According to Schiltz, however, when “Monsters” plays in “New Moon,” Twi-hards won’t be squealing for Hurricane Bells. Schiltz told Blast that the song he wrote will introduce everybody’s favorite vegetarian vampire, Edward Cullen.

“Bella gets a camera for her birthday,” Schiltz said excitedly, setting up the scene. “She takes it to school and…’Monsters’ is in that scene. It’s the first time you see Edward on camera. He pulls up in the school parking lot and…he walks out and he’s in slow motion. And then that’s when you hear the guitar riff.”

So if you think you can’t wait ’til Friday, do what I do: put “Monsters” on repeat, close your eyes and imagine Edward Cullen is coming to wish you a happy birthday.

Watch our full interview with Hurricane Bells below:

Tanya DeJesus and Melissa Unger contributed to this report.

But don’t take our word for it. Just ask the teenage girls who waited for hours-upon-end this weekend just to get a glimpse of him as he passed through the Natick Collection on his “New Moon” mall tour. Even without the appeal of his co-star Ashley Greene (”She’s my best friend,” he said), who was supposed to join him (her appearance was cancelled), Lutz, with his blue eyes and movie star smile, had no trouble filling a mall with screeching “Twi-hards” a week before the release of “New Moon.”

But just a few hours before the Natick Collection madness began, Kellan, dressed in black from head to toe, capped off with brightly bleached hair (it’s jet black in “Twilight”) sat down with Blast and a few other reporters to talk about sudden fame, snowboarding and making fun of co-star Kristen Stewart.

Like many of the actors in “Twilight,” Lutz was just another struggling actor before his role in the vampire series thrust him into the spotlight. With a few parts here and there, he wasn’t unknown, but the “Twilight” phenomenon brought him and many of his cast mates unprecedented fame.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that Lutz plays a lovable, bulky vegetarian vampire in “Twilight” who likes to play off of his more serious, sparkly brother, Edward. Edward is caught in a tricky situation with a human girlfriend named Bella and his overwhelming desire to have her for lunch. Talk about a rock and a hard place.

Those who have seen the movie might not be able to picture Lutz in any other role, though he says it came very close to being that way. Initially, he was offered an audition for the part of Edward, the pensive, pining bloodthirsty lead.

“I had just gotten back from doing ‘Generation Kill,’” Lutz said, “which was seven months in Africa portraying Marines killing people. I did not want to play a depressed, complex character like Edward. And my agent’s like ‘It’s gonna be huge!’ and I’m like ‘Cool!’ *click* (simulates hanging up a phone).”

But thanks to that persistent agent and a change of perspective, Lutz found his way to playing Emmett Cullen, who he claims he is more suited for.

“He’s this happy-go-lucky guy with no fears,” Lutz said with a gleaming smile. “He’s indestructible. He’s this monster. And he just laughs, cause nothing can hurt him…and he just makes fun of Bella.”

Fans of the books know that Emmett Cullen spends most of his time finding ways to poke fun at the saga’s clumsy, red-faced heroine Bella Swan, played in the films by Kristen Stewart. Lutz brought that spirit to the set of “New Moon” and “Eclipse” by ribbing Stewart whenever he got the chance.

“I do!” Lutz said when asked if he liked making fun of people on set. “Especially Kristen…we had some great scenes in ‘Eclipse,’ and it’s fun just hanging out with her, ’cause she’s just such a free bird. Saying the funny lines that my character gets to say and having her laugh when she’s not supposed to…(she’d say) ‘You guys, we gotta go again!’ She’s adorable.”

Lutz shared about a specific scene in Eclipse where, though she tried, Stewart couldn’t keep a straight face due to Lutz’s humor.

“There’s a scene when Bella hurts her arm because she hits Jacob,” Lutz said, “and so Jasper and I walk in, and I say some really funny comments. She tried to go tit-for-tat with the humor, (but) she just kept on laughing.”

Lutz, Stewart and the rest of the ensemble cast for “Twilight” have been working together for two years, giving them time to develop a rapport. But critics wondered if that chemistry would be altered when the decision was made to find a new director for the second film, “New Moon.” Once the success of the franchise became apparent after the release of “Twilight” ( “It opened so high that they greenlit it the next day, which was amazing,” Lutz said) the sequels were put on the fast-track to release.

“Twilight” Director Catherine Hardwicke declined to direct “New Moon,” claiming she would need more time to prepare than the studio would allow. Director Chris Weitz (”About A Boy,” “American Pie”) was quickly brought in, and the Twilight world waited with baited breath to see if he could recreate the magic in “New Moon” that Hardwicke had brought to “Twilight.”

Lutz said that the two directors had very different styles, but each suited the story they told. “Twilight” had to make a vampire love story not only realistic, but compelling, and Lutz said Hardwicke succeeded in making that happen.

“‘Twilight’ is an artsy movie, and Catherine had just such a great independent style,” Lutz said. “She really captured the beauty of what ‘Twilight’ is.”

“New Moon,” which details the heartrending loss of first love, called for a melancholy tone, which Lutz said Weitz was perfect for. “(Weitz is) so chill. He’s so easygoing,” Lutz said. “It didn’t feel like work.”

In “New Moon,” much to the fans’ dismay, Lutz and the rest of the Cullens disappear for awhile, acting in Bella’s best interest.

“All us Cullens wish we could be in that movie so much more,” Lutz said. “But we can’t because we’re sticking really close to the book. And we’re in the movie for the really crucial scenes, but we disappear. We go away for Bella’s safety.”

Now, before the second movie has even been released, the third one is on its way — and yes, there’s yet another director. David Slade (”30 Days of Night”) is following Weitz’s tear-tinged “New Moon” with an edgier “Eclipse,” which just wrapped filming.

In “Eclipse,” the Cullens are back…along with some werewolves, some angry vampires and a very clumsy Bella. This makes for a lot of fight scenes, which are Lutz’s forte.

“In ‘Eclipse,’ I worked so much doing fight training,” Lutz said. “My character’s there for all the action.”

But Lutz wanted to make sure he got in on the real action on set.

“I nagged and nagged and nagged so I could do all my stunts,” he said. “And I was so annoying that finally -– I’ve been annoying for the past two years trying to do my stunts — they finally allowed me to do a lot of my own stunts, which is great. ‘Cause whenever I can do that, I put 150 percent into it, versus stunt guys who get paid, you know, to not get hurt. They don’t wanna get hurt, ’cause that’s their job, so they do it, like, 145 percent. I just enjoy doing them. They’re fun to me. I’m a thrill seeker. I like taking risks and getting hurt.”

There’s one film left to make in the series, but Lutz expressed concern that “Breaking Dawn” may never make it to the big screen. Contrary to the pacing of the first three films, Lutz said all of the actors are killing time while the studio has yet to release the names of potential directors, release dates or any other plans for the film.

“We aren’t filming it,” Lutz said. “There’s no word. It’s a real bummer because when we did ‘Twilight,’ we always hoped to continue on with the book series.”

With the success of the franchise came more big-name actors, like Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning. Lutz said he fears that if the studio doesn’t move fast, they’ll lose their cast to other projects, putting the “Twilight” saga on hold.

“Us actors are having offers for tons of stuff now,” Lutz said. “To get the…actors that are a part of this – the Volturi, the wolves, the Cullens, that’s a lot of actors to just say months before we shoot, ‘Hey, can you guys come do this movie?’ ‘Cause we don’t have contracts. Versus the first three films we were all under contract. So nothing’s telling us ‘hold these dates.’ There’s only a small time frame that we could shoot…because of weather. So I hope they make their mind (up) after ‘New Moon’ comes out.”

Lutz said the determination of the film’s future might be in the hands of “Twilight” fans.

“I think it really matters for the fans,” he said. “If they come out and support ‘New Moon’ like they did ‘Twilight,’ and then ‘Eclipse.’ Because we all want to finish this baby. It’s such a part of us and it would just seem empty not to finish the last chapter.”

Lutz also addressed the rumor that “Breaking Dawn,” the longest novel in the saga, might be filmed in two parts.

“I’d hope that they’d want to shoot it all,” he said, “cause it’s such a big book. If they were to split it…there’s not really a clear line. I feel like if you did three fourths of the book and then the last part or something…but I think they would have to shoot it all in one push. Five months worth. But if they don’t greenlight it…”

Portraying a playful vampire and joking around on set makes Lutz’s job sound pretty ideal. It becomes clear, though, that it’s not all fun and games as he described his taxing tour schedule.

“Definitely the hard part,” he said, “is just getting on the airplane and trying to find time to sleep.”

Hopping back and forth between the East and West Coasts and getting three to four hours of sleep on average, Lutz said he relies on the love and support of the fans to sustain him.

“Definitely meeting the fans and the energy that they bring really keeps you going,” he said.

Due to the series’ instant popularity, its stars, and by default, Lutz, instantly lost much of their privacy to the persistent clicks of paparazzi cameras following their every move. Lutz initially didn’t have it as bad as his co-stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, but it wasn’t long before a photo surfaced of him, shirtless, exercising in his own gym.

“Being a part of ‘Twilight,’” he said, “definitely opened my eyes to how nuts it is to be a named actor and have paparazzi follow you and crash their cars trying to get pictures of you. And all you can do is be like, ‘Ha ha. Karma.’”

But the sudden fame will have no lasting effect on his life, Lutz claims. He said he plans on using it to pursue his acting dreams, but nothing else.

“You know, I’m not here to become famous or to be a millionaire,” he said. “I’m just very passionate. You know, I might have to do my hair before I go out more,” Lutz said. “(But) I’m not gonna let anything change me. I think fame or whatever it is we have changes the people around you. And as long as you stay true to yourself, everyone else will get a wakeup call and you’ll find out who your real friends are and who’s in it to get something else out of you.”

Lutz told us that though he enjoys his work, he’s eager to get home after the press tour to spend some time with none other than his mother for the holidays.

“My mom’s very traditional,” he said, “and puts up lights and cooks great meals with little cookies…it’s just great to be with family. I feel like a little kid when I go home. I have a little stocking full of, you know, candy. It’s great.”

He said he also looks forward to fitting in one of his favorite pastimes over the holiday season — snowboarding.

“I have my season pass in California,” Lutz said. “I bring my dog in my truck, and throw my boards in the back. It’s a piece of crap truck. But it’s my baby. I love it.”

Look for Kellan Lutz in “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” which hits theaters this Friday.

First we had Napoleon, the nunchuck-wielding, moon-boot wearing dancing fiend. Then there was Nacho, the cook-turned-wrestler in “Nacho Libre.” In “Gentlemen Broncos,” we meet Benjamin Purvis, the quiet science-fiction lover whose mom sells nightgowns and popcorn balls for a living.

In “Broncos,” Hess takes us into Benjamin’s world of cowboy heroes, battle stags, pooping snakes and transvestites. Benjamin finds himself in uneasy situations involving blow-darts, hand massages, guardian angels and shootouts.

So color me surprised when I sit down to talk with Hess and find that, besides his freakish height (6’5”), he looks pretty normal, even average. In comfortable jeans, black-rimmed glasses and a black flannel shirt, he doesn’t even vaguely resemble the outrageous characters he creates. But as we begin to discuss the process of what it was like bringing “Broncos” to life, Hess reveals his fascinating and hilariously weird brain, showing that he might be more like his characters than he seems.

Blast: You say that a lot of your stories are autobiographical.

Jared Hess: Yeah. When my family first moved to Idaho, before school started, there was a trip to a Shakespearean festival in southern Utah. I didn’t have any friends yet, and my mom’s like, “You’d better go on this thing, it’ll be awesome, you’ll meet a lot of new friends.” So this girl and this guy who were very similar to Loni and Tabitha made friends with me and were like “Come sit by us! It’d be awesome!” I was sitting just like Benjamin was and they busted out the lotion and he started giving her a hand massage and blowing in her ear, and all the kids on the bus were like, “Gosh that kid’s an idiot. He’s hanging out with those guys!” So it was really uncomfortable. It was all the gross crap that happens in the back of a van bus.

My wife Jerusha…has a 15-year-old cousin who lives up in Alaska, and he’s been writing really messed-up science fiction stories that make his mom cry. We read some of them and the content is quite disturbing. His were a little medieval. I tried to block it out of my mind. It was a lot of…slapping.

Blast: In what ways do you see yourself in Benjamin Purvis?

Jared Hess: I think I identify with him, in him being kind of an outsider a little bit, but someone who’s creatively engaged, although he’s misunderstood in the things he’s trying to create. I channel that for sure. Especially as a kid I was trying to make my own videos even though people may have gone “Oh well, what are you doing?” You know? It was important to me.

The mother character in this film is based on my mom. She worked for a modest nightgown company and sold popcorn balls that me and my five younger brothers would have to go peddle around…so many things that happened to Benjamin in the film have happened to me.

Blast: One thing that’s a little different about Benjamin is that, you know, with Napoleon, he’s very outlandish. Benjamin is very relatable. He’s a normal kid. And besides the fact that he’s wicked into sci-fi, you really kind of think he’s not a nerd.

Jared Hess: Yeah, yeah. He’s the most normal character in the film. He’s surrounded by a lot of eccentric personalities. You kind of learn about his weird side through his work. But definitely, yeah, he just seems like a normal kid.

Blast: Is Ronald Chevalier based on anyone?

Jared Hess: One time I was a camera assistant during college, and I was working on a really low-budget independent film about Mormon pioneers coming to Utah. The screenwriter visited the set one day, and he was rocking the same clothes as Ronald Chevalier’s the first time you see him. The same Bluetooth earpiece that he never uses. He just looked awesome.

Blast: Tell us about putting the look for the film together.

Jared Hess: To me it’s really important. There’s such a hand-made quality, I think about all of it. It’s all from our style and It’s fun that people can recognize your work based on looking at it. It’s important to get the right kind of tone out there. We shot the film entirely on location in Utah. But the science fiction aspects of it, you know i borrowed a lot of things from my favorite science-fiction films. You don’t really see the big budget glossy expensive CG stuff. You know, like, the battle stags and crap, that stuff was in my trapper keeper when I was like, 12. Stuff that I’d drawn. A lot of the ideas that are in (Benjamin’s) story are, you know, really lame ideas that I had as a kid.

Blast: You’ve got some pretty fierce animal action going on in this film.

Jared Hess: We do!

Blast: You’ve got like a wolf, a bobcat, a snake, like all this stuff. Did Mike White actually have the live snake on him?

Jared Hess: He did. That was a real snake. His name was Peaches. And (Mike) got to be very good friends with Peaches. When we were shooting the snake would…he couldn’t control it very well and it was always gravitating toward Jennifer Coolidge’s chest (laughs) and she would would go “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” But it was very tame. It’s an albino boa. Weird, huh?

Blast: And it knows how to poop on cue?

Jared Hess: Yeah pretty much (laughs). We had a little hose hooked up to an air compressor full of beef stew (laughs). It was some gross mixture, I think it had apple sauce in it and mustard.

Blast: Not much worse than the real thing?

Jared Hess: I know, totally. Yeah, they were like, “This smells worse than crap!”

Blast: That was definitely a shocked laugh for me.

Jared Hess: I know, it’s funny because people either laugh at that or they think that it wasn’t meant to happen! People have asked me, “Was that real snake-poo? Did that happen and you just happened to be rolling?”

Blast: Well, you’re still trying to wrap your mind around the fact that he’s wearing a snake, and then all of the sudden…

Jared Hess: (laughs) Yeah, the bobcat actually had a bigger role but…wild animals aren’t really meant to be controlled. But we got it to eat cat food.

Blast: And a gonad?

Jared Hess: Yeah totally. That was like a ball of cat food.

Blast: Where does the name “Gentlemen Broncos” come from?

Jared Hess: My mom had a parenting book written in the ‘50s called “So You Want to Raise A Boy?” There was a chapter in there where the author referred to the 16-year-old stage in a young man’s life. He called it the “Gentlemen Bronco” phase of life where young men like to take their shirts off and mow the lawn. It didn’t make much sense, but I really liked the title.

Blast: This is a pretty different role for Jennifer Coolidge.

Jared Hess: We knew that we wanted Jennifer to play the mom. You can see her real, kind of tender sweet side. She’s really not that glammed up in this at all. She’s kind of a little more “Middle America.”

Blast: Kind of drab almost.

Jared Hess: Yeah yeah. I felt bad that we put her in such bad clothes. She kept teasing me. But she had so much fun. And you know, she’s so great at improv. It’s funny, cause at the cast and crew screening, everyone had their favorite improvised moment that she did. Not all of them made it into the film, but some of them are on the DVD. When the scene ended, we’d kind of let her say whatever she wanted for at least a take or two and then everybody was in stitches. It’s not really about one-liners and a punch-line of a joke in this film. But you kind of get to choose what’s funny to you.

Blast: All of your characters in your movies are pretty quirky, but in this one, even down to the extras, like the ones in the choir scene – where do you find these weird looking people?

Jared Hess: (Laughs) It’s funny because the choir scene was mostly made up of my family (laughs).

Blast: Well now I’ve really offended you! Great!

Jared Hess: No, no. It’s funny because actually, like…my wife’s handicapped aunt was in that scene. (Also) one of her cousins who has Down’s Syndrome. Both of which we’re very, very close to, obviously. The extras in the film – we like to populate it with authentic people. We’re not going to a fancy Hollywood extras casting agency. We’re getting people that we interact with, you know, daily. That you see at the grocery store. A couple of my little brothers were actually Cyclops guys. They were like, (Napoleon voice) “Jared, I can’t see a dang thing in these!”

Blast: Even when Chevalier is doing the Q&A session and there are all of those sci-fi fans. I mean they’re just interesting to look at. They’re just funny people.

Jared Hess: For some of those things, we really try to get science fiction fans. So it was fun.

Blast: Sam Rockwell plays two roles in this movie. What was it like working with him?

Jared Hess: We knew that we wanted to party with Sam Rockwell. I’m a big fan of Sammy. Even though he plays two pretty funny roles in this film, when he comes out of the trailer, out of wardrobe and makeup, he’s in complete character. You know, he’s like, goin’ for it. I’ll say, “Sam, I wanna tell you something.” And he’ll say “Hey, hey, hey. What? I’m Bronco. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He’s pretty die-hard. Like, he’d be watching episodes of Lonesome Dove in his trailer. He was really channeling some cowboy thunder for Bronco, which I loved.

Blast: What was it like working with Michael Angarano?

Jared Hess: It was awesome. A real pleasure. I mean, he’s so talented and he’s really effortless when he’s acting and bringing to life a character, and that was really important. You know we spent a lot of time trying to find the right person to play him and he ended up being just perfect for it.

He and Napoleon are very very different. And I think a lot of people, with Napoleon, were like, “Gosh! This kid!” you know either they really actually knew somebody like that or they were like “This guy’s obnoxious and I don’t like to have to do anything with people like that.” But with Benjamin, he’s more accessible on an emotional level.

Blast: The everyman.

Jared Hess: Yeah, yeah.

Blast: So we have to talk about Jemaine Clement. I’m a huge “Flight of the Conchords” fan. As soon as I saw he was in this, I was like, “I gotta go see this!” What was it like to work with him?

Jared Hess: Yeah yeah! He is one of the most humble, sweet down to earth guys I’ve ever met in my life. Like, his success has not changed him at all. He’s still hangin’ with the same pals that he’s always had.

Blast: Like Bret?

Jared Hess: Yeah, yeah totally (laughs). He’s so funny. He would have ideas on the set of something funny to do or try, and he’s just brilliant. The guy’s so funny. His timing and everything. He was a dream to work with.

Blast: This is a completely different character from the one we all know him for. In “Flight of the Conchords,” he’s so self-depricating and a putz. But in this, he’s arrogant!

Jared Hess: He’s a totally different character. I remember when our sound designers were working on the film, they were like, “Where’d you find that British actor that plays Chevalier?” And I was like, “Oh, that’s Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords.” They were like “What? That’s him? Really?” They didn’t believe me. They didn’t put it together.

Blast: He really pulls off that accent.

Jared Hess: Yeah, it’s great. And I love when you watch an actor, and you don’t go “Oh, that’s Jemaine, from Flight of the Conchords.” That’s always a testimony, I think, to them, that they’re really becoming the character.

Blast: How did you place him in that role?

Jared Hess: We sent him a script, and he called back and he was like (impersonating New Zealand accent) “Yeah man, I really want to do this. I’ll do anything you want. Do you have anybody playing Bronco?” And I was like, “Yeah, we got Sam Rockwell.” And he said, “Oh, yeah, he’ll do great, man.” And then I said, “You know, we were thinking Chevalier for you.” And he’s like “Oh yeah, he’s great.” Jemaine wanted to play the guy as an American, but I told him to watch “Logan’s Run” and try and do Michael York. Then he called me back and was like (impersonating Chevalier) “Hello, Dr. Ronald Chevalier.” And I said, that’s what we’ll do!

Blast: What are your comedic influences?

Jared Hess: I guess it’s life. Letting those awkward beats play out. That happens in life all the time. For me they’re fun and very uncomfortable. A lot of people that watch our films, because of that uneasiness, are not sure if, gosh, something really disturbing is gonna happen. And then when they’re relieved to know that it didn’t go to the dark place they thought it might go to, then the second time around they’re like, “Ahhh.” They’re enjoying it cause they know it’s not gonna go there.

Blast: It’s okay to laugh. I know what you’re talking about cause I could feel that tension building. You’re thinking, “Benjamin has just got to explode sometime soon, and I’m gonna be really unhappy if that doesn’t happen.” And so when he just goes crazy on everybody, it was so fulfilling.

Jared Hess: Yeah, gratifying.

Blast: And you’re like, “Yes! Okay. Good.”

Jared Hess: Yeah, it’s good. Cause he gets walked on the whole movie. He’s a polite, good kid.

Blast: Something that sets your comedy apart, too, from the rest of the stuff that’s out there right now is… lots of stuff out there is very profane. In your films people say “gosh” and “darn” a lot, and Chevalier says…

Jared Hess: Dagnammit! (laughs) That word was improvised. My dad always used to be like, “Dagnabbit!” Then I told Jemaine to say it, and he was like (imitating New Zealand accent), “Ok, yeah, yeah, I’ve never heard that word before, but I’ll try it.” And so we’re shooting (and he says), “Isn’t that why we do what we do, dagnammit?!” And I was like, “Dagnammit? You just made a new word!”

Blast: Do you intentionally keep out the curse words? Is it for comedy or is it for other reasons?

Jared Hess: You know, it’s funny, because it’s such a part of how I talk. I came from a big Mormon family and we were all taught not to swear. So I don’t feel comfortable swearing. You know what I mean? I think it’s just our sense of humor.

Blast: Yeah.

Jared Hess: You know, it’s just not my personality. So that just kind of naturally works its way into our dialogue. So we have a lot of swear word replacements like “flippin’” and “friggen.”

Blast: Your wife, with whom you co-write everything, has just written a romantic comedy.

Jarod Hess: She did, yeah.

Blast: Are you going to be directing that?

Jarod Hess: I don’t know if she’ll let me. I think I’ll ruin it. She’s super-talented. I mean, she may direct it. She’s not decided yet.

Blast: Will it be similar to your previous movies?

Jared Hess: No, it’s something totally different. She’s like, “I get to make a girl movie now.”

“Gentlemen Broncos” is now in theaters.

Michael Shanks is an actor, and while it’s easy to get lost in the character he has played on, off and on again for a dozen years, there’s a lot under the surface.

Born in Vancouver and raised in small town British Columbia, Shanks began his acting career playing Charlie Brown in the fourth grade play. He witnessed his first television production in college while taking a beach break from trying out for a play. Ironically, it was “MacGyver” that shanks saw being filmed, not knowing of course that he would one day star beside Richard Dean Anderson in “SG-1.”

He made his television debut in a 1993 episode of “The Commish,” a popular ABC crime drama. He landed a lot of minor roles before getting his big break on “Stargate SG-1″ in 1997, staring in 196 episodes in the series as an adventurous archeologist named Dr. Daniel Jackson. Since the end of “Stargate SG-1″ in 2007, Shanks, 38, has been trying to remake himself as an actor

“Well its a double-edged sword, I will say this,” Shanks said in his interview with Blast. “The things that come down the pipe, career-wise, that are offers to pay the bills are sort of sci-fi related projects.”

But, humbly, Shanks admits that all he can do is keep trying to land roles — hopefully roles that aren’t nerdy archeologists. “You just have to get back in a line as if you’re starting all over again,” he said.

We saw some of this. Shanks left “SG-1″ after season 5 and landed a few small roles, including two episodes of “Andromeda,” where he met his wife. It’s possible we may never have seen Daniel Jackson again if Shanks was offered another starring role (pure speculation). But Daniel’s was a popular role, and Shanks returned to “Stargate,” first as a guest, and then in his everyday role.

After “Stargate,” Shanks got to show some range by playing a pseudo-villain in the popular USA series “Burn Notice.” He played Victor, a rogue secret agent taking revenge on the shadowy intelligence agency that killed his family. He also recently landed a role that could bring him more into the mainstream by appearing in The CW’s “Smallville,” as comic book hero Hawkman. It’s still in the realm of sci-fi/fantasy, but the show has a wider following.

Still though, we can’t forget what Shanks and the “SG-1″ crew did in making the Sci-Fi/SyFy channel what it is today. A new Stargate show, “Stargate Universe” began this year, even as a rumoed “SG-1″ straight-to-DVD movie is on the shelf.

“Stargate Universe” is a much younger, more melodramatic, almost juvenile take on the franchise, and fans are conflicted. Shanks is too, even though he’s slated to appear in at least four episodes this season.

“It is really slick and pretty,” Shanks said. “[But] from what I’ve seen I’m not on board. … I’m not hooked in.”

Shanks said the drama and conflict seems forced. “They’re creating tension, pathos and angst,” he said. “The conflict with the characters seems a bit forced.”

One thing I did not dig deeply into was Shanks’ relationship with Christopher Judge. At the San Diego Comic-Con International in 2008, Judge boasted that he and Shanks started their own production company. We later heard about a production about the archangel Michael. But Shanks said the production company was off. He didn’t discuss his relationship with Judge, and I didn’t press him any further on the matter.

BLAST: So you and Christopher Judge are best buds. You have a production company you’re putting together? What’s happening with you guys?

MICHAEL SHANKS: Yeah. Let’s just say the production company’s not happening anymore, and I’d rather not go down that road and talk about Christopher Judge at this particular junction.

Shanks lives in Vancouver with his wife, the beautiful British-Filipina-Canadian actress Lexa Doig (Jason X), whom he got to work with when she played a doctor in 11 episodes at the end of “SG-1’s” running. She is also known for her sci-fi/fantasy work. The couple has two children, and Shanks has an 11-year-old Daughter, Tatiana, born in 1998 to then girlfriend Vaitiare Bandera, who played Daniel Jackson’s wife, Sha’re on “SG-1.” Shanks also said he’s been known to enjoy a good game of Hockey — like any true Canadian.

Editor’s note: After readers called out Blast — and called us liars — for not including the audio of the Christopher Judge portion of the Michael Shanks interview, we are posting it in the interest in full disclosure. We wouldn’t lie about or improperly quote an actor who agreed to give an interview to Blast.

Nighy comes off as anything but an egotistical rock star. During our talk, he was soft-spoken and intelligent, and, despite a little jet-lag from a transcontinental flight the night before, mentally sharp and eager to answer questions about his new film “Astro Boy.” He spoke with Blast about how far animated films have come, what it’s like to play a short fat man and about finally getting the chance to play a wizard in the next “Harry Potter” film.

Nighy’s enthusiasm for “Astro Boy” was palpable. He said he had always been intrigued by the “phenomenon” of the character (who, according to Nighy, is the Japanese Mickey Mouse) but was attracted to the film based on its smart script.

“I liked everything about the script,” Nighy said. “It’s a proper grown-up story. (It has) universal themes and stuff we all deal with, like family and belonging.”

When I asked him about his character Dr. Elefun, a scientist and supporter of Astro, Nighy said the character’s overall goodness struck him.

“He is the representative of human decency in the film,” Nighy said. “His instincts are pure and he is able to distinguish between what is benign and what isn’t.”

Nighy chuckled when I asked whether or not it was challenging to voice a character so physically opposite from himself. While Nighy is tall, spindly and angular, Dr. Elefun is short, dumpy and has a cucumber-shaped nose. Nighy said he pretty much played it straight.

“I did try to do a couple of things that I thought would accommodate that genre of creature,” Nighy said. “But in fact they really wanted it just like me, so it’s pretty much just Bill Nighy.”

The chance to work with director David Bowers again, who he had previously worked with on “Flushed Away,” was exciting as well.

“David is a really cool guy,” Nighy said. “He is devout when it comes to animation and he writes scripts that are worthy of any genre.”

Nighy said “Astro Boy” is an example of a larger overall trend. There has been a tremendous shift, he said, in quality of animated films. They have become more than just movies for children. In his opinion, they are approaching the quality and emotional depth of live-action films.

“The scripts are of the same level, the performances hopefully are on-par, and the degree of craft and technical achievement is very close,” Nighy said. “There really are some masterpieces being made, and modern animation has transcended any sort of subgenre. They are absolutely mainstream and serious movies.”

When the conversation turned to his upcoming role as Rufus Scrimgeour in the final two Harry Potter films, Nighy expressed clear excitement at having finally earned his wand.

“I’m a wizard, finally,” Nighy said. “I thought I was going to be the only English actor of a certain age who wasn’t in Harry Potter, but it turned out not to be the case.”

Nighy said it was great to work with all of the older actors, many of whom he grew up with in the industry. Nighy added that working with the younger actors, particularly Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, was a pleasure.

Even more gratifying for Nighy was that he got to play a wizard with David Yates as his director. Nighy has worked with Yates three times previously, most notably in the BBC miniseries “State of Play”

“David is one of the finest directors currently working, and he is a believer,” Nighy said. “It was a pleasure to be back working with him on something as luscious as Harry Potter.”

“Astro Boy” hits theaters today and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” will be released November 2010.

There will be some spoilers in the podcast. Click at your own risk.

Now that the movie has been shown to fans, we can finally sit down and talk about it.

I saw “Boondock Saints II” last week. I liked it.

I didn’t like it in the way that I’m a news editor and occasional film critic. I didn’t love it in the way that I’m an artist and I can appreciate a classic piece of film.

Let’s face it, there’s two kinds of people in the world: The ones that love “The Boondock Saints” and the ones who hate “The Boondock Saints.”

And I love “The Boondock Saints.”

Shit, I put it on the cover. But I’m not a damn fanboy. I’m not a fanboy about anything. In fact, the more I like something, the harder I tend to be on the people in charge. You can ask the people at Sony when PlayStation 3 first came out, and you can ask Boondock writer/director Troy Duffy, because I changed the pace on Monday and asked him some pointed questions.

What you’re going to hear in the podcast on the top of this article is my session on one of a series of roundtable interviews that Duffy and actors Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus, and Billy Connolly put on at The Black Rose bar in downtown Boston. We had a good time and we laughed throughout most of the 20-minute session, but I was on a mission to bring home some data for this piece of our month-long coverage on the sequel, “All Saints Day.” But, besides that, the podcast is mostly hilariousness and gay jokes.

“It was just like riding a bicycle,” Duffy said about his return to directing.

“He sucked equally on this one as he did in the first one,” Flanery added after a pause, laughing.

But return it is. Duffy made Boondock in 1999 and hasn’t made a film since. He was a young director coming out to Hollywood, and he made some mistakes — and I’m probably being nice here. But he still managed to make a good movie amidst it all.

“They talk about Troy as a new director, but from day one it looks as if he was doing it his whole life,” Connolly said.

Just as people either love or hate Boondock, they either love or hate Duffy. (The Documentary “Overnight” really hurt him too)

The people in the original movie seem to be loyalists. Nearly everybody — including someone you don’t expect (it’s in the podcast) — is back for the sequel.

“Everything just happened,” Connolly said. “Everybody seemed to be there for the love of the piece, not just to be in a movie or earn some money.”

It showed. When you listen to the podcast and check out our other interviews, you’ll hear how good of a time they all had making both movies.

Boondock is an organic cult success, and the cast and crew know it.

“Half of Boondock was one guy sitting another guy down going ‘you’re watching this movie,’” Duffy said.

Will there be a third movie?

“Lets just ride this one into the shore and see what happens,” Duffy said. “I got some ideas.”

It’s also up to the studio and the fans. If the sequel makes money in theaters, I say bet on a trilogy.

At the end, I asked Duffy what we could expect from him going forward.

“During that 10-year period, I have written a bunch of scripts,” he said, “and I intend to knock them down like dominoes one by one. They’re in ascending budgets, all different stories. One is a period piece, a buddy comedy, a black comedy, one is about serial killers, one is called “The Peregrines” which would take me an hour to describe what the’s about, one is about a historical figure, which will take a lot of money to do that last one.”

The four guys also toured Boston College and Emerson College before premiering the movie for fans on Monday night. Here’s a vid from their day:

“Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day” is in theaters October 30.

Fresh off the plane from New York City, Ling was still giddy and giggling about the highlight of her press junket trip – appearing on the Howard Stern show. A video on her website, shows how she unabashedly dressed like Stern and “danced around like crazy” for him. What does a Stern look-a-like wear, one may ask? Well, this free-spirited actress’s Stern interpretation involved a large afro wig, a midriff-baring red silk top and tight-ass leather pants.

“Watch me and join me on the shiny dance floor if you are depressed baby, I will light your fire and make you laugh!” Ling said on her site, directing fans to the Youtube video of her provocative little shimmy with Stern. It was like watching an episode of “So You Think You Can Dance” gone wrong. It is clear Bai Ling is a carefree personality with a deviant indifference to the judgment of others.

Ling literally orchestrated this interview, which was unsurprising after watching her dominate the larger-than-life personality of Howard Stern.

That persona, she says, (one of her eight), is “the one you see on the red carpet- this crazy, out of her mind little girl who just wants to have fun and dress sexy and show herself in public.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Bai Ling, the loquacious and energetic actress with whom I am speaking. This Bai ling, she says, is profound, intelligent and sophisticated. She is the serious professional who takes every role she lands to a new, unique level.

Successful actors become someone else when they are good at their craft. The line between acting and reality is blurry in the life of Bai Ling and her “eight little spirits”. The consistent irrationality of her being(s) is both captivating and endearing.

In Alejandro Chomsky’s “A Beautiful Life,” Ling plays Esther, a woman struggling to realize her dream of becoming a rock star by working as a stripper to pay the bills. Ling said she gave this character “a delightful innocence of fun.” Despite tough circumstances, Ling portrayed Esther as a life-loving woman. She sang for the first time in a film, wore no makeup and embraced taking off her clothes.

“I gave her many colors,” she said.

The film deals with sexual abuse, violence and love. When asked if it was difficult for her to be in such an emotionally taxing and heavy film, she said both yes and no. Ling said that it is sad but important to learn about, witness and deal with “demons and tortures.” She briefly alluded to tortures she witnessed in Tibet as a 14-year-old army artist in the People’s Liberation Army while entertaining in the musical theater. A book about her life experiences in Tibet is coming out soon.

Ling says she does not identify specifically with her character, Esther. She didn’t have a lot of time to prepare and acted mostly on instinct.

“I wanted the audience to see different dimensions of a woman – complex personalities,” Ling said. “Very vulnerable and provocative and very innocent.”

Acting was always in the cards for Bai Ling. It came naturally to her; she yearned to move people and show them the beauty and complexity of a woman. Ling’s father taught music and her mother was a dancer. They formatted her soul, she said, with nature, poetry and music. She calls herself a passenger, blindly following her journey.

“It’s not about Bai Ling,” she said. “It’s about this gift I have to give.”

Her life journey took her from China to Hollywood via New York, where she briefly landed, neither knowing a word of English nor one person in the city.

“People thought I was crazy,” Ling said. “For me, I don’t see the obstacles. I just see the beauty I want to express.”

Eventually making her way to Tinsel Town in the early nineties, Ling has since had many major and minor parts in titles including “The Crow,” “Anna and the King,” “Entourage,” and “Lost.” She posed for Playboy in 2005 (or, shall we say, the sexy crazy Bai Ling did) and also appeared on VH1’s reality series “But Can They Sing?”

In her next role, Ling will portray a man in a boxing film that will shoot in Houston, TX. Ling was given the choice of two roles: the hero’s girlfriend (“kind of boring,” she said), or the owner of a UFC type organization. She chose the latter. Ling has actually played several parts that were originally written for different actors, including Esther in “A Beautiful Life,” which was originally intended for Denise Richards.

“I enjoy these things because they were not written for me,” Ling said. “You have to have some magical power to pull off these roles. You cannot just be a little girl. You have to have something other worldly, magical.”

Other worldly? Perhaps. Bai Ling is certainly no plain Jane. She’s very open (maybe a bit too much so) about her natural talent. One might consider her arrogant. But with Bai Ling it’s different. Like her characters, she is complicated and multifaceted. This will always be the cornerstone for her approach to acting which is to seek more challenging roles in which she can portray the diverse aspects of a woman.

“Maybe it’s something to do with the sexuality and the modern openness of freedom that I have,” she said. A modern day Casablanca would be her dream come true.

While passionate and spirited, Ling is sweet and honest. She loves her family and misses them, especially around the holidays. All are in Asia, where she says the communist reality is beautiful. She prefers the freedom in America and enjoys unhindered travel between the two locations.

“U.S. is like my lover or boyfriend,” Ling said, “and China is my grandparents.”

Following the screening of “A Beautiful Life” in New York, a tearful gentleman came over and squeezed Ling’s hand. He told her she moved him, a mere stranger, so deeply. She couldn’t believe it, but I most certainly can. After chatting with this fascinating woman for quite some time, it is clear to me that this unique talent she speaks of certainly has a bright and promising future.

“A Beautiful Life” premiered October 2nd in limited release and will be in all theaters in late 2009.

It’s the stuff of a movie itself — our hero is in a nasty car crash, laid up in a hospital bed for weeks, and he needs an interpreter to tell him what the doctors are saying. He’s black-and-blue, his face is badly swollen, and he wears an eye patch to cover the scars from the surgery to implant an artificial eye socket.

But his devotion to his art is true. He devises and storyboards a movie from that hospital bed and sneaks out late at night. He flies to Los Angeles with the eye patch still attached to his face and directs the movie he envisioned.

Fiction this is not.

It’s part of how Norman Reedus spent the ten years between “Boondock Saints” installments. Reedus, who plays Murphy McManus in the upcoming sequel, “Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day,” said he “dropped off the face of the earth for a while” following a serious accident several years ago.

“It was pretty dramatic, I didn’t think I’d be an actor again,” Reedus said. But even if he had been unable to act, he planned on staying in movies. And his short film “I Thought of You” is proof-positive of that fact. Reedus escaped briefly from a hospital in Germany to shoot the movie, which he wrote and assembled from his hospital bed.

And though Reedus said he was worried he didn’t look the same after the accident, Boondock fans still approach him daily, recognizing him on the street.

“I’m impressed every day. Sometimes people come up and they have my face tattooed on them,” he said. “I say, ‘I hope you were drunk when you got that.’ Almost 90 percent of the time they say, ‘yes I was.’”

Reedus said that in the ten years since the original movie, there were several false starts at getting “Boondock Saints II” up and moving.

“It came and it went so many times in the last ten years,” he said. “You get excited and you start to work with your schedule.”

But when the project was finally green-lit, Reedus said it was easy to drop back into Murphy McManus mode.

“I started working with a trainer right away, with a dialect coach right away. Then it was just ‘Boondock Saints’ camp,” he said. And gathering everybody together again helped, too. “It was a déjà vu once we got on the set and in the peacoats, once we got the guns and started reciting the prayers and stuff.”

And that thick Irish accent that Murphy has? It’s not natural.

“It’s not super hard once you get going with it. Everybody on the set’s speaking like that all day long,” he said.

Reedus’ impression of his character is one of respect and awe.

“They sort of have this calling from a higher power to take out the bad guys that have slipped through society and are getting away with it,” he siad. “I don’t think they’re bad killers or nasty people, they’re just stepping up to the plate.” The public really connected with the Saints in the first movie, and the controversy of are-they-good-or-are-they-bad helps them relate, he said.

The new “Boondock Saints” movie isn’t the only chance the public will have to connect with Reedus this fall — he’s also got a new movie, “Pandorum,” which recently hit theaters. Reedus described the film as a sci-fi thriller set in an abandoned spaceship.

Reedus also addressed amost important question: Will there be a Boondock Saints III?

“I hope so — I could do a bunch of these,” he said. But he added he hoped it wouldn’t be ten years down the road, imagining “Sean and I walking with walkers, trying to lift our guns and we can’t get them up. Hiding out in an old-folks home in Miami.”

"Motherhood" starring Uma Thurman

It’s just one day in the life of Eliza Welch — a mother of two, former writer and chronic blogger.

It seems simple enough on the surface. Today, she needs to get her daughter to school, take care of her toddler son, blog and prepare for her daughter’s sixth birthday party, along with a list of other errands. Then, she decides to enter a contest for a parenting magazine: 500 words on what motherhood means to her.

Now it’s not so simple. Adding to the chaos is the fact that she lives in a tenement walk-up in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Not only is there an endless line of physical obstacles, like a towed car, there is an endless sea of people ready and willing to criticize her.

It all culminates in a breakdown. The once promising, creative and inspired writer fears she’s lost herself in motherhood.

“Motherhood is a thing that can be terribly under-appreciated,” said Uma Thurman, who plays Eliza, in a recent interview with Blast. Even mothers themselves deride their own job, she said.

And that’s just why director and writer Katherine Dieckmann wrote “Motherhood.” The experience doesn’t parallel any of the usual extremes. It’s not “Leave it to Beaver,” nor is it “Mommie Dearest.” It’s a continuous barrage of larger problems, mindless minutia and judgmental by-standers; all of which can quickly make an intelligent, creative woman question herself.

“I wrote it because I was very frustrated with the absence of movies about mothers,” said Dieckmann. “What is motherhood really like? What happens to a woman’s psyche and sense of self?”

For Thurman, also a New Yorker and mother of two in a creative industry, Eliza’s story is familiar.

“I felt very moved and much related to Katherine’s writing,” she said. “I relate to (Eliza) as a character in many ways. I’ve had that day, in my own way.”

And almost as important as Eliza are the people that surround her. Avery, her husband played by Anthony Edwards, quietly endures an unfulfilling job to bring in money. Sheila, her best friend played by Minnie Driver, is the single, sex deprived mom who becomes the unwilling subject of a blog entry. Then there are the other mothers – the wealthy snob mom, the over attentive mom, the slightly crazy new-age mom and more – all ready to offer their opinions and judgments without being asked.

“People like to lecture mothers,” Dieckmann said. “And it’s just like, fuck you.”

Even the 20-something guy in the party store and some old ladies on the street had rude lectures to dole out.

“It’s amazing how liberal people are in criticizing mothers,” Thurman said.

New York itself becomes a problematic character too. Streets crowded with tourists, a film crew, heavy traffic and tenement living all make Eliza’s day even harder. That’s why, Dieckmann said, she chose the city as her setting. Suburbia just doesn’t present as many challenges. Your life is planned differently and ordinary tasks become more difficult.

“There’s something about the peculiarity of life in New York,” she said.

“Motherhood” doesn’t glorify its heroine, though. Eliza isn’t always right. As Thurman put it, “She’s trapped in her bubble.”

Eliza begins to face doubts about her parenting skills, her marriage and her creative self as she tries to answer the question, “What does motherhood mean to you?”

“She sort of agrees with the deriding of her own job,” Thurman said, thinking about a particular scene. “Is it important? Do I have anything to say? Am I just another mother in this park?”

And that’s the central theme of “Motherhood.” How does a mother successfully raise children while maintaining a sense of self? What happens to passion and creativity when all she can focus on are physical daily tasks? It’s a delicate, difficult balance.

So what does motherhood mean to Thurman?

“Growing up.”

“Motherhood” opens in theaters October 23.

Finally, there is the issue of Tilly’s brother, Grady Funk, portrayed by David Koechner, who some fans may recognize from NBC’s “The Office” and most recently the film “Extract,”

As one of the final sets Blast visited in Burbank recently, we caught glimpses of a few scenes being shot before we sat down with Grammer, McGraw and Koechner to discuss the show.

The first question we had to ask the cast was: What brought them all together for this project?

“For the last year or so I was thinking about returning to television again, and trying another shot after ‘Back to You,’” said Grammer. “I looked at television and thought to myself, the only thing missing in television these days is the traditional family show that has everyone living together, mother, father, and the kids, you know? Then I met Tucker (Cawley) and he had this loosely phrased idea about a guy who had fallen down from a big perch and was moving down to Virginia.”

Blast was able to see the final pilot episode shortly before our meeting, and we wondered if the physical comedy aside from the witty dialogue would be part of its style.

“Melinda’s stuff is high farce. This week we shot some things in the woods,” Grammer laughed.

“I think a lot of the behavior just ends up physical,” McGraw added. “So, a lot of times if it’s not written in, if it becomes physical because of how we are covering for ourselves and each other. I think there’s a lot fun stuff, and there’s some things that are a little broad.”

We may just see a bit more into Tilly’s side of the family, whose southern roots brought them to Virginia in the first place.

“Well we get (Grady’s wife) and a couple of kids. I don’t know how many.” Grammer said. He also explained more about the relationship Hank has with his brother-in-law, Grady, a man who has no problem reminding Hank of the reasons he’s in Virigina.

“This relationship will be to always antagonize one another,” Grammer said. “And she secretly is a party to it all because he and she are brother and sister. But the key relationships are here (in the pilot).”

“So far we’re exploring the world of the family, the extended family,” said Koechner, “and then probably the town, and the state, and the nation.”

And what of the kids on the show? In the pilot, Maddie clearly has her issues with daddy, and a boyfriend of sorts. “Oh we’ll be dealing with the boyfriends, I mean she’s only 17,” said Grammer emphasizing the plural.

“What’s great is that it’s a modern father daughter relationship. It’s not one of the corny ones that doesn’t exist,” Koechner added, saying that, these days, teenagers go through things much faster than a decade ago.

“There are real moments, and hopefully in the end everyone is going to grow up a little,” said Grammer. “They’ve had one life they thought was pretty well set, and it changed. That throws everyone into a tailspin.”

“And it was a rare existence that you don’t really have,” McGraw chimed in, “and I do think an interesting dynamic in the triangle (between Hank, Grady, and Tilly) is that in-between them, I might come back to her old ways. Throw back a couple of beers with Grady. Or I’ll push against them. Hank has that American (perspective) of starting from nothing and making something new, kind of pulling up by your bootstraps. And the realities of how those ‘bootstraps’ are different than twenty years ago.”

We closed by asking the trio to tell viewers why they should watch “Hank” this fall.

“I think the show has an identifiable character that everyone can relate to, that’s just like so and so,” said Koechner. “And it’ll definitely get people to laugh. It comes from a place of honesty and truth. It’s not just manufactured. The writing is good, and makes me laugh out loud. And finally, well, I just love Kelsey Grammer!”

“Oh, I can’t fight with that!” Grammer replied.

“I think it’s a relief to watch a show where you see people going through such changes because it makes you feel like you’re not the only ones,” McGraw added.

“And this is a show, the whole family can watch it, and it’s not a kid’s kind of show.” said Koechner.

“For years, I’ve heard people tell me that Hollywood doesn’t make shows for (the family) anymore,” Grammer said, “and this year, Hollywood does.”

Catch Grammer, McGraw, Koechner and all of “Hank” every Wednesday at 8 p.m. on ABC.

Jesse Eisenberg, who is swiftly dominating the “geeky-and-smart-yet-adorable-and-funny male lead” category in Hollywood, plays, you guessed it, the geeky and smart, yet, oh-so-hilarious-and-adorable male lead in “Zombieland.” And he seemingly can play that role so well because of personal experience. Throughout the interview, he stumbled and revved over his words like speed bumps, liberally inserting “like” and “y’know” and occasionally dropping a word like “pratfall,” and rushed on while I stayed back and tried to define the word by context. But you see why girls drop like flies for him when, after making a wry, witty comment, he flashes those dimples for which his younger sister, Hallie Kate Eisenberg, is more famous. (Remember the little Pepsi girl?)

Harrelson and Eisenberg spent a lot of time talking about how hard they’ve worked on this film, which is not, they protest, the next “Shaun of the Dead.” But as they spent most of the interview hurling comedic one-liners at each other, laughing in their own world at things I couldn’t understand, it became apparent that being funny isn’t hard work for them.

“I take (my role) three-quarters seriously,” Harrelson said.

“Yeah, like most of your work,” Eisenberg shot back without missing a beat.

This chemistry, which is as natural in the movie as it is in person, was apparently developed a lot on set.

“The fun things to film,” Eisenberg said, “are, you know, improvising with like, Woody, that’s like, amazingly fun, we would be improvising for, like, several minutes, and we’d all end up laughing and he would just stare at us in character like ‘Why are you laughing at me?’ Like that look he was just giving me now as I was explaining it.”

Harrelson, quick to return the compliment, talked about the scene where his and Eisenberg’s characters meet.

“This is the last take,” Harrelson said, “and then he says ‘Oh, one and done, I always say. I mean, I said it once.’ It’s like, really clever! Or, ‘Hey watch out, you almost knocked over your alcohol with your knife.’ Things that I couldn’t have known that was gonna be funny. There’s a lot of that stuff.”

Unfortunately for us, however, Eisenberg said much of the improv won’t make it into the movie.

“They’re usually so absurd,” he said, “cause they’re just actors trying to make each other laugh, not the characters actually speaking. Uh, yeah, there was a lot of… pratfalls.”

So, perhaps the hard work they’re talking about is running from zombies for hours at a time.

“I mean, it’s difficult to make,” Eisenberg said. “Like, a little fight scene that is, like, 30 seconds, takes a long time to film and, like, a lot of preparation and, you know, you’re running all night and whatever. You have fake blood and puke on you and… it’s, like, really fun to watch, but you know, definitely the least fun thing to film.”

Although “Zombieland” isn’t marketed as a horror film, it doesn’t spare the blood. Director Ruben Fleischer’s zombies aren’t the typical plodding-with-arms-outstretched zombies. In fact, they’re quite fast, and incredibly persistent. Viewers get the opportunity to see a mother get run down in a minivan by her own toddler zombie daughter. The scene ends with you watching mom slide face-first for ten feet on hot asphalt.

A lot of the carnage got thrown in post-production, Eisenberg said.

“(Fleischer) just became desensitized,” Eisenberg said. “When you edit a movie and you’re sitting there for just days and days and days… he would just stop seeing the blood splatter and they’d end up just putting more in. and now… the whole movie’s just… like sepia-toned.”

When audiences go to see “Zombieland” this Friday, many will be holding it up in comparison to the similar 2004 flick “Shaun of the Dead.” Eisenberg and Harrelson insisted, however, that the films aren’t comparable.

“We’re not a competition,” Harrelson said.

Eisenberg felt a little more strongly about the comparison. He had this to say to those who are critical of “Zombieland:”

“You don’t want to see my movie? Fuck off,” he said, laughing. “I worked so hard on this! If you don’t want to go because there was another movie ten years ago that had a slightly similar tone… It’s one of the funniest movies you’ll ever see ever. The zombies are, like, almost secondary. So if you don’t want to go see it because you’re, uh, precious about the genre, or whatever, fuck off.”

The film, which actually started out as a television show, definitely lends itself to having a sequel. If it does as well as expected, that very well may be a possibility. The end leaves us wanting to see what happens to our post-zombie-apocalypse characters. Does Columbus come up with more rules to live by? What other shenanigans do he and Tallahassee get themselves into?

“The moment (’Zombieland’) ended,” Eisenberg said, “I was like ‘We gotta do another one tomorrow!’ It’s so much fun to watch. You want to see another one. You want to see like more rules. You want to see, like, what these people are gonna do. Like, it’s just the most fun experience.”

Look tomorrow for our review of “Zombieland,” which comes out October 2.

Photo credit: Blast staff photo/Aram Boghosian

“I’m just not one of those people that can sort of watch everything happen and be off in La La Land daydreaming about something else,” Barrymore said in her recent interview with Blast while she was in Boston.

She explained shy she has finally taken her seat in the director’s chair after a lifetime of acting and 15 years of producing. “I wanted to do it when I felt like I was really ready and really understood how filmmaking works on every single level that I possibly could.”

Whip It, in theaters October 2, stars Ellen Page as a Texas teenager who finds an outlet from her loathed life of pageantry in the world of women’s roller derby.

Barrymore took a risk in choosing a movie about a relatively unknown sport — that even she knew almost nothing about — as her directorial debut.

“I love to see girls do what boys do, especially not male bash while they do it,” she said.

Barrymore said it was important to her to create a movie that encourages women and girls to go after their goals. “Take from your inspirations, but don’t imitate them. Become your own individual,” she said.

Clearly she has no problem inspiring women, herself. “And still (directing is) the biggest challenge and, you know, it’s gonna knock you sideways on a daily basis no matter how prepared you think you are,” she said.

And boy was she prepared. Barrymore, along with Page and co-stars Kristen Wiig and Juliette Lewis, spent painstaking hours learning to skate and getting in shape for their many rides around the rink.

“You bond and you injure yourself together and cheer each other on to get it right or to celebrate when you learn a new trick,” Barrymore said.

Now she’s practically a pro. Though her role in the movie, as badass derby girl Smashlee Simpson, is fairly small, it’s obvious that she sank her teeth into her role as both actress and director, taking it upon herself to learn everything she possibly could about roller derby. “The game is real, the girls are amazing,” she said. “They’re these great little tribes. There’s great competitiveness and capability and athleticism.”

Another reason she was drawn to the sport was its propensity to include people from all walks of life. “I also think that it’s a very welcoming sport in that you can be any age or size or ethnicity or economical background and it’s a very come one come all, open hearted sport and party and I like that.”

Derby certainly does look like a party, with an always excited crowd and hot girls in tiny outfits swearing at each other and getting in fights. But did Barrymore portray roller derby realistically? “The only intention I had was to celebrate it and allow people to be let in on something if they don’t know about it and celebrate the people who are involved in it,” she said. “I honored the derby world entirely.”

As for the critics? “You can’t please everybody so you’ve gotta get over that, like, as soon as you come out of the womb,” she said.

No she can’t please everybody, but she can sure try. And try. “I’m sort of surprised when people go, like, ‘why did you want to direct’ or ‘do you think you’ll direct again.’ I’m like, ‘Do you know me?’ I’m film obsessed. I do nothing but work. I wish I had more of a social life,” admits the workaholic.

Barrymore is unabashedly proud of her movie, but modest in a decidedly un-Hollywood way. “I think you don’t have to be a certain age or gender in order to be a storyteller. I think you have to risk being personal and exposing yourself and investing in your characters and driving great performances out of people,” she said.

She is also proud of the real-life derby girls who are able to kick-ass on and off the rink. “What these girls do is have these great little alter egos and they’re one thing by day and another thing by night,” she said.

So does Barrymore have an alter ego? If you remember her stripping on Lettermen’s desk and partying all night long, you may think so. But in reality, Barrymore has grown into an inspiring woman.

“’Be your own hero’ is the tag of our movie and that’s a big theme for me in life,” she said. “I just think you have to be your own little hero.”

Kardashian teamed up with LegalZoom founders, Robert Shapiro and Brian Lee, to deliver clientele trendy, affordable shoes every month. ShoeDazzle.com taps into the expertise of Hollywood stylists who recommend shoes for customers based on people’s fashion personality as determined by the site’s “style sensibility questionnaire.” The site offers a highly personalized shopping experience at the affordable price of $39 per pair, including shipping.

To learn more about the site, and of course about the shoes, Ms. Kardashian herself, Co-Founder and Chief Fashion Stylist, spoke to Blast about the endeavor.

Blast: In knowing that you have very good fashion instincts but also high fashion taste, what led you to create a site that offered fashionable but most importantly, affordable foot wear?

KIM KARDASHIAN: I love high fashion but am equally a fan of stores like H&M and Forever 21; so looking good doesn’t always mean you have to spend a million bucks. I started ShoeDazzle because I know that all women love shoes, and with the economy the way it is right now, some people feel like they have to forgo fashion trends because they don’t have the means to buy the styles they want.

BLAST: You wear great outfits and have experience with clothes, why focus on shoes; and, is there a plan to expand on this idea to introduce new items?

KK: ShoeDazzle.com gives women a way to wear their favorite trends, and have a Hollywood stylist choose shoes for them for $39. It can’t get much better than that. I already have the clothing store I share with my sisters, DASH, and my closet re-organizing business. It just seemed like a natural fit to add shoes into the mix-especially because I love them so much.

BLAST: Where did the concept to create a “quiz” where women can tell their preferences and then be updated on what is in stock for them via e-mails come from?

KK: We knew that in order to provide custom shoe choices for each member we were going to have to find out more about the member and her individual style. What better way to do it than with a quiz? To me, the style sensibility quiz on the site is sort of a mix between a questionnaire on a dating site and one of those entertaining quizzes in women’s magazines. The mix of the two allows us to find out about each customer while also keeping it brief and fun to take.

BLAST: What do you hope customers will enjoy the most from your new business?

KK: For me, the best part of ShoeDazzle.com is the personal shopping experience and the chance to be paired with a Hollywood stylist that picks shoes for you. That is a service that can cost hundreds of dollars and something that most women just don’t have access to.

BLAST: How has the relationship with your partners made the product better?

KK: I’ve known Bob Shapiro for a long time. He’s a close family friend and a really smart guy, which makes him wonderful to work with. And the fact that he and Brian Lee, our other partner, had such success with the Legal Zoom concept made me feel confident that they knew how to bring the right technical experience to make ShoeDazzle work the best it could.

BLAST: Why would you recommend your site and what would be the one piece of advice you give to costumers who are putting together an outfit?

KK: I’d recommend ShoeDazzle because everyone woman deserves some personalized attention when it comes to shopping, and hey, you can never have to many shoes. And this way, you have a new pair of trendy shoes every month of the year and you are always looking updated and stylish when you go out! My advice to customers looking to put together a great outfit? Shoes make the outfit! They are the best accessory.

—

“I realize that not every woman has the opportunity to shop on Rodeo Drive or Madison Avenue, but I still think that every woman deserves A-list treatment,” she added. “That is why I partnered with some of the smartest men I know to develop a shopping forum that is not only convenient to use but that also offers styles I would wear myself.”

After launching March 19, ShoeDazzle opened its services exclusively to 5,000 charter members. Those wanting to join the “society” after the initial 5,000 members will be added to a waiting list and will be notified as soon as additional memberships become available.

Shapiro and Lee founded LegalZoom.com together in 2001. It’s an affordable at-home online legal document preparation service site. They’ve taken their extensive web experience and fused it with Kardashian’s spot-on fashion sense to create a simplified and personalized shopping experience for every ShoeDazzle member.

“ShoeDazzle is the right business at the right time. Women love shoes and want to look great but they demand value,” said Lee. “At ShoeDazzle, we cater to our members’ needs and desires by leveraging our talented team of fashion experts, led by Kim, to choose gorgeous shoes and to offer them at an incredible price.”

BLAST: Where did the content for The Glass Passenger come from?

ANDREW MCMAHON: Gosh, it was sort of this weird limbo period, to be honest. I was recording a lot of The Glass Passenger while I was touring everything in transit. Obviously it’s no secret that I had fallen ill around the time that Everything In Transit was finished and was coming out. So pretty much it took me several months to kind of recover from that and deal with all the things that went along with that. And then of course you know, I wanted to get back on the road and really make sure that people had heard Everything In Transit, so I started really working that record and touring tons of dates a year to support “Transit,” while kind of concurrently starting to write and record The Glass Passenger. So there was sort of this strange limbo period where I had my hands in a lot of things and was doing a lot and obviously still trying, while my body was bouncing back, I was still sort of dealing with some of the stress and trauma that goes along with, you know, having recovered and gone through what I had dealt with and getting sick, so, that’s where the content came from, in a lot of respects; that sort of inner-personal struggle of trying to find my place in the world after a pretty traumatic event and in a lot of ways trying to use the music to propel me forward and to get me past this.

BLAST: Are you going to continue writing more mature songs or do you prefer writing similar to your earlier, lighter songs?

AM: I was 17, 18 years old when I was in Something Corporate, you know. Obviously by the time we had put it on hiatus I was turning 21 and becoming an adult and all the things that go along with it. I guess mature is a word. I’ve always, since I was nine years old and started writing songs, have written songs about what I’m dealing with at that point in my life. When you’re 17, you’re writing songs about what it’s like to be in love at 17 and what’s really more relevant at 17 than love: getting into relationships and then breaking them off and the pain of that and all that stuff. Not to say that that stuff isn’t very relevant too, but obviously the approach, when you start getting older; now I’m 26, I’ll be 27 in the summer, it’s like … I write songs from the perspective of a 26 year old now, not a 16 year old. So yeah, I think I’ll continue to grow hopefully and continue to write songs that represent who I am, not songs that intentionally hearken back to some old sentiment, I guess.

BLAST: So what are the songs that you’re writing now about?

AM: The songs I’m writing now about … it’s kind of hard to say. I haven’t really gone in and recorded too much. I went into a recording session recently that was kind of groovy. We ran a bunch of old material we had an accumulated over the course of four or five years. Two of the songs very well may make a new record, but those are obviously older tracks. I think now a lot of these songs are sort of angled around love and about relationships, but I think from a very different perspective. I think that in a lot of ways about real love and what goes along with that and what goes along with you know really being committed to someone and something and sort of how that can be idealized, but sometimes that ideal isn’t always the reality and sort of trying to approach that and analyze it from that level which is sort of the first time I’ve really gotten to do that because obviously The Glass Passenger was about something very different.

BLAST: Are you experimenting with any new sounds?

AM: The sounds I find myself gravitating towards now more than ever are really rich, warm and natural sounds. I think the studio for me is always my second home if you consider I tour anywhere from six to 10 months a year. I’ll spend the remaining months in the studio, regardless of whether I’m recording for an album or just trying to work out some new material and stuff. I find myself sort of slowly gravitating away from the more rigid recording structure, not to say avoiding pro-tools all together or things like that, but I think pro-tools have created this safety net for a lot of bands and a lot of artists to not accomplish and not achieve the sounds on their own and I think my perspective, especially after having been on the road for so long, in these past few years playing with a really talented band, I think you’ll find me going into studio recording more live and recording with less effects and you know less processing and all of these things and really kind of focusing on nailing the sounds and nailing the take and really kind of making it about the magic of the take instead of spending months and months and months and month working on the song and working in the effects. I think I’m kind of getting away from that style.

BLAST: You must have had an interesting end to 2008 — you kind of got sucked into Twilight-mania.

AM: Yes I did sort of, didn’t I? (laughs)

BLAST: Tell me a little bit about working with Stephenie Meyer on the making of the “The Resolution” music video.

AM: It was one of these things where I had a friend of mine who had notified me, this is probably months before I got involved with Stephenie, that Stephenie was a fan of Jack’s Mannequin and that she had made reference to Jack’s either on her website or in the thank you’s in one of her books as being an inspiration for a character or whatever, we were on a play list or something like that. I heard this and at that point didn’t really know much about “Twilight” and while it was obviously a huge phenomenon throughout the country and probably the world and what-not, I don’t think it had quite broken the surface yet. As the months wore on, obviously I was sort of realizing how big a deal this whole thing was and about the same time we were searching for video treatments for “The Resolution” and frankly hadn’t really found one that we clicked with. It was sort of a frustrating process and I was trying to kind of sort it out and we started talking; myself and the label, we started talking about, “Is there anything we could do that would be different and cool and clever that might invigorate this process, and maybe it isn’t just going to video treatments, maybe we reach out to the musicians from another band we like or we reach out to film directors or actors or other people we know?,” that sort of thing. In that conversation, I was like, “Well you know, this woman who writes these books that have sold millions of copies is a purported fan of Jack’s Mannequin. Maybe we could reach out to her. She’s an author, I’m sure she could come up with something cool.” And then of course, it was sort of a pipe dream, I guess, in a sense. I mean I wasn’t really thinking of it on the grander scale of how huge she really was. Sure enough, we reached out, and she was like, “Sure, that sounds great,” and she sent in three treatments and we loved one of them and she ended up coming out and co-directing the video for us.

BLAST: How involved was Stephenie in the process of filming the video?

AM: It wasn’t like she was behind the camera, you know, she’s an author. There was this guy named Nobel Jones who is a director and she was on set the whole time, she obviously wrote the treatment, and she and Nobel collaborated quite a bit as far as the execution of her vision and how she wanted it to look. She was definitely there and approving shots and giving her opinion of certain shots as we went along, so she was definitely a part of the production and the directing of the video, sure.

A 27-year-old up-and-coming actress, Liebert moved around a lot as a child and didn’t study acting professionally until she became a student at the Canadian College of Performing Arts in Victoria, British Columbia. There, an experience Liebert describes simply as “amazing,” one of her teachers told her she might do well in theater and television. Perhaps, as Ali thinks back, it was she who planted the seed.

“As long as I can remember I have loved performing,” Liebert said in a recent interview with Blast. Growing up in a small town near Vancouver, she competed in music and singing festivals and acted in myriads of school plays.

It was her gay uncles, she says, who had a strong influence on her love of performing. Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, and Barbara Streisand: she wanted to be those ladies. Often, her parents could hear her around the house singing “Papa Can You Hear Me?”

Jeff, Ali’s brother, is a talented guitarist, and her Dad dabbles in music as well. Her late mother was once a dancer and model.

“My Mom’s family is very outgoing,” she said. “All of the women are extremely gregarious and funny. Maybe that kind of rubbed off. Maybe I was trying to get attention because everyone was so loud.” As a result, whether it was a backyard barbecue or family room stage, Liebert has always been performing.

After graduating, Ali was approached by an agent who recommended a move to Vancouver. That she did, and she was able to break into the scene while working at a casting agency. During her job as a reader, she went from being a non-working to a working actor. Not only did Liebert learn the ins-and-outs of auditions, she also learned more about human emotion, about someone being there for the part, or maybe just desperately needing to pay rent. “I basically know every actor in Vancouver now, because I read with them,” she laughed.

This appreciation for human emotion has helped catapult Liebert’s career. Four years ago, she played the little boy, Anybody, in Edmonton’s Citadel Theater production of West Side Story — a role that she was so passionate about she cut off all her hair and dyed it from blond to brown.

“I cannot believe I did it!” she exclaimed. “I don’t know if I could do it again. I mean, if it was an amazing role in a story that had to be told, such as Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry, I’d have to do it again.”

Lacking neither passion nor dedication, Liebert’s resume continued to blossom even faster than her hair was able to grow back. Following small parts in “The L Word” and “Dead Like Me,” Liebert quickly landed recurring roles on “Whistler,” “Intelligence” and “Kyle XY.”

It was 2008, however, that proved to be Liebert’s breakout year. Having moved to Los Angeles for pilot season, she landed the role of Nikki on CBS’s “Harper’s Island,” a show that, ironically enough, was being filmed in Liebert’s home of British Columbia.

“It was so weird! I lived on Bowen Island for a year and when we would go over there to shoot, with everyone being from all over the country, I’d be like ‘I went to school there.’ It was so beautiful. It was Heaven,” Liebert said

Described as “the biker chick,” Liebert’s character, Nikki, is a very straightforward and tell-it-like-it-is kind of girl. “I can get very rambunctious and sarcastic,” she said, “and Nikki is definitely like that.”

Nikki is the girl from the small town who never left, and Liebert identifies. “I do feel like that small town girl- big heart, high hopes and dreams.”

Liebert recently completed roles in two motion pictures, “The Breakup Artist” and “Year of the Carnivore,” both premiering later this year. She also just wrapped “Hardwired” with Cuba Gooding Jr. and Val Kilmer.

Sylvia, her character in Sook Yin Lee’s “Year of the Carnivore,” is Liebert’s favorite role so far.

“I loved her whole perspective on life. I am kind of a people-pleaser and she’s just not. I like playing characters that are so straight up with people, honest and to the point. I hope to become more like that,” Liebert said.

While building her resume and making sure to choose roles that are family friendly and respectful to women, Liebert isn’t too “choosy” yet. Is that the ultimate goal? Of course! “I hope it continues and the parts get bigger and more exciting.”

As for her dream role, she laughs as she says it would be Liza Minnelli. Realistically, she thinks, it would be something that included singing. One day, a role in a series based in Vancouver would be ideal. In addition, Liebert’s plan is to be on stage in Vancouver in the next year. She says her heart is where home is.

Back and forth from Vancouver to L.A. can be exhausting, but she hasn’t yet made the plunge to live full time in Tinsel Town. Perhaps she is delaying the inevitable, or perhaps she will always be that small town girl, or maybe Liebert just really is one of the few down-to-earth, sweet, family-loving people refusing to fall victim to celebrity. When asked about her love life, she becomes shy and won’t elaborate, but makes sure to point out “not because I think I’m famous.”

When she’s not working, Liebert loves being around dogs and taking photos of them, though she hasn’t picked one out for herself just yet. “I may have a secondary career as a pet photographer,” she quipped.

What’s to come of the future? One thing seems likely: Liebert hopes she will never lose sight of what’s important. Family, friends, pets, good food (croissants, more specifically) — her appreciation for the simple pleasures in life is palpable.

And ss for that GPS? Well, for right now, it’s recalculating.

Before a recent An Horse show in their hometown of Brisbane, Kate Cooper, one-half of the Australian duo, was asked if she had ever been to the particular venue before.

“I had,” she said in an interview with Blast a few days later. “I used to clean the toilets there.”

An Horse’s back story is a classic indie rock fairy tale. Call it “High Fidelity” meets “Slumdog Millionaire.” The band was conceived in a now-defunct record store in downtown Brisbane, and cultivated through a series of happy accidents that allowed Cooper and her band mate, Damon Cox, to go from working minimum-wage jobs and harboring rock star fantasies to landing a record deal and touring the United States.

Their debut full-length album, “Rearrange Beds,” will be released in the States on March 17 and is already available on iTunes.

The pair met in 2005, when Cooper was hired at Skinny’s, a windowless independent record store in downtown Brisbane where Cox worked. (“We didn’t deserve to be called Skinny’s,” Cooper quips. “We seriously went to work every morning and ate doughnuts.”)

When business was slow, they spent time bonding over a shared love of music, blaring mutual favorites like Nirvana and Metallica over the store’s speakers. Both admit they were probably less than stellar employees.

“We’d get a coffee in the morning and talk about a music all day,” said Cooper, 29. “That was basically what we did.”

With both playing in their own bands — Cooper a singer/guitarist with Iron On and Cox a drummer with Intercooler and Mary Trembles — they became fast friends and regulars at each other’s shows.

They recall days spent driving around Brisbane, pretending they were famous musicians on their way to play a show for legions of adoring fans.

“I would ask Kate what city we were in,” Cox said, with an audible trace of embarrassment. “It was kind of weird.”

In late 2007, Cox asked Cooper if she would be willing to perform solo as the opening act for one of his bands’ shows.

“She said, ‘Well, why don’t you get up and play drums on a couple songs?’” he recalled. “And we, being the perfectionists that we are, had to have a few rehearsals before we could get up and play together. And we did, and it just really clicked.”

“We always had this idea in the back of our mind that maybe one day we’d like to try and write music together,” said Cox, 32. “Once it happened, it just felt really good, and it kind of went from there.”

Using Skinny’s as a rehearsal space, the duo started practicing and writing songs together regularly.

“Even though we were busy working in the record store and doing other things we still always made time for An Horse practice, even though we didn’t even have gigs,” said Cooper, who borrowed the band name from a grammatically-deficient sweatshirt she was once given.

By December, they were on a roll. On a whim, they decided to record a handful of songs with a friend in Brisbane and completed a five-song EP, with no plans to ever officially release it. But Cooper slipped a copy of the unfinished demos to Tegan and Sara Quin of indie duo Tegan & Sara, who coincidentally were playing a show in Brisbane the night they finished recording. Cooper had kept in touch with the Canadian twins after meeting them months prior when they gave an in-store performance at Skinny’s.

After hearing the EP, the Quins asked Cooper and Cox to be the opening act on their upcoming tour of the United States. To say the offer took them by surprise would be an understatement. An Horse had only played one show — an in-store performance at Skinny’s a week after they finished the EP to mark the store’s closing, with Cooper’s and Cox’s other bands rounding out the lineup. But they accepted anyway.

“We were at a point where … we still only had like seven songs or something, so we had to write some more so we’d have a full set to play,” Cox recalled.

During the “Out of Hibernation” tour in the spring of 2008, Cox and Cooper found themselves playing mid-size venues across the United States with Tegan & Sara. It paved the way for them to spend much of the second half of the year touring on their own in the U.S. and Australia, including an appearance at the CMJ Music Marathon in New York during which, Cooper said, she was “literally dying” with a bad case of the flu.

Tegan and Sara Quin continue to be An Horse’s biggest cheerleaders. Sara in particular offered feedback during the recording of “Rearrange Beds” last summer and was instrumental in the band signing with Mom & Pop, a fledgling indie label based in New York. She also devoted several weeks to doing A&R work for An Horse at the end of last year.

Despite the help they’ve gotten on the business end of things, though, Cooper and Cox say they’re not looking to expand their core lineup any time soon.

“I don’t think Damon and I ever really made a conscious decision we would start a two-piece,” Cooper said. “It was like, oh, let’s play music together, and we did. And it just fit really well and worked. … We thought it sounded great just the two of us and we didn’t need anyone else.”

Key among those concerns was whether the Minutemen — a group of superheroes founded in 1939 and pivotal to the story of “Watchmen” — would be included in the final product.

Blast got a chance to watch the first 18 minutes of “Watchmen” at New York Comic Con a few weeks ago and saw for ourselves that Snyder did manage to pull of a balance of attention to detail and concrete storytelling. The Minutemen were heavily featured in the opening minutes of the film; heroine Silhouette prominent among them.

We also had the chance to speak with actress Apollonia Vanova about the role of Silhouette and her experience on the set of “Watchmen.”

“There was a lot of attention to detail,” Vanova said of her time on the set. “I was overwhelmed. … Every little prop was perfect. I couldn’t believe how real everything was to different times and different eras. And it was just really excited to be a part of that project to see all the characters dressed in their costumes.”

Silhouette’s screen time is limited, but her presence is big part of the “Watchmen” universe. As one of the Minutemen, Silhouette is a major figure in the spotlight during the 1940s.

Her homosexuality — shown during the film’s opening montage with a brilliantly choreographed reenactment of the V-J Day kiss — leads to her murder.

“I have read on an Internet site that some lesbian women are offended about the V-J Day kiss in the movie, writing that it is a cheap shot and an attention-getter for the men. I don’t agree,” Vanova said. “In my opinion that sequence should be included in the movie. … For Silhouette, this was not only about the war ending, this victory represented her own personal victory as well — she was Jewish and a homosexual.”

The V-J Day kiss — a scene unique to the movie — was the part Vanova was asked to audition with.

Vanova said filming the kiss was “amazing” and her favorite part of the experience.

She said during every practice take, the set had been silent, but when it finally was time for the shot to be filmed, balloons and firecrackers went off to represent the celebration and then she performed the kiss.

In the graphic novel, Silhouette retired from the Minutemen after the fact she was a lesbian became public knowledge. Later on, she was murdered by one of her enemies.

SPOILER WARNING In the film’s opening montage, there is a scene where Silhouette and her lover are shown murdered on their bed with the words “Lesbian Whores” written on the wall behind them. END SPOILER

“When we think of superheroes or of heroes, you always think they are people with great moralities or people who are ideal humans. And I think in (”Watchmen”) I think that all the superheroes are flawed — and not in a bad way — but that they are all human. … Because Sillouette was a lesbian and she had to escape Austria, she had her own personal reasons to join the minutemen and these reasons may not always be for the good of others. These superheros enact justice based on their own interpretation and morals. This is what makes them human and flawed,” Vanova said.

A true thesbian, Vanova adjusts herself and her persona to her role — straight or gay.

“As an actor, I feel very comfortable with both,” she said, “When I do a scene with a man, the feminine apect dominates. When it as with a woman, I instinctually become more masculine. In opera, a lot of the roles for mezzo sopranos are ‘pant’ roles and I find the discovery of the masculine very interesting.”

Vanova has not seen the final cut of “Watchmen” and could not comment on whether homosexuality in superheroes was as present in the film as it was in the novel, but based on the footage shown at New York Comic Con, the character of Silhouette was kept the same.

In the novel, the stories of the Minutemen were reserved for brief essays and excerpts from novels taken from within the Watchmen universe that followed each chapter. The history of the Minutemen illuminates on the present circumstances of the superheroes.

Vanova said the film preserves the stories of the Minutemen during the opening montage using a combination of art references (Character Sally Jupiter’s retirement party is based on Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper”) and historic events (Another, The Comedian, is portrayed as being the one who shot Kennedy).

“I think they wanted to show why, for example, my character was ousted for the group,” Vanova said. “I think kiss is just a visual representation of what happened to Silhouette. The snapshot.”

There was an additional scene shot of Silhouette escorting gangsters and “dominating them” with people taking pictures that Vanova said is being held for the DVD.

Vanova said it was the attention to detail that impressed her on the set.

“Every little prop was perfect. I couldn’t believe how real everything was to different times and different eras,” she said. “From what I’ve seen and from when I’ve read the comic book, it was pretty close.”

Her costume, which she enthusiastically expressed her love for, was a glamorized version of the black number Silhouette wore in the comics. The look required that they cinch Vanova’s waist down to a trim 22 inches. “As long as I kept my diet, I was fine,” she said with a laugh.

Vanova, who Stargate fans will recognize from her role in one episode as the Wraith Queen, said she plans on focusing on acting and her opera singing now that “Watchmen” is completed. She is producing her own opera CD, which is slated for release in April.

She certainly has the look for fantastical sci-fi and alternate reality roles like “Watchmen” and “Stargate.” Does she look out for these roles?

“I just happen to fit the roles of unusual characters,” she laughed.

“Watchmen” opens Friday.

Terri Schwartz also reported from New York.

That’s how our chat with Australian singer, Gabriella Cilmi (pronounced chill-me) begins. And it just kept getting sunnier. Blast got to spend a few moments with the 17-year old who has already become famous in her home country of Australia and across Europe, and we learned that the singer is down-to-earth, interested in American culture and has the talent needed to become a big hit in the U.S.

“I really haven’t toured around the U.S. so its nice to have a sort of fresh start or clean slate her, I am older now and I know what I am doing and I have done it in Australia and Europe before. I am looking forward to traveling America like you see in movies where you’re traveling on the open road and see cactuses,” Cilmi raved.

Cilmi is an Australian but is of Italian descent. Since she was young(er), she has expressed interest in music but was told she did not have the discipline needed for a music career. Not accepting the criticism of teachers, she joined a band performing cover songs by Led Zeppelin, Jet, Silverchair and others.

“I listen to different things. Growing up I listened to Led Zeppelin. I love Kings of Leon and Jett, and I would listen to them when I went to school,” Cilmi said. “I love listening to old blues stuff too, so I love different things, and I guess I’m a mixture of things. I love Blondie and Stix, so maybe my genre is ‘popular glam rock.’”

While singing at a community festival in Melbourne, Warner Music executive Michael Parisi was amazed with the singer’s vocal abilities. Parisi brought Cilmi to major records labels in the U.S. and the U.K. where she was offered record deals at four different companies. Finally in 2004 she joined Island Records UK.

While working on her debut album Cilmi co-wrote singles for the Australian movie Hating Alison Ashley. In December 2007 her ‘Sweet About Me’ single broke on the radio as a Top 100 hit from her Lessons to Be Learned CD. 

“Gabriella possesses every attribute that music fans across the world are hungering for,” said Monte Lipman, president and CEO of Universal Republic. “U.S. fans are about to see first-hand what European audiences have been raving about, whether it’s her poise, her passion, or unbridled ability to deliver a song like you’ve never heard it before — Gabriella is this year’s breakthrough artist.”   

The album will be released in America on March 17, with her single already being played in radio and featured on VH1’s You Oughta Know.

“If I can get my album recognized here too it would be amazing. People are hitting me up on MySpace, so it’s really cool to have that reception too,” Cilmi added.

For such a happy-go-lucky young woman, it seems hard to believe Cilmi has already won or been nominated for artist of the year awards or hailed by publications like Britain’s Q Magazine. But what the girl lacks in stuffiness she makes up in creativity. Her voice is reminiscent of blues legends like Etta James and similar to today’s sounds of Duffy.

“I write everything from personal experiences, everything that catches my attention influences me and I like to write on that and use music that inspires me to make old things new, ‘Sweet About Me’ is a nursery rhyme about people who never want to grow up so if you don’t want to grow up listen to it,” she added.

Whether or not she gets the attention divas like Beyonce and Britney do in this country, one thing will remain the same: Cilmi’s abilities and friendly manner, which has already survived European media scrutiny and temptations of the music industry, are unchangeable.

“Just check out my MySpace, I’m obsessed with my MySpace page and I answer all my messages, I swear!”

In cue with her joyful spirit Blast is giving away a special Cilmi pack, so check our contests page next week and enter to win by March 28!

A lifetime fan and attendee of comic conventions, Uslan had to be pried away from the impromptu autograph queue that was left over from his hours at the autograph area in order for us to get a few minutes to sit down.

When I commented on his enthusiasm to interact with fans, (”That’s just who Michael is,” said his assistant), Uslan said, “the fact that they made me a guest of honor this year, and had me deliver the keynote this morning, just means a lot to me. It really means a lot. As I told everyone at the keynote, I’m one of you.”

In that light, I asked him how it felt to see The Dark Knight succeed so extraordinarily. Had he expected it to be such a resounding success?

Michael Uslan: Since the day I first dreamed of making dark and serious Batman movies and returning him to the creature of the night, I always knew in my head they would be successful and well-received. I don’t think anybody can anticipate something to the effect that your movie is the second biggest movie in history. That’s incredible to process.

The most important aspect of that for me is the respect and credibility that it brings to seventy years of of comic book artists, writers, and editors who toiled in obscurity largely, who are now rock stars. Their works are now hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian and the Louvre. It’s a recognized American art form. People are acknowledging that it’s a modern day mythology. It is our contemporary American folk lore. To be part of that process after working in the trenches for thirty-three years, to get this kind of recognition for the art and for the business and creators, that’s been the biggest payoff in the world for me.

BLAST: To what extent does “The Dark Knight” responsible for that, do you think?

MU: It’s played a huge role, it truly has. One of my real true goals in the beginning of what turned to out to be my life-long journey, was to attempt to erase from the consciousness of the collective world culture, the three words “pow,” “zap”, and “wham.”

I was there in seventh grade — the night Batman came on TV for the first time — and was simultaneously thrilled and horrified by what I was seeing. Somebody spent a lot of money on a color version of Batman with a really cool Batmobile, and there it was on prime-time TV, but I knew everyone was laughing at him and that killed me.

To be at a point now where people can go in and appreciate a dark, serious Batman rather than a pot-bellied, funny Batman, where you can have a movie that resonates with people because it deals with critically-important themes and that many critics have hailed as the most important movie to deal with 9/11 and post-9/11 issues, it’s like we’ve turned the world on its it head.

BLAST: After so many years of Batman and so many different versions — like you said, Adam West’s Batman in the sixties and now Christian Bale — which incarnation is your definitive Batman?

MU: Well, to answer that generally, there have been so many completely different interpretations of Batman of the years just in the comic books themselves, and then you have the cartoons and live action series and the movies — my point is everybody has their one true version of Batman. If you grew up in the sixties, [for] the bulk of the people their true version was that TV show “pow, zap, wham.” If you grew up in The thirties, it was a darker Batman. if you grew up in the forties or fifties, it might be the Super-Batman of Planet X. So it really depends on when you’re reading this stuff and when you were exposed to it.

For me, when the smoke clears, I think Christian Bale’s Batman, and more importantly, Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne, is the ideal interpretation, the truest interpretation that fans of all periods and all translations of the character known as Batman, can sink their teeth into and say, “This is truly Batman.”

BLAST: You mentioned Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne. In Batman Begins, a solid hour of the film deals exclusively with the man, not the mask. Is it that real man, that flesh-and-blood greatest superhero, what makes Batman resonate the most with you?

MU: The word is human. Batman’s greatest superpower is his humanity. That’s what resonates. That’s what works. That’s what people can identify with. That’s what people who sit in the movie theater watching “The Dark Knight” feel that they themselves are on those ships and that they are forced (to wonder), “would I press the button and blow up the other ship to save my own hide?”

[Batman] is one person who believes he can make a difference in the world. And he is willing to commit to that and go through hell in order to stay committed to that and prove that he can make a difference in the world. That is so primal, that is so inspiring, that is so basic — as is his origin. The concept of a kid watching his parents murdered before his eyes is as primal as we can get. And I think people can truly relate to that and understand what drives him, what pushes him to the edge to the point where he’s so obsessed to get the guys who did it, to get all the bad guys, so that he’s driven to the fine thin line of being psychotic.

And I think if you add to that the Jerry Robinson Joker, who to me is the greatest supervillain ever, you’ve got this opera of two figures of opposing equal strength, representing goodness and evil. But the evil is wearing the mask of the carnival, covering the horror that lurks beneath the surface. And the good guy is dressed like a terrifying bat. The dance that they do is an incredible dance that again, anybody can relate to.

BLAST: Yeah, in “Dark Knight” the line that stood out most to me was the line, “the unstoppable force meets the immovable object” and I just sat back in my seat and said, “Whoa.” And then, of course, there’s the other line “I think we’re destined to do this forever.”

MU: Yeah, exactly. And in the first Batman movie, with that operatic dance going on in the bell tower – “I made you, you made me, one can’t really live without the other.” And in all history there will always be order and chaos, and black and white, and what I think Chris Nolan was saying is that in our world today, there is not as much black and white as there is gray. And comic books and comic book heroes must become more complex, more textured and layered, and the themes must be more carefully considered.

BLAST: Speaking of villains — well, we were sort of talking about villains – is there a villain that you haven’t yet seen on screen that you would love to see or that hasn’t yet been portrayed in the way that you imagine it?

MU: I can’t answer that in terms of the movies, but I can answer that in terms of comic book fan Michael. I always loved Man-Bat. I thought, here was another great story. That Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde thing. I always had a problem with the Hulk films because the Hulk I read growing up was the story of Frankenstein and the story of Dr. Jekyll and and I went to the movies and it was the story of King Kong. And it didn’t work for me, I couldn’t figure that out, I couldn’t make that transition. I think Man-Bat has a true Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde thing that I find fascinating. So I’ve always loved him as a villain.

I always seemed to like the edgier villains. The Penguin was always a little silly to me. Going back even earlier, there were villains called Tweedle-Dee and Twiddle-Dum. On the TV show, King Tut was a a little too silly for me. so I like the edgier ones, I like Two-Face, I like the Joker, I like the Reaper.

BLAST: And about Two-Face – it’s been said that at the end of “The Dark Knight”, Two-Face could still be alive.

MU: (laughs) I say the same thing that we said at the end of the first Batman movie, where people weren’t convinced that Joker was dead, that he could still be alive. And I said, “what makes you think so?” and they said, “Well, I’ve probably read a thousand Batman comics in my lifetime, and probably eighteen times the Joker has been killed and keeps coming back,” as do all the villains. Speak to a Superman fan! I thought he was dead, but he’s back.

BLAST: And Batman RIP right now. But I still don’t believe that, so –

MU: Yeah, lets’ not talk about that. I’m still waiting month by month for Captain America to pop back in.

BLAST: Same here! There was a Captain America downstairs and I was like, see, I told you, he’s still alive!

MU: (laughs) It’s comic books. You know, it IS comic books.

BLAST: We’re running out of time — I see your assistant waving me down — so let’s get in a few last questions. Do you have a favorite sequence from any of the films?

MU: Oh, I have many that still give me the chills.

BLAST: What was your favorite from The Dark Knight?

MU: Virtually Heath’s entire performance. It’s the performance of a lifetime.

BLAST: And is there anything at all you can give me on a possible sequel?

MU: (smiles) No.

BLAST: (laughs) Well, would you like to do it? Have you spoken about it with Chris Nolan at all?

MU: How ’bout them Yankees?

BLAST: You said you first came across the story of the [Bielski] brothers 12 years ago.

ED ZWICK: Yes.

BLAST: What was the process between then and now in creating the movie?

EZ: Well, we optioned the book, and then we, on our own, worked on a story from the book. An adaptation. We go a studio to pay us to write a script, and they then abandoned the process. We worked on it ourselves but, inevitably, life intercedes and making a living and the other things that catch your imagination. That included several other movies over those years. But each time, we would go back to it, think about it, try to find financing, not necessarily be able to, work on it. There was a significant amount of work that happened about three years ago when it occurred to me that there was a central flaw in what we were doing in the telling that involved trying to tell too much an it was about telescoping the beginning significantly and telescoping the end so as to intensify the fabric of it. That really helped. It sort of took on a new life and it somehow galvanized me to rededicate myself to trying to get it done. And I had gotten Daniel Craig. He had wanted to do “Blood Diamond” at a certain moment, and the studio was not interested in that. But I had met him and really liked him. I had liked his work before I had seen him in “Layer Cake” and “The Mother” and I had seen “Infamous;” these great roles. And it was only a matter of time before his gift became known, so that when I finished this draft, he was the first person I sent it to. And he read it and said he wanted to meet and we got together in London and had a six hour conversation that was terrific and really, by the end of which, it was clear to both of us that we wanted to do this thing. I had to secure the financing then. We had been rejected by every conventional means and again, with Daniel’s participation, were rejected again. So I found an independent financier who was willing to put up the money who then pre-sold some of the foreign rights to mitigate his own investment. And then we got a domestic distributor, which was Paramount Vantage, to distribute it.

BLAST: And that’s where we are today.

EZ: And, well, there was four months in Lithuania and some post-production.

BLAST: ["Defiance"] is very different than other World War II and Holocaust movies that are out there, just in the fact that you think “World War II” you think “D-Day” and you think of “The Holocaust” you think “concentration camps.” Was there a conscious decision to keep those aspects out of it?

EZ: They were not intrinsic to the experience of the story. I wanted the story to be very subjective: from the experience of these people, which means that the Germans themselves were at a distance. If they were close to you, it meant that you were dead. So therefore, they had to be at removed. Similarly the camps were, at that moment, nothing but a rumor, if that, so they couldn’t figure in the story. I really wanted to remain true to the circumstances and to their experience, and that defined the telling. It was about “the forest” and what happened in that forest became, metaphorically, a place of change and transformation, as it has been in literature from the Brothers Grimm to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” It’s a place where people go to seek refuge but are changed by it.

BLAST: Did you ever meet with any of the [Bielski] brothers or any of the families?

EZ: The three oldest brothers in the story are dead, and were when we began. But their sons became very important to us and told the stories their father gave us, videotapes of their fathers that they had collected. We met others who had been in the brigade. They came to visit us. It turns out that they gave us access to an autobiography that Tuvia had written.

BLAST: Has that been published?

EZ: No, it is unpublished and it’s literarily very odd and stilted but it’s very interesting as a document. It has some of the Soviet party nomenclature in it. It has a very casual attitude toward violence. It contradicts itself at certain times. It’s very interesting.

BLAST: Not personally having known the story [of the Bielskis] before this movie, were there any creative liberties taken?

EZ: Definitely, in the composite of the other characters, and in the imagined dialogues between people. I mean, who knew what happened there really? And these conversations? There was a dialectic in the Nechama Tec book about the decision to seek revenge and the impulse to save others. That found its expression in these two characters [Tuvia and Zus Bielski], and that becomes the central metaphor of the story.

BLAST: There are a lot of metaphors in the whole Passover idea of [Tuvia] coming through as Moses and splitting the sea. What was the basis behind that decision, other than the obvious?

EZ: Besides my own artistic so-called interpretation, I felt that the metaphor was implicit. These two brothers, it evoked Moses and Aaron. These people wandering from one place to the next, it evoked the wilderness and the diaspora. I just thought that there was a real value to its epic nature to find those metaphorical parallels. When they were passing through the water [at the end of the film], that happens to be true but it’s remarkable.

BLAST: Was it true that [the passing through the water] occurred at Passover or was that a creative liberty?

EZ: No, I believe that the big attack did take place during Passover. I could be wrong, but I think that’s true. What’s surprising is that people who [don't get the metaphors] go along anyway. We screened the movie in Westminster, Colorado where they may have heard of Jews but never seen one, and it played wonderfully, and people got it. They related to it as a story; a story of survival and of community and all the other parts of it. I mean, there is a special relationship that one has with a story if you imagine your relatives or yourself in that situation, so how could it not but be that? But it’s not necessary I hope.

BLAST: How was working with Daniel [Craig] and Liev [Schreiber]?

EZ: We had a great experience together. We really did. They’re both from theater. Daniel is a working-class British actor from theater, and Liev is one of the great lights of the American stage right now and has been for the past 15 years. So at some times they’re very similar, even though one of them has just happened to be vaulted into mega-stardom suddenly.

BLAST: Well, [Liev] is going to be the next Sabretooth.

EZ: Well he is in fact. I wanted him to send me a picture of himself wearing some big cat suit with whiskers or something like that, but he said they managed to avoid that. I said I wanted to see him in spandex.

BLAST: You should have managed to incorporate that into ["Defiance"] at some point.

EZ: It would have been good, don’t you think? At some point just a kind of a “Rawr.”

BLAST: Have the hair and the nails; I think it would have gone with the theme of the movie.

EZ: Well there was a whole Holocaust theme in the first X-men [comic books]. The genocide of the mutants and all of that. There was Jews, homosexuals, and mutants. That’s who was sent to the camps.

BLAST: So basically, “Defiance” is just a big metaphor for “X-men.”

EZ: [laughter] You’re right, it’s in reverse.

BLAST: Tell me a little bit about your background. Obviously you’ve been a big player in [Hollywood]. Tell me a bit about your history and where you started.

EZ: I started directing the theater when I went to college. I did not study theater. I directed in the theater because it was a great opportunity to direct. I studied literature and history and anthropology and science and everything but theater, and I think that was the best thing that ever could have happened to me. I wrote journalism while I was in school and for a year or so thereafter. Somehow both of those things found their expression in these movies: the theater and the journalism; the research of a subject or the immersion in a subject.

BLAST: Do you think that’s more important to being a director than necessarily going and studying for eight years?

EZ: In film? I do. I do. I mean, otherwise you’re just making movies about other movies, as opposed to knowing how to learn about the world or going out in the world and actually seeing what the world has to tell you and to holding the mirror up to the world.

BLAST: Your stories tell about aspect of history, like with “Glory” or with “Defiance” and “The Last Samurai.” They’re aspects of history that people might not necessarily have known about beforehand. Do you set out, when you make these movies, to educate people, or is it just topics that you find interesting?

EZ: First I find them interesting, and I do want to suit myself because, I can’t keep myself interested for two years, how can I expect people interested for two hours? I think that’s for sure. But, there’s nothing wrong with people learning something while they’re being entertained. I think that’s one of the ways we actually learn most of what we learn. Even this presidential election, you saw both candidates trying to present themselves as a narrative. They understood that that was the way of communicating their story; their beliefs were somehow tied up in their narrative. And I think narrative is the way that people open themselves to learning as opposed to through the more rigorous, clearly academic process.

BLAST: What do you have next in line? Are you going to keep with the theme of “Blood Diamond” and “Defiance,” or are you going to make the next “Superbad”?

EZ: Well that would be good. Yeah, I liked “Superbad.” I wonder, what would it become? “Super…..”

BLAST: An adult version.

EZ: Yeah, I waited and I missed it. [laughter] I never really can predict. I just really tend to immerse myself. And then it’s done. And then I look around and I’m convinced I’ll never think of anything else and I’ll never get to make another movie.

BLAST: Which clearly is what’s been happening to you for a while ago.

EZ: It’s going to happen someday. [laughter]

BLAST: Nothing’s got your mind?

EZ: It’s a lot of head scratching, yeah.

BLAST: How long did it take you to film the movie, when you were in Lithuania?

EZ: Pretty fast: 60 shooting days. That’s about 12 weeks, or 10 weeks with six day weeks. It was a tough schedule and we were very far north and it was very cold and very wet. It didn’t get light until 7:30 in the morning and then it got dark by 4:30. It was a hard thing.

BLAST: Did you actually manage to film during winter?

EZ: Oh sure. We went all the way into real snow. Sometimes we filled it in with fake, but when you’re trying to load an automatic weapon in freezing conditions [...] you’re just trying to get it done, and it looks great on film. The breath is real, and the shivering is real, and the faces are blue and the teeth are chattering. That’s a good thing. By the way, people suggested we film [in America], but those faces, the faces of the extras, you just can’t find them. They’re from Eastern Europe. That’s who they are.

BLAST: What kind of preparation did the actors have to go through for the film?

EZ: Weapons training, certainly. Dialect work. A lot of research. Russian. Daniel and Liev had to really learn how to speak Russian.

BLAST: The movie is obviously a very sensitive and emotional subject. Was that hard at all on the set for actors to cope with it or for you to cope with it?

EZ: You know, you’d think that, but in fact, when you’re doing something that you believe in or that has meaning, it never feels hard. I think what’s hard is when you’re doing something that’s cynical and you feel a little shabby and that you’re giving yourself away. I think that’s much harder.

It would be the only full-length album the trio made together, but the self-titled LP with songs like “Never Meant” would become staples in the underground Chicago scene. Out of the American Football ashes Kinsella created a solo project – Owen — that has forged its own place in the windy city’s indie hall of fame.

Some have gone so far as to credit Owen as being “The Inventor of the Chicago Indie Scene”, but when Kinsella talked to Blast he said the accolade was far from the truth. In fact, he suggested “The Passenger of Chicago Public Transportation” or ”The Consumer of Chicago Style Pizza” are more appropriate titles.

“There was already a thriving indie scene in Chicago, and it’s surrounding suburbs, way before I knew what ‘indie’ or ‘math rock’ was. I spent my youth going to see all these bands and trying to learn their songs.” Kinsella said, and countered that the Chicago scene made a huge impression on him rather than the other way around.

“It had a huge influence on me: musically, socially, morally, in my formative years and I definitely felt connected to it then,” he said.

After American Football disbanded, Kinsella went solo. Owen became less about musical experimentation but more about an artist finding and creating his own sound.

Still signed to Polyvinyl Records, Kinsella took the money designated to record his first album to create a home studio. Kinsella recorded all the instrumentation in the comfort of his living room and the outcome was “Owen” (2001).

While it created some buzz, it was the second album, “No Good For No One,” released the following year that secured Owen a spot in the souls of the broken hearted everywhere. Once again, Kinsella took the money arranged from his label and used it to expand his home studio and recorded the entire album there.

Lines like “You’ve got everything you came for/Warm arms, a warm bed to fall into/when you can’t get what you did out of your head” (”Nobody’s Nothing”) are propelled by Kinsella’s heartfelt voice over intricate acoustic guitar melodies. From the first album to the second, Kinsella expounded upon his lyrical technique, using each track to tell a story.

“The lyrics usually come out one slow line at a time, and after I have a few strung together that I like I figure out what the song is about. It can be as vague as ‘a night out at a bar with friends’ or as specific as ‘feeling guilty about not wanting to shake the homeless man’s hand because he smelled.’ Once the idea is formed, then I fill in the rest of the lines, trying to keep them as concise as possible while still saying what I want to say,” Kinsella explained.

Kinsella said he doesn’t start making a record with a specific theme in mind, but his albums tend to have a similar tone dependant on what he is doing or where he is in his life when he is working on the album.

Assisting with Kinsella’s own lyrical potency is his tendency to draw on literary figures. “No Good For No One Now” is decorated with references to everyone from Raymond Carver to Oscar Wilde and Ernest Hemingway.

“Usually I’m attracted to a specific line in a story and create my own context for it. Sometimes then the actual line works its way into the song and sometimes the song exists as a reference to the sentence or book. I find myself returning to Gabriel Garcia Marquez [author of "Love in the Time of Cholera"] for inspiration. I’m a sucker for love stories and everything he writes seems to gravitate around the concept of Love,” Kinsella said.

Lyrically, Kinsella has progressively moved away from the tales of heartbreak. From “No Good for No One Now” to “I Do Perceive” (2004) to “At Home With Owen” (2006) the content becomes less about the one that got away and more of the stories of someone slowly finding their way into their own skin. Songs like “Use Your Words” and “Windows and Doorways” breathe more like messages of moving on rather than being entrenched in heartbreak.

“It’s a result of me being more comfortable with myself than I was however many years ago ‘No Good’ came out. At that time I had recently figured out how to make myself happy but I was still feeling really guilty about it, so I was always sort of conflicted. Nowadays I think I communicate better, which makes my happiness less qualified,” said Kinsella about the change.

“At Home With Owen” also became the first album where Kinsella left his mother’s house to record anything. He split the recording of the album in half, opting to do part of it still in his living room and the other in a professional studio, which allowed him more options. In the end, “At Home” has a much more filled out sound than the previous Owen records. The use of more guitar and bass gives the album more of a full band feeling, but Kinsella says he’s happy with the final outcome.

“I’m definitely more comfortable recording at home for a number of reasons – I can do as many takes as I want without feeling like I’m wasting someone else’s time. I’m generally uncomfortable singing in front of anyone else. I can not put pants on that day if I don’t want to. I can take breaks if I get frustrated without feeling like I’m wasting money. That said, the final product that comes out of a studio makes me happier than the one that comes out of my house.” Kinsella said.

Two years since his last release, the world does not have much longer to wait to see where Kinsella ends up with the next Owen LP. Recording is slated to be complete by March with a tentative summer or early fall release date, Kinsella said. While fans can be sure to expect the same signature Owen lyrical honest intensity, some new influences in Kinsella’s life may provide view to yet another new Owen dimension.

“My wife and I are having a baby in late March and while I’m sure the birth of my daughter will inspire me in countless ways,” Kinsella said. “I can’t say for sure that’ll it’ll inspire me to continue to be a ’starving artist’.”

“It’s definitely been a bogus journey but we’re having a good time, We’re almost done. [with the tour]. We have two weeks left which is a little bittersweet,” commented bassist Adam “Sisky Business” Siska from the second floor of The Roxy, before The Academy Is…’s show in Boston, Mass on Nov 12.

The band has been touring non-stop since early this year to promote “Fast Times At Barrington High,” named after Siska and lead singer William Beckett’s former alma mater. The entire album revolves around a high school motif, but the band stresses that the record was never meant to be a “high school album.”

Upon listening to “Fast Times,” it is evident that without the high school theme, the songs have their own significant meaning that can be applied to all aspects of life. Whether it is the beginning of a complicated relationship (”After The Last Midtown Show”) or moving on from a certain experience (”The Test”), the lyrics deliberate on emotions that affect everyone even after graduation.

“I think that high school is a pretty interesting time for people, people like us, middle class American suburban kids. I think that a lot of things that I’d been through in high school have really become reoccurring trends later on in life,” said Siska. “The record certainly is not just about high school and many people think that but high school is kind of a platform, or a metaphor for the things that we are talking about, we always have been talking about — which is motivation and the drive to do something exciting”

“Fast Times at Barrington High” has become more than an album title for The Academy Is… – it’s a lifestyle. After recording the album, a third for the quintet (”Almost Here” in 2005, “Santi” in 2007), they headlined the entire Vans Warped Tour. The band spent their album release day flying to Australia for another tour with label mates Panic at the Disco and Cobra Starship. Along with a brief stint in Europe, The Academy Is… has been keeping busy with their own headlining tour this fall – The Bill and Trav’s Bogus Journey. Andrew “The Butcher” Mrotek laid down drum tracks for the entire record in a day and a half. The Academy Is… prefers a hectic schedule to make things more exciting, Siska said.

“I think when you spread [work] out for that long the aim for that focus, and that natural energy could be lost. Working quickly in the studio keeps us really spontaneous and fresh all the time. This record was definitely our favorite one to make [because it was the] the most fun,” said Siska.

The third album comes only a year after the release of their sophomore effort, “Santi,” which proved to be disappointing in record sales and caused turmoil among eagerly awaiting fans. “Santi” became the embodiment of the pressure and struggle in the band, especially after the removal of guitarist Tom Conrad right before recording.

The process of writing and making “Fast Times at Barrington High” became about regrouping and finding again the essence of The Academy Is….

“Coming back in to make the third one was back to basics. It was just like ‘Oh, we get to make another record.’ How many bands get to make three albums? For us, we had gotten back to a place where we were good enough friends that we knew what we wanted,” said Siska.

A band’s revival from a “sophomore slump” was not dependent solely on their songs and material. The Academy Is… seems to have acknowledged that from the start. They have created a unique and open relationship with the people that directly determine their livelihood – their fans. Not only do they offer meet and greets and early entry access to their fan club (Santi’s Little Helpers) but they also write blogs and post episodes of their weekly TV show – “TAI TV” – to stay in touch with thousands of kids worldwide that dedicate their time memorizing lyrics and going to shows.

“We just want to encourage our fans to be creative and have a good time. In terms of the closeness with our fans, we just think it’s exciting,” said Siska. “I think the days of the rock star, as we thought of them, are over. I think the hotel trashing days are over. We just want to have a good time, play music and have a positive relationship with our fans, and that’s that.”

There are only a few hours before the show and they still have to sound check, get dinner, and greet all of their fans before doors open. The band makes sure not to neglect their “Santi’s Little Helpers”. Even though they have less than thirty minutes, every member of the club walks away with a signature and a few precious moments with the people they have been waiting hours outside in the cold to see.

“When you spend so much time with other guys all year round it can get a little– the tension can build up and I think this time we just had a blast hanging out and playing songs. We really found who we were in the sense that we got comfortable with everything in our lives just in terms of our friendships and our relationships,” Siska adds before heading back to the bus with hopes that he’ll be able to catch a nap before the show. Despite being tired, Siska makes it obvious that The Academy Is… has no complaints about where they are, “We’re happy,”

It’s 10:05 p.m. when William says this is going to be the last song of the evening, and they were supposed to be off the stage at 10 p.m. There’s a shifty glance between Beckett and guitarist Mike Carden because they know there is a stage manager somewhere in the building having a heart attack. They were brought here to put on a show and something as trivial as a curfew is not going to stop them from delivering the screaming crowd a full set. Beckett only asks for everyone’s “eyes and ears to the front of the stage for only just one second” at the beginning of “Attention”, but it’s three minutes of chorus jubilation. It seems everyone in the building knows the words. No matter the struggles and disagreements it took, The Academy Is… is here, there’s no almost about it.

The filmmakers took a break between shots to adjust the camera and lighting for the next take. As they reviewed the previous shots, their star received a make-up touch-up. The bright lights were causing his white face paint and green hair dye to run.

When they were ready to resume, the actor once again repeated his lines, strutting around in his green vest and purple suit, flicking his tongue out over his lips in an awkward habit.

The filmmakers cut the scene and congratulated each other on the success. They were filming a new Batman movie that took place two months after the conclusion of July’s blockbuster, “The Dark Knight.” It was their first filming session, and the groups of filmmakers were making great progress.

Their star went to drink some water between takes and was greeted by the owner of the house they were filming in. “Nice makeup,” she said.

They were not on a sound stage or the lot of a billion-dollar production. The actor playing The Joker was not a Hollywood prima donna but mild-mannered 21-year-old Craig Deering of Illinois.

The house’s owner was Deering’s best friend and fellow film maker Allen Murphy’s great aunt Mary’s. While watching the filming, she told her nephew that while she always supported the arts and was glad to help, she had not expected college students running around her house dressed as Batman and an evil clown.

“She watched a little bit through a window and like peered in a couple time, and I think she might have freaked out a little bit,” said Deering.

“In my family, she should have known better,” Murphy, 20, joked.

With their initial success tucked away, the guys decided to venture into feature-length territory. (Photo by Dan Drake)

Deering and the rest of the filmmakers are part of Evil Iguana Productions. The group creates and posts their films on YouTube and suddenly blew up when they spoofed “The Dark Knight” trailer in the summer.

The filmmakers are a bunch of college kids who have been making movies together since high school with nothing but Deering’s father’s video camera and some editing software.

It wasn’t until July when the group released “The Dark Knight” spoof that they became stars. In the four months since its release, the video has received over 5 million views. Their new Batman movie is a follow-up to their spoof of “The Dark Knight” trailer that they released in July.

“I am like really happy that it is getting that good of reviews and like people are still watching because, honestly, when we were making it, and we were about to release it, I was so scared to release that video because I thought we were going to get shot down,” said Deering sitting down to chat with Blast recently. “(I thought) everyone was going to yell at us for like trying to spoof Batman and telling us it was crap, and I was expecting to take it down. But, all the positive feedback and stuff is great.”

Deering is the director and editor of all of the Evil Iguana videos, and also came up with the ideas for the “The Dark Knight” spoof, as well as the mockeries they made of “Twilight” and “The Number 23.”

–

After the success of their Batman spoof, Deering and the rest of Evil Iguana decided to venture into unknown territory — a 30 to 45 minute serious film about the Joker, set in Christopher Nolan’s Batman universe.

Deering said that making the drama was a challenge and a big change from their previous work.

“This is like by far the most professional we’ve been with a movie, which I thought was really cool, because usually we just get our camera and improvise a lot of stuff,” said Deering.

Two buds

“I was a total nerd (in middle school): big glasses, comb over.  I think my graduating class was like 21, it was really small. I tried my best to fit in with the rest of the class, though I was never considered one of the “cool” guys, but it was alright,” said Deering.

Today, Deering has people requesting to be his friend on Facebook whom he has never met but feel they know him through his Youtube series, “The Allen and Craig Show,” and his various film spoofs.

Known to many as Adam Davies, the archenemy of Jeremy Piven’s character Ari Gold, Jordan Belfi joined the cast of Entourage in its first season. Over three years, he has become famous on the show for getting Ari fired from their agency and making life a living hell.

Now in season four, he returns to continue the never-ending hatred existence that has become Adam vs. Ari.

Since Belfi is loyal to his producers, Blast could not obtain juicy revelations about this season’s story line. All we can share is the polite, “great things to come,” quote. But Belfi did say that in the likeness of the first and second episodes (where a car race surged between Adam and Ari) there will be more action and continuous shock.

Now, back to Belfi.

Born and raised in Southern California, Belfi decided to take a route many actors leave behind and attended college before going to castings. In wanting a change of scenery he enrolled at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and studied film and theatre.

“I went to the snow because Wesleyan proved to be the school I wanted to attend. What I took away was pretty invaluable, not because of who I met but because of who I became. I wanted to go away and grow and I always had the sense that I’d come back to L.A., so I wanted to be out of my element,” said Belfi in a recent chat. “College helps form who you are, it gives you time to grow and it’s something you can bring to your work as an actor. I think bringing knowledge back to your work helps color things and inform the choices you make. It was very important to me.”

Now, as an accredited actor, Belfi is trying out different settings in front of the camera. Belfi has managed to act in major television shows, star in blockbusters and be part of independent film casts.

He has a recurring role in the popular vampire drama Moonlight, aside from his Entourage gig, and he has appeared in Smallville, Shark, Gilmore Girls and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This summer, production finished on the Touchtone Pictures sci-fi thriller “The Surrogates,” where Belfi performs opposite Bruce Willis and Ving Rhames.

As if that didn’t keep him busy, Belfi also finished work on the WWII-based, indie-drama “Christina,” which tells the story of an American soldier and what occurs when he brings his German lady love to the states.

Without being pretentious, Belfi is carving a path to act at various levels, while remaining under the radar. Like others who have acted in different mediums — Natalie Portman or James Franco — Belfi is obtaining new roles, playing them accordingly and taking time off afterward to do what he enjoys: backpacking.

Recently, he enjoyed a solo European tour where he stayed at hostels and traveled by train for what he called, “one of the great thrills of his life.” Although he could have stayed at swanky hotels and gotten the VIP service, he chose the normal way to backpack and even stayed at random people’s homes. As he put it, everything created a fantastic trip that kept him grounded and gave him a local’s perspective.

And it seems that he wants to remain grounded in every aspect.

“Entourage has been the best experience of my career it and took me to a whole new level. The prestige of HBO and the quality all around makes things feel like we’re making a movie every week, and in a way we really are making mini movies each week. To be surrounded by talented people, writers and directors is all I can ask for. I feel great to be working at all levels, from the biggest of the big, to small indie films, to hit TV shows,” Belfi said.

In “The Surrogates” Belfi will portray a crooked exec. The movie, based on a comic book series, is set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through remote-controlled artificial bodies (surrogate robots). After someone begins murdering these robot images, a cop (Willis) is forced to leave his home for the first time in years to investigate the crimes. Belfi plays the VP at the company that manufactures these robots.

“The experience, itself was great. This is a huge science fiction studio movie,” he said. “Working with [Bruce Willis] was the best part because someone you admire comes face to face and suddenly all the nerves go away, for a period you are just peers — actors working together. Working at that level was exciting.”

Belfi may choose to remain under the radar – acting and living a relatively Hollywood-free life – or become the next “it” star. Whatever ends up happening he said he wants to be noticed for one thing only.

“I think it’s simple: I just want to be known as a really good actor, in the end that’s the most important thing to me,” confessed the blue-eyed hunk.

Catch Belfi’s menace of a character on Entourage Sundays at 10 p.m. on HBO. Watch Moonlight on Fridays at 9 p.m. on CBS.

“I’m not homeless yet.”

It’s a fairly low-key way to express the kind of professional success illustrator Grant Gould is experiencing.

Recently hired by Lucasfilm Ltd., Gould is part of a team that’s working on The Clone Wars online web comics. Released in tandem with the television show, the comics will supplement the plots and characters found in the weekly episodes.

Star Wars fans are no stranger to Gould’s work. His art can be found all over the official site as well as illustrations and “How to Draw” tutorials, as well as on the Topps Revenge of the Sith Artist Sketch card series.

Gould thanks fellow artist >Tom Hodges, who is also working on the online Clone Wars comic, for his start in professional illustration in 2004. Hodges, who was working on an online strip for Hyperspace, a section of StarWars.com, told Gould about the opportunity to draw for the Topps series. As a fan of the Star Wars saga, Gould jumped at the chance to work on such a well known story.

“I enjoy drawing characters that people are familiar with, but giving them my own spin,” he said in a recent interview with Blast.

With his first professional illustrating job under his belt, Gould continued to work on other projects such as trading card sets for many popular comics and television series along with personal commissions.

“So I knew I had to make a decision — start cutting back on the illustration jobs, or quit my day job and try my hand at fulltime freelance illustration,” Gould said. “I guess I figured I’m still young enough where if I completely screw up, no harm, no foul — at least I can say I tried it out.”

“I took my chances and quit my day job, and dove headfirst into the scary world of fulltime freelance.”

Scary for many reasons, not the smallest of which was the fact that Gould had little formal training and education in illustration.

“In college (Brown College in Minnesota) I had a few classes on ‘life drawing’ and such, but I would say for the most part I’m self-taught … Illustration is like any skill in that the more you do it, the more you learn and the better you get.”

Gould has had many informal chances to learn, as well. “In high school, I was the guy who would draw silly cartoons and doodle Ninja Turtles in my notebooks.”

Gould was a graphic designer for about seven years and drawing in his free time before turning his attentions to illustrating full time. “I think anatomy books and tutorial books helped a lot, too, in my younger years,” he said.

Finally, Gould recognizing that the skill of observation as helped his artwork a lot. “Watching how people move, studying body shapes and faces (both in real life and in cartoons and movies), and really noticing how things fit together — I think all of it contributes to how I draw.”

And how he draws has gotten him where he is today.

“Now that I’m working on the Clone Wars online comic, it feels like I’ve graduated and am getting to play with the big boys,” Gould said. He’s currently also working on a comic of his own. “I wrote and drew my own creator-owned graphic novel, and it’s coming out this November.” Wolves of Odin, as the name implies, focuses on Norse mythology with a bit of the supernatural thrown in.

“It’s genuinely exciting to wake up and work on something that you love…I think Young Grant would be very happy to see where I’m at today in my career.”

After all, he’s still not homeless.

I first heard of Notch by word of mouth after he did a performance in New England. “This guy is hot,” is what I heard, and apparently I should have heard it sooner. When researching for a press contact for the singer, who mixes Jamaican, hip-hop and Latin beats, I was greeted by Fan sites, YouTube videos, MTV profiles and an artist album pre-sale website.

The question: How did I miss out on this? Thankfully, here are the answers so you don’t have to.

The former lead vocalist for the hip-hop/reggae duo Born Jamericans, Notch joined the music scene in the 90s. The Hartford native’s racial background is a combination of African American, Cuban and Jamaican. 

Always interested in music, he grew up listening to Bob Marley in a largely Latino community. As a boy, he learned the Jamaican dialect Patois, was immersed in Spanish and created his own little dialect (Spatoinglish) as a result. 

“I got influenced by all the dancing, the dialects, the people. I just expressed myself by mimicking what I saw and sharing when it was needed the most, to entertain or to liven the day,” he said in a recent interview. “I learned to appreciate the beauty of a melody or the pain, and I created fusion words.’

His early success with Born Jamericans allowed him to fuse words with the passion of music to create a tool to connect to people.

Known then as Mr. Notch, Born Jamericans singles like “Boom Shak-a-Tak” and “Send My Love” introduced the artist as sultry, smooth-singing counterpart to his partner, Edley Shine, and his rugged rhymes.

For five years the duo grew popular and achieved international notoriety by offering dancehall music to American urban radio.

But with fame came commercialization. With more use of hip-hop and R&B, dancehall diehards began to turn on the duo as they became more mainstream and the group dismantled in 1998.

Notch decided to go solo, tap more into his Latin roots and make unique music.

In 2000 he jetted to Jamaica to record authentic dancehall and reggae. By listening to other bilingual artists, he experimented with his dialect and recorded Hay Que Bueno, a hip-hop/reggaeton song that is perfect for dancing. The multilingual hit became popular on both Latin-based and reggae mediums. With the success the singer moved to Puerto Rico and started to work with reggaeton producers.

The single started playing on Latin radio stations too and found its place on the Billboard Latin charts.

Shortly after, Notch was featured in the albums of Daddy Yankee, Luny Tunes, Beenie Man and even ska rockers Sublime and Thievery Corporation. The success lingered. 

“A lot of Hispanics love reggae music and they sing along to it many times not understanding the words well or they decipher what is being said, but it gives them a chance to poke into their curiosity and learn about the reggae language and maybe their own language.” Notch explained. “I’ve come along and offered more of a window for people to procure their curiosity.”

Curiosity that can form bonds amongst people. 

“We all got dropped in the western hemisphere and got shuffled as dominoes, but anyway I can find words that are close to the roots of our native people and use them I try to do just to show our historical commonality,” Notch said. ”It puts more soul to the melody … and it’s helping Jamaicans learn Spanish too,” he added with a laugh.

In 2007 Notch released his first solo album, Raised by the People, making it on Billboard’s 14th Best Selling Reggae albums and 9th Top Reggae Artist of 2007. The single “Dale ‘Pa Tra” (Back It Up) made Top 100 in Latin charts and Top 5 in Reggae charts as well. The production is a mix of merengue, cumbia and bachata in addition to urban-pop and hip-hop to his interchanging medley of reggaeton and dancehall. Songs like “Que Te Pica” and “Rosalinda” are as playable as the single and although not easily understandable to English speakers, still addictive.

“I’m making headway now, but it’s been really hard doing what I’m doing and I’m not playing clean or fair. I am able to cheat by bringing out the karate side of me and show all the things I can offer, but at end of day I believe music is the universal language,” he said. “I know melody is internal and can cross any lines. Anyone needs a song to pump up with in the shower, on the way to work or just to bring back the spirit in their lives.”

The road has been somewhat long and less than perfect after he left Born Jamericans. As the singer says, though, the ability to record music he is proud of is worth crossing any red tape.

“With the group there was a lot of pressure from the label to make R&B present to get more airplay, to be more amicable instead of cultural and ethnic which was harder to sell. We were a group and we packaged the product so I strayed away from what the label wanted and showed them my art can be different and that as an artist I can show other pallets,” recalled the singer. “When I was going back [to Jamaica] and learned about war and drugs, teenage pregnancy and school dropouts I came out with songs like Rosalinda and other songs that had social commentary that I felt needed to express the message and show things form my cultural bag of tricks.”

As he continues to remake his image and grow as a solo artist, Notch has the advantage of knowing what is like to be at the top. He can survive in the music industry jungle and take it one day at a time as well. He says that all these years he’s been dropping hints of his return and now the pieces are connecting through the Internet, through his album, through his music connections and through fan support. 

“I have more optimism and look forward to taking this industry by storm and getting people to sing my songs; but I have to take it day by day because I may be the most popular person now and later you may see me at the post office working!” he said. “The most important thing I aspire to is getting people to mumble my name, keep me in their minds, and its like getting a portrait of me in everyone’s house.”

Notch is debuting a new official website, where fans can order his album, preview new tracks and vote for their favorite songs.

The clean shaven and attractive, 30-something, also established his own music label. As he puts it, he has to deal with paying taxes and hiring personnel so he does not see the need to have his nose, “up in the air.”

“When people make a big deal about the dialect or the music or my business and ask me what I am like, one thing people keep forgetting is that I eat Italian food and French fries; I get my hair cut by Dominicans, play baseball with my Black friends and chill out with my Asian friends,” he said. “I’m like everyone, but I take time unwrapping my gift of mimicking the beauty of the people around me.”

Whether he continues being an underground sensation or becomes the next Daddy Yankee, one thing is clear. Notch is an artist who made it to the top and back and is still able to stay human. His music, like his personality, is energetic and magnetic.

We have good news for you. iNiS along with Microsoft Game Studios has been developing an answer to your woes in the form of the forthcoming karaoke video game “Lips,” to be released only on XBox 360 November 21.

We first encountered Lips at E3 in July.

Described as “Guitar Hero, only with a mic,” not only can you connect to your iPod or other mp3 player to sing along to your own tunes, but the game also features the songs of several popular and critically-acclaimed artists including Duffy’s “Mercy” and Lupe Fiasco’s “Superstar”. 

Blast Magazine recently got the chance to speak to Lupe Fiasco, whose concept album “The Cool” went certified gold, selling over 500,000 copies in the U.S. Fiasco dished about his part in the game as well as some of his current projects. 

Kellen: How did you get involved with the game, and what was your reaction to being asked to perform? 

Lupe: Uh, I got approached by XBox, Microsoft, actually a while back when they were kind of developing the game out. What struck me most, more than like you know, “come be in a game,, you know, “here’s a little money for you,” whatever — it was that the caliber of artist that they were putting me with to be kinda the initial roll-out, to actually instill the game and sell it, was dope. People like Duffy, and I was like wow, Duffy, and I went, she’s big and dope. And it made me just feel big and dope. It made me feel like, oh, I’m a somebody. Yay! [laughs] 

Kellen: Are you a gamer yourself? 

Lupe: Uh, avid. Avid gamer. A lot of role-playing games, fighting games. Street Fighter 2 is like my favorite game in the world.  

Kellen: Let’s turn to your music for a moment. You’re quite well-known for dealing with some tough issues in your music. Are those issues part of what inspires you as an artist? 

Lupe: Yeah, very much so. You know, you gotta talk about something. I know how to talk about just about anything, so you have to kind of find out the right thing to talk about. I pull a lot from things going on in the world, social issues, things I can help with or affect, and really actually bring that stuff to my audience, which is where I came from, people who listen to me and who don’t know what’s going on Russia, going on Uganda or what have you. How do I take those issues, transform them, and package them in a way where my hip-hop family or hip-hop base, you know, can understand it and participate in everything else going on in the world. 

Kellen: Your last album “The Cool” was obviously a huge success and I know you’ve mentioned before that you’re interested in expanding its concept into other media, like a comic book. Have you given that any more thought? 

Lupe: Initially when we first started, like you know the album is kinda based on these different characters, and a little plot line and a little storyline, and we just started to develop all types of crazy ideas. We actually did a little video game that you can play on my website. We’re doing a vintage radio show, like an old Vincent Price radio show from the forties. We’re planning a movie, a comic book, a clothing line, BMX bikes-anything and everything under the sun across mediums to tell the story. I just thought it was a dope story, like a hustler who gets killed and comes back to life and you know, has all these troubles going on. It’s really fresh. 

Kellen: Sounds like you’ve got a lot going on. 

Lupe: Yeah. [laughs] 

Kellen: Last year you started the group Child Rebel Soldiers along with Kanye West and Pharrell. Do you have any plans to do any more music with them, because I know you did the single US Placers which was obviously a hit. Do you have any more ideas for that group?  

Lupe: We’re all on the Glow in the Dark tour together, including Rihanna, with Kanye. Uh, and while we’re on tour we’re coming up with ideas, and different ways to do music and fashion and art and kind of everything. So yeah, we’re still working on it. It’s kind of like our little pet project. 

Kellen: What are some of your favorite artists to worth with besides Kanye and Pharrell and some of those other guys? 

Lupe: Well I worked with Patrick Strump of Fall Out Boy. Fall Out Boy’s pretty cool. Jill Scott, who’s pretty amazing. Anybody that’s kinda like, you wouldn’t expect me go out and work with. You know for like the Superstar remix, like Jeezy and T.I. Any way that I can kinda push the envelope and kinda hit you where you’re not expecting me to hit you at. I really just kinda go for it. 

Kellen: Do you have any ideas at the moment for your follow-up to “The Cool?” 

Lupe: Yes. 

Kellen: [laughs] Is that all I’m gonna get? 

Lupe: May 2009. Stay tuned.

BLAST: How goes the filming of “Pushing Daisies”?

BF: It’s going really well; we’re filming episode seven right now. We start episode eight Friday [August 29], and we’re moving along. We just turned in our outline for episode 10 and are story doc-ing it for episode 11 and about to turn in our story for 12 and we have 13 episodes ordered and so we have one more to go in the order before they have to tell us if we’re doing more or not. So it’s very exciting.

BLAST: You guys got cut really short last year. How did that change the story progression?

BF: You know, there’s a lot of stuff that we’re doing this year that we were going to do in the first season, but I think what really helped us is the fact that this is the second season and there were some stories the network was really nervous about like “I don’t know if that’s a first season story or if you should save that for second season.” It really actually helped us to come back with the second season so we could do some of the stories they were nervous about letting us do in the first season, since we had such a short first season, we got to do right away in the second season. It also really helped us kind of get perspective on the show. When the shut down happened, when it was like “Pencils down” from the Writer’s Guild, we were almost at the end of our scripts anyways, so we were scrambling to get another script ready, and then the shut down happened, so we didn’t have to worry about that. So a lot of those ideas we kind of got back-burnered but the specific episodes; we redid like one or two of them and there are still quite a few that we want to do from last year that were going to be part of the first season. The good thing is that we were just able to get perspective. So we took a step back from the show and being on break and working the terrors of production gave us a chance to just stop and say “Okay, what’s the story that we want to tell?”, “Where are these characters going?” It just gave us the necessary breathing room to chart out a second season which I am really proud of and very excited by. I think the writer’s strike allowed us to not get trapped in the sophomore slump of shows and you feel kind of a lag in the creativity because you see it literally go right from one to the other, and in this case it really allowed us to recharge our batteries, consider what was working on the show and maybe what was not working as well and just have a much more invigorated approach to the second season.

BLAST: Can you give us a preview of what we might be seeing in the second season?

BF: Well all the cliff-hangers that we had; we had the cliff-hanger with Swoosie Kurtz’s character Lily, that plays a big factor in the first three episodes. Really, beyond that, it really is just a big game changer that affects all of the characters; we understand why that secret was kept and why Lily made the choices that she did to not be honest with Chuck about their relationship and we see what happens when Olive, who has been keeping all these secrets from everybody, how her breakdown sends her off to a nunnery to keep those secrets and what happens when she comes back and lets Chuck know and where does that take Chuck, what’s Chuck’s reaction. She’s in a difficult situation because she can’t just go to Lily. Here are these two people like mother and daughter who both think the other one is dead, and it puts them in a really odd situation that we’re going to have a lot of fun with that drama of that particular situation. We also are introducing a character in episode five named Dwight Dixon played by Stephen Root, and he will have a shared history with Chuck’s father and Ned’s father and will stir up a lot of hullaballoo for Ned and he becomes a catalyst to really bring the aunts into the story of the Pie Hole in a way that we really hadn’t seen last year because it was one of those things we were forced to do because of Chuck’s situation and people not knowing she was alive again was to keep the aunts separate. In our first episode, we have the aunts marching through the front door of the Pie Hole and what happens to our characters when that world starts to encroach on theirs and how do they react. It really is about trying to put the characters in really fun situations where they’re forced to keep the secrets that they’ve been trying to keep keeping but may not be able to for long because the walls between worlds are crumbling down.

BLAST: So is it safe to safe to say that Chuck’s secret becomes more tenuous? That it might be harder to keep, which we were kind of seeing at the end of last season?

BF: Yes, definitely. We’re definitely steering towards as much drama as we can mine from that idea as possible. Last year we had an episode “The Fun in Funeral” where Chuck discovers that a watch that was buried with her was stolen by the funeral director, and she gets it back. That watch basically plays a pivotal role around the middle of the season, and we understand that there is significant weight on that watch and that people want it for various reasons.

BLAST: Last season, surprisingly for it being cut short, felt very un-rushed; the progression still felt really natural. Where will the second season pick up?

The second season picks up ten months after the first season. They’re kind of in the same place where Chuck and Ned  we saw last season were in an emotionally difficult place and those wounds have healed and they’re moving forward, but who hasn’t  healed is Olive who’s been forced to be the keeper of a great many secrets. We pick up in a way that that picks up kind of where we left of, except a lot of time has passed which kind of allows Olive to buckle under the weight of all the secrets she has been keeping, that spurs a very dramatic decisions on her part to quit the Pie Hole and leave and set out on a life of her own where she doesn’t have to be keeping his secrets from so many people.

BLAST: So does she end up actually leaving, or is that part of the drama that unfolds?

BF: That’s part of the drama that unfolds; she quits the Pie Hole the first episode and joins a nunnery.

BLAST: What was the decision behind throwing [Kristin Chenoweth] on the show? I hear she’s going to have more musical numbers too.

BF: She is. Barry Sonnenfeld, who directed the pilot, is one of our executive producers that just worked with her on a movie called “RV” with Robin Williams, and we talking about who Olive was and how she has a relatively small role in the pilot and that role would get bigger as the series develops. And because of how much story telling we had to get done in the pilot because being a primus story there wasn’t a lot of room to do a ton with Olive. As we got into the season, we really fleshed out her role, and basically had this conversation; Barry and I got on the phone with Kristin and made her promise that if you do this show we will not let your talents go to waste. That’s why we created the musical numbers for her and one of the things about doing an ensemble show is that there’s an ebb and flow with the characters so we will have some characters be featured more in some episodes and others less so and so we have a great arch for all of the team this season and then she is… not relegated to the background, but she becomes so much a part of the crime solving team that we’re able to see much more of her this season than we were last season. Kristin is Carol Burnett. She has such fantastic comedic timing. She’s also a wonderful dramatic actress. She really is the Carol Burnett for our generation.

BLAST: At Comic-con, you were saying that the idea for “Pushing Daisies” came from a future idea you had for “Dead Like Me.” Is there ever going to be a similar foil that can kill people like your character in “Dead Like Me” who is introduced in “Pushing Daisies”?

BF: There’s no plan for that right now. There are going to be some small crossovers between “Dead Like Me” and “Wonderfalls” and “Pushing Daisies” planned throughout the season, but just letting an audience know that those three series exist in the same universe. Right now we have so many stories to tell with Ned and Chuck and Emerson and the aunts that right now I can’t imagine being able to squeeze in that. But maybe that’s a fun thing to do in the third season, knocking on wood that we get one.

BLAST: You guys have been nominated for 12 Emmys. Give me your response to that great critical feedback.

BF: It’s a pretty fantastic ratio for having only done nine episodes to get 12 Emmy nominations. It’s always the “I’m so happy for everyone who got nominated” and I’m thrilled that I got nominated for writing the pilot and I also wanted Ellen and Swoosie and Chi and Anna to be nominated but I was thrilled that Kristin and Lee were nominated and Barry was nominated and that a production designer. It’s a wonderful acknowledgement that everybody’s back-breaking work from last season, and everybody was functioning on all cylinders and so committed to this show and the creative vision that it just makes me proud.

BLAST: It’s definitely something to be proud of.

BF: Well thank you.

BLAST: Can you tell me a little bit more of where the creative vision came from? It definitely has a very unique feel to it.

BF: It’s very much like decorating a Christmas tree. The idea started back on “Dead Like Me” when I thought “Okay, Georgia is a character who touches people and takes their souls and wouldn’t it be interesting if she had a romantic foil for somebody who touches people and gives their life back.” Then I put that idea in my back pocket and it just kept on percolating. I had a deal with Warner Bros. to do a pilot for them. I pitched several ideas for TV series and by that time I was like “You know, I’m just going to write ["Pushing Daisies"] as a feature. I tried for several years to get it done and they seemed very interested in doing it as a TV series. So I thought, “Okay, I’ll just do it as a feature.” As a last minute thing I pitched it in that pitch session and Susan at Warner Bros. Television was like “That’s the one. That’s the idea that we’re doing.” What I pitched was that a guy can touch dead people and bring them back to life, but if he touches them twice they go back to being dead and he falls in love with a dead girl and he can never touch her again. That was kind of the pitch of the show. So the pie-maker came after that. I was like “What’s that one-liner that’s kind of odd.” I just kept on thinking “Well what does this guy do? Well, I like pie, so maybe he’s a pie-maker. I love reading, I like to read just voraciously, so she’s a shut in who reads every book that ever comes across her path,” and literally just started putting one ornament on the tree after another, and then some ornaments would come off and others would go on and I would add tinsel and light and finally the star on top. It’s strange how these ideas are developed because they are living breathing things in and of their own light and a lot of times the show will tell you what it wants to be. It really is a fascinating process because as much as I would like to say “This was the plan, and I carried it out with precision” it’s just so random and you have to see what fits and what looks good and if it’s something that’s too much then you take it off and the whole process of creating a TV show is really an interesting arch.

BLAST: It’s very much developed.

BF: Developed is such a great word because it’s something that, like you’re preparing a dish, so you add ingredients and you take ingredients away and you bake it for a certain amount of time and then you have to pull it out of the oven and butter the crust and there’s so many steps that can either ruin the dish or make it better than you imagined all along the way that it’s alchemy.

BLAST: What about the look for the show?

BF: There’s big inspiration in “Amelie” for all sorts of reasons; tradition reasons and the story telling and also the look, the saturated colors and the hyper-reality and then there’s also the working with Barry Sonnenfeld who is such a fantastic visualist. What I love about Barry and his approach to making anything is that he wants it to be pretty. He’s like “Okay, this has to be pretty. This could be prettier.” He’s got an aesthetic where he appreciates beauty and sometimes we see movies and television and they revel in kind of like ugly images and Barry is not that guy. He appreciates beauty and wants to create it. It couldn’t have been a better pairing.

BLAST: Some of the content on the show; you guys touch on bulimia and the doll and [a character] thinks she’s a human, but you guys take it with such a grain of salt and such comedy, was that ever an issue trying to get some of the problems that they had to use detective work on into the show?

BF: Not a big problem. There were some stories that we weren’t able to do because sometimes we tipped the scales a bit on certain issues. Usually for the bulimia and the episode dummy it was just a small flavor of who this character was and there wasn’t too much… The network tends to get nervous when we go big and gross, so we try not to go to big and gross places. But if it’s a matter of, once again, alchemy’s a great word; it’s a matter of finding that delicate balance of things in the right ratios that make them much more digestible than if we had significantly spent time in the bathroom stall with that character and her vomiting than it might now be as… fun. So like suggestions of things I find go much further than the visceral brutality of other things.

BLAST: How did you develop that sort kind of relationship, especially between Ned and Chuck where they’re these adults but they still have this childness to them?

BF: I think that’s really my outlook on life, that there is a sense and an appreciation to life. I think that’s what is so great about Ned and Chuck and their relationship, is that they have awe for each other and I think that the world could do with more awe.  Being able to step back and say “Wow that’s neat,” and for me consciousness is enough to make me go “Gah” about being alive, because this base between the backs of your eyes and the back of your head is thick that it can’t be measured and for me that’s enough for me to believe in a power that’s much greater then I will ever be, and appreciate my role in the universe, however small it is. It’s pretty awe-inspiring.

BLAST: Never has a show made me more hungry than this show, I swear. With all the pie, I’ve been craving a nice apple pie for like the past month or so. Can you talk a little bit more about the whole choice for the pie?

BF: You know, really for me it was just sitting down to do this show, I just wanted to fill it with so many things I love. I couldn’t do Criminal Minds or CSI, because you have to live in a very dark head space and a very dark outlook on the human condition. Working on a TV show really is in a lot of ways a prison sentence; you live it, you breathe it, you sacrifice your personal life because it just demands so much of you. I wanted to fill it with so many things I love, that when I have to be here all hours of the night that I was here with things that make me happy. And I love pie. I love a good cherry pie.

BLAST: Every episode just doesn’t leave you alone, it’s like “Oh my god I want pie so much right now!”

BF: I miss those old McDonald deep fried pies.

BLAST: Oh my god, yes!

BF: Remember those?

BLAST: Oh absolutely. I think they still do the apple pies there don’t they?

BF: Well they used to have them in these little hot pockets, and slide them. I think they had a lot of law suits, because people would bite into them and take off all the skin from the inside of their mouths. But I miss those. That was one of my happiest moments; going through the McDonald’s drive-thru and getting a cherry pie.

BLAST: They had cherry pie and I think they had peach at one point, and I would get the apple and they had them two for a dollar and I would just be like “Ah, this is heaven.”

BF: [laughter] The cherry was always my favorite. And you know, a great apple pie is so hard to come by.

BLAST: Yes, yes. Diners are the classic place to go and get pie, and they look so great on shows like “Gilmore Girls,” and then I go to a diner and they aren’t quite up to snuff.

BF: No, no. I mean like, “Twin Peaks,” their pies, yum yum yum.

BLAST: We’ll be on the search for the perfect pie. But back to the show!

BF: That’s a good aspiration.

BLAST: Are we ever going to see Alfredo again? He had this brief two episode stint where Kristin Chenoweth realized she had this potential for another relationship and then he didn’t come back.

BF: Well, we were going to have him come back this season, but he booked a play. As soon as he’s available and we can squeeze him in, we absolutely want to get him back. We have a new romance that’s going to be a brewing for Kristin this season, and what we want to do is get knee deep into that hot and heavy, and then bring Alfredo back. So that there is a big conflict on whom does she choose?

BLAST: Well at least she’s finding some happiness instead of being upset the whole time about Ned and Chuck.

BF: Yeah, we got to give her some happy.

BLAST: Okay, and for my final questions, is there any hope for Ned and Chuck?

BF: In terms of…?

BLAST: Their relationship continuing versus just being on the brink every second hoping that there is no accidental touch that’s going to send Chuck back?

BF: I think there is a tremendous amount of hope for Ned and Chuck. We’re going to see all sorts of devices. I’m excited about an episode were doing now, episode eight, where something really big happens in the story and it’s something where you just want to see Ned and Chuck hold each other and you cut to, Ned and Chuck spooning, where Ned has his arms around her holding her tight and then you reveal that there’s a plastic divider that’s he’s pulling a plastic bubble holding her. So we’re coming up with all sorts of ways we can get them to touch without touching. What’s really fun about this season is that we’ve sexualized Chuck and Ned’s relationship. It’s a family show so we don’t go too far, but we definitely treating them as two sexual adults. There is some nudity, but it’s eight o’clock, so not that kind of nudity, but there’s bare backs and stuff like that. It’s nice to see them grow in that direction.

BLAST: They aren’t going to be kissing each other through Emerson or anything like that though, right?

BF: Like Ned kisses Emerson and Emerson kisses Chuck? [laughter] No, we won‘t be doing that. We do have by proxy high fives and stuff like that that Emerson helps out in. No, he will be out of their bedroom business. He wants to stay away from that.

BLAST: How is shooting for “Chuck” going?

CF: It’s going well; we’re shooting episode 2.09. So we’re nine episodes in and we’re currently writing episode 13. It’s going really, really well.

BLAST: This is the first [show] you’ve done, right? Can you maybe tell me a little bit about that?

CF: Yeah, before this I was working at the film archive for the Motion Picture Film Academy. Then I was also writing features on the side, and I had a feature in development, but by hook or by crook I couldn’t show it to anyone as a spec, but I could show it to TV people, because TV feature people don’t talk. So Josh read it and really dug it, and we went to school together so we started talking about TV shows we liked to see. That’s where “Chuck” came from.

BLAST: The first time I saw the whole Buy More parody off of Best Buy, I couldn’t get over that. I thought it was so funny. ["Chuck"] definitely has those elements, like when Chuck and Bryce are talking in Klingon. It definitely has that funny, more-comedy-than-comedy element to it.

CF: Yeah, that’s the fun of the show for us. There are those moments where the show has high concept action; in each episode we try to come up with something we haven’t seen before, or if we have seen it before, we put some sort of twist or turn on it. And then on the other side of the coin there is the Buy More story. It’s like Chuck’s story with his sister Ellie and Captain Awesome. Those stories are just as important; the heart-warming stuff at home or the high comedy at the Buy More. It’s really fun to make the show because there are so many things that just put a smile on the face as we’re doing it.

BLAST: So what part of the show is you and what part of the show is Josh, because Josh’s other projects; “The OC” and “Gossip Girl”, have a very, very different feel than “Chuck” does.

CF: It’s our work together. We co-wrote the pilot, and I think it’s very much a matching of our sensibilities. Before working on “Chuck,” I was writing what most people would consider action stuff, and Josh’s stuff shows he can write action, but he’s also been very successful with the comedy and soap opera stuff with “The OC” and “Gossip Girl.” I think that the show “Chuck” is definitely comes from the imaginings of two guys who grew up in the 80s and watched a whole lot of Spielberg movies, a lot of Joe Dante movies [...]. Sometimes when we thing about the show and the stuff that we want to include, we’ll say it’s on the cutting edge of 1984. It’s very much the product of that 80s psych, and Josh and I both think in the same TV and movies. Sometimes there’s just the ideal cop in the room, and we all know what we’re tapping into. We’re tapping into some music video that we all watched way too many times or a TV show that we were obsessed with when we were 13. Sometimes there’s an episode which is like one person’s obsession more than everybody else. We’ve got a really exciting episode coming up which is based on old Atari video games. That was very much the writer who is working on this sort of disgrace, and we all kind of dug it because it’s like “Oh, that’s half the stuff we were obsessed with as kids.” When it comes to the physical production of “Chuck,” Josh is a fantastic show runner. With all his experience from “The OC”, he knows how to run a television show, so it’s a real learning process for myself just to go from writing scripts to actually in television, it’s such an involved process. The writers are involved not only in the writing of it, but also in the casting, the producing, and then the editing of the show; you’re there all along the way. So then as a producer, I’ve learned an incredible amount in just the last two years. It’s like the best master class anyone could have. I suggest that everyone get their own television show. Josh has been a great partner in that.

BLAST: You guys kind of got cut off partway through your first season because of the strike. How many episodes are you going for this season?

CF: The expectation of probably 20 could kind of change more or less partway through the season. We’re currently working on our first 13 episodes, with the expectation that we’ll get a back nine from NBC, which is the way it usually works in television; if you make 13 episodes, then they’ll order nine more. We’ve designed the season very much around the lines of taking the 22 episodes, and then if NBC decides maybe even more, who knows. In our first season, we made 13 episodes, and we had just kind of gotten to the realization that people were really digging the show and we had found a really nice audience and we were building. It was around episode six of our first season that we really got into the “Chuck” back story and we realized that people were truly interested in the mythology of the show. They wanted to know about more about Chuck, where he comes from, why Bryce sent him the Intersect’s secrets. We were just really digging into that mystery when, unfortunately, the writers’ strike hit. Then we had to kind of close up shop. After the strike was over, NBC decided to give us a second season as opposed to nine more episodes. What we essentially did was take most of the concepts we wanted to get into in the back nine and turn that into the beginning of the second season. Of course you have to massage everything when you do that because essentially a season is kind of like a giant book with each episode being a chapter. We’ve gone back and our first episode we’re definitely re-launching the show, so that if a person didn’t watch those first 13 episodes, they can kind of get back into the show very quickly, or understand the show very quickly. We had a lot of great ideas that we were very excited about, and now we’re looking forward to getting into them. I think that when Josh and I first came up with the show, we were very much thinking about stand alone episodes, kind of like a show from the 60s, 70s, or 80s. It would be a mystery of the week or an action show of the week. And you would have a villain come in and tell a little mini action-comedy story, but we realized that people really liked the mythology, and I think that people have been primed with shows like “Lost” and “The X-Files”, expect mythology. It was exciting for us; it was like “Oh, people want to know more. They want to have recurring villains and they want to have a greater sense of the mythology and a greater sense of the mystery.” We loved to oblige them in the second season.

BLAST: Is this going to have a more direct plot? Is there going to be an actual nemesis, more so than Bryce, that’s going to be introduced?

CF: Yeah, absolutely. We began to tease out the idea that there was an organization called Fulcrum in the first season, which is essentially like in “Three Days of the Condor” in the way he describes a CIA within the CIA. This mysterious organization is something we’re playing with now in the second season. Like, who exactly are these people and what do they want? A lot of shows have gone down this road and we are looking to tell it, but what’s our original “Chuck” take on that? I mean, they have operatives and people who are looking for Bryce Larkin because they believe that Bryce is the Intersect computer. But it’s like “What makes these people tick?” In our show, it’s like there’s always intermediates, there’s a lot of villains who are working for [Fulcrum], or working for people who don’t even know. Through this season, we’d like to get the audience excited about what is actually happening and what in our bigger, overarching mystery. What is their plan? There will be more of an organization as well as Bryce Larkin will [be involved]. Fulcrum is something we look forward to getting into.

BLAST: I’m taking from that that you might get into them very quickly in the first few episodes?

CF: Yes, you could say that. You could definitely say that. The show is started with a real bang this year. Our first episode is an epic. We’ve got amazing bits of action having to do with the re-launch of the new Intersect computer, Chuck thinking that he might be let go, that the government might be done with him, and he can go back to his old life. What does that mean for him and Sarah? I would say that our first three episodes are definitely an arch unto themselves; essentially getting us back into the show and dealing with the Sarah/ Chuck romance. They’re really romantic. There’s a lot of romance in the first three episodes, as well as a lot of slam-bang action.

BLAST: What about Bryce? I heard he’s going to be coming back a couple of times this season.

CF: Yeah, Matt Bomer is fantastic; we worked with him last season. He was also the first person to work on the pilot on our first day of shooting with the Intersect vault scene. Matt brought such a great energy to the show that it’s been a real great pleasure to work with him. He will be coming back to the show this year right now. And he comes back at a very unfortunate time for poor Charles Irving Bartowski.

BLAST: I feel like there are a lot of questions left in the “Chuck” mythology, even back to the Stanford days, because we didn’t get a quite clear explanation from Bryce’s perspective why he did what he did. How long is it going to take for those to get cleared up?

CF: Some of the mysteries are things that even Bryce doesn’t know the answers to. Those things will be addressed this season. But when you see Bryce, he won’t have all the answers for you. In other parts of the show, we will go back to Stanford, but maybe they won’t deal with Bryce. We’ll definitely be going back into each of our characters’ back stories and teasing out those things that lead to who they are personally but also to the mythology of the show; the Intersect super computer, Bryce Larkin, Fulcrum, and why Chuck was sent those secrets. I think that that’s definitely what will be answered by the end of the season.

BLAST: Can you tell me a little bit about Tony Hale joining the cast?

CF: Ah, Tony Hale; he’s great. And that goes to the Buy More side of the story. A lot of the time we talk about spy stuff on the show, but such great fun is in the works for the comedy side of things, inside the Buy More. Tony Hale will be joining the cast as Emmett Milbarge, the new assistant manager inside the Buy More. Emmett is a passive aggressive character, and sometimes overtly aggressive. And when he comes into the store, it’s like he lasers in on one Charles Irving Bartowski because he realizes these are two men cut from the same cloth; leaders, college men as well. Unfortunately Chuck is public enemy number one for Emmett Milbarge. We kind of saw Emmett as someone cut from the J. Edgar Hoover cloth by way of Mussolini. His presence in the store is a new challenge for Chuck. One of the things we love about the show is that the stakes inside the Buy More are sometimes as seemingly high as the stakes out there in the real world, with the intensity. When people go to their jobs, it’s the most important thing in their life. For Morgan and Jeff and Lester and Anna, Emmett Milbarge is their Fulcrum, is their evil nemesis. Tony is fantastic; he’s come in and he’s hilarious, and we’ve been really enjoying cutting his episodes.

BLAST: Are there any surprises you can let us know about in the first episode? Anything we can look forward to?

CF: Essentially by the end of the teaser; first episode, our entire show is turned on its head. It’s an exciting, amazing episode with a twist ending that hopefully no one in their right mind will see coming, except for the people that wrote it. Also, just in the upcoming episodes, we’ve got a lot of great cast members coming on. Tony Hale. We also have Melinda Clarke from “The OC” coming as Sasha Banacheck, KGB spy. We have John Larroquette on the show playing episode two, playing Roe Montgomery, the master seducer who will train Chuck Bartowski in how to seduce women. We also have Michael Clarke Duncan in the first episode; 2.01, starring as the villain of that one. In episode 2.04 we have Nicole Richie who is really funny. So we have a lot of really great guest stars coming on this year and it’s been a lot of fun to cut these people in and introduce them to our crazy world. The show really comes to life.

“I started to sing in front of people when I was in primary school with my friends but the first time I had an audience was when I was 16,” Niko reminisced. “Every summer I went to the beach on my bicycle with my guitar [But] it was unusual because I was a young boy singing Diana Polanka songs and the guys of my age sang other things.”

In an interview with Blast, Niko explained that his musical passion was, is and will forever be, rock. Because of this he began performing the rock songs he grew up listening to and loving. As he grew older his beach gigs got him a mid-sized following, or as he describes with a grin, “I started making many, many, friends.”

As a child he received a keyboard, rock cassettes and a guitar as gifts for Christmas and birthdays from is parents who wanted him to enjoy music. However, they never fully realized that as Niko taught himself to play the instruments and lip-synch to the rock tunes, he was dreaming of one day being an artist. After performing in the beach over the summers his first glimpse at fame came when he was 18.

The teen entered a TV competition, Rei Por La Note (King for a Night), where he sang and won the night’s honors. His performance was seen nationwide and after that his popularity grew. Through more contests and gigs he met Paolo Limiti, an Italian T.V. personality from the national station Rai Uno. Limiti decided Niko would be great addition to his show and sooner than soon he was performing American, dance and Italian songs for millions across Italy’s television sets. In search for more, Niko moved to Milan.

There he put together a band of seven musicians and toured the country for ten years. His large number of new “friends” started filing up bars, as he became a true “Piano Man” and sang at local restaurants and hot spots across the country.

“I worked in clubs and played and sang every kind of music, from waltz to salsa to cha-cha-cha to disco from the 70s every kind. When I was 20 I started to sing in Italian because I started to work at many piano bars, but for me it’s beautiful to be here [in America] because I feel at home. I don’t now why but I always thought there was something special for me, something between me and America- I always felt this, and now it’s a dream come true for me.”

While touring and being on stages nearly every other day the star in training learned valuable lessons. Niko says that first, and most importantly, he learned to stay on stage and to know how to talk to the audience. He also learned the “right behavior” with my musicians, to know how to be punctual and work as a team rather than being a diva-man. “I think it’s important to stay true to yourself, ‘tu mismo,’ because I am living this moment like an important adventure and a beautiful experience for my life first of all. Is not important to me to become a huge star it’s important to me to sing.”

Just as he got into Italy’s heart, Niko tells that when he sings he can give other people the feeling that he’s feeling. For him, that is the most important thing. “I understand it will be strong if you have success now but then no more! I don’t want this, I just want to stay quiet and enjoy this moment every day.”

It’s still uncertain if Niko’s days will remain quiet or not. He was offered the opportunity to come to America by director-producer Steve Binder who met Niko on one of his shows while vacationing in Europe. Binder enjoyed the show so much he offered Niko the chance to meet people in the industry and obtain a development deal with Live Nation. From his most recent album Niko’s sounds are smooth and romantic. He is indeed gifted with a good voice, making his ballads alluring, but what probably attracts audiences most is his open personality.

Throughout the interview itself, the singer was nervous about his accent but eager to share memories and talk. This Italian feel is what Niko can bring to the table without having much competition. Although he is compared to Josh Groban or Andrea Bocelli and toured this summer with Chicago and the Doobie Brothers, his music is constantly developing.

“I want him to be Niko not anybody else, you can compare the vocal talent but not the performance. His communication with the audience is different,” said Binder. “Going with Chicago and the Doobie Brothers who are heavy duty Rock and Roll and seeing that they’ve embraced each other and had true love affair of musicians is amazing. Too see that four bars into a first song people are putting attention… I’ve never seen that with an opening act.”

Now as he prepares to work in the U.S. it’s exciting to hear about the music he may work in. Maybe audiences can expect Italian accented soft rock tunes? “I think when I first saw my first movie I was four or five with my parents and we went to see Grease. This was my first important moment because I immediately loved the music, Rock and Roll, the style, everything; I love many different kinds of music but my first love was Rock and Roll,” asserted the singer.

Although his summer tour has come to an end there are plans for future concerts as a record is being prepared. When asked whether or not he missed his native land, the answer is “of course,” but for the obvious reasons of family, friends and fans that are there. As far as his career is concerned Niko tells that he belongs here now.

“When I said ‘I am going to America’ people in Italy were very happy for my career and for me because I didn’t have many opportunities, it’s a sad thing but the music business in Italy is very closed; so we’ll see what happens because they are waiting for another Italian concert,” Niko added jokingly. “I couldn’t believe I to go out of Italy. I could not do it because it was difficult, I didn’t know anybody but I met Steve and this year is the beginning of my adventure.”

Enter to win a copy of Niko’s CD, Per Te, by emailing Giveaways@BlastMagazine.com

BLAST: So how goes shooting?

JG: It goes well. We’re having a blast. It’s totally just a pleasure and so much fun to come to work and work on this set because it’s a great set. It’s a fun set.

BLAST: Does Morgan get to get into the action a little bit (in season two)? Maybe?

JG: He gets into his own action. He doesn’t go out in any of the Chuck world stuff as of yet, and I don’t know if he ever will, though I’m sure he’d love it, between you and I.

BLAST: I think we’d love it too.

JG: Yeah. Some of the action comes to him at the Buy More whether inadvertently, like he doesn’t know, or like the rest of the stuff gets mixed up at the Buy More. And then there’s a few things that are like things that are specifically centered around the ‘B’ story and the Buy More and sort of Morgan and some enemies, but like Michael Strahan from the New York Giants, and he kind of plays a big jock guy or whatever and him and Morgan get into it. So he gets into his own trouble at the Buy More.

BLAST: What about him and Anna, because that kind of tapered off at the end of season one. Does that continue into season two?

JG: It does. Yeah, it definitely does. And so is the fun little romance. It’s pretty bizarre. She’s definitely the uh… she wears the pants, or leggings.

BLAST: The short skirts in the relationship?

JG: She wears the short skirts and leggings in the relationship. Yeah, so it’s pretty funny. Exactly. Everyone kind of wasn’t sure, well, what happened? And I think that was a lot to do with the strike. I think that those episodes weren’t as fleshed out as they could be because they only had to go off of the outline that they really had through whatever episode. I think that’s the reason why the last episodes are kind of like “Huh?” We are kind of where we left off where Morgan and Anna were at. There’s some fun stuff that happens between those two. It’s pretty cool.

BLAST: I was a little worried. I was like “Did I miss something in here?”

JG: Yeah, I think a lot of people felt that way. Exactly. When we first started to do little tests for the beginning of this season, that was one of the first questions. It was like “What the hell is going on with you and Anna; where did she go?” I think everyone was kind of like hoping that that wasn’t going away. So yeah, no, it’s good.

BLAST: What about Morgan and Ellie?

JG: Mmm, now we’re getting down to it. No, at this point I think it’s just he’s good with Anna and Ellie’s now engaged with Captain Awesome. But I think in Morgan’s brain, it’s just one of those childhood absolute infatuations, first love kind of deal, and she’ll always be that. I think he loves Anna, and I think all that’s cool, but I think that if Ellie was like “Hey, what’s up Morgan?” he might not hesitate. I think he’ll always love her in that young boy’s dream kind of thing. It’s very sweet and very childlike love.

BLAST: Especially in the first few episodes of the first season you definitely got that puppy dog sort of “Oh, you want to hang out?” type of thing.

JG: It’s less of that now between Morgan and Ellie. It’s almost brother and sister, and that’s exactly what it was. She was like big sister to both he and Chuck. So I think that there’s more of that now Anna’s around. I kind of get off her case a little bit. I think there’s still a sweetness between (Morgan and Ellie) that’s unspoken. It comes out here and there. But yeah, it’s good. Another great relationship.

BLAST: I heard Josh Schwartz talk at Comic-con and I believe he said that this season takes up pretty much right where the last season ended. Is that true?

JG: Yeah.

BLAST: Can you kind of set us up for where we’re going to be starting episode one?

JG: Basically the government has kind of constructed another working Intersect. So it does pick up where we left off which is that “Okay now what happens?” Is John Casey going to get the orders to, once the Intersect is completed and fully operational, now what do we do with Chuck kind of a deal. Is he going to have to be eliminated or quarantined? I think that’s where we kind of left off and that’s exactly where we pick up with season two. Literally I think it picks up with Chuck being held out of a building and while he’s hanging there the audience will get a little recap through his panicked words. There’s not much of a gap there. It’s sort of, if the Intersect is completed, what’s going to become of Chuck? And part of that is kind of good; part of it is Chuck going like “Oh my Lord, to be free of this thing.” But I think he thinks that if the Intersect is finished, he’s a free man. He can go back to his normal life. That’s where we’ll probably pick up from.

BLAST: At the beginning, right when Chuck did download the Intersect, there was some talk of removing it. That tapered away though, and they just used him as a tool. Does that come back in this whole “We have a new Intersect” conversation? Or is it basically just “You’re going to die”?

JG: Not so much of a removal. The removal I don’t think worked and it never really comes up again. I think it’s basically “We can’t have two Intersects”. We can’t have some guy walking around knowing all these things in his head because that’s still way too much of a (danger). It doesn’t come down to removal as much as removal of him completely.

BLAST: Do we have any new characters? Maybe in the Buy More or new agents that are coming that might stay for a little bit longer or become more main?

JG: Yeah. Most of the characters that you’re probably familiar with in the first season become a little bit more present. Most of the Nerd Herd and obviously like Anna and Jeff and Lester and Big Mike and all those guys are recurring regulars or regulars or whatever. They’re going to be playing a little bit more of a role in the whole thing especially at the Buy More I think. And then of course Tony Hale comes on; Tony Hale from Arrested Development, who is just so much fun and such a cool dude and so funny. He comes on to play this really cool character called Emmett Milbarge who is brought in from corporate Buy More as an efficiency expert and as he spends more time at the Buy More you realize we are not friends. That’s the cool stuff. We had C.S. Lee played Harry Tang and he was great character for the Buy More and an adversary for Chuck and Morgan at the Buy More. Emmett’s that kind of character. This story is playing out much more like Morgan has… I hate to use the word “grown up,” because not quite yet, but he’s maturing and taking on a little more responsibility, he gets a little bit more responsibility, people are now coming to him. Chuck’s by now left the Buy More because I think the spy world is really starting to consume him a little bit more this season. At the Buy More, people like the Nerd Herd and the gang and stuff are turning to Morgan now and he does the best he can in his Morgan way, and so it usually leads to some fun times at the Buy More. And so Emmett becomes this really cool adversary for Morgan and the guys and Tony just fit right in and is just great right off the bat. It’s fun.

BLAST: What kind of character does Tony play? Is he channeling the whole “Buster” persona or is he going to be more along the lines of a serious [character]?

JG: Well, both. He’s definitely a new deal but he plays his character so well it’s easy to imagine that this is the guy that if he finds a piece of lint in his pocket he would blow a gasket. Emmett is this like ridiculously anal [character] and takes his job way too serious and the rest of us couldn’t take it any less serious, including Big Mike. You’ll definitely find some elements of [Buster], but I think it’s a whole new deal and a whole new character. It’s pretty funny. It’s pretty good stuff.

BLAST: So he’s the big new character; there’s no one else super surprising?

JG: He’s not until the fourth or fifth [episode] right now. He’s not in every episode. He doesn’t start the season off in the show but he eventually kind of comes in. As far as new characters though, nothing changes too much. As far as the spy world is concerned you still have Chuck, Casey, and Sarah, the three of them are sort of out there, so no one really gets added to that gang. A lot of cool guest stars though, a lot of people coming on board: Michael Clarke Duncan and there’s an episode where John Laroquette plays an ex-spy who has to come in and teach Chuck how to be more suave and how to seduce women and once again, a great premise, a great actor coming in. And him and Zack together are just great because they’re both so freaking cool. So yeah, you got a lot of cool guest stars, but the cast’s pretty much the same as it was like I said with the addition of some recurring like Tony Hale. That’s about it. That’s about it so far.

BLAST: What about the plot? Is there a more definite destination that we’re going towards? Is there going to be a nemesis introduced?

JG: What’s funny is that I tried to talk to the guys all the time, whether it be Josh Schwartz and mostly with Chris Fedak who I see a lot. I love trying to get answers out of them, the writing staff and stuff. But it’s like, they’ll give you little niblets. You know they have a plan. You know, they’ll pull out their Chuck bible and… I know they have their whole history ready to go. I think there’s going to be stuff they’re going to introduce, people they’re going to introduce, roads they’re going to go down, but I just don’t think they’re going to give it up to us. Every script that I get is the same as what you guys are going to be seeing every week, watching it. It’s just like “Okay, okay. Interesting, interesting.” I mean there’s a few things they’ll tell us in advance but as far as any big things like that where are we going to find out what really happened to Chuck’s parents or is his father alive and is he out there? I’m sure they have a map and a blueprint, but they sure as hell aren’t telling me.  But I’m sure whatever it is, it will be good. I think we’re shooting episode nine right now and there’s some kind of cool revelations and some cool things. And of course Bryce Larkin, who kind of is the nemesis, he’s popping in and out. There’s always Bryce lingering, kind of causing havoc, kind of helping Chuck and also hurting him at the same time. I would say that if there is a nemesis, it would still be Bryce Larkin. As far as anything new, again, perhaps, but I don’t know.

BLAST: Well once again, thanks for talking to us. We look forward to watching Morgan wreak havoc at the Buy More.

JG: [laughing] Well, you will. You will.

“My first assignment for finals in drama class was Shakespeare and the teacher said I couldn’t do it because a Latino wouldn’t do it well. I remember practicing with a little tape recorder, and he ended up giving me an A. He said that I was good, but that I should go to Mexico to do soaps because as an actor I wouldn’t make it in the U.S.,” recalls Hector Luis Bustamante talking to Blast recently.

That teacher is probably biting his tongue now because Bustamante, like many other Latino actors, is making it in the U.S. His latest gig casts him as Pedro Vera in Lifetime Network’s Little Girl Lost: The Delimar Vera Story. He is also Luis Aramboles, opposite Michael Chiklis and Walton Goggins on FX’s hit series The Shield and, oh yeah, his 30-plus episodes as a heartthrob on NBC’s soap Passions.

“The teacher said to me that I had an accent, and I tried to get rid of it, but later I realized my accent is me and its not gonna change. He had his favorites in class and I speculate I wasn’t one,” Bustamante chuckled.

A native of Medellin, Colombia, Bustamante moved to America when he was 12. His family settled in New Jersey, and he became an East Coast boy. As he got used to life in the North, the actor also became interested in the television show I Love Lucy where, as he explained, it was the first time he saw a Hispanic man in an American show. “Something in me said ‘wow that’s what I want to do.’”

Like so many other boys, he first joined drama class in high school as an attempt to meet a pretty girl. As he got to rehearse and learn more about acting, Bustamante took things seriously, which included the teacher’s comments. Although he never said it out loud, the criticism made Bustamante think he would never be a good actor. When senior year came and went, he chose to study graphic design at Parsons School of Design in New York.

“I was rushed and I decided to do graphic design until I was ready to do an audition thinking to myself ‘oh my god what am I doing?’ and I told people,” he said. “They said ‘you’re crazy’ and I became a corporate investigator and did that for 10 years instead.”

Sudden twist? Yes and no. By the late 90s, Bustamante was doubtful he could be a good actor, but at the same time he yearned to act. Under everybody’s radar he lobbied for a move to the West Coast, while going home at night and watching T.V. thinking “man, one day,” he said.

“I ended up getting the job in San Francisco and it wasn’t until a couple of months later that I stumbled into an advertising for an audition. It was for a Latino actor and I said “wow they want an accent,” so I knew I could’ve done this since long ago,” said Bustamante.

With the flier, the then private investigator went home and researched what he had to do to get to Los Angeles and not fail in the business. Without caring about comments he set goals for himself. He enrolled in acting classes at Shelton’s Actors’ Studio and within a year, he started hitting up auditions.

While in the bay area, Bustamante got his first major television role, appearing on CBS’s The Agency, playing the head of the Colombian police. His television credits include roles on NYPD Blue, Monk, Without A Trace, 24 and Heroes.

“In the spring of 2003 I got a TV show and it was the same year I flew to NY to resign [as an investigator]. My boss was crazy over it and he even said ’sleep it off and come back tomorrow’. I slept it off and the next day I came in and had my resignation signed off,” he said.

His resignation came with an explanation to his direct supervisor too, who after hearing that Bustamante acted on his days off said, “Really? You’re on TV?”

“My boss was like me, interested in the industry,” he said. “When I was working I got a call from him saying he’d drive me to an audition, so along the way certain people have stood out to make things happen.”

But everything is not acting nowadays for the Colombian. Bustamante, who is very close to his family, moved his mom to Los Angeles when he relocated there. He is also a proud dad. His daughter’s only petition is that he plays a “good guy one time and a bad guy the next.” Aside from this, he has also made time to get involved with PADRES Contra El Cancer (Parents Against Cancer), Eva Longoria’s non-profit organization committed to improving the quality of life for Latino children with cancer. After attending last year’s fund raising gala and watching video greetings from children who are helped through the foundation Bustamante wanted to help more. He currently serves as an ambassador to the group, seeking donations and speaking about the children’s needs.

“Even though I feel like I made it, it has to be like I haven’t made it yet. My goal is to be a part of a big blockbuster or a cast that gives me a daily job and make me say, ‘yeah I made it.’ Many actors complain that there’s no jobs and I’ve just been blessed to have a job since I moved here so you have to make a decision and sacrifice it all to make it happen,” Bustamante confessed.

The new season of The Shield, premiering September 2, is rumored to be the best thus far. Bustamante only gushed that the show is “opening with a bang and finishing with a bang.” As far as Lifetime goes, the film, based on a true story, follows a mother whose daughter is believed to have died in a fire and is spotted six years later at a birthday party. Bustamante was “very interested in the story,” and from previews, it seems it will be an interesting tale.

The actor’s Passions episodes will begin airing in October. Of all the projects he has going on he admits that the daytime drama was a big challenge.

“Every actor has to do three scripts a day and you only have one take so it’s a lot of work! It made me a better actor and hats off to everyone who works on soaps everyday,” Bustamante said, saying that any job is a good job too. “As actors we have to be balanced and understanding and sometimes its just waiting, like going to the amusement park. Why stop in a line that takes two hours? Because there’s an amazing ride at the end and that’s exactly acting. You wait to get to the front of the line to get the ride of your life.”

Hailey, looking slightly frazzled in glasses and a ponytail, steps off the elevator clutching a Starbucks cup, and Grey follows a few minutes later, huddled in a purple hoodie.

“They’ve really packed a lot in for us today,” Hailey explains to me as she asks a concierge where she can drop off her laundry nearby.

Midway through our chat, Grey and Hailey are whisked away to approve mock-ups from a recent photo shoot, and after the interview concludes, they’re off to film a segment for Fearless TV. All the hubbub precedes a sold-out show at Manhattan’s Highline Ballroom the following night.

It’s the eve of what was supposed to be the release date for “Common Reaction,” the band’s debut full-length album. But the record was pushed back to August for reasons that remain unclear (more on that later). As a result, this spring Grey and Hailey found themselves in the unlikely position of playing a string of shows to capacity crowds who had never heard most of their material, save for a five-song EP released last November. But apparently that did nothing to dampen fans’ enthusiasm.

“Other than the fact that people are bummed out that they can’t get the record sooner, it hasn’t really had much of an effect,” Grey said.

“It’s tricky, but then we play the songs off the EP and they’re like, ‘Yeeeaaaah!’ ‘cause they know those,” Hailey added. “And I guess we’re just anxious to have that be the whole show.”

Hailey, 37, who portrays blogger/podcaster/talk show host Alice Pieszecki on Showtime’s lesbian drama “The L Word,” is best known musically as one-half of ‘90s college radio faves The Murmurs. Grey, 29, has a resume that boasts collaborations with Busta Rhymes and Dr. Dre, as well as soundtrack work for film and television. Hailey, who knew Grey as the bassist and keyboardist for L.A. indie outfit Mellowdrone (for which she’s credited as Cami Gutierrez), broached the idea of a musical partnership in the fall of 2006.

“We were complete strangers,” Hailey said. “I was looking to do music again, and Cam was in Mellowdrone. And I basically just, you know, asked my friends about her. She seemed like a cool girl and obviously had a stellar roster of people she’s worked with. So I just called her out of the blue one day and was like, ‘Hey, do you want to start a band?’”

Borrowing their name from a PJ Harvey song, the pair recorded the “I See Red” EP in Grey’s house and embarked on a mini-tour of major U.S. and European cities in late 2007. In order to fill their set times, they were forced to write new material on the road almost daily. (”We had nothing to play!” Grey stresses.) The outing included a sold-out date at London’s Shepherd’s Bush that they cite as a pivotal show in their burgeoning career.

“It just sticks out in our minds as the most exciting because it was a giant theater filled with people, and it was probably our 15th or 16th show ever,” Hailey recalled. “For us, it was a massive thrill.”

Grey, however, says being thrust in front of such large audiences from the start (thanks mostly to Hailey’s “L Word” fame) has been a “double-edged sword.” The more soft-spoken member of the duo admits that transitioning from a behind-the-scenes collaborator to frontwoman has taken some getting used to.

“I want to say it’s been seamless, but it hasn’t,” she said, laughing. “It’s been kind of difficult to just know what you’re doing immediately in front of that many people. … But I think I’m coming into it pretty well. I mean, it’s different every show. You know, there are good shows and bad shows.”

Fans in New York would probably agree. The Highline Ballroom show earlier this year was the band’s second in the city in the span of five months. A performance at Webster Hall last December was marred by sound problems and technical difficulties, and neither Hailey nor Grey appeared to be comfortable, either on stage or with the songs they were playing. But during their performance this spring, Grey demonstrated a newly-discovered commanding stage presence and Hailey sashayed behind her keyboard, openly enjoying the rebirth of her inner rock star.

It’s clear that the vast majority of Uh Huh Her’s following — for now, at least — consists of fans of “The L Word” and Hailey in particular. That said, it’s also clear that the band has bigger aspirations and hopes “Common Reaction” will nudge their music into the mainstream.

“We’re both really grateful that we have an audience to play for. … It’s every band’s dream,” Hailey pointed out, with Grey nodding beside her in agreement. “We do want to branch out, but there’s no negative to it. It’s just basically given us a springboard.”

“A launching pad for bigger and better things,” Grey added.

But while Hailey’s name is likely the big draw at this point, it’s arguably Grey that’s at the helm. In addition to handling production duties on the EP, she’s credited with lead vocals, keyboards, synthesizers, bass, guitars and programmed drums on the album. Hailey lends backing vocals and synthesizers, occasionally picking up the bass during live shows. Their writing process is collaborative both in terms of music and lyrics, they say, so recording the songs that would become “Common Reaction” revolved in part around Hailey’s shooting schedule for “The L Word.”

“It (was) different every month of how we sort of put this thing together,” Hailey said. “When I got home … we would get together and write all the time. Cam would fly up to Vancouver (where “The L Word” is filmed). I bought a computer rig up there that was exactly the same as hers so we could bring the same hard drive up there and have the same files.”
Hailey and Grey have their own theories about why the record was pushed back.

“To be honest, I just don’t think (the record label) had a really good marketing plan,” Grey said.

“We don’t officially know,” Hailey noted. “I think that the label was expecting us to make a record much like the EP, which was a really lo-fi, homemade bedroom thing that Cam did – which is amazing, and she’s a genius at it. But … it just (ended up being) a lot more polished and commercial, and I think (label executives) were like, oh, we need to set this record up properly then, and not just put it out.”

(When asked about the postponement, a spokesperson for Nettwerk Records e-mailed the following: “We are really excited about the album and believe this band is something special. So we wanted to give the music time to gain a life in the public and reach people before the release.”)

With the new release date — August 19 — coinciding with “The L Word” being in production for its sixth and final season, Hailey will once again find herself juggling two jobs later this year. (Grey, for her part, says she plans to work on solo material later this year while Hailey’s filming.)

“It’s a lot of work, and it’s straining,” Hailey says. “I have to admit, it’s hard. The hardest part is being away from home so much, because now at this point, I work on (”The L Word”) and then maybe I’m home for a couple of weeks, and then I’ll be touring. So, that’s hard. But it’s great because I’m doing two things that I absolutely love.”

Hailey’s colleagues at “The L Word” have been supportive of the band, both on and off-screen. Uh Huh Her’s sultry “Explode” was featured in an episode of the show’s fifth season earlier this year.

“It was super sweet that they put a song of ours in there,” Hailey said. “It sounded good, (but) it didn’t make any sense (in the scene).”

Grey begged to differ, pointing out that the song’s haunting “Don’t walk away” refrain was audible as a main character was preparing to fly the coop with her lover.

“Oh,” Hailey said, visibly grasping the significance for the first time. “I didn’t even get that.”

Once the show ends, Hailey said, she plans to devote herself full-time to Uh Huh Her.

“I definitely don’t want to stop acting,” she said emphatically. “But I love doing this.”

It may be a blessing in disguise that Uh Huh Her is finding its footing at the same time “The L Word” is coming to a close. Hailey and Grey are both talented musicians, and the quality of their music is respectable in its own right – good enough to warrant the attention of listeners who are unfamiliar with Hailey the actress.

Throughout “Common Reaction,” densely layered keyboards and guitars abound (”I tend to err on the side of synth,” Grey quips.) The duo recruited session musicians Brad Ackley and Jordan Medina to play guitar and drums on the album, and performed as a quartet during their spring tour, with “hired guns” Jacques Brautbar on guitar and Josh Kane on drums.

A few of the songs are products of Grey and Hailey’s prolific writing during that first tour, including rollicking lead single “Not a Love Song” (which is currently streaming on the band’s MySpace page) and the title track. On the former, Grey insists, “I am not singing a love, singing a love song,” then proceeds to blow that assertion out of the water over the next 10 tracks, which are all about … well, you know.

Two songs from the “I See Red” EP – “Say So” and “Explode” – also made the final cut. (”They were standout tracks … that we wanted to kind of polish up,” Grey explains.) The album version of “Say So” doesn’t live up to its EP predecessor, but the two versions of “Explode” are nearly indistinguishable.

“I think the album will reach a different audience,” Hailey said, reiterating the band’s intent to broaden its fanbase when “Common Reaction” hits shelves. “So it’s giving those new people a chance to hear the old stuff that they never heard. It’s not like we’re re-feeding the same audience. That’s not the plan.”

The pair’s breathy vocals blend nicely together, and the album is anchored by strong harmonies, particularly on the title track and the ridiculously catchy “Covered.” Grey’s occasionally mumbled singing often renders the lyrics indecipherable, but not to a fault.

“I think our voices fit well together,” Grey said. “A lot of it was production-conscious, trying to make two voices kind of sound like one.”

“I think a lot of times people don’t know who’s singing, which is funny,” Hailey added.

The title “Common Reaction,” the ladies explain, refers to the volatile relationships that are the subject of most of their songs.

“It’s kind of like when something’s really potent,” Hailey said. “It’s almost like chemistry. It’s like two things are drawn together, and it’s a good combination, but it’s also …”

“Like a chemical reaction,” Grey chimed in. “It’s explosive.”

“It’s explosive,” Hailey concluded after a lengthy ramble. “We just thought matched sort of the theme of the album. … I think a lot of our songs are about that very thing.”

The same might be said for Hailey and Grey themselves. Self-admitted polar opposites (Grey’s a Capricorn; Hailey’s a Cancer), the pair seem to make the most of their differences. Over the course of our 40-minute interview, both munching on bagels, they often clarified each other’s thoughts and finished each other’s sentences. Apparently they’re well-practiced at this after months of writing lyrics together.

“What makes it interesting, I guess, for us as writers, is just talking about the same thing, but talking about it from two different points of view,” Hailey said. “Just on a very shallow note … I’m a real sort of happy-go-lucky kind of person.

“And I’m … ?” Grey responded, feigning insult.

“No, you’re happy as well,” Hailey backpedaled, “I’m not saying that you’re dark or moody, but you’re just … You know what I’m talking about.”

“I think I have a bit of a dark side,” Grey offered. “And she’s kind of … ”

“I don’t really have one,” Hailey interjected with a laugh. “We’re just different. I don’t know.”

“We come from two different places, and just try to make (our songs) make sense,” Grey explained. “They somehow always do.”

Common Reaction comes out on August 19.

With the sounds of David Bowie and Bauhaus providing the soundtrack for her adolescent romps through Canadian forests, it was clear a future of tours and gigs was where Sharma was headed. But as her teenage years began, a love of acting began to manifest itself. 

“I was going through life after graduating from high school trying to figure out all my shit,” Sharma said. Upon graduating, she enrolled in the Emily Carr Institute of Design, inspired by the likes of Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso. In a continued youthful attempt to find her career path, she also earned a Holistic Counselor Certification from the West Coast College of Massage Therapy soon after.

It was then that Sharma decided to devote herself to the pursuit of acting as a career choice. She knew the odds were stacked against her as an Indian woman in a predominantly white industry.  

She trained at Ivana Chubbuck Acting Studio, and later the Lyric School of Acting. She acted in roles on the cult classic series “The Lone Gunmen” (2001), and “Dark Angel” (2002), along with parts in well-known series such as “The Twilight Zone” (2002) and “John Doe” (2003). Pretty soon she had secured the part of Dr. Harden on the series “Smallville” (2006).

Her auditions and unique career choices got her noticed, because soon she was filming on the sets of the major motion pictures “The Core” (2003), and “The Chronicles of Riddick” (2004), then on Showtime’s “The L Word (2004). Finally, she landed her a role on the award-winning show “Battlestar Galactica” (2006).

“Battlestar Galactica” is a re-imagining of the original 1978 television series of the same name. It follows the last remaining human refugees who fled their home world after a nuclear disaster.

On the show, Sharma’s character Tory is an aid to the president, played by actress Mary McDonnell. In this season of the show, plot twists involving Sharma’s character have garnered mixed reactions from fans.

Sharma said she often finds herself defending her character’s actions, after she was revealed to be a Cylon, part of the race of robots and human-looking cyborgs who launched the apocalyptic nuclear attack. In the story, the Cylons’ ultimate goal is to pursue the last of humanity and wipe them out.

“I think even Tory the Cylon is still human,” she said. “If you look at all the characters on the show, they’ve been starved, hunted, homeless, dying, imprisoned and after all that, they’re still living together in space. Sometimes what is seen as evil under one circumstance, will seem the most humane thing to do in another.”

In terms of filming, Sharma said it’s Tory’s on-screen romance that cause her more stress than her character’s moral dilemmas. 

“Love scenes are extremely anxiety-filled,” she admits, “especially being half-dressed in front of the film crew. But, hopefully our hard work shows through on screen.”

The recent strike by the Writers Guild of America left shows like “Battlestar” at a stand-still. Many actors and crew members in the industry were left without work. Sharma used the break to work on other projects and to spend some time at home in Vancouver. She recalled an awkward dinner with other Battlestar Galactica cast members where no one was even sure if the show would even return.

She also began to focus more on humanitarian work. “I was lucky to grow up with such loving parents,” she said, “whom showed me how to be humble, so I can help those in need.” She supports various charities, including helping victims of 2005 Hurricane Katrina, and victims of the 2006 tsunami in Southeast Asia. She has even supported, through donations of time and money, womens’ shelters across Vancouver. In the past she has given free acting lessons to youth in Vancouver.

As Battlestar Galactica draws to its finale, Sharma is keeping herself busy with a role in “Traveling”, a film in post-production starring Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart due out in the fall. Although Sharma acknowledges an off-screen romance, when asked about a significant other she would not reveal any details. She said her significant other has kept her grounded and her newly-acquired and much larger sci-fi fan base is making her focus more intensely on the quality of her performances. 

Looking ahead, Sharma said she is taking her acting career one role at a time.

Viewers first glimpsed the gorgeous Simmons, 25, two years ago in her recurring role as Hillary on ABC’s “Kyle XY,” a Sunday night sci-fi/ teen drama hybrid that takes the angst of feeling out of place during those formative years to a whole new level.

And if her star should ever burn out, she’ll always have her dreams of becoming a gourmet chef. After all, the family has their own top secret recipe for scalloped potatoes said to inspire mythical-type cravings.

At five Simmons landed her first commercial role after her first audition. Three years later she landed a part in the 1990 TV movie version of Stephen King’s “It” as a tricycle riding tot and the first victim.

“It was actually not too scary being a child on a horror movie set,” Simmons said. “I did all my scenes without Tim Curry (who played the infamous Clown). The director just told me how to react and he told me where to look.”

Careful editing makes it look like Simmons appeared on-set with Curry, but eighteen years later she’s still thankful that it wasn’t the case. “I’m scared of clowns still to this day!”

From the start, Simmons idolized child star du jour Shirley Temple.

“When I was little, no matter what restaurant I went to, I always ordered a Shirley Temple,” Simmons says. “(As a child) I wanted more than anything to have a drink named after me. I thought that that meant that you really made it as an actress.”

Simmons also worshipped funny girls Carol Burnett, Kate Hudson and Reese Witherspoon. But Temple held her longtime awe. “I always wanted to be just like her as a child, she was such an amazing triple threat, and I always thought that she just lit up the screen when she was on it,” Simmons says.

The native of White Rock, British Columbia, a suburb of Vancouver, had plenty of chances to strike out into science fiction.

“I just kind of fell into the genre,” she says. “A lot of sci-fi projects are filmed here in Vancouver, so it has just been pure luck that I was able to audition for so many of them.”

The experience helped establish Simmons as a scream queen. “I love any chance I get to scream and run away from some monster.”

With puberty came the opportunity to play a host of sexy, funny teen roles. Her credits include roles like Carol in 2007’s “Good Luck Chuck,” Ashley Freund in “Final Destination 3″ and Hot teenage girl in “2gether: The Series.”

Even at 25, Simmons is still regularly cast in roles that require her to shave off nearly a decade.

Harkening back to her high school days isn’t difficult. “I feel more like a teenager some days than I do an adult,” she says. “I love doing high school scenes … I had some of my best times in high school.”

Her longest stint to date is as part of “Kyle XY,” spending nearly four years with the cast and crew of the ABC hit. “The cast is so connected with each other and everyone is so sweet and talented,” Simmons said. “It really makes going to work everyday such a delight.”

That bonding extends to Simmon’s character Hillary, who’s had the opportunity to mature during the run. “I’m really beginning to love her,” she said.

“At first she was always wanting to be the center of attention, she was boy crazy and wasn’t the best friend in the world,” Simmons says. “But now, she has really grown up and has discovered herself a lot more.”

Simmons and the cast will start filming season three soon, though the actress is tight-lipped about any upcoming plot points. “I can’t give you any hints, because the writers don’t even tell us what’s going to happen,” she says.

On the silver screen, Simmons is looking forward to an upcoming role in Hollywood Brats, a comedic portrait of real-life celebutantes and starlet train wrecks directed by Terry Ingram and slated for release next year, where she’ll play Lindsay Lohan.

The film has been touted as strictly based on documents from the public record in the hopes of dodging the potential lawsuit this kind of undertaking attracts.

To brush up on her best LiLo impression, Simmons studied the starlet’s body language and cinematic résumé.

She’s no dead-ringer for Lohan, and she knows it. “I know I don’t look identical to her, or sound just like her, but my job was to act like her as much as I could and get the story across.”

When she’s not on set, Simmons keeps her body ripped with Crossfit training, a mix of gymnastics, Olympic weight lifting and sprinting with her personal trainer at Vancouver’s Studio 55. “My trainer, Nathan, works my butt off,” she said.

Down time is reserved for her other loves: spending time with her beloved four-year-old Yorkie Talula, playing Rock Band on Xbox 360 and cooking.

“I am a big foody,” Simmons admits, “and I am most relaxed when I’m cooking.”

Friends and family are already fans of the hobby, reaping the rewards after a day spent slaving away in the kitchen.

Recent culinary creations include fish delicacies and one of her favorites, Simmons Scalloped Potatoes, concocted from the family’s secret recipe. “Once you taste our Simmons Scalloped Potatoes you can’t stop eating them.”

On the web – visit Chelan Simmons on www.myspace.com/chelansimmons or the soon-to-be launched www.chelansimmons.com . “I always love hearing from my fans after a show has aired … it’s so sweet to hear what they thought of the show that night. My fans are the ones that keep me reaching for the stars.”

It wasn’t all that long ago that Canada was the veritable laughingstock of the music industry, with such smirk-inducing exports as Bryan Adams and Celine Dion.

But beginning in the late 1990s, the Great White North’s music scene began to redeem itself and now boasts some of the biggest names in indie rock and pop, including Arcade Fire, Feist and The New Pornographers.

Also riding that wave is Constantines, an Ontario-based quintet whose fourth album, “Kensington Heights,” hit shelves April 29. Singer Bryan Webb offered his thoughts on the Canadian Invasion of late during an interview before the band’s show at New York’s Mercury Lounge last month.

“It’s kind of a noticeable thing when a Canadian band gets some recognition outside of Canada,” Webb mused, pointing out that the same recognition doesn’t come for U.S. bands who find success in other countries. “We’re kind of supported and encouraged, especially ‘cause we’ve had some success in the States. It’s kind of a novel thing. But at the same time, there’s been a good run of that in Canada in the last 10 years.”

The title “Kensington Heights” is a joking reference to the band’s less-than-glamorous rehearsal space in the Kensington Market section of Toronto where much of the album was written. (”We tried to give it a little bit of panache,” Webb said with a smirk.)

Webb and the other four Constantines (guitarist/vocalist Steve Lambke, keyboardist/guitarist Will Kidman, bassist Dallas Wehrle and drummer Doug MacGregor) first crossed paths as regulars of southwestern Ontario’s punk rock scene.

“We just started as five people … playing just really loud music,” Webb explained. “That was just a scene that we were all invested in, and as we’ve gotten older, we just kind of wanted to be kind of a good rock and roll band.”

The anthemic undertones that anchor “Kensington Heights” reflect the cohesiveness the band members have fostered over the course of nine years of playing together, according to Webb.

“You develop certain ways of communicating with each other that you don’t have with other people,” he said. “When we started, it was sort of like everyone playing all at once, as loud as possible. We’re a lot more comfortable with each other now.”

The tagline often bestowed upon Constantines’ sound is “Bruce Springsteen meets Fugazi” – a description that’s bolstered throughout “Kensington Heights” by the distorted guitars and Webb’s earnest vocal delivery on songs like “Our Age” and “Brother Run Them Down,” both of which sound like vintage Boss.

“I think (the comparison’s) fair,” Webb conceded. “The thing that gets me is when people call us a blue-collar band. I just don’t know how that applies to music, you know?”

Despite Webb’s protestations, Constantines’ appeal to the working man is understandable – evidenced as much by songs like “Credit River” (opening line: “So you’ve decided to declare bankruptcy”) as by the fact that the members set up and tuned their own instruments before taking the stage at the sold-out Mercury Lounge gig.

A number of the songs on “Kensington Heights,” including the exceptional “Trans Canada,” which chugs along with a muted bassline and mumbled vocals before swelling into a crescendo are dedicated to individuals in the liner notes. “Tributes,” Webb calls them, to loved ones who are “surviving in interesting ways.”

Webb, who recently moved to Montreal from Toronto, describes the overall theme of the record as “place, especially the idea of transience being its own place” – a fitting motif for a band that’s been touring for almost a decade. That idea is best embodied, according to Webb, in “Time Can Be Overcome,” a jukebox-in-a-dive-bar type track that the singer cites as his favorite on the record.

“In that song, that idea’s applying to time and being in a particular place and time, being at a particular age,” he explained. “All of us are in our 30s, so that’s about the time that maybe nostalgia really starts creeping in … You start to look for other ideas of home or place. If you’re moving that much … you start to think about things in a different light.”

Earlier this year, home proved to be hazardous for Lambke, also a recent transplant to Montreal, who broke his hand while carrying groceries up the stairs, shortly before the band was supposed to embark on a mini-tour to showcase the new material.

“Pretty much every house in Montreal has a staircase outside that leads up to the second floor,” Webb explained. “Which is beautiful and really picturesque but it’s really dangerous, obviously, in the winter so he just slipped on the stairs. Luckily, it was only his hand, I guess. It sucked, of course, but it could have been worse.”

Although the mishap forced the band to cancel shows in New York and Toronto, they fulfilled their obligation at Austin’s SXSW festival last month, with Lambke still donning a cast. (”He’s a trooper,” Webb said.)

No strangers to the festival circuit, Constantines have shared the stage at Canadian indie showcases with bigger names like Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene. But according to Webb, there’s a sense of camaraderie, not competition, among their compatriots.

“Canada is such a big physical space with few centers where you can play … (so) you tend to get to know, if you’re a touring band in Canada, all the other touring bands in Canada,” he explained. “(It’s) just a bunch of people trying to make distinctive, interesting music. We’ve been lucky to be part of really supportive scenes.”

Rachel Stolte, one third of L.A.-based trio Great Northern, has no misgivings about her band “selling out” or losing their proverbial “indie cred.” On the contrary, Stolte displays a refreshing enthusiasm as she speaks excitedly about the fact that her band’s song “Home,” off of their debut album Trading Twilight for Daylight, was featured in a Nissan commercial during the Super Bowl.

“I’m open to that, because we just need to make money,” Stolte says without hesitation, speaking backstage after Great Northern’s set at New York’s Webster Hall last month. “If we can get a song that we already wrote in a commercial and make money off of it, we’re like all about it. … I don’t want to worry about paying my rent when I get home. I want to be able to spend my time writing.”

To that end, Stolte and her songwriting (and romantic) partner Solon Bixler have literally put their money where their mouth is. They used the commercial proceeds to build a home studio and are anxious to return and record new material with drummer Davey Latter. For now, they’re laying down demos whenever they get a chance while touring as a support act for The Gutter Twins, Stolte said.

Stolte and Bixler, both of whom are in their early 30s, were friends for years before they began working together – an idea Bixler proposed off-handedly while the two were attending an Elliott Smith concert in 2003, Stolte recalled.

“He gave me all these tapes, like rough ideas on the guitar and stuff that he was working on … and he was like, ‘Do you want to sing and play piano on these?’ she explained. “We always talked about wanting to do music together, and it was just never right timing-wise.”

That night, Stolte recalled, she stayed up until 7 a.m. listening to the tapes and coming up with vocal arrangements.

“It was exactly what I needed at that moment,” she said. “It was really a pivotal night in a lot of ways. The night before, I literally wrote down, ‘What do I want in my life? I want music to come back in my life. I want all these things.’ And it was pretty amazing that literally he handed (the tapes) to me the next night … We came together in a place in our lives when we were both sort of feeling this way.”

Four years later, Stolte said, the songs that made the final cut for Trading Twilight for Daylight reflect those quarter-life crisis mentalities. She describes the album as a “vomit” of raw emotion expressed through a smorgasbord of genres.

“I think our record is a little bit all over the place,” she said. “We just got it out of our system.”

Stylistic variances aside, Trading Twilight for Daylight is unified by ethereal melodies, lush harmonies and sentimental lyrics. Stolte said she and Bixler came up with the title of the record during a trip to Mandecino, north of San Francisco.

“It was that time of day, you know, when the light is just perfect and everything feels like it’s going to be ok,” she recalled. “If we could trade the hours of daylight for that, how happy would everyone be?”

Stolte, who had been singing in bands since she the age of 16 but never played a musical instrument, began learning piano when she began collaborating with Bixler. She developed her vocal style by listening to singers like PJ Harvey.

“PJ Harvey I think taught me how to sing,” she said. “I literally would sit in my room and lock the door and try to mimic her. I don’t know that I sound like her, but I learned to kind of sing from my gut from her. She’s somebody, for me, who doesn’t always sound beautiful, but always takes risks and blows my mind.”

Many of the tracks on the album, including “Home,” address a false sense of nostalgia about childhood memories.

“As a kid, you have this mindset where you’re less judgmental. But (as you get) older, you see things maybe more clearly or overall negatively,” she said. “When you go home, you want that feeling you had when you were a kid but you can’t ever get it again, because as an adult you see things that you didn’t see as a kid.”

“Searching for home is a major theme (of the album), searching for a feeling where you feel safe,” she continued. “I think Solon and I have this common thread. We’re both searching for that feeling of home and we kind of found it in each other and in our songwriting and in music. It’s a solace for us.”

A fitting description, because songs like “City of Sleep” and “Low is a Height” evoke the feeling of being softly lulled into slumber by a gentle lullaby.

“Home,” in addition to being used in the Nissan commercial, is also featured prominently in the film “21.”

“It’s really funny because that song was not going to go on the record,” Stolte said. “We didn’t really like it.”

As much as they’ve embraced the song’s advertising appeal, Stolte said supporting their first major-label release doesn’t come without pressures.

“I feel like the music industry has changed so much,” she said. “Getting signed to a label doesn’t mean what it used to mean. They can almost fuck you more than they can help you. … Are they gonna push us so hard on people that people are gonna hate us?”

For that reason, the band members aren’t measuring their success in terms of commercial placements.

“I think a good song always speaks louder than some gimmick, some label trying to push something on people,” she said. “I think building up a real fan base who genuinely like the music and then any way you can make money and music to do that is the way to go. … We’re in a good place at the moment, because we have real fans from the beginning, when we used to play shows where there were literally nine people in the audience. And those people are still coming to our shows, and that’s fucking awesome. That’s amazing. It’s such a driving force.”

Stolte, who gushed about the nearly-completed Gutter Twins tour (”Every night, I’m glued to the stage”), said the audience enthusiasm is part of the reason she prefers life on the road.

“Being on the road is so stimulating,” Stolte explains. “You’re in a new city every day. It almost speeds up your evolution a little bit. You feel like you learn so much. … I feel way more creative. As soon as I get in the van, I’m ready to write. I feel way more creative. The hardest part is going home and adjusting to less stimulation. … It’s almost like it’s a heightened sensory overload, and then when you’re at home, everything’s flat.”

It’s both a blessing and a curse that her and Bixler’s personal relationship has evolved along with their musical partnership, Stolte said.

“We fight all the time,” she readily acknowledged. “Solon and I have a completely different songwriting process … It took us a while to kind of get to know each other’s (style).”

Stolte works out the melodies and lyrics while Bixler tackles the layering and more technical aspects of production, she said. It’s not uncommon for the pair to be up until the wee hours of the morning hammering out the minute details of tracks. (”We’re both Capricorns,” she explained. “It’s kind of like going out with yourself.”)

“In the beginning both of us were fighting to do everything,” Stolte explained. “And now we’ve kind of relinquished control over certain things. … It took us a while to get to that place.”

Now that they’ve found it, Stolte said the band is eager to return to their studio and begin recording again.

“I feel like we were totally put together for a reason,” she added. “We’ve finally figured it out.”

Do you think “Lust Lust Lust” is a departure from your previous work?
I don’t compare our albums. I don’t think of our style as being one fixed thing. It sounds a little different from some of the other stuff, but I think all our albums sound different.

Does the album have an overall theme, conceptually or musically?
It’s about the difficulties in maintaining relationships and making decisions in regard to relationships. The only thing I wanted was just, I wanted to have the album have sort of a surf feel to it because I like that. I added a lot of surf-y kind of guitar lines.

You’re based in New York, but Sharin lives in Los Angeles. How does that work as far as your songwriting goes?
I write all the songs and the songs I like, I send them over to Sharin and see if she likes them or not. And if she likes them, we’ll put them in a little folder that will go on the album. It’s very simple. It’s always been like that.

How many songs did you write for this album?
A hundred or so. I just like writing songs. I just write whenever I feel like it. Sometimes I’ll write three or four songs in a day and sometimes I won’t write anything in a month.

Do you have any favorite tracks on the record?
I have none. I like them all.

Talk about your experience at SXSW and your canceled performance.
We did 12 shows down there and that was a lot. And before that we had just come from Europe on a long tour and just did a West Coast tour, went straight down and played SXSW and then we flew right back and started an East Coast tour in Minneapolis. So at that time I think we had done something like 25 shows in a row, and we just didn’t enjoy it anymore. We just took a day off.

Did you get a chance to see any of the other artists who were performing there?
I saw Thurston Moore. And I saw MGMT. I thought (the MGMT show) was brilliant. I thought it was really good. I really like them a lot. I think they’re really entertaining.

What were some of your favorite records from 2007?
I don’t have any from last year. I rarely buy new stuff. MGMT is probably one of the newer bands I have sort of listened to. I don’t really sit at home and listen to music. It’s very rare. If I do, I put on like a classical vinyl or something. I enjoy watching movies and reading books a lot more. I have thousands of movies at home.

What are some of your favorite movies?
Hitchcock movies and (films directed by) David Lynch.

How long have you lived in America, and how do you like living here?
Seven years. I like living in New York. I think New York is really different from other towns in America. That’s why I like it. It has a certain European feel to it that I find very attractive. There are a lot of different cultures and they all seem to mix really well. There’s a lot of stuff going on. It’s a great city to walk in. it’s a beautiful city. New York has everything. It’s one of my favorite towns.

Who are some of your major influences or sources of inspiration?
It’s hard to say what influences you. I think everything you hear must influence you in some way. (I gain inspiration) just through life experience, meeting people and walking around and enjoying life and not being on tour so much. There’s nothing more uninspiring than being on tour, because it’s just a bunch of shitty cold dressing rooms all over the world. So there’s really not much inspiring about that.

Your stage show is very simplistic – just two guitars and a guest drummer (Leah Shapiro) who plays a stand-up kit consisting of only a floor tom and a snare. Is that a reflection of your approach to music in general?
I like music that’s very minimal. That’s what we’ve always done. I’ve always recorded everything at home, and it’s just very simple and that’s the kind of music we really like. We have (had) two people in the band, we have (had) five people in the band. We change a lot. We change around. We don’t like to play the same all the time. We try to make it more entertaining for ourselves. This is the best tour we’ve ever done. We have a great album out and we’re selling out shows.

Do you notice any differences between touring in America and touring in Europe?
It’s pretty much the same. It’s all about traveling, a lot of down time and a lot of waiting around. The only difference is sometimes when you tour in Europe, you get to see some really nice cities like Paris and Rome and all that stuff, and then you actually want to go out and experience the town.

You’ve been quoted as saying “Lust Lust Lust” is your best work. How so?
That was probably a misquote because I never think any of our albums is our best work I really like them all equally as much because they’re very different. They’re all equally good.

“I walk through the airport with a guitar case … and like half the time, swear to God, some douchebag’ll be going, ‘Oh, you gonna play us a song? Damn, that’s a pretty big guitar for a little lady,’” a flu-stricken and audibly annoyed King said recently, chatting via phone from the Portland airport as she waited for a flight to San Francisco for her next show. (”I decided not to drive and infect everyone else in the van,” she explained.)

But while King doesn’t court fame, the brazen belittlement from gawking onlookers is beginning to get old.

“A lot of things that used to not bother me at all are kind of starting to bother me,” the feisty guitarist continued. “No one’s ever gonna know who I am at the fuckin’ airport and that’s fine (but) it feels like they’re assuming that I can’t play guitar. It sends this message of, ‘You’re an idiot and you don’t know what you’re doing.’ …. For so many years I wouldn’t give a shit, and now it’s like, ‘Would you say that to a guy? Fuck you.’”

Anyone who has heard or seen King perform knows that, at the very least, she “knows what she’s doing.” In March, the 28-year-old musician released her fourth full-length album, “Dreaming of Revenge.”

Last year, when she wasn’t recording her own album, King kept herself busy by collaborating with a number of artists including the Foo Fighters and Tegan & Sara on their 2007 releases. She also contributed music to the films “Into the Wild” and “August Rush,” and acted as a hand double in the latter.

Despite the occasional aggravations she faces, however, King said the title of her latest effort, which is taken from a quote by painter Paul Gauguin, doesn’t offer a glimpse into her psyche. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

“I take (the sentiment) to be so cynical and sort of horrible but also incredibly funny and tongue in cheek and just sort of true at times,” King explained. “I’m certainly not a vengeful person.”

A critical darling, King has noticed that enthusiasts unfailingly mention her gender in the same breath as her musical prowess- but also acknowledges that it’s a factor that sets her apart from many of her peers.

“This is a boys’ club,” she said matter-of-factly. “You’re like the lone female a lot of times when you’re doing this job. … I feel like when people go, ‘She’s a great female guitarist,’ it’s like, ‘oh, she’s really good for a girl.’ When there’s too much emphasis on me being a girl, I’m like, who cares? Yeah, I’m a girl. Ok, cool. We’ve established that. I definitely don’t need people to acknowledge the fact that I have tits.”

King picked up the guitar at age 5, but initially drums were her instrument of choice.

“I thought the drums were the shit and I was gonna be a drummer, but I was always a better guitar player,” she said.

Her sense of percussion allows her to create a virtual one-woman show during her live performances, although she tours with a full band. King’s innovative playing style involves alternating between fingerpicking and strumming the strings with acrylic nails, and tapping the neck of her guitar. Her fingers fly across the fretboard, creating a mind-bogglingly manic blur.

But King nonchalantly downplays her pseudo-slap technique.

“To me, it doesn’t really seem that outlandish or weird,” she said.

King describes “Dreaming of Revenge” as being replete with “slow, simple melodies,” layered over her intricate guitar parts. The predominantly instrumental record kicks off with “Bone Chaos in the Castle,” a groovy two-and-a-half minute, perk-your-ears jam sure to capture the listener’s attention. Among the few vocal tracks thrown into the mix are catchy first single “Pull Me Out Alive” and the dreamy, folk-sounding “Life Being What It Is.” In keeping with her somnolent motif, the liner notes for “Dreaming of Revenge,” designed by Seb Jarnot, include a build-your-own mobile kit of sorts, complete with cardboard punch-outs.

King said the record brings her a step closer to cultivating her own distinctive sound.

“I write very sad music and I write sad melodies in particular,” she said. “I’m not just a ‘female guitarist.’ I’m trying really hard to become Kaki King. I want to sound like, me. It’s really, really difficult. Only a few people in their lifetime really get that, but that’s still the goal … to start playing a tune and sound like you and have people recognize it to be you and no one else. That takes a lifetime, and I think people that people know that that’s the path I’m on.”

For songs that don’t fit into that path, King has a side project called Daysleeper (”It’s a reference to the fact that I sleep all day”) with her bandmate Dan Brantigan to record occasionally improvised material and “weird, quirky, techno-y, almost dance-y track” that diverge from King’s typical fare.

Currently in the midst of a tour that runs through mid-April, King said she’s excited about presenting the new tracks on the road.

“I’m really psyched,” she said enthusiastically. “All this material is so fresh.”

“It’s tough to keep it creative though, and that’s what I’ve always tried to do,” she added. “Ultimately, I’d rather be known as like, ‘Oh yeah, that sounds like Kaki King,’ rather than ‘Oh, she’s pretty good for a girl.’”

People often don’t see the person behind the TV character or movie hero, but behind Davis — who has 134 acting credits according to IMDB.com — there lies a warrior, educator, painter and writer.

Davis has played many roles over the years, but he has been an artist his entire life.

“I started drawing and painting when I was a kid,” said Davis in a recent interview with BLAST. “I’ve always liked drawing and painting landscapes and buildings.”

Davis’ art portfolio is a combination of oil paintings, drawings, wood carvings and stage designs, all of which exhibit attention to detail and affection for the simplicity of the country life he grew up in. Originally from Aurora, Mo., Davis now resides in British Columbia, but he says the inspiration for his artwork is rooted in his rural hometown in the Ozark Mountains.

“It’s a small town filled with good people in a beautiful area,” Davis says. “It’s a beautiful area with picturesque towns and farms set among rolling hills, which are crisscrossed by many rivers,” he writes in his biography on his art website, donsdavisart.com. “The towns and farmsteads contain wonderful old homes, barns and other buildings that provide nearly limitless opportunities for artistic inspiration.”

Though the picturesque towns inspire his work now, Davis says that in college he was greatly inspired by abstract painters, including Robert Motherwell and Jackson Pollack, who are still among his favorite artists. “I like abstract art. I still do a bit of it,” he says. “But spending 16 years teaching stage design and technical theater seemed to change my personal creative orientation toward more representational work.”

Perhaps most well-known for his roles as Major General George S. Hammond on the Sci-Fi Channel television series “Stargate SG-1″ and Major Garland Briggs on “Twin Peaks,” spaceships and eerie towns are not the only settings Davis performs well in. Before picking up acting in the late 1980s, he taught at the college level, served in the military and completed a master’s degree and doctorate in theater.

Davis’ hometown in the Ozark Mountains inspired much of his artwork, but the powerful, authoritative characters the 65-year-old actor plays best came from his years in the military during the mid-1960s, when he was stationed in Korea. He entered the US Army with the rank of lieutenant and left as a captain with a collection of memories to fuel his acting career.

“I draw on my experiences in the military and the unique people I met and worked with in a lot of my work as an actor,” Davis said.

Now that “Stargate SG-1″ is no longer in production after 10 seasons, the general has retired his Stargate Command badge and picked up his paintbrush. Painting will not become a new career for Davis, who says he does not sell his work — yet.

“Over the years I’ve often thought of opening an art gallery — I still think about it,” Davis said. He is entertaining the idea of marketing select prints of his paintings if he can find an arrangement that suits him well.

For now, painting is just a way to relax and forget about the aliens left thwarted in his path.

“I paint for myself and my family and my friends,” he says.

The Missouri native has come a long way from his childhood landscape sketches, on a journey that’s taken him to the far corners of the galaxy and back again. It was not until after the army, his own education and the subsequent years of teaching that he decided to pursue acting full time.

Davis may not be a space captain in real life, but he is a true science fiction fan. His favorite sci-fi shows are “Dr. Who,” “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and “Lexx.” He is also a fan of Spider Robinson, the Nebula award-winning author of “The Callahan’s Series,” the Stardance trilogy, the Deathkiller trilogy, and other science-fiction novels.

Since starting out, Davis has appeared in numerous films and TV shows. He was the coach of the Racine Belles in “A League of their Own” and had roles in “Alaska,” “Best of Show,” “The West Wing,” and “The X-Files.”

His favorite role was Donald P. Carstairs from the Canadian television series “Slick Air.”

“Carstairs is a ‘tough-guy’ private eye. He’s a slob, and not the brightest bulb in the pack,” Davis said. The show, also starring Shannon Tweed and David Elliot, is about a couple who run an under-funded charter airline service. “When Carstairs is not repossessing their office furniture and equipment, he is often being hired by them to do bodyguard work,” he said.

Davis is currently involved in a number of projects, portraying starkly different roles in each. Set to release later this year are “Woodshop,” an indie comedy about making it through high school alive, “Viper,” a made for television horror flick and “Far Cry,” an action-drama.

“I am a character actor, and I enjoy playing a variety of roles,” he said.

Davis is also appearing in the straight-to-DVD Stargate movie, “Stargate: Continuum,” which will serve as a mid-summer fix for SG-1 addicts. Davis says he is working on his own screenplay, though he is keeping the details to himself for now.

His characters — past and upcoming — differ greatly but share one common gene that draws Davis to them. He is a sucker for “any well-written role that allows me to portray an interesting character in a good story, with a talented director and talented actors, who happen to also be nice people.”

“I’ve been fortunate to have this experience many, many times while working in both TV and film,” most notably, with “Stargate” and “Twin Peaks,” Davis said.

Charlotte Stewart is one of those talented actors and nice people. Stewart, who played Davis’ Catholic wife on “Twin Peaks,” has fond memories of the show and her fictional husband.

“I think Don got a great kick out of being in Twin Peaks,” said Stewart in a recent interview. When the show aired, she says, “he was like a kid enjoying a private party.”

“(He is) one of the most genuine, sweet human beings I have ever met,” she said.

The fans seem to have taken an equal shine to Davis.

“Mr. Davis will always be one of my very favorite people because he cares so much for Stargate and for the fans,” said Patricia Stewart, a fan from British Columbia who met Davis at a convention last August. “And when I saw him later that day, he remembered my name! He’s a real gentleman.”

Other Stargate fans say they’ve had similar experiences.

“I’ve always found Davis to be 100,000 percent professional when dealing with his fans,” said H.C. Taylor, a Stargate fan from Newburgh, N.Y. “He’s always been absolute aces.”

Taylor has been a Stargate fan for years, but she became a true Don S. Davis fan in 2004 at a convention where he spent time talking to her group and encouraged them to approach for pictures or a handshake throughout the event.

“You could have knocked our table over with a feather,” said Taylor. “Nobody does that at a convention.”

Like many Stargate fans, Taylor kept up to date with the actors’ post-gate lives, careers and interests, which included keeping tabs on Davis’ growing collection of original artwork. After inquiring about purchasing a print, a copy of Davis’ “Oregon Coast” arrived at her door, as a token of his appreciation of her Stargate tribute website, selmak.org.

The painting of a rocky coastline reminds of the coast of Maine, where she often visited with her father. The print has become a priceless possession and represents the growing appreciation among fans for the complexity of the man behind the role. It is a strong appreciation that binds people beyond a television show or movie set.

“If my house was burning, I’d grab my purse, my dog, cat, undies, and it,” Taylor said.