The first reviews for Milk couldn't have come at a better time. I chose the Milk preview for today's Media Bar because I really wanted to loop gay rights into the larger example of the successes of the civil rights movements of the past decades, Variety says:which is what so much of this election season has been about. And the reviews are glowing.

And on a project whose greatest danger lay in its potential to come across as agenda-driven agitprop, the filmmakers have crucially infused the story with qualities in very short supply today -- gentleness and a humane embrace of all its characters, even of the entirely vilifiable gunman, Dan White.

And from The Hollywood Reporter:

"Milk," written by Dustin Lance Black and directed by Gus Van Sant, is the first great film to look at civil rights from the perspective of the gay movement . . . Yes, it's a biopic, a love story, a civil rights movie and sharp political and social commentary. But it transcends any single genre as a very human document that touches first and foremost on the need to give people hope.

The film is superbly crafted, covering huge amounts of time, people and the zeitgeist without a moment of lapsed energy or inattention to detail. Even the opening moments -- black-and-white archival footage of cops rousting men covering their faces from gay bars of the '50s and '60s, the kind of harassment that led to the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York -- offer a poignant reminder of what was not that long ago.

You can watch the trailer for the movie in today's Media Bar. Is there a better reminder that when our leaders won't stand up for us, we can stand up for ourselves? Milk opens Wednesday, Nov. 26

I've been hunting for a new show now that Heroes is so unwatchable and Project Runway is almost over and Damages isn't back on until January and Lost is, wait, what's going on with Lost? Anyway, I think I might have found one -- "True Blood."

I'm sure you've seen the advertisements. It's the new one on HBO by the Six Feet Under guy (based on the Southern Vampire books by Charlaine Harris, which I have not read) about a blonde girl with superpowers who falls in love with a 200-year-old vampire and struggles with her place in the world . Uh, yeah. I've seen and deeply loved Buffy, and I don't need some cheap knockoff, placed in Sex and The City's previous time slot or not. But, my boyfriend and I had a big ol' fight Friday night, and I wasn't in the mood to do anything this weekend but stay in and fight with him some more in my head.

Ryan Kwanten

So, on Saturday night, I was flipping around the channels, and I saw that "True Blood" was available on the HBO On Demand channel. I remembered the clip I had posted with the hot boy dancing for money, and I was like, "Wasn't that Kwanten guy from 'True Blood?'" So I clicked on play and started watching Episode 1, hoping for some rear nudity, possibly some HBO frontal, from the hot boy. And for the next 5 episodes I learned that it's all about sex, drugs, booze, and now vampires in the working class parish of Bon Temps, LA. Sookie, a telepathic waitress at a restaraunt/bar who may or may not be human, is orbited by her wise but secretive grandmother, her hot and horny brother, her smart and bitchy best friend, her shy and unrequited boss, and, of course, the 200-year-old Vampire Bill and his reluctant orgiastic posse. And a serial killer.

And, yeah, that hot boy was all kinds of naked. His hot bare ass was all over the place plowing one girl after another. No full full-frontal, but I got to witness that boy get an erection through his pants. They totally showed him getting hard. But here's the thing -- that wasn't the best part.

Continued after the jump.


The best part is that the show itself is really good. It's sexy, kind of funny, and not-quite-campy. While it has a few surface features in common with Buffy, it's sexier and . . . earthier, dirtier, than "Buffy" ever was. Sure, all the nakedness and graphic sex has something to do with that, but on "True Blood" the sex isn't teased out and assigned to one character at a time. It permeates each of the characters, gay and straight, and animates each of them in different ways.

The pilot was especially surprising. Most pilots (and, well, most first seasons -- Buffy didn't find her legs until the second season) are usually a little rough. There is so much exposition that the storytelling becomes weighed down (Damages is definitely an exception -- that baby was up and running from the first scene). But, "True Blood" managed a pretty complicated and witty exposition while maintaining a story arc that leapt across the rest of the episodes.

In the world of "True Blood," vampires have "come out of the coffin" because of a Japanese-invented synthetic blood called "TruBlood." The race, gender, and sexual orientations analogs are readily apparent, and, with absolute self-awareness, the show corrals anti-vampirism into a liberal and conservative ideology that gives all of the characters something to bounce against as often as they do each other.

In a nod to the art of television storytelling itself, the title of the show is a remarkably witty reference to a synthetic creation that allows some of the darker truths of humanity to see the light of day. And, with the same complexity, the writers of the show successfully balance the fight between stereotyping and truthfulness in ways that John Cloud failed in The Advocate.

The best part of this show is that I never really know what's going to happen next. I know what I know about vampires and all of that, but that just isn't enough. I need to know more. I might even pick up the books.