Posted by Shadaliza On June - 9 - 2009ADD COMMENTS
As a part of the innovative marketing campaign for True Blood several “fake” websites have been created. A good examples is Bloodcopy, but now there is also WelcomeToBonTemps.com.
This is a sweet little website that shares Bon Temp’s vitals, such as local activities, directions to the town (I’m interested to hear where, in fact, these directions will lead the traveler), and a video featuring locals and their pro and con views on the recent influx of vampires to their town. You’ll find ads for Merlotte’s. There’s table service with a free mind reading included. There are also interesting tidbits about the region’s history, climate, languages, and Cajun culture. Rene’s fake accent was Cajun. If you’re not from Louisiana you may find this information helpful in understanding the people and their heritage.
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An article about True Blood on Variety.com sums up what we can expect from the new season.
‘The second season of “True Blood” goes down smooth, representing a perfect summer concoction — long on soapy romance, macabre intrigue, and graphic bursts of sex and violence. HBO’s stab at playing to a cult audience has turned out to be perfectly timed for the pay channel, offering a lighter counterweight to the emotionally darker dramas airing elsewhere. And while the vampires-as-downtrodden-minority gay metaphor continues to resonate throughout these early episodes, exec producer Alan Ball and company have firmly established their alternate universe as its own engrossing (and occasionally gross) little world.
Cast additions that came onboard as season one progressed have also shot adrenaline through “Blood’s” veins, though the central story remains the same: The different-worlds romance between Sookie (Anna Paquin), who has the psychic ability to hear people’s thoughts; and Bill (Stephen Moyer), the vampire born during the Civil War era for whom she has madly fallen, and vice versa.
Their relationship is complicated, however — and that qualifies as an enormous understatement — by sundry outside forces, including the regional vampire leader Eric (Alexander Skarsgard), who covets Sookie’s powers; and the teenage Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll), who Bill was compelled to transform into a vampire. The latter yields darkly comic results, inasmuch as petulant youth and a thirst for blood are a potentially combustible mix.
Meanwhile (and there are a lot of meanwhiles), Sookie’s friend Tara (Rutina Wesley) continues to fall under the spell of the mysterious Maryann (Michelle Forbes), adding a spooky “Rosemary’s Baby”-type undercurrent to the proceedings; and Sookie’s dimwitted brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten) experiences a religious awakening, enlisting in the vampire-hating Light of Day Institute.
In short, there’s a helluva lot going on, and the assorted subplots feel more compelling this season, including the constant sense of menace surrounding both Eric and Maryann. Moreover, the religious overtones of the Jason storyline should irritate the religious right (just to drive home the parallel, a sign in the credits says “God Hates Fangs”), whose intolerance toward gays has been superimposed onto the undead. “They live forever, but we were here first!” the group’s acolytes cheerfully sing on the bus to their religious retreat.
Without spoiling anything, there is also a scene in the second hour (four were made available) that might be as grotesque as anything ever produced for television. In fact, I’m feeling a little nauseous now just thinking about it, which I realize, for some, will in and of itself provide a strong inducement to watch.’
The part that is really interesting is of course the scene in the second episode that is described as “grotesque”. The teeth pulling episode last year made my stomach cringe (in a good way, that’s why I watch a vampire show), I wonder oh I wonder what this could be?
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Ryan Kwanten is featured in the June issue of Muscle & Body
On HBO’s “True Blood,” Ryan Kwanten plays a Bayou bad boy with dangerous obsessions. Off-screen, the Australia-born actor is a beach-loving triathlete and yoga enthusiast. Muscle & Body spends some quality time with the sunny side of the rising star.
Convincing evidence of the shape-shifting acting skills of Ryan Kwanten is presented in the first instant of meeting him. There’s the musical Australian accent, the engaging smile, the warm handshake, the down-to-earth demeanor — is this really Jason Stackhouse, the blood-slurping, sex-crazed Deep South degenerate who has captivated fans of the HBO hit “True Blood”?
The distance between the off-screen Kwanten and the character he portrays can be calculated only in galactic measurements. It makes his already critically acclaimed performance all the more impressive.
But there is one true-life quality of Kwanten’s that isn’t concealed in the Southern gothic series: his cut physique. The 32-year-old actor is rendered shirtless in numerous scenes, though not gratuitously, considering the steamy, swampy locale of “True Blood’s” fictional Bon Temps, La. But those moments reveal a ripped musculature as sharp as the eyeteeth of Bon Temps’ vampires.
Kwanten’s remarkable physical conditioning isn’t the result of a high-paid celebrity trainer but the actor’s own lifelong immersion in the fitness lifestyle. Raised on the coast near Sydney, he developed a love for the surf, a fire undoubtedly stoked by his father, a champion paddle boarder. Kwanten’s mother is herself an avid runner who passed on her passion to her oldest son and his two younger brothers, making for one very active family.
“I always grew up with physical activity, so now it’s just a part of who I am,” he says. “I do a little something every day. Even when I’m working, I’ll go home and run on the soft sand at two in the morning. No matter the time, even if I have to wake up at four, I do whatever [exercise] I can. If
I don’t then I’m not me.”
In it’s second week in DVD release, HBO’s True Blood piled on another nearly $7 million in DVD sales for a total of $26 million after 2 weeks to continue to lead all TV shows in DVD sales for the week ending May 31, 2009, and fell just 2 spots to #6 overall among all DVD sales.
Posted by Shadaliza On June - 9 - 2009ADD COMMENTS
Earlier this week we announced that Stephen Moyer will be a guest on Regis & Kelly on June 10, but there seems to be confusion about the day he will be on and we haven’t been able to get the date officially confirmed. We’ll keep you posted on updates.
Update: We just heard through Truebloodnet.com that Stephen is TAPING with Regis and Kelly on Wed. and the show will air at a later date.
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The Billsbabe’s Shoppe added t-shirts with the text Vampires are the coolest. They come in white and in black.
The Billsbabe’s Shoppe is a non-profit – at cost fansite store. With every item purchased a small charitable donation will be made to the Brentwood Theatre in Essex, UK, of which Stephen Moyer is patron.
Boutique du Vampyre in New Orleans supplies all the wanna-be vampires who weren’t born with sharp teeth with custom made fangs.
These fine quality, realistic Vampire Fangs are custom created using quality dental equipment, and color matched to your own teeth to enhance your Vampiric look.
Fangs range from $100.00 to $800, depending on your specific desires.
To complete the illusion of real Bill and Sookie “Do it, I want you to” sex, get these fake tattoos to decorate your partner’s neck after you have treated him or her on your special love bite.
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As promised, Movieline hit up the Young Hollywood Awards last night, a ceremony dedicated to honoring Tinseltown’s best and brightest (and youngest!). We witnessed heartfelt acceptance speeches and a knockout performance by Naturi Naughton from the upcoming Fame remake before moving on to a DJ AM-spun afterparty that Young Hollywood Artist of the Year Adam Lambert prefaced with, “I hope somebody buys me a drink.” No need, Adam — they were free!
First up in our series of red carpet video interviews from the event is Evan Rachel Wood, who was receiving the Young Hollywood Superstar award (presented by Patricia Clarkson) but took the time to talk to Movieline about her splashy season two performance as the vampire queen of True Blood, a role she’d been unable to discuss until now.
Find out about her take on the character and her impending lesbian love interest in the video below:
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HBO went to the set and presented the cast with questions from the fans, here is the second video where Ryan Kwanten, Rutina Wesley and Michelle Forbes talk funny moments.
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There’s a scene in the new season premiere of True Blood in which Bill, the brooding village vampire, beds Sookie, his mortal girlfriend, after they’ve had an argument. It’s steamy stuff—makeup sex is still makeup sex, even when one party isn’t technically living. Mid-act, Bill bites Sookie’s neck with his fangs in an orgasmic frenzy, then kisses her, smearing her own red blood down her cheeks and onto her lips. Stephen Moyer, the actor who plays Bill, has the difficult job of portraying both a savage bloodsucker and a likable romantic lead, and this interlude, at least, comes off as hot as it does scary.
“I had an e-mail from a lady after Bill bit Sookie for the first time saying, ‘It was all going so well—why did you have to bite her?’ ” says Moyer, when I ask him about handling those two aspects of the role. “I explained to her that it was actually a consummation of their relationship as opposed to a violation. He wouldn’t do that for just anyone.” True Blood, which starts season two this week, is fundamentally a love story between two outsiders. Sookie Stackhouse, played by Anna Paquin, is an otherworldly waitress who can read people’s thoughts (except for Bill’s), and Bill Compton is a 173-year-old Civil War veteran who also happens to be a vampire. “However weird our show is, it’s ultimately about relationships,” says Moyer, who’s on location in Louisiana, where True Blood is set. Created by Six Feet Under’s Alan Ball, who adapted it from Charlaine Harris’s books, True Blood in its first season introduced viewers to a world where vampires live openly but are treated like second-class citizens, even those who, like Bill, want to co-exist with humans. “I play this vampire hero who’s trying to be decent and do decent things,” says Moyer. “And he loves Sookie so much that sometimes he goes too far for her.” Ball notes that he “expertly walks the line between monstrous, noble, and vulnerable. He’s wildly romantic and appealing, and I am not at all surprised by the rabid intensity of Bill love from the fans.”
Moyer, a 37-year-old Brit who has toured with the Royal Shakespeare Company, peppers his speech with “darling” and “love,” and sounds nothing like Bill, whose Nawlins accent spawned the catchphrase “Sookie Stackhouse, you are maaahn!” (If you’re a fan of the show, you’ve tried to repeat it, unsuccessfully.) When I point this out, Moyer immediately switches into “Bill.” “When I’m in my voice and I say ‘Soo-kie,’ that’s just how it comes out,” he drawls creepily, pronouncing Sookie to rhyme with cookie (as opposed to kooky). “Everything moves slowly in Louisiana, including the way they talk,” he says. “The voice has really taken on a life of its own. There’s a parody of it on FunnyorDie.com called Vampire Bill’s Cooking Show, in which they make Bloody Marys.”
Adding to the show’s romantic fantasy is the fact that Moyer and Paquin have become an offscreen couple too, though with (presumably) less biting going on. “In the casting process, they read us together, so our chemistry’s not a coincidence,” says Paquin. “The two characters have to lock eyes and go, ‘Oooh, who are you?’ ” she says. Moyer insists that “we tried to stay professional for as long we could. But it was unstoppable.” The couple tried to keep their relationship out of the press until the first season aired, “because I didn’t want the publicity to be about us as a couple. But now it’s fantastic—not only do we live together, we see each other every day,” he says. That Bill and Sookie’s connection continues into real life seems a natural progression; the show hinges on the fact that these two are meant to be, in some cosmic way. “I hope people feel like it adds to the show instead of taking something away,” says Moyer. “Our relationship has grown in front of the crew, in front of everyone, really. To be honest, it’d be weird if I were with somebody else.”
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In it’s second week in DVD release, HBO’s True Blood piled on another nearly $7 million in DVD sales for a total of $26 million after 2 weeks to continue to lead all TV shows in DVD sales for the week ending May 31, 2009, and fell just 2 spots to #6 overall among all DVD sales.
