Easy A hits theaters today and I was lucky enough to get a few minutes to speak with the lovely and talented Emma Stone who was enjoying her first starring role after co-starring in such great films as Superbad, The House Bunny and Zombieland.

If you’re not familiar the story of Easy A it’s actually a rather intriguing update on the literary classic The Scarlett Letter, with a modern twist. In order to help her gay best friend who is being bullied in school Olive (Emma Stone) feigns losing her virginity to the boy to save him from ridicule. When more boys trying to up their social standing approach Olive for her services as well, she opens for business pushing the high school rumor mills into overdrive.

While the film does hearken back to the teen craze of the late 90s this film takes a slightly more realistic and jaded approach to high school life.

What drew you to play the role of Olive?

First of all, it’s really rare to read a really well-written, fleshed-out, funny character that’s female, especially in a comedy, and so that’s exciting right off the bat.  Then I just thought the script is so clever, and I really liked Olive’s perspective on things.  She’s no damsel in distress, so I just really liked her all around as a character and loved the script itself.

Did you have any experiences in high school that are similar to that of your character? Were there any particular traits that you felt you had in common with the Olive?

Well, circumstantially, I really didn’t have anything in common with Olive because I was homeschooled for most of high school.  So, I was kind of on my own for most of that experience.

As far as personality goes, I think she and I are pretty eerily similar in a lot of ways.  That might be one of the reasons I responded so quickly to her when I read the script.  I could kind of understand her viewpoint and where she was coming from and what it was like to have a family like that because I have really open, straight parents that we talk about everything.

So I liked seeing that kind of cool relationship she had with her family.  Yes, I feel like we have a lot in common personality-wise, but I did not have her high school experience.

The story seems to take several stereotypical teen clichés and flip-flop the roles, empowering what is usually simply a supporting character and making her the main protagonist.  Do you think a film like Easy A could have been made like say ten years ago?

A big part of it—even beyond the character roles or flipping certain stereotypes on their ear—is the speed of technology now and the digital age and text messaging and Twitter and that type of communication and her being able to not atone but explain everything that’s happened into her webcam and having people be able to see it.

So, I’m sure there could have been some differences ten years ago that would have been similar, but to me, it feels so kind of time sensitive, the issues that we’re dealing with, so it feels like a kind of modern-times movie to me.  But in terms of the characters, I would hope that those are relatively timeless.

More after the jump!

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It’s another week and time for another epic Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World interview.

This time, I sat down with Jason Schwartzman who stars as Gideon Graves and Anna Kendrick, who plays Scott’s sister Stacey Pilgrim in the film. I should probably go on record by saying I am a huge Jason Schwartzman fan and have been since I first saw Rushmore on laserdisc. It was great chatting with these two and a lot of fun as well, as you can probably tell in the interview.

Also, if you haven’t seen this film… what are you waiting for? We need to support this film in any way shape and form we can, and for the life of me I can not figure out why this film, with its stellar reviews and write-ups, isn’t making the money it should. So read up and go see the film again.

So Jason you worked on the score for Funny People… did you have any influence at all on the score for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World?

Jason: Um… no… (laughs).

What did you think of it then?

Jason: I loved it, so much. I really think a big part of the film is the music. Not only in the background in fight scenes, but you know, [when the] bands in the film [are] playing songs.  We were pretty lucky to have Beck, Broken Social Scene, and Metric do songs for the film.

Nigel Godrich even composed an original piece of music and to me it was just incredible. I probably did Funny People because no one else was available, (laughs)  but for this one everyone was available.

So they all got to do it as they should and it was just amazing, especially the sound design too is amazing in the film as well.

Did you have any favorite songs from the film?

Jason: Yeah, I love every Beck song and the Ramona Song.

Anna: Black Sheep is my favorite song

Jason: That is a really great song too.

Anna: I’ve heard all of the songs a lot, (Laughs) and that’s only one I really like is Black Sheep.

Jason: That is such a great song. Ramona is such a great song as well, it has great chord changes and I like Summer Time (Jason breaks into the chorus to Summer Time)

More after the Jump!

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Last week I got the chance to sit down and talk with both Edgar Wright and Michael Cera of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World at our very own Ritz Carlton in Center City, Philadelphia. It was a big day for me both as a writer and a fan, getting to meet and chat with both of these guys face-to-face about the film.

I hope you enjoy reading this interview as much as I enjoyed conducting it. You’ll learn quite a bit about the film and which great Canadian invented basketball. I really hope you support these guys, and check out Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World at your local theater!

So how familiar were you with the source material before you started production on the film?

Edgar: I was given the first book.

I was asked this the other day “Were you a big fan of the book already?” and I said I was given the book the week it was published, so I sort of read it with everyone else when it first came out back in 2004.

So for me the process of making this film has been, for the last six years, a very organic one. Because I got to be in contact with the author as he was writing the books the entire time.

When we started filming in March of 2009, the fifth book had just been published and the sixth book only existed as a rough draft. So, I was working on the adaptation for about five years altogether.

How involved was Brian O’Malley with the process of making the script?

Edgar: He was very involved in the sense he read every single draft of the script.

In some cases, me and Michael Bacall would send the script to Brian and he would do little polishes on scenes.  So he touched up a couple of scenes he had an idea about.

But weirdly, some of his stuff in the film that he did work on in the script, is not in his books either. So it really is like a real collaboration, because there are a couple of lines in the film that are Brian’s but the aren’t in the books, and then there are a couple of lines from our script that were in the books; because we wrote the first draft of the script back in 2006.

There are like one or two lines, in book four and five that are lines from our script.  Brian O’Malley was very polite to email me and say, “Can I use one of your lines from the Roxxy Scene for the book?”

Michael: Art imitating art.

Dan: That’s very meta.

Edgar: Yeah, it was very good that way, and it was an easier thing in terms of like a fanbase of a comic like this where everyone has very specific thoughts on things.  I would just kind of try not to read any of that and just kind of go straight to the source and talk to Brian about stuff.

More Epicness after the jump!

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Johnny Zito and Tony Trov

We had the chance briefly catch up with our friends Tony Trov and Johnny Zito, two Philadelphia comic book writers and indie film makers. You might recall their awesome work on Fiesta Day, the short film for our Fiesta Movement that we premiered with a free Prince of Persia screening.

They’ve just returned from SDCC 2010 and we had a chance to talk to them about their experience.

So, what are you guys currently working on in the wide-world of comic book writing?
JZ: Moon Girl Fights Crime is kicking ass and we just released Carnival De Robotique during Comic Con. Download the (FREE) Comixology app [iTunes store link] and Check them out!
TT: DC Comics is releasing LaMorte Sisters and Black Cherry Bombshells on their App later in the month. We also have another title in the works called D.O.G.S. of Mars. Stay tuned for more about that.

Every summer it seems like you guys have gone on yet another SoCal, SDCC adventure. How many times have you guys gone out at this point?
TT: This is the third year in a row we’ve taken the pilgrimage.
JZ: We’re always in a Comic Con state of mind.

How do you think 2010 compared to the first time you guys went?
TT: Every year is more ridiculous than the last. Anything can happen; don’t turn your back on Comic Con for a minute!
JZ: The geek community is emensely diverse and every year you can see a new niche being welcomed with open arms.

What was the newest/most exciting thing about SDCC this year?
TT: Scott Pilgrim was everywhere. It by far dominated the convention. Everyone was really hyped for the new film and the latest graphic novel.
JZ: The beautiful, young ladies dressed as Jackie O.

Read more after the jump!

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If you follow the site, you’re probably familiar with XipWire, the text-to-pay service. We have used it for several donation drives here on the site, and we have nothing but great things to say about it.

A couple of weeks ago I sat down with Sharif and Sibyl, the two folks behind the service, to chat with them a bit about XipWire. Enjoy.

What are some of your thoughts on mobile payment technology? I know other countries already use it, and it seems like the US is behind the times on taking advantage of this convenient technology.

Sibyl: That is pretty much one of my biggest selling points, is that the United States is one of the only countries that hasn’t adopted mobile text payments. People we approach are very surprised that for developing countries like India and Africa, this is second nature to them; this how they do everything.

We think it’s necessary as a nation, because of how addicted we are to our mobile phones, and what a culture of convenience we have become to adopt mobile payment technology.

Sharif: What you would think is the US would always be the technical innovator, and in a lot of ways we are… but not for mobile technology.  That is partly because of the competition we have when it comes to the carriers we have here. Most countries where you see a lot of that technical innovation there is usually one dominate player in the mobile market, and they kind of dictate what they are going to do, and provide.

Sibyl: We really see it as the way to pay and the next greatest thing. I think what encourages us the most is when someone tries it in front of us, or if we’re at Capogiro and I am using it; and someone is like, “ What did you just do?” That is my favorite question, because people get excited when they find out they can use a text message; something they already know how to do, to pay for things.  They already love their phone and now they have this great-added feature that is really just waiting for them to use.

Sharif: The other thing I think is interesting is really the evolution of mobile payments, because like all things in the world it evolved out of necessity, even when there was not infrastructure. The fact that they had the cell phone towers that came in early on, and people understood “I have this phone, I need to pay and I can sort of add the two together and make it happen.” It was necessity that allowed it to grow in these developing countries; where it’s convenience that I think will make it happen here.

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John de Lancie is a familiar face to most Star Trek fans, having played Q, one of the franchise’s most legendary guest characters across three different Star Trek series.

He recently made an appearance at Wizard World Philly 2010, along with several other Star Trek actors, one of which was his son, Keegan de Lancie. Keegan played the son of Q on Star Trek: Voyager, and took the stage with his father during a Q&A session on Saturday of the convention.

What many fans may not realize is that Keegan made a radical departure from his days of wearing a Starfleet uniform and pestering Voyager’s crew. After attending college at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and going to Jordan on a Fulbright Scholarship to study Iraqi refugees, he ended up working for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a United Nations agency.

Geekadelphia had a chance to talk with Keegan for a few minutes on Sunday of the convention. A transcript is below, after the jump!

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Photo by Darko Boehringer

It turns out  that seasoned keyboardist Jordan Rudess — famous for his sonic contributions to Dream Theater and Liquid Tension Experiment – is into tech as much as you and I are. Come to think of it, his devotion is at an even higher level with now two apps under his belt for mobile devices like the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Rudess took the time to chat with us recently about his adventures into the app world through Keyboard Wizdom and Morph Wiz as well as his ideas on the evolution of music and technology integration.

GEEK: What are your goals with taking the Keyboard Wizdom tutorials to mobile devices?

Jordan Rudess: I’ve been very involved with the whole app world, the iPhone and iPod Touch technology, and have been doing a lot of things in that area. And this company that I have been doing videos with, Mac Pro Video, a very forward thinking online educational company. They’ve always been doing cutting edge stuff and it was actually them who came to me and said, ‘Hey, we want to put your course on an iPhone app.’ And I said, ‘Wow, that’s awesome!’

I thought that was a pretty cool idea. You just take the whole course, make it fit and people can carry it around in their pocket. I’m excited about that whole idea. All of that instruction could be in somebody’s pocket; that’s pretty cool!

It’s good timing for me too, because I’m working on some more instrumental apps for the iPad and iPhone.

More after the break! (more…)

Grey Skies, a new sci-fi horror flick set to premiere this month, is as much about alien invasion as it is about human relationships, according to producers.

A group of old college buddies reunite to reminisce about their glory days for a quiet weekend getaway in beautiful lakeside cabin. Despite typical drama and some sexy tension, all seems right … until distant flashes of light announce the arrival of mysterious creatures. One by one, people start disappearing. The group must band together to outwit the unknown or risk losing each other – and their lives.

Behind this low-budget indie project is a passionate group of actors, directors, writers and producers hoping to make a name for themselves. We spoke with writer and producer Mark Reilly, his wife Stacy Jorgensen and Michael Cornacchia (a Philly native) who both starred in and co-produced the film.

Cast and Crew Members from Grey Skies

This movie is quite a collaborative effort. How did you get started?

Michael Cornacchia: Mark, Stacy, and I are the producers,as well as the director Kai Blackwood. The director of photography Gavin Fisher is also a co-producer, as well as our post-production supervisor. So everybody’s wearing like, fifteen thousand hats with this production.

Stacy Jorgensen: I moved out to Los Angeles to be an actress and I was getting frustrated with the lack of auditions and roles. Since I married a writer, I told my husband if he wrote something for me, I would find the money. And so we did.

What’s the scariest part of the film?

SJ: For me, it’s one of the final scenes in the film. Without giving too much away, it’s when you see what really happens to these characters get taken. There’s about three to five minutes seeing exactly what they do to people and then re-release them into the wild, for lack of a better term. It’s almost what scientists do when they tag wild animals. I think the scariest thing is when you see what they do to Jenny.

Mark Reilly: We’re tapping in to some primal fears with noises in the dark and lights flashing. You hear these ghost stories about what goes bump in the night – but this time it’s aliens. The thing outside your window is actually something from another world, looking at you, studying you, taking you out of your home and experimenting on you. I like these idea of these aliens just … fucking with you – pardon my French.

Your co-producer and makeup artist, Barney Burman, won an Oscar this year for his makeup in Star Trek. What was it like working with him?

MC: Barney saw our breakdown for the roles we were casting and saw we were making a low budget alien-horror film, so he sent us an e-mail that simply said: “Need aliens?” He just said he doesn’t like watching low-budget horror flicks with bad makeup effects. He has been instrumental in making this thing come to life.

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With the Lost finale airing this weekend, I thought I might post this very appropriate interview, since the subject, Mira Furlan, has been surprisingly absent from the show since her character’s death, with another actress playing her role in recent flashbacks. Mira played the role of Danielle Rousseau, one of the unsung heroes of the show.

Fans grew to follow this intriguing character as she developed throughout the show, until she was suddenly killed off in the middle of the fourth season.  What makes somewhat controversial, is the producers of the show publicly stated that she wanted to leave the show, which is why her character’s story ended the way it did.

But when I had the chance to interview her at Farpoint this year, her explanation was a very different.

Before the interview, I found Mira didn’t start out her career like most actresses, but had an amazing and almost unbelievable back-story of love, war and survival. So sit back and enjoy an interview with one of the most interesting actors to appear on Lost.

I read that you’re are originally from Zakhaev, Yugoslavia; where you were a member of the Croatian National Theatre.  Could you tell us a bit of about your journey as a theatre actor moving to film and television, in pre-war Yugoslavia?

It’s a huge, huge theme. I began work in theatre, almost immediately as I was still a student at the Academy of Dramatic Arts.  I got a job in TV and I got a TV movie, which kind of put me on the map there.  From then on I started doing television and theatre at the same time.

I did my first theatrical film fairly late, I was 24, maybe 25.  I immediately got the main film award in Yugoslavia for it, and from then on I was working non-stop.  Then bad things happened, but that’s life – good things, bad things and somehow you try to survive through all of them; because sometimes good things are really bad things in disguise.

In what was then Yugoslavia, I did a TV series that was immensely popular.  That actually created problems for me, people were calling me by that name, they were completely identifying me with that character and I was doing very serious work in theatre, playing all the classics, so I was bothered by the fact that people didn’t take this other work seriously.

The usual problems of actors, what you do and what you put out, and what people get out of it.  Which is all a matter of their prospective and their perception and you can’t really influence it.  So sometimes there are those dichotomies.

More after the jump!

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Tim & Mikey stare at a blank laptop screen. Deep thoughts ensue.

Besides helping ourselves to free coffee this past Monday morning, Mikey and I started our day by arriving at Independents Hall in Old City.  I consider it a ground zero of sorts for a lot of movers and shakers in our closely-knit Philadelphia tech scene, which makes it a great location for the interview that took place!

CBS3′s Nicole Brewer arrived to interview us about our involvement with the Fiesta Movement, specifically how social media has changed the way large corporations market their brands & products.

Joined by Gloria Bell, and later on by Sam DeLaGarza (Brand Manager for the Ford Fiesta) as well as our ridiculously fun Geekadelphia-themed 2011 Fiesta, we wrapped an awesome and informative interview on 3rd street.  Check out the Interview HERE!

PS – if anyone make a ringtone of the “Geekadelphia.. yeaaaaa!” audio at the end of the video clip, we are willing to pay you with fancy things.

You might recall my rather favorable review of the Australian film The Square, a few weeks ago. Well, while the director Nash Edgerton was in town presenting his film to the Philadelphia Film Festival, he took some time out to sit and answer a few questions for our readers here on Geekadelphia. It was great chatting with the up and coming Director, and really getting a bit more perspective into the making of The Square.

1.So what inspired you to go from doing stunt work, to being a director?

Well, I guess I have been making short films for quite a while now. That kind of started out with me and my friend Tony trying to shoot an action sequence to put on our show reels; to try and get stunt jobs.

My brother at the time had just started out as an actor as well, and he said, “maybe the same thing could work for me.” So I got a friend to write a scene, and we were going to try and shoot that as well; so he could use that on his reel to get acting work.

So he and his friend Kiran, and my friend Tony and I went out and started making this thing, which basically became a short film. It was simply this dialog sequence followed by this action sequence. I think the four of us really enjoyed the process of making it so much that we kind of had a revelation, that we keep making films beyond like our sort of vocations as like stuntmen and actors.

2. So what was the inspiration behind The Square?

It was Joel’s idea; he is quite fascinated with the small stories in newspapers that are like 10 pages in. The articles are usually only like usually 1 or 2 paragraphs, and they talk about a strange crime very generally, and never really go into any background details of it.

He always reads those things and imagines how it got to that point. One day he read one about a guy who was digging up the foundations of a building, and he found a skeleton of a baby. This article had like nothing beyond the details of that skeleton being found, and he started thinking about ideas of things that could have led to the point of someone being found in the foundations of the building; and it kind of went from there.

3. Coming to such an established genre as the heist film, what do you think The Square brought to the table that was new and exciting?

Well we tried to base it in, and really play it as straight and as real as humanly possible; and not have it kind of  have a heightened or surreal quality to it. I think playing it that way really adds to the tension of it. Setting it in a real situation, with real characters gives it a certain gravity.

Take for instance Carla, who is not really a femme fatale or anything; its not like she is this really sexy girl trying to manipulate people. She is just like a regular girl. I just wanted to show that these kind of situations can really happen to ordinary people as well.

More after the jump!

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This interview is proof that my college adviser lied to me in high school. Writing for Geekadelphia has given me the chance to interview some pretty cool and interesting people over the last year, and this interview is no exception.

Pete Donner, is a Master Builder for Lego. What does that mean exactly? Well it means that while we are filing our TPS reports, Pete is creating things out of Lego for a living. In a job that seems to go right up there with the guy who reads Megan Fox her lines off camera, this guy has a job worthy of some serious envy. He was in town for the Toy Story event I wrote about earlier this week and was nice enough to tell me what its like not only to work for Lego, but how you end up with an awesome title like Master Builder.

Could you tell us a little bit about how one becomes a Lego Master Builder?  What’s the path one takes for that sort of career?

It’s been kind of been a unique path for everybody that’s currently a Master Builder, that works for Lego. I began working in the company in 1997, as an intern right out of high school. I was working on gluing together the kits you can buy in the store, and they were then put into the display cases in Toys R Us. That assignment came to an end, but they wanted to keep a few people around to work on the first Lego Imagination Center, which is the Orlando downtown Disney brand store.  That’s what its current incarnation is.  I stayed on for that, and the first model I ever built that was a three dimensional model. It was one of the mini figures blown up to fifty times it regular size.

I guess I was just kind of a good fit for the company. I was familiar with Lego, and I always have always been involved in the arts. That’s one of the main keys if you are trying to get into this field, is to study art, mathematics, architecture; anything in that vein would really help out.  My luck was I got the experience right out of high school, so I was able to get my feet wet with the company, and then tailor my college education to fit the needs of the department at the time.  So I actually have a degree in Fine Arts, and a focus on computer technology, graphic design, 3-d modeling that kind of stuff.

Thirteen years of training and apprenticing on some level, just like any other field, has gotten me the title of Master Builder.

You said their was an apprenticeship and you had to work under that, and eventually earned the title of Master Builder?  How does that work? Can you tell us about the levels?

When I first started with Lego, you would start as a model gluer and that would encompass really basic stuff.  You would do mass productions of models, or you would do glued sets to go into the malls, and stuff like that.  If you stayed on, and you were good at what you did, then you could go on to be a model builder and you would continue to grow your skill set with each step.

Model builders would then be responsible to take on more of the responsibilities involved with translating designs. As a model builder designs would be handed over to you, and you would be charged with making it complete, without having somebody to supervise you through the process. Then you would move up from there to Senior Model Builder.

Senior Model Builders would do some designs on the fly. They would also fix models because of an error in the design, or an error in the build. As you take on more experience and more responsibility it kind of increases your title as you go along.

Finally you reach Master Model Builder, which now for us encompasses the ability to design full models. To make models that are really sound, so that it can support it’s own weight, and will not be hazardous to the public, and understanding how that all works. Also, it helps to have a public persona, to do stuff like this, have interviews and go and do an event, and work with the kids like we are going to be doing tonight at the Boys and Girls Club at Wilson Park.

So it changes and evolves, it’s a living thing.  When I first started you did what you were classed to do. Now I do everything from just glue together a set, or to sit down and work on something like John Lasseter, to doing what I’m doing right now.

More with Pete after the Jump!

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