Our site is about to undergo a huge overhaul!  In the meantime, please enjoy our current projects:

THE MILLIONAIRE MATCHMAKER – season six premieres this month on Bravo TV!

SUSHI GIRL – pick up the new film written (along with Kern Saxton) and produced by Destin Pfaff.  Own it on BLURAY in February! www.SushiGirlMovie.com

DNR BRANDS – visit Destin Pfaff and Rachel Federoff’s hot new clothing and jewelry site www.DnRBrands.com !

Stay tuned for that website overhaul COMING SOON!

Destin

One of the most frequent questions I get asked is “Rachel, how do you do it?”  My answer: “I’m Super Woman duh!”  Having to juggle a husband, career, and an almost-three-year-old son you have to be equipped with super powers to get it all done.  Let’s face it we women are numero uno when it comes to multi-tasking.  I can talk on the phone, make dinner, and send an email or twelve all at the same time. Men sorry to break it to you, the art of multi tasking is not your forte.

There are truly moments when I feel like pulling my hair out and throwing in the towel, but I hear those four sweet words “I love you mommy” from Sin and it’s all worthwhile.  I used to have such guilt having to not be with Sin all the time but in this day and age women are “doing it for themselves.”  We can have a career and a family and make it all work.  The key is to not lose yourself along the way.

Moms this goes out to you:  don’t feel because you are a mom you have to look frumpy and think everything is centered on your children.  Don’t get me wrong family comes first, but you have to make time for YOU!  Get dressed up, take a spa day, go out and have a ladies night with girls, plan a little weekend getaway.  We moms know all too well that if we don’t get a break every now and then and get back to being a girl, we may as well check in to the funny farm.  Ok, now go out and get a mani/pedi and drink a margarita!

Also check out the TWITTER page for the upcoming new film @sushigirlmovie !

You all know how much of a charity and people lover Rachel is… but in some ways, so am I.  I am so proud and happy that Rachel has been asked to be the spokes-celeb for the fight against The Choking Game.  If you haven’t heard about it, well that’s no surprise to me as most people have no clue what that is.  This so-called game is yet another terrible fad that young children are doing all over the US and even the world.  If you can remember what being a child was like and how fads spread like wildfire, well you can only imagine!

So here’s what it is; tweens and even younger are indulging in choking each other, passing out, then coming to causing a quick “high.”  Some even do this suffocation alone!  The issue…most often they never return.  I lost a good friend in high school to this awful game and knew loads of kids doing it so it hits home for me.  I was lucky to see just how idiotic it was to do this and had parents who were very much into my life- sometimes too much!  Two women who are cousins Barb and Neecy, told me about their personal experience on Twitter.  Neecy found her son one morning alone, and sadly was one of those who never came back.  He was only 13.  Having not laying down they have started to fight the battle and make the world aware of this “game” and I’m joining them.  I don’t know what I would do if this were to happen to my son!

If you can believe this, as of now when someone dies from this game it is not considered a real death but instead classified as a suicide!  So we have grabbed our pitchforks, and are mobbing congress to make this is legal and REAL death.  I would love you all to help us win this battle and sign the petition by going here, http://www.petition2congress.com/5809/stop-choking-game/ you’ll see so many speaking up about their own children passing out and passing on.  If you are a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, or a humanitarian then speak out with us.

My nerd-dom even goes a step further as I’m a gamer in general.  For those of you non-gamers that have no clue what a gamer is, that’s someone who plays video games!  Yes ever since I was listening to Wham and Regan was Pres, I was on my Nintendo playing Duck Hunt and Super Mario Brothers.  Go even further back and I was a total pinball wizard!  Get me on a video game and forget about it, I’m not leaving the house!  What can I say I love technology!  I even love playing online too!  There are so many great sites out there for playing online like http://www.foxybingo.com/  it’s a great way to play if you don’t want to spend the cash on a PS3 or Xbox etc.  The great thing about these sites is you can win real prizes or cash or whatever!  It’s like a casino in your own home!

Seriously games are fun and it keeps you young at heart whether online, at home, and even in the bedroom!  That’s a whole other story kids!

Mike Gencarelli: James, tell us about your role of Francis in “Sushi Girl”?
James Duval: Yeah, I play Francis and I am part of the old core group members of this group of professional criminals. I play the shifty one in the group, so to speak [laughs].

MG: Andy, tell us about your role of Max in “Sushi Girl”?
Andy Mackenzie: Max is honestly surrounded by all these badass guys, except Max is probably the most badass. He is the guy that shoots first and doesn’t even have time to ask questions later. He has somewhat of a brain and he actually is somewhat multidimensional with his relationship with Mark Hamill’s character in the film. We push buttons all throughout the film.

MG: What drew you to work on this film?
AM: I read the script the first time and I tried to picture who was going to be the actors playing these characters. First off, I pictured Tony Todd because he is the pimp and it would be perfect. Everyone brought so much to the table in a completely different way than you can ever imagine. It just keep getting better and better every day.
JD: Absolutely it just kept growing. Andy was actually signed on to this film before me, like a year and a half ago. I knew Tony before just from the business and I knew who Andy was but never met him. So I was really excited to sit down and looking forward to the rest of the casting. At that point they hadn’t locked the characters down for Fish (Noah Hathaway) and Crow (Mark Hamill) yet. This was an opportunity to sit down a do a real good character piece with the script that Destin (Pfaff) and Kern (Saxton) has written. It is absolutely dynamic. I learned a lot from working across Tony Todd, who just has this presence. Then when you throw in the color of Mark Hamill and Noah Hathaway, honestly it doesn’t get better than that. When you think of Mark Hamill, you really don’t even know what he looks like anymore besides he does a lot of voice work. All of the sudden he shows up at our last table reading with a character completely out of a comic book [laughing]. It was the funniest, scariest and creepiest thing…all at the same time. It turned everything around that I was doing or thinking. I thought now I have to react to this guy [laughs]. Everyone knows Mark and Noah so well from growing up with them in films, but to see them come and deliver on this film is really what acting and making movies are about. This is a character breaking role for Mark Hamill and you will not look at him the same way again.

MG: You both sound so inspired about working on this film, it is really refreshing.
JD: It is just a dream come true. We are working with really dynamic actors that are really some of the best in the business but we also have a really great dynamic script. It has fleshed out character development and twists and turns. As an actor getting to play that is just a blast, you can not ask for more when you are making a movie.
AM: Exactly what Jimmy said, definitely a dream come true. Imagine growing up, you are watching “The Neverending Story” or “Star Wars” or “Candyman”. All of the sudden you walk into this room and all of these guys are in the same room as you and you have to be a badass [laughs]. That is where the inspiration is but how can you actually be a badass when you are surrounded by all these badasses [laughs].

MG: What would you say was your most challenging aspect working on the film?
JD: Every actor wants to shoot as chronological as possible. This was shot over 18 days and the real challenge was that after 7-8 days, you are left exploring and figuring out who you are. You want to go back in time and known that something prior was going to happen and changed a relationship. We spent a lot of time on set and even off camera talking about who these characters really came from. Once you see the movie we are right there in this middle of this crime. You are left wondering where we all came from. We are constantly exploring and seeing where we could take these characters. The film basically takes place in one night with some flashbacks.
AM: We were trying to do the chronological aspect the best we could but then there was a couple of occasions when we had to jump way forward and catch somethings. That was the big problem during those moments, we really didn’t know who we were at that moment and that is when we needed to go back and try to find out.
JD: Can’t talk about the budget, but we didn’t have a lot of money or time. We had to move fast and in the sense of doing so you are jumping from scene to scene quickly. You have the camera setup jumping from shot to shot without changing, so you have to be really on the ball with what was going on.
AM: What I meant to say with the biggest challenge was sitting around the table right next to a hot naked chick with only sushi covering parts of her body…that was really hard [laughs].
JD: Cortney Palm, great young up-and-coming actress, was really amazing having to sit there 15-18 days in the same position. She is going to blow you guys away. I think there are some parts of this film that we can’t say but it is going to go down in cinematic history. The visual shots and certain scenes are very memorable and it is really exciting to be a part of.

MG: James, What is the deal with “Mondo Holocausto!”?
JD: I know we were planning on doing it a couple of years ago. It is still in pre-production and I just received an email from the director, so it might be moving forward again. It was put on the back burner for a while. It was going to be down in the style and spirit of the 70′s Mondo campy horror films with badly dubbed over purposely. I do not know if it would work but I love the idea and the concept. I saw some test shots with the actors voice dubbed and I couldn’t stop laughing. I thought it was incredible. If we are fortunate enough, I hope he gets the money and we still get to do this film.

MG: Andy, do you still get a chance to work on your music as well as acting?
AM: Yeah, I am still playing drums in a band. Everyone is currently busy with other things so we haven’t been playing live recently. It is such a great outlet for me and I totally need to get back out there.

MG: You both have a few films in the works, so what’s next?
JD: I actually just finished filming my first script that I wrote with a friend of mine. It is a totally different film that “Sushi Girl” and it was great writing it. We really explored the characters in the film. We started editing this week, so we will see how it goes. I am really excited. I also have a film that I produced that premiered at Raindance Film Festival in London, called “The Black Belle”.
AM: I have two films in post right now. One of them is called “Knifepoint” that just premiered at Fantasia in Montreal and next it is moving to Chicago Horror Film Festival. There is another film I did which is also hitting the circuits, called “American Joyride”. I also just did a Civil War TV pilot called “Reconstruction”.

Based on an original story from Chiba,Bushido 

follows a band of Buffalo Soldiers and Japanese samurai serving together in the American Civil War. Assembly Line partners Neal Fischer, Destin Pfaff,Kern Saxton and Suren M. Seron will produce. Three more action projects will follow.

“This first project falls right up the alley of why Assembly Line was assembled, to create high quality films in a variety of genres,” said the Gersh-repped Pfaff (Millionaire Matchmaker). “We couldn’t be happier to be partnering with a legend such as Sonny Chiba.”

Chiba and Assembly Line previously teamed on Sushi Girl, which was written by Pfaff and Saxton, who also directed. Todd, Chiba, Mark Hamill, Michael Biehn,Danny Trejo and Jeff Fahey star in the thriller.

Assembly Line is also developing Catalytic, Todd’s directorial debut about a magician’s road trip on the eve of a supernatural apocalypse.

Chiba has been making movies, including Quentin Tarantino‘s Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Executioner, for 50 years.

Hollywood Reporter has announced that Chiba’s first film for Assembly Line will be Bushido, a film about ”a band of Buffalo Soldiers and Japanese samurai serving together in the American Civil War.” The film is based on an original story by Sonny Chiba, and will reunite him with his Sushi Girl co-star Tony Todd. His next three films are still unknown.

Sonny Chiba made his feature film debut in 1961 and has been working steadily ever since. He made his first big splash in America with the three Street Fighter movies, which captured the kung fu zeitgeist back in the mid-1970s. Younger film fans probably recognize him as the master swordsmith Hattori Hanzo in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Volume 1, a role Chiba originated on Japanese television in the 1980s and reprised (believe it or not) on the 9,895th episode of the daytime television soap opera Days of Our Lives in 2004. Other Chiba roles you might recognize can be found in the Chinese fantasy epic The Storm Riders and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

[CORRECTION: Sonny Chiba is incorrectly identified on IMDb as appearing in the aforementioned 'Days of Our Lives' episode. Although the character of "Hattori Hanzo" did appear in the episode, he was played by Chinese-American actor George Cheung. You can watch a clip from the episode - in which the actor is quite obviously not Sonny Chiba - right here. Thanks go out to reader Dan Richard for the correction!]

CraveOnline will return with more Sonny Chiba news because, as Christian Slater once said, he’s a badass motherf**ker.