Vampire Diaries Prelude a Bloody Tease for CW Fans?
[show=vampirediaries size=large]How do you build buzz for a show that hasn’t come out yet, and is targeting vampire fans, whose needs are already being met by True Blood and Twilight? Retrofit directors producers Chris Hanada and Tanner Kling have a lot of experience making web series designed to get fans excited about pre-established TV franchises like Heroes or Smallville — but for the CW’s upcoming new series The Vampire Diaries, they’ve taken a prequel approach.
The Vampire Diaries: A Darker Truth, which premiered last week, is a four-part series written by Diaries staff co-producer Sean Raycraft and directed by Kling and Hanada that’s meant to serve as a prelude to the teen vampire drama that kicks off Sept. 10th. In preparation for this review, I tracked down a copy of the show’s pilot script, which is adapted from the L.J. Smith book series of the same name and has resulted in pretty standard CW fare with a True Blood twist. The series’ focus is on Elena (played by Nina Dobrev), a teenager with a tragic past who becomes entangled with vampire brothers Stefan (Paul Wesley) and Damon (Ian Somerhalder). Teen angst ensues, albeit fairly edgy and well-written teen angst that tackles some serious issues — props to Dawson’s Creek creator Kevin Williamson and co-writer Julie Plec for that.
While Vampire Diaries is all about Elena, A Darker Truth belongs to an entirely different character. Jason Harris (Matt Perello) is an enterprising young man armed with a laptop, a DV camera and a mission: His sister Joanne was recently killed, and he suspects Stefan, whom he’s thus followed from New York to the sleepy little town of Mystic Falls, Va., (where the series takes place, thus enabling the web series to be shot on the same locations as its parent show). Read More about Vampire Diaries Prelude a Bloody Tease for CW Fans?
This week I’ve been 
After a long day, I returned home to find a mound of junk mail clogging my mailbox. Of note was a letter from Citibank informing me that it was jacking up the interest charged on my credit card, adding more fees for foreign transactions and other such issues that might result from an economic meltdown. Not much of this impacted me personally, but something bothered me about this letter dubbed a “notice of change in terms and right to opt out.” 
Updated with Cisco Confirmation: If you want to know how bad it is going to get for all of us in Silicon Valley, just look at Cisco Systems (s CSCO). For first time in its history the company is going to shut down for four days at the end of the year, according to a report by UBS Research. Remember when such shutdowns were associated with industrial era companies? Well, this is the new past as they say. I heard that a major internal annual event has been put on hold as well.