shorts
Malin Akerman’s Other Life
Look out for Canadian actor Malin Akerman in 27 Dresses. She plays Katherine Heigl’s bubbly sister Tess, the one who’s getting married to Heigl’s boss (Edward Burns)…the guy Heigl’s character secretly loves.
You may also recognize Akerman from last year’s The Heartbreak Kid, in which she starred opposite Ben Stiller as his delightful new wife who, out of nowhere, transforms into an over-the-top whack job.
If you do know Akerman through her movies, it may be harder to recognize the Stockholm-born, Toronto-raised actor looking rather rock chick in this photograph of her L.A.-based band, The Petalstones.
Akerman, who went to Toronto’s York University for theatre, joined the band in 2003, one year after she moved to the City of Angels. Her band mates — from left, Francesco, Roberto and Mario — were already a group in Italy before they moved to L.A. and welcomed Akerman as their new lead singer.
You can watch their video for “Poison” on YouTube, as well as a clip of a live Petalstones appearance at Hollywood’s Viper Room.
The band put out one album, Stung, before Akerman’s movie career took off, leaving her less time to spend on music. But she swears that she still wants to keep the band going.
“Time permitting, absolutely,” Akerman writes by email from Vancouver where she’s working on the sci-fi thriller Watchmen opposite Billy Crudup and Patrick Wilson. She plays Laurie Juspeczyk, also known as the superhero Silk Spectre II, in the adaptation of Alan Moore’s popular comic book. “Although new albums will take a little longer to put together,” she adds, “since they will have to be recorded in segments, in between movie shoots.”
Next month the band plans to sit down and start writing their second album, and they hope to play some more live gigs later in the year.
So what does the rest of the band do while Akerman’s out making movies? Tour with other artists, she says, adding, “Everyone is keeping busy.”
—Marni Weisz
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Artifact
This month’s objet de film: Nicaraguan Rambo mural
Rambo,
the fourth film about troubled Vietnam vet John Rambo comes out this
month — 26 years after Sylvester Stallone rammed the character into the
world’s collective psyche via First Blood, and 20 years after the last Rambo movie, Rambo III.
Now anyone who doles out vigilante justice or uses excessive force to solve a problem is at risk of being called a Rambo.
The
embittered GI’s likeness has been recreated via action figures, on
T-shirts and in fan art, and a quick Google search reveals a surprising
number of pet pooches named Rambo — almost all of them of the lapdog
variety. |
Even the small Nicaraguan city of Ocotal bears this
tribute to a gun-wielding Rambo — muscles rippling, bandana holding
back that luxurious hair — painted on the side of what appears to be a
tiny movie theatre, the Mini Cine Hollywood.
—Marni Weisz