Where are all the bodies buried?

Bring out your dead: True Blood unearths vamps, werewolves & intrigue in season5 opener

Supernatural television shows are almost always populated with lots of dead characters. But usually those dead people slink around as sexy, shirtless ghosts and vampires or at least lurch around as mindless rotting zombies. However, for the season 5 premiere of HBO’s supernatural, southern gothic satire True BloodSunday night, the episode was all about actually burying the dead. Or digging them up and eating them, whichever.

So who died, and where are all the bodies buried?

In fact, Anna Paquin’s Sookie Stackhouse, the part-faerie, telepathic hero of the series, spent so much time cleaning crime scenes and digging graves, it felt like True Blood had turned into a PBS anthropology documentary on the burial rituals and practices of the indigenous Bon Temps, Louisiana peoples. That is until we got the first, and probably contractually obligated, shot of Alexander Skarsgård’s bare butt. Then, it felt like HBO again.

So who died, and where are all the bodies buried?

Debbie Pelt
At the end of season 4, crazy werewolf and recovering vampire blood drug addict Debbie Pelt, tried to shoot Sookie and ended up killing supernatural-trouble magnet and Sookie’s best friend, Tara instead. Sookie, in turn, killed Debbie with her own shotgun. Yet, somehow, a part-faerie waitress shooting a werewolf-real-housewife is probably the most un-supernatural death in the show’s history.

Tara Thornton
Though Tara ended up with part of her brains splattered over Sookie’s kitchen floor, neither Sookie nor Tara’s cousin Lafayette were ready to let her die. They made a deal with the devilishly awesome Pam, Eric Northman’s vampire daughter of all people, to turn Tara into a vampire, a ritual which requires Tara and Pam to be buried together in Sookie’s backyard for a night.

Technically if this whole vamp Tara project works out, that will make Tara Eric’s vampire granddaughter, because the True Blood writers love their viewers and wants us to die laughing.

Jesus Velasquez
Another body to be counted at the end of last season was Lafayette’s lover Jesus. Jesus was a powerful brujo (witch) but was stabbed by Lafayette when the latent medium was possessed by the even more powerful dead witch Marnie. Yeah I know, how many times have we seen that old plot line? The twist is that now Jesus’ body is missing, but there are so many other bodies to be buried this episode that the mystery of missing Jesus was left unsolved.

Marcus Bozeman
Late last season, werewolf Alcide killed the local wolf pack leader Marcus. Why that is important this season is because the wolf pack and Marcus’s mom blame shapeshifter Sam Merlott who is dating Marcus’s shapeshifting ex-wife Luna. The pack made Sam take them to the Marcus’s unmarked grave, and then they proceeded to dig Marcus up and eat his entrails. It’s a werewolf thing. Don’t impose your closed-minded non-were Western prejudices upon them.

Nan Flanagan
While Sookie and Lafayette were busy mopping and bleaching the Stackhouse kitchen, Vampire King of Louisiana, Bill Compton, and his sheriff, Eric Northman, were at the royal residence sopping up the vampire goo that was the once Vampire Authority representative Nan Flanagan. She was paying Sookie’s ex-lovers a visit to either kill them or make some kind of deal to go against the Authority. Exactly whose side she was on was left rather ambiguous but Nan threatened Sookie, and so she had to go.

True Blood usually alternates between the sexes when designating each season’s top sexy villain. If the pattern holds again this summer, we should be able to smell the testosterone directly from our television screens.

What’s so important about all these dead bodies, especially since some of them aren’t even sexy anymore?

A Pam sired, and possibly mindless, vampire Tara, is certainly going to cause both Sookie and Lafayette heartache and stress. The woman had massive anger-management problems and an uncanny talent for getting kidnapped by supernatural crazy beings when she was human. The human mind can hardly encompass what trouble she’ll get into as a vampire.

The killing of Nan is probably Bill and Eric’s first step down, and it’s a doozy, into the vampire political underworld. Eric and Bill were on the run from and then overrun by minions of Vampire Authority for, well, not respecting the Vampire Authority’s authority.

And while Eric and Bill are busy with vampire infighting, Alcide and Sam look to be about to play werewolf and shapeshifter power politics.

So what can we expect from season 5?

Season 4 was about girl power. Wronged female witches, ghosts, and ghost witches stuck it to the Man who was usually a vampire. Even Sookie had an "I-choose-me" moment when she dumped both her former vamp lovers Bill and Eric and gave werewolf Alcide the let’s-be-friends speech.

Though he hasn’t made an appearance yet, season three’s vampire king of Mississippi, Russell Edgington, has been rescued from his cement prison and is sure to wreck havoc upon the world.

The Reverend Steve Newlin, who hasn’t been seen except for cameos since season 2, is back. Newlin once commanded an army of faithful vampire-hating followers, but is now a vampire himself and is openly declaring his love for Sookie’s brother Jason.

Being dumped by Sookie, while they were wearing cute matching robes, seems to have pushed Bill and Eric on the road to an epic vampire bromance and perhaps right in the middle of a real war between philosophies on the nature of government. Sure Russell Edgington might represent the dying vampire monarchy system but he’s a powerful 3000 years old and kind of nuts. Meanwhile, the city council cabal, or whatever the Vampire Authority is, seems to hold ultimate political power, but if they can’t even keep the Sookie-whipped comedy duo of Bill and Eric in line how do they expect to rule the vampire world?

Finally, just a reminder. The dead character with magical powers whose body is still missing is named Jesus. Hopefully hell will be fun if Nan is there to welcome us.

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Movie Review

Daniel Craig shines in Queer, an unapologetic tale of love and loss

Photo courtesy of A24

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer.

As recently as the late 2010s, if a movie was made about an LGBTQ+ character, it was more than likely about their coming out experience. Romance, if it existed, was typically chaste, and actual sex was almost completely out of the question. Things have changed dramatically in the 2020s, to the point that a major movie star has no issue starring in a film called Queer.

Based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs, the film features William Lee (Daniel Craig), whom everyone calls just Lee, a writer living in 1950s-era Mexico City who spends most of his time haunting local bars with friends like fellow writer Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman) and hitting on younger men. His early interactions in the film seem to indicate that Lee has a bad reputation within the local gay community, as multiple people avoid him or give him odd looks.

Lee senses an opportunity when he encounters a newcomer, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Despite some awkward interactions, the two of them start spending time together, although Lee has much more invested in the relationship than Eugene does. Their hit-and-miss bond continues until Lee, who’s starting to get into drugs in addition to the booze, convinces Eugene to accompany him on a trip to South America.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes (making their second straight film together after Challengers), early on the film seems to be mostly about the divide between an older person who’s grown comfortable in his ways and a younger person who’s living a relatively carefree life. The introduction of drugs into the plot changes things, though, with Lee searching out more ways to open his eyes to what the world has to offer.

Guadagnino and his team use some interesting visual storytelling techniques to introduce ideas that may not be present in the actual script. The most successful, demonstrated in multiple scenes, is the superimposition of movements by Lee over what’s actually taking place in the scene. The subtle overlay gives the audience insight into Lee’s true feelings, showing what he can’t or won’t say out loud.

Music also plays a big part in how the plot is perceived, with the use of anachronistic songs from Nirvana and Prince serving to heighten certain moments. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is not as in-your-face as the one they did for Challengers, but it complements the film well, especially when the plot starts to get trippy in its final half hour.

Craig, who appears sweaty and disheveled for much of the film, is about as far from the suaveness of James Bond as you can get in this role. He takes multiple risks with his performance and almost all of them pay off. Starkey’s character is subdued by comparison, but still comes off well. Schwartzman and Lesley Manville are given showy roles, with both using altered appearances that make them nearly unrecognizable to deliver memorable performances.

Queer is not as accessible as Challengers was storytelling-wise, but the fact that it tells a story about gay men living their lives as they see fit with no interference or questions shows how far the film world has come in a short period of time. It also continues Guadagnino’s streak of making audacious films in a way that few other filmmakers are willing or able to approach.

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Queer is now playing in theaters.

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