'True Blood' sinks its teeth into a second season

Fox Searchlight gets first look on Danny Boyle's movies for three years

One of Hollywood's hottest directors is staying put at Fox Searchlight. Danny Boyle, who just won the best director Oscar for "Slumdog Millionnaire," has signed a three year-first look deal with the specialty division of Twentieth Century Fox, John Horn reports on the Big Picture blog.

"Slumdog" was a massive success for Searchlight, which acquired half the rights to the film for $2.5 million from Warner Independent and helped drive it to a $353 million worldwide gross and eight Academy Awards.

The deal continues Boyle's long relationship with Searchlight. His last four films were all distributed by the studio. Keeping the director in-house was a top priority for recently promoted Searchlight co-presidents Stephen Gilula and Nancy Utley since their former boss, Peter Rice, went over to head programming at the Fox network.

Under the new agreement, Pathe Films, which helped finance "Slumdog," will co-finance his future movies.

For more details, check out The Big Picture.

-- Ben Fritz

Photo: Danny Boyle accepting an Academy Award for directing "Slumdog Millionnaire." Credit: Gabriel Buoys, AFP/Getty Images.

'True Blood' sinks its teeth into a second season

One wordâ€"a name, actuallyâ€"makes it hard to take “True Blood” (8 p.m. Central Sunday, HBO; three stars) seriously.

That name is pronounced “Suhkhee.” Or “Soohkee.” The actual moniker belongs to Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), the true love of Bill Compton, a courtly vampire who, when human, fought in the Civil War.

Compton is played by an Englishman, Stephen Moyer, and the way Moyer tries to say the name with a Southern accent is faintlyâ€"OK, more than faintlyâ€"ridiculous. Yet that verbal mangling also provides a certain amount of enjoyment in the Watcher householdâ€"the competition to say "Sookie" in a Bill-like way that makes other laugh is by now a summer ritual.

That’s not to say Moyer is a bad actorâ€"far from it. He gives Bill an air of quiet pathos and steely intelligence. Two seasons in, however, I’m still not sure what he sees in “Suhkhee”â€"sorry, Sookieâ€"a psychic waitress whose main activity in Season 1 seemed to be flouncing angrily out of rooms, houses and bars. Give this woman a location, and she would find a way to stomp away from it in a foul mood.

There’s less flouncing and stomping this year, yet Paquin’s performance remains rather flat and predictable. And the love story of Bill and Sookie, the most mismatched couple in Bon Temps, La., remains about as interesting to me as it was in Season 1â€"which is to say, not very.

But the curious thing about “True Blood” is that, even if you’re not that interested in their relationship, there are other things to enjoy, notably the supporting performances and the mostly efficient plotting. And it the show itself doesn't seem to care much whether you take it seriously.

In a recent conference call with the media, “True Blood” creator Alan Ball used the word "fun" quite a bitâ€" a word that didn't come up often in coverage of his last HBO drama, "Six Feet Under."

Ball called "True Blood," not inaccurately, a "big popcorn thrill ride."  And he had a simple explanation for the current popularity of neck-biters in pop culture (as evidenced by the "Twilight" book and movie franchise and the upcoming "Vampire Diaries" on the CW).

“Vampires are sex," he said. "Vampires are, like, the ultimate romantic, rock-star, bad-boy or -girl fantasy.”

No one could accuse “True Blood” of being prudish. You may wonder, as I did, if the show is an excuse to see attractive people who are not overburdened with clothing give in to their steamier desires.

Yet the character responsible for some of the steamiest anticsâ€"a mysterious woman named Maryannâ€"is played by the magnetic Michelle Forbes, who gives the character a frisson of danger. Forbes’ crackling performance is one of the best things about the show, but the excellent work of several other supporting playersâ€"including Rutina Wesley as Sookie’s friend Tara, Alexander Skarsgard as a commanding vampire named Eric and Ryan Kwanten as Sookie’s brother Jasonâ€"make “True Blood” worth watching.

It’s a bit disappointing that Jason is stuck in a predictable side plot about religious zealots who are determined to wipe out the scourge of vampires. Ball said one theme of Season 2 is “the power of cults,” whether they spring from the supernatural world or from organized religion.

Just as Ball’s “Six Feet Under” could at times, “True Blood” can veer into ham-fisted preachiness once in a while. Are we supposed to sympathize with the vampires, who are sometimes presented as an oppressed minority, or see them as dangerous murderers (which a number of them emphatically are)? "True Blood's" exploration of this issue isn't so much nuanced and thought-provoking as it is muddled and indecisive.

But no matter. This is not a show that wants to make you think. It would be unfair to simply call “True Blood” trashy escapism. 

This is HBO, so this is well-acted, classy trashy escapism.

Below are a few other notes from the conference call with Ball. They contain a few bits of information about the upcoming season (mostly related to casting). Don't look if you don't want to know.

More from Alan Ball:

Evan Rachel Wood guest stars in the last two episodes of the season as a very powerful vampire queen.A new character named Godric will arrive (he'll be played by Allan Hyde, according to an HBO rep). He's "the oldest [vampire] we've ever met but also probably the most human," Ball said. Episode 5 will contain a sustained flashback. Ball has never read the "Twilight" books or seen the movie. He says he doesn't understand why anyone would create a vampire story "about abstinence" -- "I guess it makes it safe for young girls."Bubba, a character from the books, won't be introduced on the show. Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll), a character who we met at the end of Season 1, wasn't in the books but we'll be seeing more of her journey in Season 2. Another new character in Season 2 is Daphne (Ashley Jones), a waitress at Merlotte's. The writer of the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries, Charlaine Harris, is "90 percent" happy with how the show turned out, Ball said. And Harris is likely to make a cameo on the final episode of the season.

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