by Daniel Robert Epstein

When the Borat movie was released last year you couldn’t even count the number of publicity appearances that Sacha Baron Cohen made in character. Those appearances, along with creating a hysterical and powerful movie, turned Borat into a monstrous hit and a cultural phenomenon that crossed all lines of gender, race and politics.

Much of the attention for the film was given, and rightly so, went to Cohen, but for most movies the director is always an essential element. Borat‘’s director is Larry Charles, previously best known for his writer/producer work on Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage. Charles also directed another mop topped Jew named Bob Dylan in Masked and Anonymous. I got a chance to talk with Charles about creating the movie, the politics behind the scenes and how he got those people to say such outrageous things.

Read our exclusive interview with Larry Charles on SuicideGirls.com.

by Keith Daniels

Obsidian Entertainment’s Dungeon Siege 3 is a polished and highly addictive button-mashing action-RPG that succeeds in creating a story-oriented co-op fantasy dungeon crawler for mainstream console audiences in the tradition of Secret of Mana or Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance. Though the Dungeon Siege franchise was originally developed by Gas Powered Games, Obsidian is known for taking on sequel projects from other developers, most notably the sequels to BioWare’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Bethesda’s Fallout 3.

SuicideGirls spoke recently to Dungeon Siege 3’s Lead Designer, Nathaniel Chapman, also a veteran of Neverwinter Nights 2 and Fallout: New Vegas, about where this sequel fits in with its predecessors, his design philosophy, and how Diablo is Diablo.

Read our exclusive interview with Nathaniel Chapman on SuicideGirls.com.

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by Alex Dueben

Trina Robbins is a legend among people who read and study comics. She’s a cartoonist who was active in the San Francisco underground in the ’70s and ’80s where she contributed to many publications including the East Village Other, It Ain’t Me Babe and Wimmen’s Comix. In recent decades she’s worked more as a writer on books including Go, Girl! and Chicagoland Detective Agency, in addition to working on Wonder Woman, Xena and The Spirit.

Robbins’ other claim to fame is that she is one of the great comics historians. In books like A Century of Women Cartoonists and From Girls to Grrrlz she writes not just thoughtfully and passionately about many cartoonists whose work has faded from consciousness, but she also reshapes our perception of comics past. In the book The Brinkley Girls, which she edited, the work of the artist Nell Brinkley was brought together, showing her incredible drafting skill and demonstrating why she was one of the most popular and important illustrators and cartoonists of her time.

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by Daniel Robert Epstein

Since Perry Farrell broke into the music scene in the early ’80’s few people have had such an impact on modern music. In fact, his co-creation, Lollapalooza changed the face of American music festivals forever. But it is really the impact of bands like Jane’’s Addiction and Porno for Pyros which has cemented Farrell into the world’’s musical consciousness. His new collaboration, Satellite Party, is set to expand that world view.

Satellite Party unites Farrell with cohorts such as producer/guitarist Nuno Bettencourt and collaborators like Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fergie, Thievery Corporation and even a spoken word appearance by the still dead Jim Morrison. I got a chance to talk with Farrell about this exciting new work on the phone while he was in Hong Kong.

Read our exclusive interview with Perry Farrell on SuicideGirls.com.

by Keith Daniels

I first heard of Rebecca Watson in her role as the lone female host on The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, on which she appears as one of a quartet of co-hosts led by Dr. Steven Novella, but she first gained notice within the skeptic community because of her work with the collaborative blog she founded, Skepchick.org.

Skepchick advocates for the interrelationship between critical thinking, science, secularism, and feminism. One of the most passionate, articulate, and fearless secularists in the public eye, Rebecca divides her time between Skepchick, the SGU podcast, and frequent speaking engagements at atheist and skeptic-oriented conferences and conventions. In 2009 Skepchick started its own convention, SkepchickCon, which occurs annually as part of the larger CONvergence at the end of June in Minneapolis.

We spoke recently about Skepchick, the Religious Right’s war against women in the United States, and the difficulties women face even within the secular community.

Read our exclusive interview with Rebecca Watson on SuicideGirls.com.

by Nicole Powers

On the surface, The Last Mountain is a documentary about the dirty business of coal, the highly destructive and toxic practice of mountaintop removal mining, and one community’s fight to preserve their homes, their livelihoods, their health, and the last great mountain in the region. However, the story of Coal River Mountain in West Virginia is allegorical of much that is wrong with America, which is why during our roundtable conversation with the film’s champion, renowned environmental lawyer and activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., he barely mentions the four-letter word that is coal. Instead, Kennedy focuses on the underlying history and climate that has allowed corporations to rape and pillage our environment, and poison and kill our citizenry with impunity.

In The Last Mountain, Don Blankenship, the former CEO of Massey Energy (he retired at the end of December 2010), is typecast in the role of modern day robber baron. As the largest coal producer in Central Appalachia, his company is only able to function on the scale it does by subjugating democracy. Mountaintop removal mining is cheaper and less labor intensive than traditional underground coal extraction methods, but it causes such an affront to the landscape, water and air, that it can only be done when the authorities charged with protecting the public interest are willing and able to look the other way.

Between 2000 and 2006 Massey chalked up a staggering 60,000 EPA infractions, but has suffered little in consequences beyond much belated and pitifully low fines that serve the government’s need to be seen to be doing something while maintaining the status quo. Of course, Massey is not the only corporation and coal is far from the only industry that is using and abusing our severely compromised shell of a democracy. In light of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling allowing corporate campaign donations (and a subsequent one that makes direct-to-candidate payments permissible), our government couldn’t be for more up for sale if it were posted on eBay.

Though there will inevitably be dark days ahead for our democracy, it’s not all doom and gloom thanks to a groundswell of grassroots activism as witnessed in Coal River Valley and documented in The Last Mountain. As for the environment, Kennedy points out towards the end of this interview that there’s an (LED) light at the end of the tunnel, and ironically it’s capitalism in its cleanest and purest form that may end up saving the day.

Read our interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on SuicideGirls.com.

The Last Mountain opens in Los Angeles* on Wednesday, June 15, and in Irvine, Pasadena, Philadelphia, San Francisco*, and Berkeley on Friday, June 17.

*Bill Haney and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will appear in person at the Landmark opening night screenings in Los Angeles and San Francisco – visit the Landmark website for more details.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

It’’s 2007 and Simon Pegg has become a bonafide movie star. Pegg’s breakout role in the surprise cult hit Shaun of the Dead has led to bigger roles such as the lab tech in Mission: Impossible III and the lead in the Run, Fat Boy, Run written by Michael Ian Black. But Hot Fuzz is the film that Pegg and his long time collaborator, director Edgar Wright, have wanted to do since they wrapped Shaun.

Shaun of the Dead is one of my favorite films of recent years, but Hot Fuzz surpasses it in acting and humor, and technically the film is a marvel. Wright and Pegg have crafted a tight screenplay that lovingly satirizes elements from some of the best/worst action films of all time. Amazingly they’’ve incorporated those ideas into pivotal and often emotional scenes.

In Hot Fuzz, Pegg plays super cop Nicholas Angel, who does such a good job of arresting bad guys that he is making his department pale in comparison. He is then transferred to the rural sleepy hamlet of Sandford. At first he spends his time trying to whip the lazy police department into shape but soon Angel realizes that Sandford is hiding a dark secret…

Read our exclusive interview with Simon Pegg on SuicideGirls.com.