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.
supra shoes on sale cheap supra shoes supra skytop supra societyThe deck chairs keep moving in the TSN 1050/Sportsnet FAN 590 radio competition in Toronto, due to start next week.
Gord Stellick is also leaving the FAN to head for Sirius satellite radio's hockey channel to do a hockey show from noon to 2 P.M. Stellick doing hockey - what will they think of next?
Stellick's departure opens the way for Primetime Sports to return as a 4-7 p.m. show once again, from 3-6 p.m., with Andrew Krystal filling in 1 - 4 p.m. Thus, virtually all of program director Don Kollins's initial moves as program director at the FAN have been reversed or abandoned. At TSN, Bryan Hayes makes the move from AM 640 as it prepares to jettison its experiment with the Maple Leafs rights. Hayes is getting 10-noon after Mike Richards. (So much for syndicated U.S. hosts Jim Rome and Dan Patrick, eh?)
Elsewhere, Stormin’ Norman Rumack returns to Toronto airwaves starting Monday as he joins The Score Radio as a late-night host. Executive producer Mike Gentile says he wants the former FAN 590 character to shake things up as he once did. “We’re not talking about him swearing and carrying on,” Gentile said. “But we want the old fire he showed engaging guests back in his prime. We think he could make a great addition to Puck Daddy Radio in the morning and our other shows.”
TSN Radio has lured writer Bruce Arthur, who’d been a regular guest on then FAN’s Prime Time Sports, to be a co-host once a week with James Cybulski on its afternoon drive show Cybulski & Co. Arthur also joins The Reporters, the Sunday morning TV program which lost Damian Cox to Rogers and Michael Farber temporarily to illness.
A finger in the eye of golf’s TV vigilantes: Just hours before the start of the Masters on Thursday, the governing bodies of the game (the USGA and the R &A in Great Britain) stuck a finger in the eye of golf’s TV vigilantes. One of sport’s enduring charms (?) is the eagle-eyed role of viewers in affecting the outcome of even major tournaments. In the past, TV detectives have noticed rules infractions missed by officials on course and phoned them in. Causing embarrassment to the golf establishment.
Earlier this year, Camilo Villegas was disqualified in Hawaii after a viewer spotted him tamping down a divot that was in the path of his ball - a two-stroke penalty Villegas failed to call on himself. Padraig Harrington likewise was disqualified in Abu Dhabi when HD video replays later showed his ball had moved microscopically as he addressed it.
No more. In cases such as Harrington’s, where players can reasonably assert they did not see the infraction, the player will now be assessed the two-stroke penalty but not be disqualified. However, in cases such as that of Villegas or Dustin Johnston at last year’s PGA (who grounded his club in a sand hazard), players are still expected to know the rules and will still be DQ’d.
So if you planned to spend the weekend breaking down the Masters telecast like the Zapruder film in an effort to achieve your 15 minutes of fame, you might want to take up a new hobby.
West Is Best: Anaheim Ducks Corey Perry forward became the next hot property recently as he pushed his team to an (almost certain) playoff spot with his 50-goal performance. In doing so he became the darling of NHL voters in the media, who’d previously given their hearts to Vancouver’s Daniel Sedin. Prior to that the impressionable voters were swooning for Sidney Crosby.