The sun was down but the hotel bar was bright when Sean Bean arrived and took a table in the only shadowy corner of the patio — or maybe the corner was no different than the rest and it was the actor who brought bit of hushed winter along with him just like the Irish beer in his hand. The 51-year-old Brit has sad eyes but an easy smile and after making small talk the topic turned to his latest project, the ambitious HBO fantasy series “Game of Thrones.” He is clearly enthused about the show, which premieres next Sunday, but at one point he sounded like a world-weary knight summoned for yet another quest.
“I like playing guys with swords and the horses and stuff like that,” Bean said. “It’s good. But it’d be nice to do something else, maybe a bit of comedy, something more light-hearted? I don’t know. I just take things as they come — I don’t have an agenda — and life keeps putting a sword in my hand or so it seems.”
For fans of clanging-metal epics, there are few things more interesting than the reluctant warrior with a storied past and for “Thrones” it seems Bean fits the bill both on- and off-screen. The actor thrives in movies where hard-hearted men make difficult choices and he’s shown he can hold the screen opposite of any big-name star, be it Harrison Ford in “Patriot Games,” Robert DeNiro in “Ronin” or Nicolas Cage in “National Treasure.” But for movie fans around the globe he will forever be the noble Boromir from Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” film trilogy.
“It was very special and I think we all look back on it and realize what it meant to people,” Bean said. “Things like that are usually once in a lifetime. It’s been a dozen years now since we were there making it and it doesn’t seem that long.”
kobe shoes,basketball shoes, nike shoes crazy 8 kobes shoes Hyperdunk shoes Hyperfuse XDR Zoom kobeWhen KT Tunstall reveals that her musical heroes are Chrissy Hynde and PJ Harvey (her first name is Katie, but she calls herself KT in honor of the latter), it makes sense.
The gritty and uncompromising singer-songwriter operates in the same manner as her favorites.
Tunstall, who will perform tonight at the Theatre of the Living Arts, pulls no punches during interviews or in song.
When her record label told her to drop out of sight and focus on writing her next album after touring behind 2007's "Drastic Fantastic," Tunstall admitted that she was a bit nervous.
"I got into a bit of a panic," she says. "Around that time, you had female artists like Lily Allen and Florence and the Machine doing really well. I thought that if I drifted off, the door would close behind me."
It obviously didn't, but Tunstall did drift off to the Arctic in September 2008 with a number of like-minded quirky recording artists, such as Jarvis Cocker, Robyn Hitchcock and Martha Wainwright.
The trip was designed to inspire.
"But there were too many people on the trip," Tunstall says. "I did enjoy it. It was so beautiful."
The creative process was only beginning. She and husband Luke Bullen, who is also her drummer, followed the Arctic excursion with a jaunt to India, Chile and New Zealand, among other locales.
The experiences compelled her to write 75 songs. Eleven of those cuts made her latest album, "Tiger Suit," which dropped in September.
"I felt very liberated by traveling," she says. "It was amazing. I came back writing. I think I have another album in there."
Before Tunstall works on a new disc, she's touring behind "Tiger Suit," which is full of her finest songs to date. She moves in different directions with each song, having no problem going from folk to funk within the same song, and her lyrics are moving and clever.
The brassy Scot has really found her groove.
Tunstall, who made a splash on the charts courtesy of the hit "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" in 2006, has never repeated herself.
"I don't see the point," she says.
"Tiger Suit," which was recorded in Berlin at the Hansa studio, where U2 recorded "Achtung Baby" and the David Bowie cut "Heroes," is her most polished disc to date.
"I think it's fine to try different things," she says. "It might sound a little different this time, but you can still tell it's me."
KT Tunstall appears tonight at the Theatre of the Living Arts, 334 South St., Philadelphia. Show time: 8. Tickets: $20. Information: 215-922-1011.
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