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List Price: $59.99 | | Label: HBO Home Video
Salesrank: 58
Released: May 19, 2009 |
| Our Price: $20.59 |
| Used Price: $17.99 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
TRUE BLOOD chronicles the backwoods Louisiana town of Bon Temps... where vampires have emerged from the coffin, and no longer need humans for their fix. Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin, Golden Globe(R)-winner for "True Blood", Academy Award®-winner for “The Piano”) works as a waitress at the rural bar Merlotte's. Though outwardly a typical young woman, she keeps a dangerous secret: she has the ability to hear the thoughts of others. Her situation is further complicated when the bar gets its first vampire patron - 173-year old Bill Compton (Steven Moyer, "Quills") - and the two outsiders are immediately drawn to each other. Delivering the best of what audiences have come to expect from Creator and Executive Producer Alan Ball (writer of Oscar®-winning Best Picture “American Beauty”, creator of the Emmy® Award-winning HBO® series “Six Feet Under”), TRUE BLOOD is a dark and sexy tale that boldly delves into the heart - and the neck - of the Deep South.
DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Documentary
Other
Description of True Blood: The Complete First Season (HBO Series):
Alan Ball’s True Blood series works well for television, as it has enough sensationalism to tantalize and enough story girth to make the viewer care about the characters. That one can finally invest emotion into monsters, including an undead Civil War victim, a transformer who can shapeshift into various animals, and a female mind reader, speaks volumes about America’s willingness to accept fantasy. Of course, television has always produced good fantasy shows (I Dream of Jeannie), but True Blood’s Southern Goth brand of fun horror is more macabre and more perverse, not to mention gorier, than most shows of its kind to date. Adapted from Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels, True Blood thrills because of its equal blend in each episode of erotica, humor, tragedy, mystery, and fantasy.
Set in a rural, swampy Louisiana parrish, the show centers around Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) and her clan, sweet grandmother Adele (Lois Smith) and air-headed brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten). Illicit love is spawned early on, when Sookie saves vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) from having his blood stolen in the parking lot of Merlotte’s diner, owned by Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) who completes what will form a complex love triangle. As tensions between Sookie’s suitors loosen or tighten, many side plots, such as her African American best friend Tara’s (Rutina Wesley) struggle with an alcoholic, Bible-thumping mother and her brother’s dangerous crush on drug addicted hippie, Amy Burley (Lizzy Caplan), keep one wondering who will succeed in this podunk place. The main tension throughout, however, is a race war waged between vampires and humans. As murders of “fang bangers” occur (human girls who let vampires bite them) and dumb policeman Andy Bellefleur (Chris Bauer) fails to find clues, one sees the metaphorical implications of vampirism and feels deeper resonance with what can be a downright trashy show. Gossip galore, especially about what kinds of babies interbreeding will produce, is rampant. One of the funniest characters is Tara’s flamboyant cousin, Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis), who deals drugs, works as a fry cook, and services the local white politicians, while making sure he’s always up in everyone’s business.
What makes True Blood smarter than pure soap opera is the parallels it draws between its monster mash and actual, familiar societal problems. Sookie and her friends watch the news, where Evangelicals bash vampires and prohibit mixed marriage, and everyone is addicted to V, a.k.a vampire blood, that effects like psychedelic heroin. Even its gore reflects a mix of serious and silly, as vampires explode into red, sticky goop. Though it may not be attempting to qualify for the best vampire footage ever shot, True Blood is as addictive as that substance the town’s youth obsesses over, which is a metaphor in itself. --Trinie Dalton
Stills from True Blood (Click for larger image)
True Blood: The Complete First Season (HBO Series) Reviews:
Childish, Poorly Written, Poorly Acted 
2009-11-08 - The main problem here is Anna Paquin - a terrible actress given not to interpreting a character but merely spewing memorized lines. God, she is awful!!!!!!! The secondary problem is that this show doesn't know what it is - sometimes it's a drama, sometimes a comedy - but never a black comedy - and sometimes it's just the bloody Waltons....Although admittedly, I don't know how the series ended...I couldn't watch it all.
True Blood Season 1 Sucks You In 
2009-11-07 - True Blood Season One is worth every penny! The acting doesn't make you want to vomit. You get sucked in (pun intended) because you get attached to the characters. I love the satire. The characters have unbelievable accents that make you feel as though you are in Louisiana.
Can't wait to buy season two!
Went great!
2009-11-07 - The set came within the delivery period. Was an authentic set and it cost less than the actual Amazon price. Way to go.
True Blood
2009-11-05 - Finally - a vampire story for adults that's not as dark as Dracula; instead, it's fun and very sexy!
Disappointing Adaptation 
2009-11-04 - If you've never read the Sookie Stackhouse books of Charlaine Harris on which this series is based, the TV series is literally OK. It's an interesting situation (vampires come out of the "coffin" thanks to a synthetic blood that eliminates the need for them to attack humans.)
But for fans of the books, this series is a major disappointment. Not because things are changed somewhat--you expect that in film adaptations--but the changes here are often damaging to the very things that made the books so much fun. Season one, in all of its episodes, deals with the basic plot lines of the first book, "Dead Until Dark".
First of all, in the books the lead character, waitress Sookie Stackhouse has a wonderful, wry, witty and slightly catty sense of humor. She's reasonably smart, gracious, sexy, and lots of fun. That's totally gone here--Sookie as played by Anna Paquin is clueless, slutty, and shrewish--as if the entire series is a depiction of PMS. In the book, although she works as a cocktail waitress, she is definitely a lady. In the series she becomes trampy white trash. In the books, Sookie's grandmother is pictured as an elegant, refined, kind if slightly old-fashioned lady. In the series she dresses like a homeless person and is portrayed as kindly but hardly refined.
Second--a lot of time is devoted to side stories involving minor characters whose characterization has been changed for no apparent reason other than to feature lots of sex and nudity. Sookie's brother Jason is pictured not only as oversexed and not the sharpest tool in the box (as in the book) but as downright stupid, a drug addict and a bigot to boot. And far too much time is spent on his sexual escapades. Sookie's friend Tara becomes a major (and rather unpleasant) character here (as well as changing races). The flamboyantly African-American cook Lafayette (who is portrayed sympathetically in the books) here becomes a dealer of particularly unpleasant drugs. And Sam, Sookie's boss, who is a shape-shifter and a supernatural creature himself, by his unexplained and unreasoning hostility towards the vampires becomes much less sympathetic than in the book for no discernable reason.
Third--there's a lot of gratuitous sex and pointless nudity. The books have some graphic sex scenes in them--but they are all relevant to the plot or the characters. This being HBO, you are treated to lots of naked bodies and simulated sex, regardless of the relevance to the story. While the actors are all very attractive physically, this runs the risk of turning the series into soft-core porn.
So in short--it's OK. But I think you'll enjoy the books more. They are funnier, more exciting and more interesting than the HBO series.
