"True Blood" Witches. True Blood Watchers?

I've been on a True Blood tear, catching up with Season 3. I haven't enjoyed it nearly as much as Season 2 (the peak) partially because the Big Bad "Russell, King of Mississippi" (Denis O'Hare) wasn't half as interesting, dynamic or amusing as immortal maenad "MaryAnn" (Michelle Forbes) from Season 2. Plus, I've missed the comedy gold that sprung up in the religious cult satire subplot which starred Jason Stackhouse (Ryan Kwanten), the ensemble's undersung hero. Yes, everyone loves his body. But he's arguably the most gifted comic in the cast.

Here's the new teaser for the fourth season of True Blood. If Fiona Shaw, the sensational stage actress, Harry Potter's Aunt Petunia, and our favorite batshit crazy sociopathic rich lady (The Black Dahlia) is this season's Big Bad, maybe Season 4 will rival Season 2?

Here's the teaser.

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Team Experience: "Maleficent" and More

I'm always curious about your film experiences out there in the dark. That curiousity extends to the contributors here at TFE, not all of whom I know in real life given that they're spread across the globe. You know them, virtually speaking. Hopefully you love them. But I thought we'd ask them a couple of questions each week. Feel free to answer yourself in the comments and join the conversation.

WHAT'S THE BEST THING YOU SAW THIS WEEK?

JA: A tie between every single second of Emmanuel Lubeszki's photography for The Tree of Life (it's a gorgeous film that left me cold), and that probably photoshopped image of Jake Gyllenhaal doing the Grace Jones pose in his underpants. I see beautiful things!

Andreas: John Carpenter's The Thing -- after several viewings, it retains all of its original power.

Robert: Ramin Bahrani's short film Plastic Bag. I stumbled upon it while attempting to keep my Herzog high going after being enthralled by Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Bahrani's film follows and anthropomorphized plastic bag (shades of American Beauty are minimal) and finds itself spiraling into themes of life, death, and meaning and best of all, it's narrated by Werner Herzog himself... as the plastic bag of course!

Michael (Unsung Heroes). The best thing I saw this week was, without question, the montage of drunk cast members from the latest episode of Parks and Recreation. I want an episode length edit of all the improv that went into that scene.

Jose: Since theaters here are only playing four movies (Rio, Fast and Furious 5, Thor and Priest) I re-watched Gone With the Wind in HD. Mind blowing!  Sure gives any new movie a run for its money. It also felt much shorter than Thor.

WHAT'S THE WORST?

Michael : the worst thing I saw, or rather didn't see, was screen time for Rene Russo in Thor. It's been forever since Russo had a high-profile gig and she gets 30 measly seconds of screen time? You can't tease me like that Thor.

Andreas: The first 10 minutes of I Know Who Killed Me. (Nonetheless, I may revisit it later; I'm a glutton for punishment.)

JA: The worst thing I saw was the original ending to Alexander Payne's Election. Truly, stupefyingly awful.

TIM BURTON HAS OFFICIALLY LEFT DISNEY'S "MALEFICENT".

Robert: The marriage between Tim Burton and Disney makes me so sad. They're like two people who were really sexy back in high school, still trying to fit into their cheerleading and football uniforms, telling each other how great they still look, and wondering how that dorky kid Quentin got so popular (this metaphor has gotten away from me). But I still want to like them very much. So I guess what I'm saying is I wish they'd split and find new partners who could convince them to hit the gym... cinematically speaking.

JA: Never much loved Sleeping Beauty as a kid - I was all up in Alice in Wonderland and Fantasia - so I was never attached, beyond really liking the way the word "Maleficent" rolls off the tongue. Maaaalefahcint! I don't understand why people didn't take it up as a name for their children. Little Maleficent would rule pre-school with an iron fist.

Jose:  Maleficent would serve itself better from a director with an eye for actual Gothic, I say call Jane Campion or Catherine Breillat!

YOUR TURN...

• Who do you think should direct MALEFICENT with Burton gone? 
• What's the best & worst anything you saw this week? I've been enjoying True Blood and Ishtar (more on the later in a bit.)

Game of Thrones, Three Hours In

I've resisted commenting on the new HBO series Game of Thrones, made possible by way of The Lord of the Rings. (That's a gift that will hopefully keep on giving to the fantasy genre. No one wants to go back to the 80s when B movie status was forced upon an entire genre.) I wanted to see how the series did or did not evolve from the kick-off show a couple of weeks back. So after three hours in the Seven Kingdoms, it feels like time to discuss.

After glancing at a few reviews and comment pieces, most of which seem elated at the ratings or the instant second season renewal, it seems the general consensus is FuckYeahGameofThrones. I am personally not elated though I did want to be. I imagined that the right cast or storytelling decisions in the series would smooth over or even hurdle some of the problems with the book series. I loved the first book but grew less enamored with each until I finally gave up on the series halfway through the third. By that time we had been introduced to dozens of major characters (plus several dozen minor ones) and the story threads, splintered at the thrilling final chapters of the first book, had only been rebraided in the abstract. The characterizations were, generally speaking, quite interesting. What killed it was the lack of interaction between the characters. The map is so big and the plots so resistant to truly intertwining that it felt like you were reading 100 different novels at once and even the ones about blood relatives would almost never overlap. Great characters are great characters but even they need chemistry with other great characters to truly leap off the page or screen.

George R R Martin can turn a phrase with the best of them, build a thrilling moment, and make complex decisions about characterizations (the best longform aspects of the book may be that, aside from maybe three or four characters, most of them minor, nobody seems entirely like heroes or villains). But I found the author's voice too cruel -- the ratio of gruesome plot turns to endearing or lighter or funny or romantic bits is roughly 99 to 1 -- and the stories far too repetitve once it was clear that entire books would go by and we'd still be harping on the same points (in that way it was already a television soap opera!) and still yearning for some face-to-face time between ANY of the characters we'd seen interact in the first novel.

But here's how the pros and cons and character detail breaks down thus far.

Click to read more ...

50 Foot Woman (RIP)

Though I can't remember why I was watching Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) a few months back and thinking of maybe writing something up on it. (I thought I'd look at the 1990s Daryl Hannah remake too.) Needless to say that never came to fruition but this morning I read some horrific news. Yvette Vickers, the star of that infamous Bad Movie People Love about an angry adulteress who rampages once she's giantized, was found dead this week in her home in Benedict Canyon. She was 82ish.

The worst part of the story is this gruesome detail: her body was mummified indicating she'd been dead for a long time, possibly a year. That nobody checked in for that length of time -- neither friend nor neighbor (she had no surviving family members) -- is scarier than any horror movie.

Her first film appearance was in the showbiz classic, Sunset Boulevard. May she rest easier than those Hollywood ghosts.

Posters, Links, Handguns

Via Awards Daily, the Albert Nobbs teaser poster. Enjoy it while you can as you know it'll soon be replaced with a boring poster of Glenn Close's floating head. Or perhaps Glenn Close and Mia Wasikowska photographed separately and then awkwardly fused together? Something I'll never understand: it's not like actors are never in the same room. Why not shoot movie poster photography ON THE SET? This shouldn't sound like a genius idea but given the state of movie posters, it is.

On the other hand... staying positive for a moment, we probably bitch too much about bad poster design these days. In truth there's a lot of very good work being done these past few years with the caveat that 95% of the good work is happening in the "teaser" realm rather than within the world of official movie poster. Perhaps Hollywood assumes that the movie obsessive crowds are inspired by good design but the unwashed masses only understand giant floating heads or horizontal stripes featuring film stills?

Oh and while we're talking posters... MELANCHOLIA. It's also a beauty. Love the little curlicue flourish.

Upcoming Films
Scott Feinberg liked the Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid "sequel" Blackthorn at the Tribeca Film Festival with high marks for Sam Shepard as Butch.
Hero Complex JJ Abrams names seven films that influenced the upcoming Super 8.
Tom Shone Smart take on why the superhero movie is suddenly going retro with Captain America and X-Men First Class.
Towleroad I look at the men of May at the movies. Who is headlining? Who should we obsess over? 
Artsbeat Tribeca Film Festival Winners 

Um...
Towleroad Alex Pettyfer talks about his dick and reveals that he is one. Note to upcoming movie stars: do not act like stardom is a burden when you're still trying to win it. It's a turnoff -- most people would kill to switch places with you. If you turn people off before they're turned on, you're a trivia answer within a couple of years or completely forgotten.

Yes
Observations on Film Art wonderful piece on the visual language of movie endings and beginnings.
Gold Derby the Globes and the BAFTAs reveal their awards calendars. Once Oscar chimes in everyone else follows. 

Gadgets
Txnologist futuristic cars in the movies, they're totally into gullwings and butterfly wings and not today's boring doors that open sideways.
i09 lists the greatest handguns in sci-fi history so if you like Firefly, Farscape, Star Trek and the like, read on.