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Ewan McGregor joins HBO's ''The Corrections''

Posted: 22 Nov 2011 06:30 PM PST

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com): Ewan McGregor has joined the cast of the HBO drama pilot ''The Corrections,'' the cable outlet confirms to TheWrap. McGregor will play Chip, the younger son of an elderly Midwestern couple trying to draw all of their children home for one last Christmas together.

The pilot, based on the Jonathan Franzen novel, is written by Noah Baumbach and Franzen and produced by Scott Rudin. In the book, Chip is a writer and academic who gets mixed up with a Lithuanian crime boss.

McGregor joins a cast that already includes Chris Cooper and Dianne Wiest as the parents.

Still to be cast are the roles of their older son, a suburbanite overwhelmed by his wife and children, and their daughter, who flees her marriage only to end up in an affair with a married man.

Deadline first reported the casting.

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Still much bite in 'True Blood' Season 4

Posted: 22 Nov 2011 03:59 PM PST

Season four of True Blood is as tense and blood-tinged as ever.

TIS the season where I get annoyed with Sookie Stackhouse. Why, pray tell, is everyone so in love with her? And truly, must the world – or, at least, Bon Temps – revolve around her? As vampire Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten) eloquently says in one episode, "I am over Sookie and her precious fairy vagina and her unbelievably stupid name!"

Still, my Sookie irritation aside, True Blood retains its mixture of humour and gore this season as vampires bare their fangs against fairies and witches.

When we last left Bon Temps, Sookie ran towards a mysterious light and promptly disappeared.

At the start of the fourth season, we soon discover where she ends up, but the shiny, happy place isn't so happy at all, so she makes a quick exit. However, when she returns to Bon Temps, she discovers that a year has passed when it only felt like a few minutes to her!

Since her mysterious disappearance, her friends and former beau Bill have moved on. Most, however, are not in a good place. We find out what happens to Sam, who was last seen shooting his brother, and Tara, who skipped town and is now in a relationship.

Meanwhile, the new vampire-human couple Jessica and Hoyt are having the relationship blues while Lafayette is nicely settled in his relationship with the nurse, Jesus Velasquez. And Bill? Well, he is now in high places. Eric remains incorrigible, though an encounter with a witch will quickly shake things up for our Nordic vampire.

Looks like it's another tense, blood-tinged season for True Blood. Because True Blood doesn't spend too much time getting you up to speed before throwing a big bad supernatural creature at Sookie to contend with.

The villain of the season is the seemingly mild-mannered Marnie, a Wiccan and proprietor of a shop selling potions and spells. The folks at Bon Temps think that Marnie isn't really a witch – you know, the kind that can turn you into a frog – but she does have one special power: she talks to the dead. However, one day, she meets a dead witch that actually empowers her to a point where she can perform spells.

The ghost turns out to have a vendetta against vampires, so things turn really ugly and gory quickly. (Fiona Shaw, who played Harry Potter's magic-hating muggle aunt, is able to give Marnie, a meek character, the bite of a villainess who shouldn't be trifled with).

This decision to fast forward a year to the future allows the viewer, through Sookie's eyes, to re-explore the town and to see the characters in a new light. It freshens up the story and makes things interesting as you wonder how characters ended up where they were.

However, although the script is still crackingly good (Pam has some of the best lines), the acting top notch, and its ironic sense of humour firmly in place, something is lacking in season four.

In season one and two, all the characters contributed to the main story in a significant way. This season, some of the characters have stories seperate from the main story, which result in some folks not interacting with each other.

Sam's storyline is mostly apart from the vampire-witch drama, making him rather isolated from the main storyline. And he's a character that deserves a meaty, powerful tale of his own. The tepid romance story and his brother troubles are not doing his character justice.

The same thing with Arlene and Terry's problem with her new baby.

Although enjoyable on their own, the stories don't add much to the main story – they might as well have been deleted (at least for that season) to make way for a meatier exposition of the main storyline.

And, returning to the issue of Sookie – it's the same problem I have with Charlaine Harris' books (which True Blood is based on). Sookie has become too much of a "Mary Sue", or a literary character that has idealised qualities that is often a wish-fulfillment stand-in for the writer or reader. Unless someone explains to me why hot men keep being enamoured with her (fairy pheremones, perhaps), Sookie remains the weakest link in a series as entertaining and strong as True Blood.

● True Blood Season Four airs Thursday nights at 10pm on HBO (Astro Ch 411).

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Selasa, 22 November 2011