http://slyoyster.com

This has been making the rounds over the past few days.  It’s pretty well done.  As Clay Davis would say, “Sheeeeeit!”

This is neat: HBO Imagine are short films, done with multiple camera angles that you control.  “As HBO continues to push boundaries and change perspectives, we’ve created this entirely new way of experiencing a story.  Each piece of content provides unique information, and offers a unique perspective on the characters, plots, and motives at play, allowing viewers to discover for themselves what is really going on.  Have you seen the big picture yet?”

Art Heist is a good example. 

One hopes this is not just a passing fancy for the cable giant, but an earnest attempt at launching an online video site.  Maybe we’ve come to expect too much from HBO, but it seems if anyone would have figured out how to capitalize on their telelvision library to make an online profit it would have been them. [via]

Just when we got hip to HBO’s new comedy Bored to Death from Jonathan Ames, the cable network has made it available to watch the pilot episode. 

The show doesn’t debut until Sept. 20, but watch it now on Fancast, Amazon, HBO On Demand or iTunes. The series stars Jason Schwartzman as a Brooklyn writer who pretends to be a private investigator.  Ted Danson and Zack Galifianakis are also on board. 

Ames is blogging on HBO.com, if you want a some behind-the-scenes goodies. [via]

Anyone else looking forward to this offbeat comedy about a writer who becomes a fake detective?  Is it just me or has HBO slowly transformed from focusing on quality dramas to focusing on sitcoms?  Anyway, I wasn’t terribly excited about Bored to Death, despite the excellent cast, until I read this profile of writer/show-creator Jonathan Ames.

In Ames’s novels and essays on life in New York, most of which revolve around self-loathing, loneliness, sexual misadventure, and bodily dysfunction (P.S. they’re comedies), he’s cultivated a style that you might describe, oxymoronically, as uproariously melancholic. Bored to Death reconstitutes this tone for TV; the show is like The Long Goodbye meets The Squid and the Whale. In the tent, Ames says, “I was always drawn to the Philip Marlowe character in Raymond Chandler’s books. He’s so sure of himself! He’s so cool! He drinks black coffee in the morning!” Much of the humor in Bored to Death comes in the juxtaposition of that male archetype—the dapper, tough-talking, hard-boiled Humphrey Bogart type—with the modern-day Brooklyn males of the show, who are in no way cool, or sure, or hard-boiled. They are soft-boiled. Ames (the character); his best friend Ray (Zach Galifianakis); and his mentor, George (Ted Danson), a Graydon Carter–esque magazine editor, are, to varying degrees, infantilized, neurotic, confused, and emotionally inept. When Ray gets upbraided by his girlfriend on the street, he starts crying. When Jonathan is asked by an Israeli mover if he’s “another self-hating New York Jew,” he nods and answers softly, “Yes, I am.”

Bored to Death premieres on HBO, September 20th at 9:30 p.m.

The popular alt weekly sex advice columnist, Dan Savage, is working on a potential show for HBO based upon his column.  Sounds like it may be Sex in the City for the alternative kids, which is something I could get behind.

“I’m hoping to bring a new kind of conversation to TV about sex—an honest conversation, one that’s informed without being (too) wonky, funny without being (too) cruel, sexy without being (too) cheesy. Basically, my sex-advice column—but on the teevee!,” says Savage.

Taping of the pilot is this Thursday and you can get tickets by clicking here.  There’s no information on IMDB, yet, so this may amount to nothing at all.  But I happen to find Savage’s sex column (which they run in the Portland Mercury) often funny and educational.  It’s hard to take seriously sometimes, but strange sex questions often make me laugh (when they shouldn’t) and Savage usually handles it with intelligence and grace.  It’s a rare gift and a necessary one, since kids aren’t getting that advice in school or from trusted adults.  [via]

Face it.  Larry David is funnier than you.  He takes the simple act of opening a hard plastic security package and makes it worth a chuckle or two.  New season begins on September 20.

Thomas Jane could finally have his real break-out role, in which Jane plays a high-school basketball coach / gym teacher who realizes he can become a star by exploiting his giant penis. The show is called Hung afterall.

Anne Heche co-stars as his ex-wife, and Jane Adams plays, essentially, the pimp for Jane’s character. Alexander Payne (Sideways, Election), who directed the pilot, will stay on as executive producer.

According to Variety, the series’ first season consists of the 45-minute pilot and nine 30-minute  episodes, and premieres after Tru Blood on June 28. Keep an eye on the official site for more clips and info.

Also, for those wondering, there will be no Dirk Diggler moment in the show.  The goods will be heard of and never seen.  Dems da breaks kid.

Finally got to sit down and watch HBO’s Generation Kill last night, the miniseries based upon the Evan Wright book/Rolling Stone article.  I only saw the first episode (out of seven). 

It’s good, but I worry that it’s going to be difficult to watch or rather unpleasant.  It also has the benefit of hindsight and I wonder what perspective the show will take.  Will it look back with jaded eyes at the Marines? 

The first episode is nothing more than introducing all the characters of the 1st Recon Marine Batalion.  In a word it’s mundane.  The first half introduces us to the world of the marines, where there’s not much going on except mustache contests, finding batteries, the disappointment that letters from America brings, etc. 

They have been fashioned into the perfect killing weapon, or, as one of them put it, they’re “America’s pitbull dog.”  Every now and again they’re let off the leash to inflict damage on the enemy.  And yet, the country won’t allow them to do so. 

Try as David Simon and Ed Burns might, most of the characters all blend into one homogenous blur – they’re ball bustin’ and crude, dropping dialogue that would make David Mamet proud.  These marines are Men. Or at least that’s what we’re supposed to infer from their homophobia, racism, agression and frustration with not being allowed to go out and kill do their job. 

They only welcome reporter Evan Wright into their camp when he reveals he wrote the Beaver Hunter column for Hustler Magazine.  Until that, however, he’s insulted with every slander you could imagine for a “pussy, peace loving faggot” writer from some hippie music magazine.   

Slowly over the first episode as the Marines prepare for the Iraq invasion a few characters stand out from the hive, besides the reporter; one assume they (among a few others) will become the lense through which Generation Kill is told. 

There’s the awkward and soft-spoken First Lieutenant Nathaniel Fick, the nervous and talkative radio man Cpl. Josh Ray Person, and the anomaly in the group Sergeant Rudy “Fruity” Reyes.  He’s fit, cares about fashion, eats sushi and vegatables and can’t wait to move back to San Francisco after the war.  Obviously everyone thinks he’s a “fag.”   

As the first episode unfolds from Camp Mathilda in Kuwait, the Marines are waiting.  And waiting.  And waiting.  Until it’s time to roll into Iraq. 

What struck me, given the recent revelations of the Bush Administration, is how unprepared, uninformed the Marines were.  They had faulty equipment, they didn’t know who the enemy was, or what their objectives were going to be.  When they came across an Iraqi Death Squad they didn’t have the intelligence in hand to do anything more than shoo them away.  And when they encountered a group of Iraqis who’ve surrendered, instead of following the Geneva Conventions, they unsurrender them back into the desert wilderness. 

All in all, it’s a promising first episode. 

Also: Read Evan Wright’s articles for Rolling Stone.  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

HBO’s polygamy show Big Love depicts  an endowment ceremony on an upcoming episode, where Barbara (Jeanine Triplehorn) faces being kicked out of the church.  Without ever having seen the episode, the Morman Church is understandably prickly.

“Certainly church members are offended when their most sacred practices are misrepresented or presented without context or understanding,” the church statement said.

Only church members in good standing can enter temples to perform or witness sacred ceremonies. The ceremonies are centered on religious teachings and re-enactments of Bible stories to help Mormons prepare an eternal place for themselves — and others by proxy — in heaven.

Members take a vow not to discuss the rituals outside temple walls, although details of the ceremonies are widely available on the Internet.

The dramatization of the ceremony was vetted for accuracy by an adviser familiar with temple ceremonies who was on set during filming, said series creators and executives producers Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer.

“In approaching the dramatization of the endowment ceremony, we knew we had a responsibility to be completely accurate and to show the ceremony in the proper context and with respect,” Olsen and Scheffer said in a separate statement issued through HBO. “We therefore took great pains to depict the ceremony with the dignity and reverence it is due.”

The church declined an interview request by The Associated Press on Tuesday.

As is often the case in these types of television or movies depicting religions.

New York Magazine’s Will Leitch, formerly of Deadspin, has a sorta funny story about the time he went on Bob Costas’s HBO show and got verbally abused by author Buzz Bissinger.  Leitch was basically called out for writing on the internet.  And the above clip doesn’t really do the exchange justice.

There may have been spittle involved.

We milled around the green room. If you’re the type of person who cares about such matters, the following people were extremely friendly: John McEnroe, Michael Wilbon, Selena Roberts, and Mike Tirico. The following people were less so: Jason Whitlock, Cris Carter, Joe Buck. I talked to Braylon Edwards, who seemed as confused as anyone else as to why he was on my panel but jokingly pointed out how much better he looked in his suit than I did in mine. And, pacing around the room, clutching a folder of Deadspin printouts (though I didn’t know this at the time) like it was a talisman, was Buzz Bissinger. David went over to talk to him first, and left about fifteen words in with a grimace and a heads-up: “He’s locked and loaded.” Then, with the show about to start, Buzz walked over to me.

“Hey, it’s good to meet you, sir,” I said. “This should be fun.”

He didn’t even look at me. “So, you’re a Cardinals fan?” he said, with a smirk. “Yes,” I said. “They’re pretty much our family religion.”

He walked away, not even acknowledging my response. This was not going to end well.

And end well it didn’t, but it was Bissinger who ended up looking like an old man fool for not understanding the internet, well not getting it, really.  And the picture painted of a try-too-hardy Costas, obsessed with his lack of height, is well, unflattering might be a word I would use except that word is too kind for this portrait.

Need I say more. Sorry, US fans only. Unfortch.

I finally got a chance to see HBO’s new vampire series True Blood, based upon the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris.� Leading up to the series I was worried about the marketing of the series and curious how this thing would play out.

After only one episode it’s tough to determine how I feel about it, just because there isn’t a lot of material to go on.� But any worries about the series’s tone are pretty much gone.� Yes, the marketing was pretty much crap, however the bayou vampire tales seems perfectly atune to creator Alan Ball’s sense of dark humor and fantasy.� The show is shot, in terms of cinematography, very much like Ball’s first show Six Feet Under.

All I know so far is that Sookie (Anna Paquin) is a telepathic waitress who becomes anamored with the 173-year-old vampire Bill.� She’s stuck in her little world with her saucy friend Tara.� Not a whole lot happens in the first episode plotwise because it needs to establish all the characters who inhabit this world.� Vampires are out of the coffin due to the Japanese product Tru Blood, a synthetic blood.� It is strange to see a vampire world where there is no slayer or vampire hunter or whatnot.� In that sense, this is a take on the vampire mythos worth watching and difficult to gage exactly where the show is heading.

A few minor caveats: if Sookie can read minds why is she a measly waitress in Louisianna, wouldn’t she put that to better use?� Bad, bad southern accents.� Also, the vampire teeth FX were pretty horrible and not the least bit believable (they are sorta like a switchblade complete with a SFX similar to when Wolverine unleashes his claws).� Finally, and this should be no surprise to Alan Ball fans, but I hope the show doesn’t keep with the overt vampires as symbolism for homosexuals.� I’m not against exploring that subtext or even having that be one level of the show, but it comes off as sloppy and hamhanded and not the work of a master like Alan Ball.

So far so good though.� And how about those opening credits?

Okay we get it. Vampires are a stand in for oppressed minority groups. Ugh. Usually this sort of thing isn’t so bad, except when they insult our intelligence to read the subtext. With this new trailer, we get an idea of what the series is going to be about. It’s clear that this series is in trouble. HBO has shown nothing in the marketing of this show that it’s going to be anything other than an obviously campy vampire romp.

A pittance too, for I could read and watch any sort of vampire show/book. Which is to say, that despite my reservations I’ll be checking this one out as well in three weeks. Call me a sucker (pun soooo not-intended). If Alan Ball’s name weren’t attached to this show, would I be remotely interested? Probably not.