True Blood: The Complete Season Four Blu-ray review

Watching a season of “True Blood” over the course of five or so days is exhausting, and there aren’t many TV shows I’d say that about. How can 12 episodes feel like 20, especially when a series moves at a breakneck pace like this one does? I’d watched the first season way back when it premiered, and viewed most of the second season with disinterest. I saw maybe five minutes of Season Three, but figured it might be a good idea to check in on Season Four to see how things are going for what remains HBO’s highest-rated program. Indeed, “True Blood” shows no signs of slowing down, as episode nine of Season Four, “Let’s Get Out of Here,” was allegedly the most watched episode of the show to date, with 5.53 million viewers.

It seems that Season Three ended with Sookie’s (Anna Paquin) fairy godmother taking her to Fairyland, which sounds ridiculous, and yet Season Four opens with a scenario rich in promise. Fairyland appears to be something of a paradise where everyone is happy and beautiful, and yet evil lurks beneath its surface, and the fairies are not what they appear to be. Soon enough, Sookie is transported back to Bon Temps, only to learn that time moves differently in Fairyland (Fairy world? Fairyworld? Whatever…), and a year has passed in the real world even though she’s only been gone for minutes. The whole fairy thing is so quickly dispensed with, I can only surmise the plan is to return to it in a later season, because it sure doesn’t get much play here.

Read the rest of this Blu-ray review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

A chat with Lenora Crichlow of Being Human

The lovely Lenora Crichlow is mostly unknown to U.S. audiences, unless of course you’re a fan of the BBC America series Being Human (Saturdays at 9PM). Crichlow plays one third of a trio of roommates comprised of a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost. The striking actress [dis]embodies the latter - the spirit of Annie Sawyer, doomed to an afterlife of making tea and wearing the same eternal grey outfit. And yet in Crichlow’s performance there’s hope for something better, as Annie tries to make it in a world she shouldn’t even exist in, alongside her two best friends. Lenora took time out in between shooting Season Three and heading off to Comic-Con to talk to Bullz-Eye about what sets Being Human apart from other supernatural fare, the ongoing progression of the concept, and her phantasmagorical Uggs.

Lenora Crichlow: The thing is, Being Human does just what it says on the cover. In most of these vampire shows and werewolf shows – supernatural shows in general – there’s some kind of, at the essence of the show, a real celebration of their supernatural selves. The vampires and the werewolves are really glorified (although I haven’t seen Twilight) and I think Being Human’s stance is struck so differently because it actually comes from a place where the ultimate for these characters would be to be human again. Every single supernatural issue that comes up can quickly lead back to something within the human condition. Even though it is a supernatural show, it just gives the whole thing layers. The characters of Annie, George and Mitchell were originally written without being a ghost, a werewolf, and a vampire, so the characters are very fully developed. It has a huge amount of comedy in it, it has amounts of angst, mystery and drama, but at the heart of the show I think you’ve got three very well-rounded human characters, which is something that whether you’re into sci-fi or not you can tap into and relate to. I love the show and I love being in the show and I think as an actress it certainly gives me a lot more to play with when I can bring everything I play with Annie right back home and right back down to earth, and you know, sort of grounded in some sense of reality. I don’t know how good I’d be at being too much out there. As fun as it is, it really does ground the show – the fact that they’re all trying to be human. That’s the show’s selling point and uniqueness.

The above is an excerpt from a much longer interview I did with Lenora. Read the entire piece by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

Being Human: Season One

A TV series that in a one sentence pitch can be most easily described as “a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost all live together in the same house” must surely be a comedy, right? Well yes, and no. Being Human certainly has comedic elements, but they’re rarely of the “yuk-yuk” variety. It is in fact difficult to pigeonhole the series with a label. Is it horror? Comedy? Drama? It’s all those and probably more. And lest you think it’s schizophrenic in its presentation, that’s hardly the case. Being Human juggles all of these labels so efficiently that it probably deserves a new category all its own.

Now this isn’t to imply that Being Human is a work of pure genius, just that it’s adept in its mission. A massive stumbling block for me, that may afflict plenty a potential viewer, comes from the vampire and werewolf angles. Straight up – I am utterly sick to death of vampires and werewolves. Between True Blood and Twilight alone, you can’t turn on your TV, go to the multiplex, or even log onto Facebook without being inundated by both fang and full moon. Where were all these people when I stood proud and alone at the age of 10 in the school playground, boldly proclaiming my admiration for Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney, Jr., only to be heckled by my peers? Must these concepts be littered with ample doses of sex and romance in order to attract the masses? Apparently so. Being Human uses a bit of that as well, but not nearly as much as you’d expect from a series featuring vampires and werewolves, and its primary focus is instead on the building blocks of an unlikely kinship between its three protagonists.

Read the rest of this Blu-ray review by clicking here and visiting Bullz-Eye.

"Laugh? I Thought I'd Die" - 15 Funny(?) Vampire Films

Vampires are often painted as dark, sinister characters with a penchant for gothic fashion and a taste for blood that can never be fully quenched. Granted, their nature doesn't necessarily lend itself to being a laugh riot, but once in a while, we're gifted with bloodsuckers who can see the funny side of their affliction…or if they can't, then at least the viewers can. (For instance, True Blood sure as hell isn't a comedy, but if you caught the Season 2 premiere, you saw a truly hilarious scene where a new vampire took a blood taste test to determine which type she prefers.) Bullz-Eye decided to take a trip back through the mists of time to reinvestigate some of the more comedic explorations into the curse of vampirism, skipping over a couple of ostensible classics – neither The Lost Boys nor From Dusk 'Til Dawn are here – in favor of some interesting obscurities that may not have crossed your radar.

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