Chris Lilley Stars and Stars and Stars in the New HBO Series ‘Angry Boys’ (He plays 6 roles!)

Australia’s answer to Tracey Ullman, Chris Lilley, is starring in the new HBO mockumentary series, Angry Boys, which airs Sunday’s at 10pm. 

Each week, two half-hour episodes will air, featuring Lilley in a multitude of roles, including a rich kid rapper, a forceful mother, and identical twin teenager boys. 

In an interview with Winnipeg Free Press, Lilley says, “I don’t make things easy for myself, but why give myself limitations?  I don’t need a deadline.  I just work until it’s ready.”

Lilley, 37, first gained attention in the US in 2007 with another HBO series, Summer Heights High, which was a similar platform for Lilley’s ability to play multiple (often outrageous) characters.  Read more

Jerry Ferrara Chats About His “Jarring” Weight Loss

In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Entourage’s Jerry Ferrara talked about how he recently lost more than 50 pounds and, in the process, continued the natural evolution of his character.

Did he worry about how shedding major poundage would affect Turtle, the aspiring entrepreneur/friend of a movie star he plays on the hit HBO show business comedy?

“When I first started on this whole new regimen it didn’t really cross my mind, because I didn’t really know how far it would go,” the 32-year-old actor said. “But once I was into it for about a year, that’s when it did start to kick in like, Uh, maybe this will be a little bit jarring for people.”

Entourage, which follows the Hollywood lives of fictional movie star Vincent Chase and his childhood buddies, has consistently been one of HBO’s highest-rated series since debuting in the summer of 2004. However, the show is now wind-down mode, with the series finale airing this Sunday.   Read more

“True Blood” star Alexander Skarsgard on Season 4: It’s “quite different from what we’ve seen before”

HBO’s “True Blood” returned last night and Alexander Skarsgard‘s role as vampire sheriff Eric Northman will be directly involved in the story arc this season.

Thanks to a coven of witches, Northman has lost his memory and is forced to rely on Sookie (Anna Paquin), and the actor couldn’t be happier with the turn of events.

“I was excited. It was quite different from what we’ve seen before. It’s been difficult because he doesn’t …  it was difficult finding the right tone. He doesn’t know who he is, so all that baggage is gone, 1,000 years of resentment and bitterness, the whole, like, loathing humanity kind of stuff is gone. But there has to be an element of danger there still. I didn’t want him to become too much of a little puppy. It was about finding that balance, because he has to be extremely vulnerable now,” Skarsgard says.

He also enjoyed trying out his comedic skills throughout the first few episodes.  ”I had fun with it. It was just important to make it real. The humor had to come out of the situations more than him trying to be funny.”
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Watch the First 6 Minutes of “True Blood” Season 4!

You know summer is almost here because True Blood is about to premiere. I had no intention of making that rhyme, by the way.

Catch the first 6 minutes of the season below where Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) is in the land of fairies, meets her grandpa and gets into a bit of trouble.

Watch till the end. It looks like the season is going to start off with a bang!

Anybody know where I can get a light-fruit?

True Blood premieres June 26 on HBO.

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Ian McShane is riding high as the notorious Pirate Blackbeard in “On Stranger Tides”

“Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” introduces a new villian in this fourth film of the blockbuster franchise and reports are he is the baddest of them all: the notorious Blackbeard.

To fill the role of the infamous scourge of the seas, director Rob Marshall looked to Ian McShane, a British stage-trained actor best known for playing Al Swearengen, a ruthless frontier kingpin on HBO‘s Deadwood.

And McShane could not have been happier to step into those pirate boots. “Dark characters are great if they’re written with the subtlety that (Deadwood producer) David Milch wrote them with or the comedy that I think Terry Rossio provided in this particular script,” he says. “You get the best lines. And when people recognize me on the street, they tend to keep their distance.”

Understanding the mindset of the villian of the high seas proved challenging for the actor. “I guess what you do is you get the right costume, from the wonderful Penny Rose, and work with the talented Kenny Myers, who designed that beard that took two hours to apply every day. I’d go into makeup in the morning, sit down and listen to the choice of music for the day, and in a few hours Blackbeard would come alive.”

McShane adds, “Once you got the hat and those boots on, you got out there and just started acting, you know? Filming is such a mixture of concentrating and ‘hurry-up-and-wait,’ especially these big productions. And the 3-D, of course, adds a little more time to it overall. But you’re there to add the menace, and I always go on the old theory of you stand there, plant your feet, look the other actor in the eyes and say the lines. And you try not to trip over your sword.”
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HBO Premieres “Colin Quinn: Long Story Short” 4/9

The hit Broadway show, Colin Quinn: Long Story Short, will premiere on HBO April 9, 2011.

Taped in front of a live audience in New York City’s Helen Hayes Theater, the show spotlights Colin Quinn’s acute observations on the history of the world and human behavior with the rise and fall of Empires. From his opinion that Caesar was the original mobster to expressing displeasure over ancient Greece and Antigone segueing to Costco and Snooki,  from grocery shopping disputes to how times change but the human race remains the same, Quinn does not hold back while cleverly voicing his opinion on societies habits, behavior and consumption.

New York Magazine raves “Colin Quinn: Long Story Short” is “brisk and Seinfeldian”, while TIME Magazine says, “Quinn nails it! A polished act.”

Samuel Jackson Weighs In On Indie Films

Samuel Jackson has teamed up with Tommy Lee Jones to star in HBO’s The Sunset Limited, a two person drama based on the Cormac McCarthy play. In the film, Jackson plays a devout Christian named “Black” who tries to save cynical atheist named “White” (Jones).  In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Jackson opened up about the current state of independent films:

“[Independent film] doesn’t have the cache it used to have,” Jackson said. “Any kid can get a camera and make a film and put it on the internet [...] Films in my mind, today, are about events: Twilight, Harry Potter, The Avengers. They’re interested in big events and getting those 3-D dollars. Hopefully there will always be a place to tell quiet stories about everyday life.”

Read The Wall Street Journal’s full interview.

The Sunset Limited premieres on HBO February 12.

For more info about the film, visit HBO’s web site.

Broadway’s Pee-Wee Herman Show coming to HBO

Good news for those of us who didn’t get a chance to see Pee-Wee’s Broadway debut. The Pee-Wee Herman Show on Broadway is coming to HBO!

I’ve heard great things about the show and can’t wait to see it!

The teaser is below.

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The Cast of HBO’s “How To Make It” talk about how they made it

The cast of HBO‘s How To Make It talk about their early struggles as young actors.

Clip: True Blood Season 2 Preview

Here’s a clip of from Episode 1, Season 2 of this summers True Blood on HBO. It starts this June.

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