It's taken Alan Ball nine years after his Oscar win for “American Beauty” to make his way back to the big-screen. Hopefully, it’ll be a much shorter trip the third time around, the “Towelhead” director laughed.

“I have two scripts that I wrote years ago, both of which I still believe in. I’m actually thinking of trying to produce one and not direct and there’s another one that I’d like to direct,” he revealed to MTV News.

Although he insists that for the immediate future he’s focusing on writing the second season of “True Blood,” his vampire series which premiered recently on HBO, Ball thinks it’s possible one or both could become big movies in the not so distant future. So what the heck are they about? Read more...

Walking down the street a couple weeks ago I passed a poster promoting something called the “Vampire Rights Amendment.” Maybe you did, too. It didn’t register at first -- living in New York, one grows accustomed to all sorts of civic grievance. The next time I encountered one of these posters, though, I went home and looked up the VRA online, and was, first of all, surprised to find it online, and then to discover that it was part of an elaborate, under-the-radar ad campaign for an upcoming cable series called “True Blood.” Okay, I was roped in.

I’ve since acquired the first two episodes of the show, and a considerable amount of obscure information related thereto. “True Blood” is drawn from the eight “Southern Vampire Mysteries” written by Mississippi novelist Charlaine Harris, who among other things, I gather, is a former weightlifter. I mean no disrespect. These books are apparently very popular; naturally I haven’t heard of them before this. They chronicle the unusual adventures of a telepathic Louisiana barmaid (already it’s getting good) named Sookie Stackhouse, whose backwoodsy hometown of Bon Temps is apparently infested with werewolves, witches, shape-shifters and, of course, vampires. In fact, the sheriff is a vampire. In fact, Sookie dates a vampire. Sex abuse and serial killing also crop up, but let’s stick with the supernaturals. Read more...