EDIT: see below the second set of === marks for comments on the DVD set, which I just got. Original review below is for buying some episodes ON Amazon. I also bought the full DVD set as a result, from another vendor.
===============
..with a nod to the Rumplestiltskin story, a generous dash of Buffy wryness and James Joyce's Ulysses wit. You know, his book focusing on the inner petty thoughts:
'Dang my johnson, gotta get me sum poon tang.' Or, per the movie, 7+ minutes into Season 4, Episode 2, 'You smell like Dinner': numnuts anti-Vamp guy outside 'Fangtasia', among picketers contra 'fangbangers', says in rejoinder, 'I am a Christian, goddammit'.
Or, as 'Jason' proudly says in the Season Five Finale, with his 'dad' smiling on the couch: 'If I want to be a fool, then I will be a fool. That is my God-given right as an American.'
Then there are the sight gags, such as the one, halfway through Season 5's finale, of a vampire receptionist reading 'Marketing Basics' textbook against a wall of partly Greek Bible-mss type script: most of the letters and some of the words are real Greek, replete with diacritics, but some are Aramaic or even Roman alphabet letters. Just above her head is the (pseudo?) word 'archomonou', which is not in the Bible, = 'archos' (leader) + monos in the genitive='only', play on monogenes in John 3:16.
Gems like that abound. So this isn't your typical vamp show, and the combo of script writing, camera work, direction, acting is sheer genius on so many levels I have to watch each episode several times a session; each time, I find yet another layer I missed before.
Wit like that, is priceless. This series plays it coy, though. The satire is slow-cooked, seeping heatedly up through the episodes: by Season 4 Episode 1 -- an episode I wanna watch over and over and over -- Jonathan Swift, has taken over. And you got hooked. :)
I didn't think anything could top the Buffy series for varied wit.. but this does. Though the spoofing begins in the very first scene of the series, you don't catch onto that until later. If you are considering a career in acting, directing, film editing or production -- you MUST watch this series.
Yeah, and after you watch this series, you'll NEVER EVER EVER wanna
* view or have sex again,
* see ANY naked bodies, even your own;
* use the f word,
* go near a southern rural area, especially at night;
* attend covens, circles, seances, jump-or-sing-or-give-for-Jesus churches, or anything supernatural;
* hear that horrific, loud, annoying, ugly opening and closing music, nor the Cajun fake or real or any hillbilly accent sported by the cast;
* wear or even glimpse, red.
I will personally boycott the opening song and every closing song. HORRIBLE that they play a minute or two of real episode (no recaps) before that awful song comes on, just as was so horrifically popular in Smallville and Grimm. RUDE, okay? Loudness in LCD TVs is much worse due to audio compression. So you're constantly futzing with the sound. Probably the ugly music is intended, to match the ugly story line.
The series overflows with ALL of the above, and YES it's all necessary to the story (the sex is plentiful, graphic, usually tawdry, ugly, but vital to the story line). So it's tragi-comic, self-deprecating, at times farcical; how the actors manage to deliver their lines well, I do not know. I couldn't do it with a straight face.
Yet for all that, the series is quite profound. Frankly, if you carried out the devil's goals in the 3 Temptations of Matthew or Luke 4, the world painted in this True Blood series would result. FYI, Luke surgically tracks and wraps Matthew's Gospel verbatim (see my Synoptics channel on vimeo which shows his style); then, Luke reverses the 2nd & 3rd Temptation to make the 2nd his chapter theme, re Satan's twisting Psalm 91. Seems like one of this series' writers, employs the same literary device. Thus you get, self-righteous silliness abutting animalistic silliness. Cinched with wry wit, in between: 'So I recommend an iron supplement.. and vitamin B twice daily', says Vamp Bill after drinking a bartender. Call all that, Satan's 'Modest Proposal'.
I absolutely hated the first episode in Season One, but due to the brilliant acting, kept watching, then got hooked. The plot and acting always stay on the edge of campy, yet so over-the-top with the sex thang, the swearing silly religion thang: spoofing all of them, yet not disparaging Bible or God. The series draws a line between whatever or whoever God and Bible really are, versus those claiming to believe in either/both. Series then mocks and somewhat cuddles ALL practitioners: as weak, frail, scared.. hypocrites.
By Season Five, storyline transitions from the small Louisiana town to the big picture of vamps trying to live with humans, and their own political divergence -- yet always with a campy undertow. Example, its Episode 1, when this shift to macro reaches full steam -- an erstwhile 'Christian' vampire hater screams at his prey, 'Love Me!' Yeah, and at the other end you have the vamps' own faith, own Bible.. in which God is Vampyr. Cute play on Lilith myth, too: series twists that myth, just as most people twist Bible.
And unlike many reviewers here, I liked the way it ended: the series' slow-cooked beginning has alike a slo-mo yet surprising, ending. VERY well done. Perfect, even.
Enfin, this series is often a sympathetic yet honest look at how we all suck 'God' dry and then call ourselves holy. Very clever. Some of the other reviews castigate the script writing from Season Five onward, claiming Ball left; I don't see the basis for their complaint. Again, Jonathan Swift would be proud. Or God, for that matter, as the satire here is very much like Bible's own Hebrew and Greek text (i.e., Genesis 1:2 where the Holy Spirit casts Himself as a mother hen, Hebrew verb rahaph).
So if you're into political correctness of ANY flavor, do NOT watch this series, as nothing is sacred. The LGBT community is satirized, as too all straights, religious, or self-styled free-thinkers, moralists, nudists, traditionalists and 'my family my family my family' folk. The series makes fun of them all, shows up the tawdry nature of all human pretensions and frailties by using vampires, werewolves and other skin walkers/shape-shifters, po' white and non-white trash. Series is gruesome, hard to watch yet compelling. I can only stand it, 15 minutes at a time. But I find myself returning to watch again and again, maxima mea culpa.
How much this series diverges from the books by Ms. Harris I don't know, but other reviewers cover that. What I do know, is that this series is horrific, yet wholly brilliant. I wish Jonathan Swift were alive to see it.
============
About the DVD set:
It's really each individual season boxed together. So if you've got the individual seasons, this complete set doesn't offer anything different. However, unlike other HBO series I've bought (Game of Thrones, for example), THIS one is easy to navigate and has 'hours and hours' of features, just as claimed; plus a handy index, as well as the usual Languages options. Frankly, the resolution is only 480p even on my 1080p HD TV, and also the Amazon episodes are better resolution even in SD; that is, using a commercial DVD player. If played instead on my computer's DVD (Win7), I get full 1080p resolution on the same TV (which is a second monitor for my Win7 computer). Seriously, if you have a choice between playing this on computer versus on your TV with a commercial DVD player, pick the computer. The LAG using a DVD player for TV is awful, and you can't bypass the first minute or so of play easily.
Some reviewers here claim that after Alan Ball allegedly stopped writing (Season Five was supposedly his last), that the series goes downhill. I beg to differ. It just gets better every season. I've never been so enamored of a series as this, watching it over and over again. So the above comments about the genius of the series, stand. It's not really about vampires, but about society. What Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov did for science fiction, 'True Blood' does for the vampire genre. Again, how it compares to the books I don't know, nor do I care. This is one of the greatest series I've ever seen of any kind for its variety of satire and yet profundity. And despite all the nudity, f words, graphic violence and what most people would call satanism, it never disparages Bible or God, but rather keeps begging the question of AUDITING one's beliefs. Since the latter is my internet theme (i.e., brainout.net and brainout on vimeo), obviously I would find that undertheme quite important. Maybe you will, too. Sometimes you hear the writers talk about it in the audio commentary or the many 'Inside the Episode' vignettes.
Nearly every disk has at least one episode with writers or actors talking through it, saying little of importance to the storyline: they instead mostly focus on the technical details of shooting, on the actors and their experience while shooting. Many episodes, especially beginning in Season Four, have one or more 'Inside the Episode' snippets of up to 8 minutes, often saying little about the story line that you didn't already know; but it's interesting to hear their perspective.
Season One's last disk also has 'Beverage ads' in English and French (the French one is quite different and adorable), 'Vampire service ads' and 'Public Service Announcements on 'Vampire Rights' and 'Vampires in America' mockumentary which are kinda cute.
Season Two's last disk has 'The Vampire Report' and 'Fellowship of the Sun: Reflections of Light': these are really campy, too, mocking TBN rather aptly and baldly, with rampant misuse of Scripture. The latter is divided into four subparts. About 40 minutes' worth, altogether (both features).
For Season Three -- which begins the shift to the 'big picture' about how vampires are organized worldwide -- two disks have special features: Disk 1 (episode 1-2) has 'Anatomy of a Scene', plus 'Post Mortem' running almost 14 minutes (some of the material is repeated), about how they used real wolves and how they effected the 'transformation' into humans. Also, an interesting audio commentary on Episode 2 with Alex Skarsgard, better than the usual Episode-long (nearly an hour) audio commentary while the full episode plays, despite the fact most of the comments are about the technicalities of shooting. For these commentaries, it's a good thing to turn subtitles on. Yes you can have English subtitles though the language selected for play, is also English.
Season Three's last disk contains bonus features on fairies and a commentary about Season 4 (sum is about 3.5 minutes), under the label 'Post Mortem', plus some 19 minutes of (six) 'minisodes' which seem like deleted scenes: they are really good, too, filling in some minor plot holes which got glossed over during Season Two and Three. Plus, Snoop Dog's 'Oh Sookie' 3-minute music video (not my taste, but maybe is yours). The fairies' bit you can also watch for free in Amazon; see the bottom of the Season 3 page in Amazon.
Season Four, besides the usual audio commentary, the last disk of the season has 'Inside the Episodes' of about 10 minutes. Also, there's a 28.5 minute segment called 'True Blood: the Final Touches' on the post-production work in the series. It's useful if you're interested in how movie/series are made.
Season Five and Six's disks continue that trend; the disks have audio commentary and most have up to 10 minutes of 'Inside the Episodes'. Amazon has some free specials for Season Five which I didn't find on the DVDs. No bonus features are listed on the disks.
So too, for Season 7. Its ending Episode 10 disk is followed with an Epilogue 'Farewell to Bon Temps' as a Bonus Feature, with Alan Ball and each of the major actors talking about how the series affected them. It's well worth watching, and runs 28 minutes.
As usual, the folks who made the casing (those awful hubs which make you PRY the DVD so you're likely to break it); they did a poor job of the navigation options for DVD players, but are great and fast, if you play on your computer. Even so, these DVDs are far better than the Game of Thrones DVDs, and unlike the latter hallelujah you DO get Scene Selection (missing, from GoT Season 4, for example).
Thank you for your time!
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September 23, 2014 "Please retry" | Standard Edition | 5 | $11.70 | $2.93 |
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