Since departing NBC’s Law & Order: SVU, fans everywhere have been wondering what’s next for Christopher Meloni (who played main character Elliot Stabler for 12 seasons).

Wonder no more. Meloni will be making a jump to another TV show that’s just as controversial (if not as riveting) as he officially joins the cast of HBO’s popular supernatural show, True Blood.

Series creator Alan Ball mentioned to TVLine that the former Law & Order: SVU front man will play, “An ancient, powerful vampire who holds the fate of Bill and Eric in his hands.” [<-- spoiler for Season 5]

As more True Blood news pops up, be sure to stick with us for more details (and more spoilers).

Salma Hayek

VS.

Janina Gavankar

Janina had been doing small supporting roles for a while, but finally got some major shine on this past season of True Blood. Hopefully we’ll see more of Luna Vega next season, ’cause man, I’d kill her werewolf ex-husband to make time with her, too!

Yeah, this is essentially the True Blood portion of the podcast, although we do get into Walking Dead and Falling Skies a bit.

Episode 4 from Sunday night featured the Danko Jones song “I’m Alive and On Fire”. “I’m Alive and On Fire” was named after the band’s track and debut album of the same name and is also the name of Sunday’s episode. The episode will re-air throughout the week on HBO (check your local listings) and can be streamed online at HBOGo.com

No stranger to vampire folklore, Danko Jones filmed a vampire inspired video in 2006 for the song “First Date,” from the album “Sleep is the Enemy,” which can be viewed on YouTube . Danko Jones “I’m Alive and On Fire” is also available on iTunes . Fans of the band and show can now download the track for free during a limited time exclusively at RollingStone.com.

The band has announced a run of live shows in the U.S. through August and September in support of the re-released full-length album Below the Belt as a deluxe reissue featuring two new bonus tracks titled “Guest List Blues” and “Rock N Roll Proletariat.” Also included in the newly expanded CD version is the entire acclaimed Below the Belt music video trilogy. The band is currently on a European festival tour in support of the release.

You can follow the band through Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.

Visit the official Danko Jones website: www.dankojones.com 

Follow the band on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dankojones

Become a fan on Facebook: www.facebook.com/dankojones

Add on MySpace: www.myspace.com/dankojones

“Well, I can say that in the season finale of Season 3, Alcide made a pass at Sookie, and we’ll definitely pick up where that left off,” teased Manganiello at the Ford Mustang Boss Workshop, where the actor mentors boys with Type 1 diabetes.

Was it weird to do love scenes with Paquin while her real-life husband, Stephen Moyer (who plays vampire Bill Compton), was on the set? Joe laughed, “I can’t say, because if I answered that question I’d be giving away whether or not we hooked up.”

Season 4 of “True Blood” premieres Sunday, June 26 on HBO. Hit the jump to view his interview with Extra or head over there to read more.

If you haven’t been in touch with season 3 of True Blood, here’s what you missed so far:

1. Werewolves finally make it to the show.

2. A new vampire monarch appears.

3. Jessica learns some new tricks.

4. Sam finds his roots.

5. Tara has man issues.

6. The most shocking sex scene ever happens.

7. Eric comes face to face with his legacy.

8. Bill walks in daylight.

9. What the hell is Sookie?

With only 5 episodes left in the season, the ride ahead for our favorite creatures of the night is one not to be missed.

Utilizing one of the more ambitious hour+ time killers I’ve found online, HBO pushes the boundaries of interactivity with their web-based cyber-viewer, HBOimagine.com. Think of it as a movie that you can experience from any perspective. HBOimagine.com may have stumbled onto something.

For several years, companies have been looking for unique ways to develop original cinematic experiences via the online portals that we, the consumer, use everyday.

In 2001, for example, Electronic Arts came up with the clever, but ultimately failed experience, Majestic, allowing players to interact with a robust thriller via fax machines, instant messenger, and their real world telephones. Back then, players weren’t quite ready to embrace the ambitious political thriller, and EA dissolved activity within the goliath meta-game only a year after the service launched.

Fast track to 2009. As streaming media and the ease of social networking seamlessly shifted our television entertainment into the online hub, companies relentlessly pursue those bold paradigm shifts that might be the one in million ‘new thing’ that grabs you.

So you like watching movies online? In the age of Youtube and Hulu, how does a company create a unique way to hold your eyeballs AND do something creative while they’ve got you?

HBOimagine.com may have stumbled onto something.

Utilizing one of the more ambitious hour+ time killers I’ve found online, HBO pushes the boundaries of interactivity with their web-based cyber-viewer, HBOimagine.com.

Think of it as a movie that you can experience from any perspective.

Wait, let me correct that: Think of this as an HBO movie that you can experience from any perspective. Before I get into the ‘experience’ part, you’ve got to appreciate that the HBO distinction is monumental. There are a legion of internet shows of varying quality on the web, but very few even come close to bar of production and writing that customers expect from the HBO brand.

And to a large degree, HBOimagine brings that level of quality to the online space.

Through a series of video clips, supplementary images, and supporting documents, viewers can view a single scene within the context of a much larger story. Each scene is professionally scripted, acted, and directed. Look at them like scenes from any of HBO’s broadcast dramas, and you might even recognize a face or two. Video clips generally range between 30 seconds to 4 minutes, and – this is the hook – key scenes can be viewed from four different perspectives.

By perspectives, we don’t mean simply a change of camera angle. Take, for example, one of the major scenes of the overarching story. There’s an art show which begins normally enough. Art snobs saunter around a posh exhibit in Vegas. However, at the end of the four minutes, there’s a commotion, and depending on the perspective of the person that you’re following, you get to see the beginning and end of the that segment from a fascinating and – more importantly – revelatory point of view.

Those key scenes are links in an interwoven tapestry of sub-characters, side stories, and addendum information where you, the viewer, experience a complex chronological narrative at your leisure. Each video and image that you view tracks a certain percentage of the story viewed. Unlock 100%, and you’ve got all the elements to see the story from a God-like perspective. It’s like watching LOST, but you can see the story at any point from beginning to end, with an experience that becomes richer because you don’t view things in a linear order.

See the entire story in Flowchart view

As quality and ambition goes, HBOimagine.com gets the high marks. The execution, unfortunately, is where things start to unravel.

Although the service is totally free, viewing the entire experience is an exercise that only the most committed will finish. There’s a heavy price in pre-loading the entire story at once, and on two different computers with above average connection speeds, too often the video clips spit and chugged along.

Remember that each 4 minute multi-view video is really 4×4, which is actually 16 minutes of video all buffered clumsily into your browser. If you want to replay a scene, prepare to wait for it. Changing a scene’s angle is an awesome idea, but less so when the cost might just knock out the video entirely, forcing you to refresh the page. Only then, might you have the opportunity to get that awkward black screen to show picture again. Maybe.

In fact, for all of HBOimagine.com’s achievements, it’s big Achilles heel is the cumbersome technology behind it. You’ll sputter your way through the thriller, which takes about two hours to do thoroughly. The story will massage you through the aggravation of waiting, of course, and whether the end is worth it or not is entirely up to you.

HBOImagine.com ultimately feels like a big artistic experiment in new technology. While novel, I’m not entirely sure that this broadly ambitious story telling is the best way to go. Then again, I’ll be the first in line to pay a monthly fee for something smaller and more game like. Imagine a service where you can watch multi-view scenes in an online whodunit? Solve mysteries CSI style, then answer questions to win points towards HBO DVDs, or discounts from sponsors? As it exists, HBOImagine.com gives a whole lot of nifty without a great deal of reward.

It’s definitely satisfying watching short form cinema with the wit and depth of broadcast television, but where’s the prize? Where’s the online immediate gratification of reward that goes with the energy of sleuthing through such an engaging and complex tale?

While I certainly don’t have all of the answers, HBOimagine.com brings up some fascinating questions. If you’re a budding filmmaker, or just enjoy the excitement around a potential future for online TV, this complex video rubicks cube is worth a go – at least once. Check it out.

When HBO puts a show together about vampires, you know it’s going to be different from all the rest. Based on the book series by Charlaine Harris, True Blood offers vamp fans a plate of shlock with a side of grits and a dose of southern hospitality. Bon Temps, Louisiana becomes the most unlikeliest of show locales, where life crawls by without excitement making it a perfect environment for vampires.

This take on the fanged-night dwellers resorts to the basic elements with slight tweaks to the lore. They can still live forever provided that they’re not impaled with a wooden stick or burned to a crisp. Silver hurts them, and so does the sunlight but not in a spontaneous combustion, it’s more drawn out. They’re super-strong, incredibly fast, and they don’t rely on human’s blood to survive. They can simply sustain on artificial blood, called Tru Blood sold at a convenience store near you. It’s really a path chosen by the minority of vampires as it just doesn’t taste as good as humans. They walk amongst us, at night, and are out in the open. Some of them prefer to keep things old school and plot to become the superior race, while others are fine with diplomatically living with humans, even having relationships with them. This is called, “mainstreaming” and humans known to have sex with vamps are lovingly called, “fangbangers.” It’s so cute. The prize in this universe though is their blood can do incredible things to humans. It can heal, make you high, make you great in bed and in the black market it’s invaluable.

The first season starts off oddly as so many characters are introduced and their profiles take time to set up. For instance, Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) is an innocent southern belle who never likes to kiss and tell, is fearless, and compassionate towards vampires living in the same world. She is a telepathic waitress at Merlotte’s, a local bar where the usuals hang out. Outside of Sookie is a tight circle including her dumb and sex-crazed brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten) her shape-shifting boss, Sam (Sam Trammell) who holds a torch for her, her rude and crude best friend Tara (Rutina Wesley) and Tara’s cousin Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis), the resident homosexual, who, how do I best put this, is an entrepreneur of all sorts. In the pilot, Sookie saves a mainstreaming vampire, Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) from having his blood tapped by a couple of rednecks and thus begins her flirtation with the gothic vampire world. In the close-minded town of Bon Temps, however, thats enough to make you a pariah.

By the season’s midpoint, the changes begin, as the focus shifts towards vampire blood, or V, and everything it provides and why humans seek it out, adding new levels to the drama. The desire for this blood by the humans reaches levels of crack cocaine despite their prejudice towards each other actually creates a co-dependency. Tara deals with her alcoholic mother, Jason captures a vampire, and the eldest Stackhouse is murdered. A hierarchy in the local vampire ranks is revealed where Bill must answer to a district “sheriff” vampire Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) and The Magister (Zeljko Ivanek) who rules over all of them. The process of “making” a vampire falls on Bill, and hate-mongers dressed up as a religious faction rallies behind keeping the two races apart (echoing the current climate of gay marriage). And amidst all of this is a serial murderer is on the loose.

I’m not prepared to dub this HBO’s greatest new show. It did take some time for it to grow on me, but I enjoyed the care these characters and the development they were given throughout season one. True Blood creator, Alan Ball (Six Feet Under) delivers another strange entry into prime-time television; a splendid trip into stylistic indulgence, over-the-top sexual distractions, and blood-dripping decadence. The more I saw, the more I wanted. The character arcs for the Stackhouses and Bill Compton grew more compelling with each episode. Tara and Lafayette are two of the most unique characters on television while the quirks of supporting cast and guest spots by Lizzie Caplan, Stephen Root, Michelle Forbes, and Ivanek made what initially looked to be one of HBO’s many forgotten failures into a fun-to-watch diversion that’s set up perfectly for the second season.

Video: B+
Ture Blood comes onto your widescreen TV by a solid 1080p Mpeg-4, AVC-encoded high definition transfer in 1.78:1 ratio. It’s not the most consistent picture. There’s some noticeably grain-heavy spots which may be due to the transfer, or the type of camera that was used, I’m unsure, but it’s noticeable. Sometimes there’s some inconsistencies with the contrast so the blacks are not as deep as they could be particularly when Sookie and Bill “unite.” But the blood is a beautiful dark crimson, and the skintones whether pale or full of life, look darn good. Some of the mixed animated dream sequences when Jason is tripping on V come alive and for a dark, stylistic television show, it’s better than most.

Audio: A
The 5.1 DTS-HD soundtrack is pretty hyped for a television show. It’s full of atmospheric noises mimic what it sounds like at night in the hot Louisiana help put you in the mood, are balanced nicely with the dialogue. The soundtrack/score blends in when appropriate and never overpowers the other key sound elements. There is one standout sound effect, where a cool swirling effect whenever Sookie is reading people’s minds, especially when she’s working at the bar, it travels around all five channels echoing the thoughts of everyone in the room. It can almost induce a dizzying migraine but really places you in her mind and how these thoughts pass through her head. Also available are a 5.1 French DTS soundtrack and another in 2.0 Spanish DTS. Subtitles in English, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and English for the Dead and Hard of Hearing.

Extras: B-
Before I get into the extras, I wanted to speak of the packaging and presentation of this box set since it’s different than the typically variety of the standard blue cases. A pretty slipcase houses five discs in a fold-out book, that’s right, I said five blu-rays very tightly. It took me nearly ten minutes to get the damn thing out of the case! More breathing room, HBO, please. It will save me digging around for needle-nosed pliers to get out my blu-rays. And five blu-rays? Was it really necessary to take up that many discs for 12 episodes? I understand there are multi-layered specials and commentaries but I thought blu-ray was supposed to minimize the disc count because it can hold so much data. In lieu of that disappointment, the menu design is real slick, nice style and gets you in that dark, gritty mood right away.

Enhanced Viewing HD is on each disc which allows you to watch each episode with factoids on each character that help build up the True Blood universe including Lafayette gossip, animated maps, segments of interviews, “news broadcasts”, commercials, public service announcements, the history of vampires and “documentaries” all mocked up for the show. First, save this until you’ve watched through the entire season un-enhanced. It really breaks up the viewing experience and makes it hard to follow if this is the first time you’re watching the series. Some of this material is really enjoyable. More Lafayette is a good thing, trust me, and the documentary and newscasts are well-written. Part of the experience happens in picture-in-picture, the rest goes full screen and cuts away from the show. The biggest problem though is that it’s an all or nothing experience. For five minutes there’s material and then next to nothing for fifteen minutes. A pullout menu or index specific to the enhanced viewing would have been a nice touch. On average, there’s a slim 10 minutes worth of material for each hour long episode, way too much dead space.

Audio Commentaries – there are six in total, each with a different participant, and the best of the lot are those for episodes one and five.

Episode One – creator/executive producer Alan Ball
Episode Two – Anna Paquin (Sookie Stackhouse) and director Scot Winan
Episode Four – director Michael Lehmann and writer Brian Buckner
Episode Five – Stephen Moyer (Bill Compton) and director Dan Minahan
Episode Seven – director Marcos Siega
Episode Eleven – director/writer Nancy Oliver

Ball fills the time in excellent fashion, with lots of information and background into adapting the books series into television and in the other Moyer and Minahan’s back and forth candor moves through the episode. Beware, there’s a lot of Six Feet Deep talk on all of them.

Lastly are Next On and Previously On TV spots for each each episode.

Fun in Fangbanging – Overall Shock Value: B

True Blood isn’t going to be for everyone. There’s a lot of sex. Scratch that. There’s A LOT OF SEX, which can carry you through some of those early slow episodes, but this show finds its feet about halfway in and becomes a unique vampire story. If you can invest that time into this series it’s well-worth it. It’s a mature take that doesn’t take itself too seriously either. Once the struggles settle in, the vampires show their mean streaks, then picking favorites is as easy as plucking blueberries off a bush. It’s not as campy or exciting as the Whedon Buffy-verse, it’s not as epic as Anne Rice’s Interview With a Vampire, or as off-the-wall as Six Feet Deep. It’s got a little bit of all of those though and oh yeah, a lot of sex.

Ernie Estrella

Get your TiVos ready.

Rutina Wesley