Page vs Screen: True Blood S4 vs Dead To The World

Well, the fourth season of True Blood has just finished, giving me the perfect occasion to inaugurate my Page vs Screen series! (am trying to forget I had planned to inaugurate it with Game of Thrones, and then Harry Potter and then... oops!)

True Blood is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris. I'm not going to go into details concerning the previous seasons/novels, but in general each season is more or less loosely based on one novel (there are 11 books so far, will the series go 11 seasons?). The first season is the one that was closest to its respective novel - Dead Until Dark -, whereas the second season started to veer away from the novel (Living Dead In Dallas) and develop its own storyline parallel to the main action (i.e. Maryanne in Bon Temps) and then the third season just... woah! Major changes (deaths!!! some that should have taken place in later novels) and surprises to the principal plot from the novel (Club Dead)!!! Warning: some spoilers (for books and series) to be expected.

In general, all the main characters are pretty much the same as in the novels (Sookie, Bill, Eric, Jason, Sam, Pam, Alcide...). Where things really changed in the TV series (other than the variations on the plots) was in the development of the secondary characters (Tara, Lafayette, Terry, Arlene, Hoyt, Holly, Tommy...) and introduction of new ones (Jessica!!! Jesus). I think this is in great part due to the nature of the beast: screen vs page. The books are all narrated by Sookie, so all in the 1st person and the story is seen almost exclusively from her point of view. So the secondary characters don't get much development unless they interact with her directly. That wouldn't work as well on TV. Quite frankly it's one of the aspects I disliked the most from the books and the single major change that I think makes the TV series so much better than the books: the rich world of Bon Temps brought to life by all the secondary (and some major) characters (inhabited by some fabulous actors)! I can't imagine that place without Lafayette or Tara, and the first gets killed at the start of the second novel and the second just zips in and out of the action in several of the books.

On to Season Four of True Blood!

Buffy vs Edward

Hmm... I don't know if you've already seen this one, came out in June I think:



Kudos to the person who put this together (interviewed by LATimes here)! as a big Buffy fan I was contrasting Twilight to Joss Whedon's creation a lot in my mind when I saw it. The intermix of the two oeuvres kind of shows up some of the kitschy dialogue lines... (disclaimer: I did enjoy Twilight when I saw it and later read it, and am looking forward to New Moon)

But the question that really comes to mind when I watch this (or other video montages from movies/series/music) is: WHERE ON EARTH DO PEOPLE FIND THE TIME TO DO THESE THINGS?!?!?!
I mean, I can't even sit down to put together a couple of video segments I have stored on the computer from a friend's camera... it takes hours to pick the fragments you want, edit them together, add photos or music! But to do something like this where the person has gone through and interlaced clips not only from a movie but from TV episodes covering several seasons? (I counted episodes from seasons 1, 2, 4 and 5 of Buffy there) Yikes!

Oh well, I guess I'd better just thank them for it because it can be very entertaining! :o)