It wasn’t the greatest thing I’ve ever seen, but I liked it.
Huh. I guess I’ll be the quasi-official naysayer on Charlaine Harris. I read the first three vampire books and found them pretty weak. Not awful mind you, they were readable as light entertainment, just kinda formulaic. More annoyingly Sookie seems very “Mary Sue” to me, increasingly so as the series progressed. I pretty much gave up on them at that point, though if I was stuck in a cabin somewhere I might read the rest.
IMHO a much stronger ( if considerably more grim ) southern vampire novel would be George R. R. Martin’s Fevre Dream. For that matter I also prefer the broad comedy of Christopher Moore’s urban vampire books or A. Lee Martinez’s Gil’s All Fright Diner. But, you know, eacxh to their own :).
Meanwhile I will give the series a try ( I missed it last night, but will check it out sometime today ). I liked what I saw of Six Feet Under, Harris’ work might translate a little better to TV ( like I said, it wasn’t horrible or anything ) and my understanding is that the producer is ditching Harris’ plot lines after the first season anyway.
Also I always thought Anna Paquin was kinda vaguely cute.
I’ve read Fevre Dream and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Elendil’s Heir had strongly recommended it to me. (In fact he sent me the book.)
I never read any of the others mentioned.
Did anyone else catch the P.J. O’Rourke cameo?
Now, I know old P.J. isn’t very famous, but it seems like they could have given him a silly quip after the Vampire Rights chick.
And for those who may not have noticed, he was the other guest on Bill Maher’s show. He didn’t have any lines.
I loved Fevre Dream. It’s a very serious novel, and almost a different genre, to me. Harris’ stuff is pretty lightweight fiction.
Have you read Charlie Huston’s series that starts with Already Dead?. It’s gritty crime fiction that happens to involve (non-magical) vampires. It has the kind of violence (and humor) that reminds me of a Tarantino movie. It’s not really my usual kind of book, but I find Huston’s writing absolutely fascinating, especially his dialogue.
I was really looking forward to this show. I enjoyed the novels and thought they could have easily been adapted to tv. Sadly, I was completely underwhelmed by the season opener.
As others have said, Tara was just horribly done. Sookie bored the hell out of me and what the heck was up with Bill staring out of the top of his eyes the entire show?? Was that supposed to make him look deep and brooding, or just zombie dead?
To give it some credit, I thought they handled Sookie’s telepath abilities well.
I will keep watching for awhile, if nothing else, it does come on before Entourage.
I watched some of it, but it didn’t hold my interest. I was actually more interested in the preceding documentary featuring pathetic, damaged people who are obsessed with the idea of being vampires.
I tend to lose interest whenever a fictional treatment moves too far from the folklore it’s based on. Thanks to 19th century novelists and Ann Rice’s crappy books, vampires have been transformed from sad shadows that do nothing but slip out of the grave to drain life from their family members, to stylish immortal superbeings who are cool and romantic in spite of being human-sized ticks.
Yeah, but I suspect you’d find the original folkloric vampires too damned boring to even consider, Prior to The Bride of Corinth and Polidori’s The Vampyre there were no literary vampires. But then Polidori by way of Byron gave us the Titled Vampire, and that opened all sorts of doors, and vampuires got interesting. And ever since then they’ve been re-inventing the vampire’s powers and capabilities. Stoker himself invented about half of what he gave as "ancient’ lore of the vampire, and people since have been happily discarding and modifying what he gave for their own vampire novels.
With the possible eception of H.P. Lovecraft’s story about the Providence vampire*, I don’t think anyone ever did go back to the pre-Polidori image of the hopeless little voiceless suicide-buried-at-the-crossroads vampire.
Lovecraft pretty much stayed away from traditional horror subjects, but he did write one vampire story. It came out the year that Hamilton Deane’s play version was wandering around the English countryside, and hadn’t even hit London yet. I’ll bet Lovecraft hadn’t seen Nosferatu, so his story belongs to an entirely different strand of tradition that’s independent of Stoker, except as a novel. And he ignored almost all of that.
I have a different opinion. I’m not familiar with the novels so I have no preconceived notions. I thought this premiere episode was pretty good. It had to introduce the world, a lot of the characters, and several situations – all within 1 hour – and I thought it did an entertaining job of it. If I had had another episode to watch right away I would have done so.
I find Sookie a very interesting character – she has a strong moral base and is a mind-reader to boot. I’m very interested in how she is going to develop. Is she really fully human, or is there something larger going on with her?
Tara - yeah, I agree. She was pretty abrasive.
Bill - Yeah, dark and brooding now but all that is going to change soon (according to the previews I saw).
Sookie’s brother - why’d he do what he did? Was he under some other influence? He struck me more as a fun-loving, hell-raising good-ole-boy than a criminal.
I’m looking forward to the next episode.
J.
My Grandmother from the Old Country (eastern Europe) had some pretty bloodcurdling tales of the folkloric vampire, clearly not based on Stoker. Sinful relatives, buried improperly that would return to drink blood from neck or stomach. Staking, beheading or reburying in consecrated groud were the cures. Very strong, slow moving, “breath like decayed blood”, pale drawn features, claws and teeth like those of corpses, dressed in burial wrappings, smelling of the grave, “bullets can’t stop them”. *Not *sexy, not romantic. Tragic, horrifying. Some came back as they had to drink blood but clearly didn’t want to, some came back for revenge. No crosses, garlic, changing to bats, wolves, etc. They mostly preyed upon family.
She also had some stories of werewolves, who were portrayed (if anything ) as foes of vampires. These were often men, who in human form could be noble and charming, but were horribly cursed to prey during the nights of the full moon. Often a family curse, activated by some evil act. There was story of a maiden, fearfull of the werewolf; who let in a handsome well dressed “dark” charming, gentleman … and of course found that she had locked herself in with the werewolf.
Now she also had horror stories of Vlad and Bathory, distant relatives of ours according to the stories. :dubious: But Bathory was portrayed more as a sorceress and sadist, and Vald as a psycopathic killer and sadist “who some said came back even after death to continue wreaking horror”, but not specifically as a vampire per se. More like a revenant.
I also have not read the books and I’m coming to this fresh, but last night’s episode left me with the impression that Sookie’s brother did not murder that woman. We saw him put his hands around her throat, but then nothing else. I think he’s telling the truth – he initially lied because he was afraid how it would look, but he didn’t kill her. Instead, he left while she was still alive and someone else came by later, turned off the camera, and killed her. Maybe the vamp that was originally videotaped?
Just my guess. I could be completely wrong.
I’d be interested in those. The folkloric accounts I’ve read of pre-19th century vampires aren’t teriffically thrilling, and are frequently absurd. The vampires often come off as mere automatons, who can be stopped by things like a bowlful of dropped beans, which they have to obsessively-compulsulsively count*. I can’t honestly say I’ve encountered any genuinely scary ones, but I’m not familiar with all the literature.
Not Sexy is right – even Dracula, in the original, is extremely unsexy, as vampire historian Donald Skal points out. But they kept making him sexier and sexier in the movies and plays as time went by, and by the 1970s, with Frank Langella playing him on Broadway (and Raul Julia later. And Jose Greco in a competing play), he was downright Romantic.
Well, she’s a bit more than a little dead. I have heard the bean story, but not from her. In a way they were automatons in her story- either had to drink the blood of their relative becuase they had to, or had to get revenge on those who buried them improperly. Very little personality, juts one single urge. Trust me, when Babushka told them, they were SCARY.
Martinez’s book ( the only one of his/hers I’ve read ) is kind of a hoot. Vaguely rednecky drifter friends ( named Duke and Earl - they’re a bit like the main characters from the movie Tremors ), one a werewolf and the other a vampire, wander into a small town where a Hot Asian High School Cheerleader is trying to raise ancient gods.
Christopher Moore also specializes in over the top hilarious urban fantasies. My favorite ( and probably the silliest and most over the top of them all ) is The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, about a giant shape-shifting sea-monster hunting an old Blues musician in a small town whose pharmacist has started replacing everyone’s anti-depressants with placebos. That one might be bit much to start with :D. His vampire novels ( set in San Francisco ) are Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story and You Suck. They overlap with A Dirty Job set in the same place.
Hmmm…I haven’t. I’ll have to check them out - thanks for the recommendation :).
I’m a big fan of Six Feet Under so I’m willing to give Alan Ball a few episodes. I haven’t read any of the books, so I didn’t have an expectation but it was okay.
In my experience, most pilots suck. There are so many things to explain and characters to introduce, it’s hard to get it all in there and still be great.
I hope Sookie becomes more appealing to me, because she rather annoyed me in this first episode.
Story 1 :
A young maiden died on her wedding day, after being left at the altar by a cad, who seduced her by a promise to marry, etc. Broken heart or suicide? Anyway, the A/H Emperor had sent a young RC priest to take the place of the good and holy Orthodox priest. The ignorant and arrogant RC priest refused to let the girl be buried in consecrated ground. She was buried in her wedding gown and veil. That (?) night, she crept out and went to the door of the cad, and asked to be let in, promising more kisses. He was such a cad he hadn’t even know she died, so he let her in- an important detail here is that she wore her veil so he couldn’t see her face, which was of course horrible. She drank his blood and floated back to her grave. The next night she arose again, and went to her home, she scratched upon the window shutter of her youngest brother (portrayed as around our age, 8-12 or so), crying she was so cold and thirsty, and he let her in, in his ignorance. Now, she didn’t want to hurt her little brother but the hunger rose in her. She fell upon him, but she was crying also as she didn’t want to do this- so the family broke in and drove her off/she fled. The details of was she physical or just a ghost is a little unclear.
The family went to the RC priest who laughed at them and their ignorant peasant folklore. So the family went to my family (the local lords), who sent out Cossacks to find the Orthodox Priest (this was very exciting as the Cossack had to ride in all direction, riding their horses to death as they needed to find the Father before the moon rose!). They found the holy man living as a hermit and then they (Cossacks, Voivodes, family, hermit and all) went to the suicides graveyard, and while the Cossacks held back the RC priest, they all dug up the maiden’s body- which when they pulled back her veil appeared flushed with life and with blood on her lips, and dirt under her long nails. Of course, this was just as the moon was rising! The Cossacks staked her and much fresh blood came out. Then the Orthodox hermit blessed her and they reburied her with all ceremony in the consecrated graveyard. The young Jesuit left that day, never to be seen again. The Holy Father returned to his rightful position as spiritual leader, they buried the cad in the appropriate manner and everyone lived happily ever after.
Interesting; reminds me of the Scandinavian revenants.
Somebody should make a movie about those freaky-deaky Filipino vampires, like the aswang. Some of those have a long proboscis and can suck an unborn fetus right out of a woman’s womb.
Agreed. And this one for me did not suck. It didn’t blow me away by any means, but it was intriguing enough to get me to tune in next week. I’ll be giving it a few weeks before I decide whether or not to keep watching. After the crap that was “John from Cincinnati” and “Tell Me You Love Me”, HBO seems to be, at the very least, not completely sucking in the original programming department.
I’m completely unfamiliar with the books, but if they suck (heh) it doesn’t bother me. Bad books can serve for entertaining film/TV.
No, you’re only half wrong 
I liked it. It took me a long time to cope with the name Sookie (I put the book back unfinished years ago, but finally read it this year after learning how you pronounce the name) but I sort of liked the book in the end. HBO just had a free weekend for our cable company, and I sort of wish I hadn’t liked it, since this might well be the only episode I get to see before it’s out on DVD 