The second season of HBO's True Blood kicks off tonight and doesn't waste any time jumping into the scary murder madness that has engulfed the citizens of Bon Temps. According to the show's creator, Alan Ball, everything intensifies this season: vampires are more monstrous, sex scenes are even sexier, shape-shifters become more, er, shape-shiftery, and the anti-vampire movement becomes even more Read more

I was jealous of the folks at the Paley Festival in LA last week when they got to see a sneak peek of the second season of True Blood. Well, kudos to HBO for slipping this clip out to the rest of us, because it's a dark and creepy first look at season two of the vampire series. The clip focuses on Sookie, Bill, and Bill's new little vampire girl, Jessica. They're in a car together in the woods, Read more

All of the new DVD releases hit stores (and Netflix) on Tuesdays. So each week in What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday, I sort through the best of the batch and tell you what to add to your queue. Nip/Tuck: Season Five Season five finds Sean McNamara and Christian Troy making the leap from Miami to Los Angeles. While the new city provides a welcome change of scenery, the satisfaction is for the Read more

There's been some controversy and outrage surrounding Alan Ball's adaptation of Alicia Erian's novel Towelhead, which I might understand more if I hadn’t read the original work. People are calling the film "abhorrent," "ethically reprehensible and irresponsible," and "gratuitously offensive." And yet, this isn't really Ball’s fault. His adaptation is completely faithful to the novel — I Read more

I don't think it will be a revolutionary statement that how one feels about Alan Ball's new HBO series, True Blood, will have a lot to do with how one generally feels about vampires. Me, they've never really been my thing; they're OK and all, but the mere mention of fangs wouldn't necessarily get me to tune in. This review, then, is for (and by) the vampire-agnostic. So here's the takeaway: I Read more

I first heard of Towelhead when I caught a trailer for the Alan Ball-directed film adaptation of Alicia Erian’s novel. The trailer looked like a sweet (perhaps a little bittersweet) coming-of-age story with moments of dark humor. The book is all of these things, but I was not at all prepared for exactly how disturbing it would be, or how utterly sad. Towelhead is written in the frank and Read more

This weekend, writer/director Alan Ball of Six Feet Under fame returns to HBO with True Blood. The vampire saga, based on the novels of Charlaine Harris, follows Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), a waitress who can read minds — except for the one of Bill, a vampire who's new to town. I've checked out the first two episodes of the show and will give you my reaction before Sunday's premiere. But Read more

At Comic-Con, I was lucky enough to catch some footage of True Blood, Alan Ball's (Six Feet Under, American Beauty) HBO adaptation of the book series by Charlaine Harris, and I was hooked. Now there's a trailer for the series, which premieres on HBO Sept. 7, so we can all discuss the show: whether or not it looks to be of the same caliber as Six Feet Under, how distracting the Southern accent Read more