we didn't empathize with them enough to be disgusted or enthralled by the awful things happening to them.

Which brings me to my point about this show: it has a frame perfectly suited to the aforementioned framework! It sticks with the guts and with the glory aspect! The footage shown puts to bed any fears I may have had about the show being on regular cable instead of HBO or whatever. I'm seeing blood, gore and really gross looking dead and walking dead people. Added to that is the knowledge that even if the show's gore was lame the original story is spectacular and a complete idiot would be required to mess it up; Frank Darabont is not a complete idiot. So the potential for awesome is incredibly high! I'm totally pumped!

Enough of my ranting!

True Blood Episode 3 Season 3

Well. That was an interesting episode.

Ahem.

Seriously?

O...k....

Well beyond the seriously creepy sex scene between Bill and Lorena (dude. She is extremely evil but did she deserve that? Seriously?), the episode was filled with great moments.

My favorite was Sam's family showing up at his restaurant to open a tab....and visit....because they love him.

His little brother is kind of a turd.

Jason is as imbecilic as ever; he has decided to become a police officer (for like ten minutes before the creepy "bullet wound on everyone's forehead" pyschosis showing up again to deter him, that and he's dumb).

I throughly enjoyed Eric giving Layfette the lovely SV 9 Competizione just because. Eric is always full of surprises.

Sookie's up to her usual antics. She places herself in harm's way in her efforts to gain some intel on Bill's location. In the process she befriends the lovely Alcide and we get to see the inside of quite a creepy werewolf bar.

My least favorite part was Franklin Mott and his insinuated mind/body rape of Tara. He uses his glamour in a most ungentlemanly way. I mean come on! I'd be so pissed. And Tara is so stupid looking him in the eyes like that. She was all high and mighty about her distrust of vampires and WHAM!

All in all it was a very.....odd.....episode of True Blood. I felt like I needed a shower. I felt like there was a lie going on. I feel confused and in need of answers.

oh and well I'll just wait 7 days to find out what this all means...wait...wha.....WHY DO I HAVE TO WAIT TWO WEEKS FOR THE NEXT EPISODE?

oh HBO you are a cruel mistress.

But I will wait.

Trueblood Episode 2 Season 3

OMGOMGOMGOMG!
Ok. I'll take a deep breath.

Ok. So Trueblood season 3 is shaping up to be totally awesome. Squeezed into 50 minutes of complete awesome, this episode delivered majorly.

Nazi Vampires, Nazi Werewolves, awesome James Frain hitting on Tara. O.M.G. And of course now I have to wait for another episode. I'm curious as to whether or not something's going to come out about Bill's past that's going to make him look bad.  I thoroughly enjoyed Frain in The Tudors and in The Count of Monte Cristo(2002). Plus he gets to use his real accent in this show ( I notice things like that...shut up).

Plus there is this extremely creepy King of Louisiana (seated ->)with his equally creepy boytoy Talbot (hand on shoulder ->). Gay vampires are beginning to be a theme (a facet created and nurtured by Anne Rice---thank you Lestat and Louis). They've managed to keep Bill hostage, which of course he's whining about (I'm an Eric fan, Bill reminds me a lot of Edward from Twilight. Eric however is awesome but I digress).

I'm am deliciously annoyed at the cliffhangers each show brings. It makes me want to wait until the whole show is over so I can watch them back to back on demand....but I also am so impatient I know if i attempted that I'd just give in and watch each new episode on Sunday. GAH.

Oh Sunday. Why are you 6 days away!?

TrueBlood Season 3 Episode 1

Vampires = awesome. I enjoy vampires; ever since I stayed up late one night when my family first got HBO and watched Interview with a Vampire when I was ten I have loved vampires ( Do not be confused. Those sparkly beings Stephanie Meyer has conjured in Twilight are not vampires. Those are sacrilegious teenagers who don't die).  I also didn't know why I enjoyed them so much until I became a grown up. But we won't go there.

Trueblood has made real vampires main-stream, cool, sexy and addictive. And I waited a whole year for season 3 because I just KNEW this show was going to be bad ass.

And boy did that first episode deliver. I love how it doesn't even take any time between the last episode of Season 2 to the first episode of Season 3! There are so many different plot lines going on. No Spoilers but let's just say everyone is in shit right now. Left and right!

What I really love about Alan Ball's direction of this series is how he uses what we know about the shows' characters to draw us in and then how he uses what we DON'T KNOW to surprise the crap out of us!

We do get to see Eric's hiney in the first episode, along with some good ol' fashion vampire violence. I really like how the costume director does the vampire fangs; they're more "realistic" if vampire fangs can be realistic. I never really thought the Underworld, From Dusk til Dawn, and Queen of the Damned fangs were that good. They just seemed silly and rather useless. They were also ugly. These are quite neat and pretty to look at (I'm sure all the wealthier goth kids are out there getting veneers made just like them as we speak).

The blood is the best part. They really went all out. I'm sure the prop master buys the stuff in bulk (man I'd like to work for that wholesale store). I've heard that the stuff on set is made to taste like raspberry, which is really cool to imagine that when Bill bites Sookie she tastes like raspberry. *snicker*

The show does a lot to make the vampire a grown-up medium (hopefully erasing what Twilight and ''Vampire Diaries'' have down to the genre).  But in the end, the whole story isn't just about vampires--a fact that makes the show as engrossing as it is. If it were just about the vampires the favorite characters would either all be vampires or all be humans (Buffy anyone?). The show is about people--both living and undead and the bullshit situations they get themselves into. Covered in blood!!!

Awesome. Can't wait until the next episode. YAAY!

The Walking Dead AMC TV Series

If you are like any of the men in my life, Zombies are not a hobby (notice the capital 'Z') they are a lifestyle. As a recent enthusiast (I know who Bub is. I am in) of Zombie culture, I have come to appreciate the social statements made by the films, comics, literature, music, games and art associated with the subject of the living dead.
The funniest thing is about myself and Zombies (or Zack as they're referred to in my house, thanks Max Brooks) is they scare the crap out of me. It is really quite sad especially considering how much Zombie knowledge I have retained via osmosis. But the real problem with the Living Dead as they're quiet literary a walking contradiction. They shouldn't be moving, but are. They shouldn't (as human beings...kinda) want to eat me until I die, but they do. So its a little unsettling.

But like the desire to run my tongue over an owie in my mouth, its a pleasure pain I can't help but maintain.

So when I heard that the Huckleberry Finn of Zombie comics was being made into a television series, my interest was piqued, to say the least.
Reasons why one should totally be pumped about the Walking Dead Series:
1. It's directed by Frank Darabont of Shawshank Redemption and Green Mile fame (he's also a close personal friend of Stephen King....the creepy scale is going up). He is also a complete zombie fanatic.

In a recent interview on comicbookmovie.com the director shares his love for the undead: "I've always wanted to do my take on the zombie mythos, since I was a kid and I saw Romero's Night of the Living Dead - the 1968 black and white version. For our zombie show I'm calling that the Book of Genesis, and whenever there's a question about zombie behavior I go back to Night of the Living Dead."

2. I know its on basic cable. The potential for lame is great because there an obviously not be an obscene level of gore that most Zombie films provide. BUT...........!


I MEAN COME ON!



I think there is a lot of potential here. I mean there are violent shows like Break Bad on this channel so maybe this show will be reasonable violent and make up for it with really creepy!

3. I always approve of comics and books that are adapted into television shows more than I approve of those turned into films because it allows for a lot more breathing room. Look at TrueBlood. That show has become legendary and is really awesome. Look at The Spirit. Turned into a movie by Frank Miller no less and it was the biggest, prettiest and most expensive turd I've seen in a long time.  I like that they're making this into a show because if it sucks....all they have to do is get a new director for the next episode and BAM! it may suck less.

4. The Walking Dead Blog has giving me great hope. They have. A. Zombie. School. How completely badass is that? They do Zombie exercises and obstacle courses. Do they have diplomas? Or gym class? Zombie Math? I am stoked. This is going to be epic.

All in all I am pumped. Pumped to the extreme.