Rych McCain Hollyhood Notes

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Markees Christmas - Film

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Markees Christmas - Film

Rych McCain International/Nationally Syndicated Entertainment Columnist

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Markees Christmas

Makes His Playful Film Debut

Teen newcomer Markees Christmas stars as Morris Gentry in a new coming-of-age movie titled “Morris From America.” The idea here is that Morris is a 13-year-old who has just relocated with his single father Curtis, played by Craig Robinson, to Heidelberg, Germany. Morris’s rap skills leave a lot to be desired but he fancies himself to be the next Notorious B.I.G. To complicate matters further, Morris quickly falls hard for his cool, rebellious, 15-year-old classmate Katrin played by German actress Lina Keller. Morris sets out against all odds to take the hip-hop world by storm and win the girl of his dreams. The film was written and directed by Chad Hartigan and won two prizes at this year’s Sundance film Festival i.e., the Waldo Salt Screening Award and a Special Jury Award for Robinson. This film is Robinson’s first dramatic role for which he has received great reviews. Robinson is best known as Daryl Philban on the smash hit NBC-TV show “The Office.”

Morris (MarkeesChristmas) meets Katrin (Lina Keller)

Markees Christmas is a native of Los Angeles and is currently a high school student. He began acting with a school play in the 6^th grade which led to acting in a series of channel 101 shorts. With such an unusual last name, is he razed a lot for it? Christmas laughs, “As far as school, everybody on the staff calls me Mr. Christmas. People in the town that I live in, call me Christmas when they see me. I mean It’s just something that you catch regularly when you have a name like that.” One can imagine how stupid crazy it gets during the actual Christmas holidays. Christmas laughs, “They like to do it. They think it’s funny. Once I’m done eating my Thanksgiving dinner, I’m just like I want to go to sleep until Christmas is over.”

Morris and Katrin talk

Christmas secured his role in Morris via regular appearances in an online project called Channel 101 where anyone can shoot homemade shorts and upload them. How did he become aware of Channel 101? Christmas explains, “I was with my mentor from the big brother program for like two years before that. He never told me about it. That was something he enjoyed by himself. I didn’t have anything to do with film back then. I wasn’t even thinking about that back then. I was doing real bad in the 6^th grade and they basically told me there’s a school play coming up and if you don’t participate you’re going to be in the 6^th grade again. I said that can’t happen to me so I ended up participating in the school play “A Rasin In The Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry. Of course, it was revised a little bit because we were in the 6^th grade. I tried out for the part of Travis the son which doesn’t have a lot of lines. That’s what I was going for so I could get to 7^th grade. They lied to me and told me we already have a Travis. It’s Walter or you’re going to be in 6^th grade again.

L-R Craig Robinson and Markees Christmas

I took Walter, I got my lines down, I practice my lines with my mom and anybody I could find. I wanted to question why would they want to give me this part? I don’t even know why they would trust me with this part. I’m not experienced; this is my first time acting. I didn’t know that’s what I was going to end up doing. I wasn’t expecting it but it came out better than I imagined it to.” Christmas started to shoot the small Channel 101 shorts which he used to audition for Morris and he got the part. As they say, the rest is history.

Markees Christmas

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Saturday, October 8, 2016

Hellevator Twisted Twins Jen and Sylvia Soska - TV

Hellevator Twisted Twins Jen and Sylvia Soska - TV

Rych McCain International/Nationally Syndicated Entertainment Columnist

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Hellevator‘s “Twisted Twins” Jen And Sylvia Soska Blast Into Season 2 With Emphasis on The Seven Deadly Sins!

Fans of the top rated GSN horror game show Hellevator are in for a “scarified” treat for season two. Executive producer Jason Blum (Paranormal Activity, The Purge) has built a reputation as one of the best in the horror genre on the big screen and has now brought the same magic to the little screen.

Twisted Twins Jen & Sylvia Soska

Of course the show wouldn’t have its horrific up and down goose bump moments without it’s hostesses the Hellevator twins Jen and Sylvia Soska (American Mary), who have added a new floor of terror. The “Twisted Twins” will again spin their spidery web of deceit, confusion and uncertainty from their secret lair to mentally bamboozle the teams of four friends who struggle to stay calm, pretend to be cool while holding on to the last bit a sanity they have left navigating their way through dark, bug filled, wet, creepy hallways and mysterious rooms where anything can come out. They will endure all of the psychological torture to see who will last and complete their tasks including completing the pulse stopping final stage known as “The Inferno” for a $50,000 grand prize.

In talking with the “Twisted Twins,” one gets an eerie sense of scary, humor and sensual sexy all at the same time

which is a very intriguing combination. When asked if they stayed in character between takes or after the set is shut down for lunch or whatever are they still ready to hack a head off? Jen laughs out, “Oh yes, I’m very mean spirited. I’m the mean spirited one.” Sylvia sweetly chimes in, “I think I’m always gleefully homicidal. its part of the job description,” Jen comes back and says, “I’m a little bit compassionate but only about the leaches, the tarantulas and the snakes. I always check on them but the contestants not so much.” And yes they do have real live animals on the set. When this interviewer commented about not liking snakes Jen says, “You know we aren’t the type of people you need to tell your phobias to.”

Do the fans of the show recognize the twins when they are grocery shopping, at the mall or wherever even out of makeup? And how do they react? Sylvia responds, “We’re very recognizable so in or out of the makeup all of the time we’ll either get running over and ‘oh my God you’re those crazy bitches from Hellevator’ or ‘do you guys watch Hellevator you kind of look like the twins?’ They respond, “We are the twins, going down?” Jens explains, “The most exciting one was after the first episode for the season premiere. We were in an ubor and the girl said ‘are you the scary Hellevator twins?’ Then she started telling us everything like ‘this is what he did wrong, this is what she did wrong, you need to get my uncle and the four of us will go on.’ It was like yeah, it was exciting.”

So how did these lovely ladies land such a dream job? Sylvia agrees, “Oh it is a dream job. I’m still waiting for the real host to show up. Elvira, I keep expecting Elvira to show up.” Jen jokes, “Well obviously it was voodoo and witchcraft, sacrifices of small animals but no; we had an interview. They were looking for one person. They had the two of us and for some reason us talking back and forth being our interesting twinny selves; they were like our thoughts are she is pretty perfect considering that we dress whore and abusive style.”

It might be interesting to note that the late artist Prince was quoted as saying “The elevator is the devil” and he unfortunately was found dead in his Paisley Park studio elevator.

Fans can step into season 2 of the Hellevator for its four-part special event beginning Friday, Oct. 7 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on GSN.

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Project Almanac - Film

Rych McCain International/Nationally Syndicated Entertainment Columnist

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Project Almanac

When a tech nerd wizard student named David discovers a set of blueprints in his home’s basement for a mysterious device that can alter time and induce time travel he builds it and starts to experiment. When he discovers all of the wonderful things it can do, he turns several of his closest friends on to it. After seeing that they can travel ahead or back in time, the teens get testy and see if they can alter bad events by going back in time to prevent those events from happening. They go back and alter a couple of events but they soon learn that when they alter an event in time, everything else surrounding it gets altered as well, It doesn’t take long before they are in well over their heads. They soon create more problems than they solved by messing with historic time lines.

L-R Allen Evangelista (Adam) Jonny Weston (David) Sam Lerner (Quinn) and Virginia Gardner (Chistina)

The movie stars Jonny Weston as (David the tech wiz) and his friends Sofia Black-D’Ella; (Jesse who is one of the prettiest girls at David’s high school); Sam Lerner (Quinn); Allen Evangelista (Adam) and Virginia Gardner (Christina).The film is directed by Dean Israelite; written by Andrew Deutschman and Jason Pagan and produced by Michael Bay.

David (Jonny Weston) smooches up Jessie (Sofia Black-D'Ella)

In this era of re-makes for many of the present day films, is it more of a challenge to promote a completely original brand like this film? The director Dean Israelite responds saying “We’ve (the film business) have had a couple of original things happen in the last couple of years. So it is always a challenge to take something that doesn’t have a lot of people knowing about it going into it. But Paramount did a fantastic job marketing it so we knew that this concept was one that was really fun so you just kind of hope that there’s a different way in and that this is something people already know about.”One of the film’s writers Jason Harry Pagan chimes in; “The awareness always starts low when you have an original movie. You have to get out there and hit the ground everywhere and educate people about the movie.”

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Friday, October 7, 2016

Shannyn Sossamon Sinister 2 - Film

Rych McCain International/Nationally Syndicated Entertainment Columnist

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Shannyn Sossamon

Delivers The Chills In Sinister 2

Academy Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning horror film producer Jason Blum has released a string of scary films that have been so successful, most became franchised. He started with the super low budget Paranormal Activity followed by Insidious, Sinister, The Purge and Ouija which combined have gross over $1.4 billion worldwide. Paranormal Activity is in the record books as the most profitable film in Hollywood history because it was made for a mere $15,000 and grossed $200 million worldwide. Blum’s latest offering is Sinister 2 which of course picks up where the original left off.

Shannyn Sossamon as Courtney Collins

This version’s star is Shannyn Sossamon who plays Courtney Collins, the mother of twins who become involved with the dreaded evil demon Bughuul (Nick King) and his small posse the ghost kids. As expected, there are several twist and turns that the viewing audience will try to figure out only to be surprised by a different outcome.

Courtney painting chair

In this film, Sossamon's
character Courtney goes
through a barrage of
emotions. She has moved
to an isolated farm house to escape the clutches of her jealous, abusive, mean tempered, knuckle head husband while at the same time having to deal with a private detective hell bent on destroying the evil demon Bughuul and Bughuul with his band of ghost kids getting inside her twin children's head causing them to start acting weird.

Courtney encounters an unpleasant surprise

After shooting with all of that confusion going on, what kind of mindset did Sossamon have when she went home at night? She cracks up saying, “There was a lot of laughing on set so that helped. It relieves tension a little bit though out the day so that helps.” Does Sossamon like the horror genre as an actress? She explains, “ It’s funny, I’m not a horror fan. I don’t like them really at all. So I feel like they just come to me probably because of the way I look. Just because I have dark hair and dark eyes, they assume only people with dark eyes and dark hair and dark features are like well suited for these intense pictures. And that’s true, I do have access to a lot of those feelings but it’s also like gees, there are other colors. But I did like the two very worried mother parts (Wayward Pines) (Her last movie) and Sinister 2 two back to back. So it will be nice in Sleepy Hollow (her next film) to get to play a lit bit of a different area.”

Bughuul's ghost kids gather outside and are up to no good

Because she is the mother of two boys in real life, Sossamon’s intensity in some scenes was a little intimidating to the children playing her twin sons especially Dylan because he played the part of the twin that was the one the dad had abused.


The spooked out twin

Sossamon said, “I wasn’t pretending to grab him hard, I was holding him like he was my own. And I would always tell him before we shot I’m going to hold you really tightly right now because the scene calls for it so I just really need you to work with me here.”

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