Posted by Vee | March 14, 2010, 22:11 (EST) | 9 Comments
Category: TV Series

PaleyFest last weekend was fun times, and considering I made it to L.A. despite being sick as all get out, you’ll forgive me for taking the past week to recuperate and throw together some thoughts.

First off, it was nothing short of a pleasure (finally!) meeting Niyah (@CW_VampDiaries), Craig (@KryptonSite), and Carina (@cadlymack), and great seeing Jen (@NinaDobrevFan) again. And of course my travel partners-in-crime, Connie (@conallen) and Lucia (@Heroine_TV), who weathered my sick, pathetic butt and made me laugh so much. This fandom has a core made of awesome, wonderfully witty, hard-working folks, and the above are all class acts. You guys made my trip, so thank you. (The rest of you – follow all of the above on Twitter!)

If you’re looking for a thorough PaleyFest panel recap, I point you no further than Lucia/Heroine TV’s excellent breakdown. She touches on everything worth noting during the actual panel, and I can’t disagree with (most of) her personal observations either. (By the way, I’m the arm she grabbed in the last moments of the episode screening, heh, but more on that in a minute.)

CLICK TO READ PALEY IMPRESSIONS & VERY VAGUE, SLIGHTLY SPOILERY THOUGHTS ON A FEW GOOD MEN

Posted by Vee | November 10, 2009, 23:54 (EST) | 5 Comments
Category: TV Series

As many of you have undoubtedly heard by now, The Vampire Diaries is a contender in the People’s Choice Awards. We first relayed their potential nomination in the Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV Show category weeks ago and encouraged you to vote – and vote you did! The Vampire Diaries not only made it into that category – where it’s up against Heroes, Lost, Supernatural, and True Blood – but it’s also up for Favorite New TV Drama (along with Eastwick, FlashForward, Melrose Place, Mercy, The Forgotten, The Good Wife, Three Rivers, NCIS: Los Angeles, and V). We think you know what to do: VOTE!

UPDATE: Looks like the Sci-Fi/Fantasy category is mobile-only. Sorry for the confusion!

TV Guide’s MegaBuzz has another Kevin Williamson-sponsored tease for upcoming episodes:

“We have another flashback episode scheduled,” says executive producer Kevin Williamson. “We’re going to learn more about the night [Stefan and Damon] died.” This flashback will give us more information about Katherine, which will eventually lead to a surprising reveal about the Elena doppelgänger.

Thanks to Denise for hooking us up with a few scans from the upcoming issue of TV Guide Magazine. First up, we have the inclusion of Vampire Diaries in a piece on how vampire shows are “hotter than hell,” and then a piece from Matt “I talked so much smack about this show after the pilot” Roush in which he changes his tune – for the most part.

Thanks to Marcos Siega for clarifying the director line-up for the next handful of Vampire Diaries episodes. J. Miller Tobin (Supernatural, Cold Case, did we mention Supernatural..?) is helming episode 11, the aforementioned Liz Friedlander will direct episode 12 (we incorrectly said episode 11 – oops!), Mr. Siega himself will step back behind the camera for episode 13, and Julie Plec mentioned some time back that Vampire Diaries editor Josh Butler will handle directing duties for episode 14 (re: production code 113).

Posted by Vee | September 12, 2009, 14:41 (EST) | 2 Comments
Category: TV Series

We tweeted this earlier, but the Vampire Diaries pilot re-run last night pulled in strong numbers, with 2.04 million viewers. Read all about it at TV By the Numbers.

Courtesy of a kind soul, we have some additional stills from “Night of the Comet” (EP02/101) and “Friday Night Bites” (EP03/102) to share with you today. And yep, still loving Caroline’s scarf.

 
Vampire Diaries has officially joined the Television Without Pity club. If you’re a TWoP addict (like me), you know to tighten your snark cap before delving into their recaps. Vampire Diaries fans have been snarking their own canon for years, so watching others take the reins on the TV show is going to be entertaining indeed. (Not that we won’t be having our own fun in this regard, but we’re into sharing.) Cindy McLennan has posted her recaplet of the pilot (full recap to come later), TV is the Answer tackles big questions, and Vampire Diaries now has its own shiny, official forum.

Posted by Vee | September 11, 2009, 20:01 (EST) | No Comments
Category: TV Series

Hi, guys. Anything exciting going on? We’re still playing catch-up from the full-on crazy that was last night and today, and a lot of stuff has been slipping through the cracks. Here’s an attempt to gather some of it in one place. Thank you to the five gazillion of you (okay, it wasn’t that much, but it felt close) who emailed us with links, news, videos, songs, you name it, all through last night and today. This site is truly what you guys make it; we’re just the facilitators. You’ve humbled us big time with your help and overwhelming enthusiasm.

We’ll add to this post throughout the night as the need arises. And breathe. Feel free to drop links in the comments if we’ve missed something super-important.

If you’re just getting around to watching the pilot, or will be catching it tonight or Sunday, be sure to swing back by and vote in the Pilot poll.

TIDBITS UNDER THE CUT

Posted by Red | September 10, 2009, 16:25 (EST) | 11 Comments
Category: TV Series

Tyler Shields has posted a couple of his pictures of most of the lovely ladies from the cast of the Vampire Diaries. Head on over to the post on Tyler’s website to see the full-size images.

(l-r) Sara Canning, Nina Dobrev, Candice Accola, Kayla Ewell

(l-r) Candice Accola, Nina Dobrev

There are so many articles, reviews and interviews flying around that we’re just going to give you a list of links to them. Trying to summarise them would be a danger to our sanity. ;) We’ll be editing this post to add new articles as we find them – we’ll make sure to tag them as new.

Interviews

• New York Post: Paul Wesley, “I’d Never Heard of Edward Cullen”
• BuzzSugar: Kevin Williamson on Bringing Vampires to The CW
• The Hollywood Reporter: Video interview with Kevin Williamson
• MTV interview with Ian Somerhalder
• Nina Dobrev of “Vampire Diaries” on getting advice from the “True Blood” cast (new)
• Latina.com: Q&A: Michael Trevino dishes on his “Vampire Diaries” character (new – MAJOR SPOILERS)
• TV Guide: Ian Somerhalder on the The Vampire Diaries: Why it’s not Twilight on TV (new)

 
Reviews

• TheTorchOnline: THE VAMPIRE DIARIES is GOSSIP GIRL With Vampires
• HitFix review
• New York Post: Love at First Bite
• FearNet: We Sink Our Fangs into ‘The Vampire Diaries’ Pilot
• The Stranger: The Boner Diaries (Warning: Totally WTF and possibly NSFW)
• SciFi Wire: Vampire Diaries is worth watching. Really. Here’s why.
• BuddyTV: The Vampire Diaries: Season Premiere Preview
• NY Daily News: CW’s ‘Vampire Diaries’ lands in space between ‘Twilight’ and ‘True Blood’
• Clique Clack: Is The Vampire Diaries the next Buffy?
• USA Today: ‘Vampire Diaries’ stakes its claim in a populated genre
• TV Guide Magazine: The New Season: The Vampire Diaries
• Ducky Does TV: THE VAMPIRE DIARIES Premieres Tonight!
• AV Club review
• Zap2it: Meet the vamps! (new)
• Nice Girls TV: Thoughts on “The Vampire Diaries” (new)

 
Other Bits & Pieces

• Television Without Pity: The Diaries of other vampires revealed.
• CTV’s sneak peak video (Canada only)
• Los Angeles Times: Video feature with a few new clips

Posted by Red | September 9, 2009, 23:14 (EST) | No Comments
Category: TV Series

Man, there must be some really hungry vampires out there right now. @RedCrossBloodGA have reported that they’ve managed to collect over 1330 pints of blood so far in Georgia with the Vampire Diaries blood drives, and there are still 20 more drives scheduled to take place. They also achieved what they’re calling a record for them at the Georgia Tech blood drive, with 500 pints of blood donated. How cool is that?

With less than 24 hours to go until the series premieres (and where on earth has the past six months vanished to?!), there are lots of reviews and such pinging around the internet. A lot of them say the same things, and we’ll be here all night if we try and list every single one, so we’re just going to post a selection of them here for you to get stuck into.

Television Without Pity have up a fun (if a little inaccurate) article comparing various bits of the Vampire Diaries, True Blood and Twilight (fair warning, the article contains book spoilers). They’ve also added a Vampire Diaries section to their forums, so head on over for some TWoP-style discussion.

The New York Times have up a positive and amusing review that suggests (among other things) that Paul Wesley resembles Matt Dillon (points given for not comparing Paul to the usual suspects, points immediately retracted for making us feel so old), and that Damon seems like the kind of guy to steal mittens from eight-year-olds. Quite why he’d want to and what he’d do with the mittens, we don’t know, but the scenario that conjures up is hilarious.

There are more, which we’ll link to quickly. Variety have gone the punny route with their review (though they reckon the series is worth a look), while Starpulse’s review looks more into the TV series compared with the books. The Los Angeles Times seem to be digging the whole gothic romance angle of the series, and Zap2it really seem to like Candice Accola’s portrayal of Caroline Forbes.

Hopefully tomorrow is going to provide us with some interesting and entertaining news in the run-up to the premiere, and we’ll be setting up the blog and forums ready for you guys to tell us all what you think of the Vampire Diaries pilot once you’ve seen it.

As of right now, there are 19 hours, 46 mins and 37 seconds left to wait. ;)

Posted by Vee | September 4, 2009, 10:46 (EST) | 2 Comments
Category: TV Series

USA Today’s Robert Bianco picked The Vampire Diaries as #9 on his list of top 10 new fall shows:

Chances are, your first inclination is to think of Vampire Diaries as a rip-off of True Blood and Twilight — even though the book it’s based on predates both. But beneath the gothic trappings, Vampire (produced by Dawson’s Creek’s Kevin Williamson) is just CW doing what it does: building a teen soap around the complicated lives of impossibly pretty, alarmingly worldly young people who manage to seem prosperous even with no visible means of support.

Er – okay? Can we hope it’s more than that? Read the entire article.

TV Guide conducted a research survey to determine which new fall shows were most anticipated by viewers. The Vampire Diaries was #5.

And CTV is pulling out the stops for the debut of Vampire Diaries on the Canadian broadcast network. From their release:

As a new moon rises on the fall television season, CTV presents one of the year’s most-anticipated new dramas – THE VAMPIRE DIARIES – premiering Thursday, September 10 in a special 8 p.m. ET timeslot on CTV (visit CTV.ca to confirm local broadcast times). To get viewers in the mood, Canadians will be the first to see this deliciously dark drama series when CTV.ca presents an exclusive sneak peak from the first episode, premiering online at the stroke of midnight on Wednesday, September 9 (11:59:59 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Sept. 8). Adding to the buzz, CTV.ca also presents a four-part Webisode series exploring the mythology of the new drama, THE VAMPIRE DIARIES: A DARKER TRUTH, also premiering at 12 midnight Sept. 9. Based on the best-selling book series of the same name by L. J. Smith, this biting drama stars Canadian actress Nina Dobrev as Elena, a young girl who becomes the object of desire for two vampire siblings

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES will also be available on demand on The CTV Video Player at CTV.ca the day following the broadcast and on MuchMusic Fridays at 8 p.m. ET beginning September 11.