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The companion to hope, "change" is perhaps the most over-used and under-executed words in the common vernacular today. With their movie, La MISSION, actor Benjamin Bratt (who is best known for playing Detective Rey Curtis in the NBC drama Law & Order) and his writer/director brother Peter (who previously collaborated with his famous sibling on the 1996 film Follow Me Home) explore the motivations that might transform change from an abstract concept into tangible social movement in the forward direction on an individual level.

Human beings, by their very nature, resist change. This innate intransigence is often only overcome when the consequences of maintaining the status quo are significantly more painful than personal growth and transformation. In La MISSION, the central character finds himself at such a crossroads.

Che is a tough walking and talking Latino man who has secured the position he enjoys within his local community thanks to his testosterone-charged social skills, which are prized among his peers. However, Che is himself a victim of cultural stereotypes which dictate what a man should be, and unless he can reconcile his outdated ideas of masculinity and overcome the homophobia that to this day is a very real part of his culture, he risks losing the one thing that is most important to him - his son, Jes, whom he finds out is homosexual in the film's opening act.

The story was inspired by two characters in the Bratt brothers' life: Che is based on an older schoolmate and natural born leader whom Benjamin and Peter looked up to as kids (though the real-life Che has two sons, neither of which are gay), while Jes' journey echoes that of a family member who experienced a similar struggle for acceptance when his father discovered he was gay. But the family roots in La MISSION go even deeper. The film is set in the San Francisco neighborhood in which the brothers were raised, and its underlying message of hope and transformation is a testament to the convictions of Peter and Benjamin's activist mother, Elda Bratt, who participated in the Native American occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 (with her two young children in tow).

Though the subject matter of La MISSION may seem a little earnest for some, the underlying issues are handled in a sophisticated and subtle manner, which belies the power of the film. Politics take a backseat, as the viewer is immersed in the colorful lowriding culture Che reveres, and the very personal issues which father and son are fighting to overcome. Heartfelt and touching, La MISSION is all that independent filmmaking should be.

I spoke with Peter and Benjamin to find out more about La MISSION, and their wider calling to inspire and enact change through the ancient art of storytelling and their shared passion for film.

Read the full interview with Benjamin and Peter Bratt at SuicideGirls.com.

Transforming a beloved book into a film is always a huge risk. Alice Sebold's tale of tragedy, loss, and renewal is such a novel and Peter Jackson is the brave filmmaker who volunteered for the job.

The task was even more challenging since the book doesn't conform to any standard structure. The story is told from the point of view of Susie Salmon, a teenage girl who is brutally raped and murdered at the outset. Despite coming to such a violent and ugly end, as Susie watches her family from a place beyond death, she sees beauty in the connections and new beginnings the demise of her earthly body creates. It's this juxtaposition, that Sebold somehow made work on paper, which created such a strong reaction in readers. Many took great comfort in the author's vision of the afterlife, though Sebold wrote it from an agnostic perspective, which caused the devout to complain about her seemingly godless (and judgment-less) heaven. Others rejoiced in her ability to subvert the darkness of humanity, and in her capacity for finding light where there should be nothing but night.

There was therefore a difficult balancing act that was intrinsic to the success of the movie. The book was criticized by some for being too saccharin, yet if Jackson departed too far from its strangely uplifting tone he risked alienating its large and loyal following. Conversely, graphically depicting the rape and murder of a teen could easily be perceived as being gratuitous on screen, yet acknowledging that such a cruel and tragic event had happened was essential to the core of the piece.

Jackson worked on the screenplay with Lord of The Rings collaborators Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh (who's also his partner in life). Though the psychedelic dream/afterlife sequences allowed the team to draw on their familiar fantasy filmmaking background, the gritty, true-to-life segments, set in the suburbs of Philadelphia in the 1970s, have overtones from Jackson's earlier work - namely Heavenly Creatures (a period movie released in '94 that Jackson co-wrote with Walsh, which explored the 1954 Parker-Hulme murder).

Thus the movie will not necessarily appeal to Jackson's Lord of The Rings film fans, nor will it sit well with all who loved Sebold's book. Jackson is prepared for a mixed reaction however. Here he talks about The Lovely Bones' journey to the big screen, and his reasons for making the choices he did.

Click through to read SuicideGirls' Q&A with Peter Jackson.

"I didn't quite know what to expect from this interview," confesses Jason Reitman. The multi-award winning 32-year old writer and director may be secure in his ability to produce great movies, but he admits to being "scared" at the prospect of being interrogated by SuicideGirls.

It's taken us over a month to tie Jason down, during which time we've been communicating directly by Twitter and via his film and personal publicists. He's very much in demand right now. His first two movies, Thank You For Smoking, a satire set in the tobacco industry, and Juno, a dark comedy about teen pregnancy written by longtime friend of SG Diablo Cody, left indelible marks on the moviemaking landscape. Both films were unabashedly quirky yet each achieved mainstream critical and commercial acclaim -- and more importantly sparked a dialog about their respective subjects that reached far beyond the confines of the entertainment world. It's perhaps this capacity to make us think and to spark meaningful discussion that is Jason's greatest gift.

Though Jason grew up very much within the Hollywood machine (Jason's dad Ivan Reitman produced and/or directed an impressively long list of titles which includes the beloved Animal House, Ghostbusters and Beethoven franchises), creatively he's always preferred to walk the less traveled path. Intelligent and idiosyncratic, his latest comedy, Up In The Air, is no exception. Starring George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a corporate downsizer who chooses air-miles over attachment and celebrates his solitary existence, the film (which features real-world characters cast from the ranks of the recently downsized) ultimately takes flight on a path that our Hollywood-trained brains may instinctively resist. However, with a nod to Jason's libertarian leanings, the choice is right for Ryan Bingham, and that's what counts.

Though Up In The Air has just gone on wide release today, it's already been nominated for six Golden Globes, more than any other film in the class of 2009. Consequently Jason's press commitments have just got a whole lot crazier. To compound the pressure on his already over-filled schedule, he's just returned from a trip to his Canadian homeland, where he and his dad (who co-produced Up In The Air) were honored with turns carrying the Winter Olympic flame.

We finally caught up with Jason mid-afternoon on Monday as he was heading over to a satellite studio for a live remote appearance on the Faux News show Happy Hour. Once on the phone Jason was beyond generous with his time, and over the course of two phone calls, one before and one after his TV appearance, we talked about the new movie, his affinity with its leading character, and a few other topics that only SG would dare to bring up.

Hit the following link for SuicideGirls exclusive interview with Jason Reitman.

"I constantly want to feel like I'm in danger," says author and screenwriter Diablo Cody during our interview. This statement reveals a lot when you consider Cody's resume. She punctuated a rather mundane series of office jobs by moonlighting as a stripper, phone sex worker, and a peep show girl. While still working for "the man" she documented her experiences in the sex industry in a very public space -- a popular blog called Pussy Ranch. Subsequently she penned a full-blown memoir, entitled Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, which was published by Penguin imprint Gotham Books.

Having bared her body, next Cody bared her decidedly off-beat soul, writing a spec screenplay called Juno based in part on her experiences, and that of her friends, while growing up. The non-stereotypical, non-tragic tale of teen pregnancy courted controversy with its optimistic, pro-choice perspective, but ultimately prevailed both at the box office and the Oscars, where Cody won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Having bagged what many consider to be Hollywood's ultimate accolade, Cody took a career risk again, turning to a genre -- horror -- that neither has the respect of the mainstream film community nor favor with The Academy. Horror however is Cody's raison d'être, her latest film, Jennifer's Body, being an homage both to the conventions of the genre and her feminist ideals.

Femme fatale Megan Fox plays the tile role of Jennifer, a schoolgirl whose body is more attractive than her soul. The film co-stars Mama Mia actress Amanda Seyfried, who plays the archetypically nerdy Needy, Jennifer's bosom buddy turned frenemy. The blood starts to fly after a gig at the local dive bar when Jennifer and Needy encounter the enigmatic Nikolai (Adam Brody), a singer who's willing to deal with the Devil to facilitate his rock & roll dreams.

On the eve of the film's release, SuicideGirls caught up with Cody by phone to find out if her dreams remain true -- or if they've turned into anything resembling nightmares.

Click HERE to read my interview with Diablo Cody on SuicideGirls.com.

Jeremy Piven is Don Ready, a rock star amongst used car salesman. With the economy and the national psyche in the doldrums, America is in need of a fast-talking, inspirational hero like Ready. We're a nation that needs to live hard, sell hard -- and laugh hard. In The Goods, a comedy from the folks that brought us Talladega Nights and Step Brothers, Ready delivers on all fronts.

Like Piven's Entourage character Ari Gold, Ready is a man who believes that business is war. He is the fearless leader of a crack team of mercenary car salesmen hired to save Temecula, CA dealership Selleck Motors. Ready has just three days over July 4th weekend to sell all the cars on the lot -- and walk away with the girl.

James Brolin plays Ben Selleck, the owner of Selleck Motors, which is under threat of invasion by luxury car dealer Stu Harding (Alan Thicke). Harding plans to turn Selleck's used car lot into a studio and rehearsal space for Big Ups!, a less-than-talented man-band fronted by his too-old-to-be-in-a-boy-band son Paxton (Ed Helms) who just happens to be engaged to Ben's daughter Ivy (Jordana Spiro). Ready is off his game however, after losing a man (Will Farrell) in a tragic incident involving a parachute and a bag of dildos at a President's Day sale in Albuquerque.

Going in you know that Ready will ultimately prevail and save Selleck's American dream, the fun lies in watching how he does it. But Piven is waging a less certain war of his own against two big budget movies that open on the same day. He's proud of The Goods (and rightly so), and is going the extra mile to rally the troops and make sure people see it. Thus, with less than 72 hours to go before D-Day, Piven is working the phones talking to the likes of SuicideGirls. "It's been a long, long, strange trip this promotion," says the exhausted actor. "I feel like I've been literally promoting this movie for fourteen years. And I would do it willingly for another fourteen years."

Click HERE to read my interview with Piven at SuicideGirls.com.

In Neill Blomkamp's sci-fi world aliens landed in South Africa's largest city, Johannesburg, in 1989. While international governments argued about what to do with the unwanted guests, unable to return home in their disabled ship, the gigantic exo-skeletoned, shrimp-like creatures were confined to a makeshift refugee camp known as District 9. Wanting to maintain the status quo for their human residents, Johannesburg's officials adopted a strict -- and brutally enforced -- policy of segregation. Public transport and road crossings are reserved for the use of humans only, and those who spot aliens outside of their designated zone are encouraged to call a hotline (1-866-666-6001) manned by a private security firm called Multi-National United (you should keep their digits on speed dial -- just in case).

Blomkamp's nightmarish District 9 is a fictionalized reflection of the real horrors of District 6, a Cape Town municipality that was designated for "whites only" by South Africa's apartheid government in 1966. Removal of the non-white population began two years later. A total of 60,000 people were forcibly relocated to the Cape Flats, apartheid's dusty and bleak dumping ground 16 miles away. Similarly, as Blomkamp's faux documentary-style film begins, Multi-National United is charged with the task of clearing District 9 and relocating the area's resident aliens to a new government-mandated camp.

In his debut feature, Blomkamp skillfully portrays the human/alien apartheid society of Johannesburg in a hyper-real way, which sets this film apart from the bulk of sci-fi canon. With District 9, the South African born writer, director and visual effects artist takes the aliens of his beloved fantasy genre out of their usual star wars environment and has them do battle with the mundane pencil-pushers responsible for compliance in a segregated society similar to that of Blomkamp's youth. However, District 9 may never have happened if it wasn't for a more traditional space-based sci-fi project that Blomkamp was slated to helm.

At one point a film version of the first person shooter Halo was set to be Blomkamp's first feature, but the project got shot down while still in development. Microsoft and 20th Century Fox had charged Peter "Lord of the Rings" Jackson with the task of bringing the computer game to the big screen. Jackson in turn called on Blomkamp, an award winning commercial director who was creating quite a stir in the advertising world thanks to his award-winning visual effects. Though a series of three shorts were released in 2007 (collectively known as Landfall), the film version of Halo ultimately imploded. Jackson and Blomkamp forged a bond thanks to the project however, and when their work on Halo came to an end they turned to a six minute movie Blomkamp had produced back in 2005 as inspiration for their next project.

Click HERE to read my interview with Blomkamp at SuicideGirls.com in which he talks about the harsh realities behind District 9.

"If you were ever to meet a character like Captain Jack, I think the most monogamous woman in the world would probably go for him -- it'd be hard not to. "
Eve Myles (aka Gwen Cooper)

Gwen Cooper traded her ho-hum career as a policewoman to work as a professional alien catcher at Torchwood, an organization which legend has it is "separate from the government, outside the police, and beyond the United Nations." Eve Myles, the Welsh actress who plays Gwen, in turn, has traded her life in very legitimate theater for one in the warped and sexy science fiction universe.

Torchwood is the adult-orientated spin-off from Doctor Who, the world's longest running sci-fi TV series. Created by Doctor Who writer/producer/guru Russell T. Davies, Torchwood debuted in the UK in 2006. Picked up by BBC America in 2007, it has since become one of the station's hottest properties to date.

In part that is due to the on-screen chemistry between Eve's character and that of her charismatic boss Captain Jack Harkness (played by John Barrowman). When the two aren't doing battle to save the planet, they're battling to resist their mutual compulsion to get it on.

At the end of season two Jack and Eve lost two of their colleagues. Season three picks up where two left off, and takes the form of an epic five-part mini series called, Children of Earth.

I called Eve up while she was on a promotional trip in New York to get the inside scoop on Torchwood's other worldly success.

Click HERE to read my interview with Eve which is exclusive to SuicideGirls.

There's nothing half-hearted about the new album from Marilyn Manson, The High End of Low, which explores love, hate, revenge, loss and despair. Off stage, many find Manson's passion disconcerting, but the singer/songwriter considers anything that veers towards apathy to be inherently "worthless." It's therefore not surprising to hear that during the recording process Manson pushed himself and his band to extremes, the resulting album returning him to the kind of form he's not seen in a decade.



Very personal lyrically, and more melodic than past efforts, the album is the result of the much-anticipated reunion of Manson and Twiggy Ramirez -- the pair's last studio collaboration being the concept album Holy Wood, which came out in 2000. The lineup for the album was rounded out by longtime Manson drummer Ginger Fish and producer/drummer/keyboardist Chris Vrenna of Nine Inch Nails and Tweaker (who joined the band in 2004 when Fish was injured and moved from drums to keyboards upon his return to health).

The reunion with Twiggy wasn't the only emotionally charged ingredient in The High End of Low mix however, the period of recording, from November 2008 to January 2009, also coincided with the very public disintegration of Manson's relationship with Evan Rachel Wood, whom he dated following the failure of his marriage to Dita Von Teese. The 15 tracks on the album, which appear on the finished product in the order they were written, therefore chronicle Manson's emotional journey during this gut-wrenching time.



SuicideGirls caught up with Manson on the eve of a European tour to promote the new release. When asked about the album during our interview, it's hard for Manson to separate the music from the emotions and events that lie behind it. He also talks very candidly about the identity crisis that was sparked by this emotional turmoil, and his battle to figure out exactly who Marilyn Manson is.

Click HERE to read the full interview at SuicideGirls.com.

Chris O'Dowd's breakthrough role was playing uber geek Roy Tenneman in the Emmy Award winning British sitcom The IT Crowd. His character is well endowed in the information technology department but not so blessed when it comes to social skills. It's safe to say, however, that in real life the exact opposite is true.

The highly personable Irish actor, who's starring in three upcoming films -- The Boat That Rocked (written by Richard "Bridget Jones" Curtis), Hippie Hippie Shake (with Sienna Miller and Derek Jacobi), and Gulliver's Travels (with Jack Black and Emily Blunt) -- displayed a distinct lack of prowess when it came to dealing with digital phone technology during SuicideGirls protracted attempt to interview him.

The first time Chris called in, he'd just embarked on a hike in the cell phone black hole that is Hollywood's Runyon Canyon park. Thus our conversation was unintentionally aborted just as it had begun. It would take a total of five phone calls, including two more entirely aborted ones, before our interview was complete.

Click HERE to read.

The makers of Star Trek can thank their lucky stars that the spacetime continuum isn't thought to be very continuous these days. The new Star Trek film turns its back on everything that Back To The Future ever taught us about time, and embraces the possibilities of infinite alternate universes that come along with the relatively recent science of string theory.

In the domain of string theory, the paradox issues created by time travel are resolved by a split in the fabric of time, with new offshoots creating alternate futures. This non-linear vision of temporal theory, which is now favored by many scientists, has conveniently allowed Star Trek director J.J. Abrams, and writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (who worked with J.J. on Alias and Fringe), to reboot the series and open Star Trek up to a whole new world of possibilities.

The character of Spock lies at the dramatic center of the alternate universe depicted in the new Star Trek movie, with Leonard Nimoy's original Spock traveling back in time to aid a United Federation of Planets inhabited by his younger self, played by Heroes' Zachary Quinto. In this timeline, which was created by the elder Spock's leap through time, the young Spock (and not Kirk) gets to kiss Uhura (played by Zoe Saldana).

In an otherwise utterly brilliant film, it's this one storyline that may have hardcore Trekkies and Trekkers up in arms. Science fiction fans might need to remind themselves that the word "science" comes before "fiction" in this genre, where multiple alternate timelines/universes are (quite literally) the way of the future. Fans can also console themselves with the fact that a Spock/Uhura relationship is perhaps not without precedent in Star Trek's hallowed canon -- as actor Karl Urban (who play Dr. Leonard "bones" McCoy) points out in this group discussion with Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto.

Click HERE to read on.