Some people when you encounter them you just get this sense they are standing on the precipice of greatness. It has not quite arrived yet, but all the signs are there, your artform, whatever it may be and in this case with Canadian screenwriter and director Akash Sherman it is his internationally and critically acclaimed film. You have significant peers, who only seems like yesterday were not your peers, seeking you out for collaborations and you have two television and film stars who heap praise upon you after working with you.

As much as the entertainment industry is filled with stories of successful performing artists who grew up in places like Los Angeles, New York City and Nashville, there are an equal number of fabulous stories of artists who grew up in obscure places, not obscure, because they were unimportant, but more because one does not think of those towns, cities and villages, as an incubator for creatives. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada is one of those cities and this writer says that with warmth and sincerity, as it is still the city considered to be my hometown, even though I was born in Toronto.

Akash Sherman, whose father and sister are both doctors and whose mother is a pharmacist, one might have assumed would have been headed for more of an academic career, in a cold, northern city, far removed from Canada’s two Hollywood North cities, Vancouver and Toronto and where minus thirty and minus forty degrees Celsius temperatures keep  Read More

Sierra Rein - Actress / Singer

These are heady days for actress and singer Sierra Rein, she has now returned to what she enjoys doing most in life, performing on stage and in front of a camera, after two years of much of the arts world being put on an involuntary pause due to COVID. She has two podcasts on the go, a short film in post-production, appears in two episodes of a series to be broadcast and streamed on FX on Hulu this fall and she has several exciting music gigs coming up. Believe or not that is just barely scratching the surface.

Sierra Rein (pronounced Rhine as in rhinestones) talks about her role in the Hulu series Fleishman is in Trouble, “It came out of the blue. It was January of this year and my agent who hadn’t really talked to me for a while said hey can you put yourself on tape for this TV show? I didn’t really know much about the project, so I did a tiny bit of Googling. I was like oh, okay there is this character Cherry who is in the book Fleishman is in Trouble, but there wasn’t very much about her. I had my husband do the other dialogue and I shot the scene and sent it in. This was when we were in lockdown a little bit (New York City). We were slowing emerging and putting our toes back into the river of humanity of this year.

In mid-February I got an email that said, you are booked. I called my husband and I said you know that one minute scene that you shot with me, I am going to do a scene with Claire Danes and Jesse Eisenberg. It was one of those surreal moments.  I was surprised they didn’t have a callback. I think it was one of those (times) when they see who the person is and think yep that’s the character. That’s great, because Read More

Executive Producer Jeanette B. Milio

Recently, Riveting Riffs Magazine sat down with Jeanette B. Milio who depending on the project she is working on sometimes wears the hat of producer and sometimes she dons the executive producer’s hat. During the course of her career Ms. Milio has garnered significant respect from her peers, networks, film studios and distributors for her keen business acumen and her knowledge of how to finance and produce a feature film or television and streaming series that will put people in the seats in cinemas or have their eyes glued to their television sets at home. We asked Jeanette B. Milio if she would be gracious enough to take us behind the scenes and explain the business side to us.

Jeanette B. Milio’s story begins in a small town outside of Cologne, Germany, where she was raised by a single mother, who was a hairdresser. At first glance this would appear to be an inauspicious start and far removed from the life she built as a movie mogul, but she credits in part, her success to lessons learned from her mother (more about that in a minute).

“I didn’t have any idea of what this industry would be like.

The one thing I remember that drew me to storytelling even as a child, is that I would come up with little stories and I would engage all the children on our street to perform the stories in Saturday morning theater pieces on the stairs in front of our house. I invited all of the other neighborhood kids to come and watch the plays and to pay ten pennies. I think I was Read More

Kincső Nóra Pethő - Actress

Fresh from performing as a futuristic computer from the year 2100 who is named after the Greek goddess of earth Gaia IA 01, and who sends a message back to today to warn others about a pending environmental apocalypse unless we change our ways, Hungarian actress, choreographer and dancer Kincső Nóra Pethő sat down for a conversation with Riveting Riffs Magazine, over Skype.

Obviously, only the Gaia part is taken from the Greek goddess, as Kincső Nóra Pethő explains, “I am like a computer program from the future who becomes a real person by the end of this 70-minute show. It was called Heroes of the Future and it was part of Planet Budapest 2021. There were about fifty actors and actresses working on this project, which was intended to raise the interest of kids for protecting the environment. For one week (in early December) the program ran from morning until evening. It was a wonderful experience to see how enthusiastic the kids were! I felt great about contributing to such a good goal!”

Continuing she says, “We talk to the children about how in the year 2100 there is not enough air, and the environment has been destroyed. (The message is) they have to be conscious of what they are doing in the present in 2021.

When we had some rehearsal groups and I could see a small guy, who was ten years Read More

Actor Miquel Garcia Borda

Recently, Miquel Garcia Borda, an actor, director, producer, and writer who splits his time between Barcelona and Madrid was our guest at Riveting Riffs Magazine. You have seen him TV 3 the Catalan television station in series such as If I Hadn’t Met You and in the Vancouver Media / Atres Media production of the popular television, now Netflix series Money Heist, which first aired on Antena 3 in Spain. You can also catch him in the current production Hache, also on Netflix. He is directing, producing, and starring in the feature film Pregunta Por Mí Mañana opposite actress Paula Moncada. Earlier in his career he also directed music videos for two better known Spanish bands, Sol Lagarto and Pastora, as well as two other films.  

We quickly learned about Miquel Garcia Borda even prior to the interview that is he is a very gracious man, who does not take his opportunities and accomplishments for granted, who seems to understand that who he is as an artist is the sum of his life experiences and the people from whom he has learned along the way.

“When I was in college and I was nineteen we were doing a play The Philanderer by George Bernard Shaw and I was playing the main character. The instructor, Juame Melendres said to me are you allowed to go out at night? You are too young to do that. (He laughs) I said I get it. I will try harder. You must have lived. You have to live a lot to use it for your characters,” says  Read More

Actor German Torres

Actor and singer German Torres who in recent years starred in some impressive musicals in Spain, Beauty and the Beast and 24 horas en la vida una mujer (24 Hours in the Life of a Woman) and in 2013 he received the award for Best Supporting Actor from the La Unión de Actores (the equivalent of the American Screen Actors Guild), for his role in Anton Chekhov’s Ivanov, was our guest recently at Riveting Riffs Magazine to talk about his career in theater, film and television, both as an actor and a producer.

At the time we spoke, 24 horas en la vida de una mujer, produced by highly acclaimed actress Silvia Marsó, who also starred in the musical with Felipe Ansola had just returned to the stage at Teatro Galileo in Madrid, after an absence of nine months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We asked German Torres what that experience was like.

He said, “It was fantastic, after the world stopped, returning to the stage is a miracle. The theater has maximum security and culture is safe now in Madrid. We are allowed to have fifty-five percent (of capacity) for the audience now. In other communities only thirty people are allowed.

We had forgotten, just a little about the energy of the stage, because it had been so long  

There were also Read More

Derek Siow - Actor Interview

Derek Siow is one of those people you could sit and talk to for hours on end, both because he is so affable and he is an immensely talented actor, screenwriter and voice actor, who has worked in film, theater and the burgeoning video game market. The Australian thespian who now makes his home in London, England, he is part of the cast for the audio book The Sandman: Act II, which featured a stunning cast that included, James McAvoy, Emma Corrin, Brian Cox, Kat Dennings, John Lithgow and Bill Nighy. He also has two films in postproduction that he is not yet at liberty to talk about.

Before we get into Derek Siow’s acting let’s spend a moment or two talking about his other passion, screenwriting.

“I write sci-fi, drama and comedy and I write mainly because I just crave that creative outlet. In my younger days I wrote a lot of songs (oh right we forgot to mention his music, but we will!) but my writing is more focused on screenplays now. I was really fortunate last year when one of my comedy scripts placed as a semi-finalist one of the screenwriting competitions so I’m always looking at the various options on where to take my projects,” he says.

Derek Siow’s acting career got a big push in 2013 when he played the character Lee in the feature film Piercing Brightness.

“This was a very Read More

In September Norwegian director, screenwriter and actress Camilla Roman’s short film Waves premiered at the tenth Global Nonviolent Film Festival in Hollywood, California. Riveting Riffs Magazine had the opportunity to watch Waves. Like other films that Camilla Roman has written and directed Waves packs a powerful message that is very relevant to this moment in time.

Without giving away too much of the storyline, asylum seeker Leyla played by Tonje Thwin and Stig portrayed by Eric Vorenholt meet during a COVID-19 lockdown, while Stig is making a delivery to her home. All is not what it seems however and as the story unfolds the characters have to make a decision to trust one another and to tell their own stories.

Norwegian readers will recognize Tonje Thwin from television series such as Sol, Snart Seks (2016) when she was cast in the role of Linnea’s mother and her regular role as Fiona in Hotel Caesar between 2014 – 17. Eric Vorenholt is best known for his role as Arne Hammer in The King’s Choice (2016), which was in consideration for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. He also appeared in six episodes of the 2020 television series Vikingane.

Camilla talks about casting both actors, “I thought Tonje Thwin and Eric Vorenholt would be excellent choices for this film. When I wrote the script they appeared in my mind, because I knew them a little bit. It was the natural choice to ask them. They said yes and I was very happy that I cast them. Read More