FASHION Magazine

A pop phenomenon and a heartthrob, the Swedish actor can also be serious and low-key. Men’s FASHION editor-in-chief David Livingstone sits down with Alexander Skarsgard in New York.

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From the flow of his voice coming from behind the door, it’s evident that Alexander Skarsgard has taken to the role of spokesmodel with guileless good cheer.

As I sit outside a New York hotel suite, waiting in line to go face to face with the face of Encounter Calvin Klein ($87, thebay.com), this fall’s major new men’s fragrance, I can’t help hearing the interview before mine and thinking that the guy is not nearly as taciturn or inscrutable as he has been in the parts that have shaped his fame.

Born in Sweden in 1976, Skarsgard rose to North American stardom in 2008 with a one-two punch. On Generation Kill, an Emmy-winning HBO miniseries about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, he played a tight-lipped Marine nicknamed Iceman. After that came True Blood, the enthusiastically received HBO series (recently renewed for a sixth season) on which he plays an enigmatic vampire called Eric Northman.

Two budding Canadian design talents—Amanda Lew Kee and Chloé comme Parris—are heading to Big Apple for GenArt’s 14th annual Fresh Faces in Fashion event. The event, which showcases up and coming designers, takes place on September 9th and will include both men’s and women’s Spring 2013 read-to-wear collections. Fresh Faces in Fashion has sent some […]

The post Toronto’s own Amanda Lew Kee and Chloé Comme Parris to show at GenArt during New York Fashion Week appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

It’s the end, literally for some characters, and we’re so sad to see these guys go! From the faeries with loose morals and questionable fashion sense to the born-again vamps crusading for a blood-soaked female god. From brothers loving sisters, to rednecks wearing Obama masks and shooting supes to love triangles breaking friendships apart, it’s been quite a season. And we’ve lost some loved ones and some strange ones: Bud Dearborn, Sheriff Elijah, Patrick, Roman, half the Chancellors and, as of tonight, many more. Let us say goodbye, together…

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It feels like many of the plots that so dominated at the start of the season have been tied up and forgotten like last week’s shrimp gumbo at Merlotte’s. The Ifrit, Jesus’ sewed-shut lips and crazy gramps, Andy Bellefleur’s butt cheeks and Alcide’s pack troubles, were they all just so many fried pickles — tasty, but ultimately not so filling? Last week, Sam and Luna went on a mouse hunt for Emma, The Authority went anarchy in the U.S.A., and Sookie and Jason’s hunt for the vampire that killed their parents led to a discovery of sorts: Sookie was sold into vampire slavery by her kin. Besides the incredibly sad Hoyt-Jason-Jessica triangle coming to an end with the former’s Alaskan plans and memory force-quit, there was the big break up of Russell Edgington leaving The Authority due to boredom and a craving for fae blood. The show’s most ostentatious bloodsucker got into some pre-season finale trouble tonight, but first those other people who live in Bon Temps have some fried pickles for us…

Of Mice and Men
-Luna and Sam are still mouse-ing around in The Authority looking for Emma. They find her locked up with the human food. Some guards intercept, and Sam gets sent off to be Bill’s next meal, leaving Luna to figure out how to save her and Emma.
-Andy makes good with Holly’s sons and promises to be the best boyfriend ever to their mama. Which is pretty much an invitation for this show to mess with him, and it does in the form of preggers Maurella paying him a visit and calling in the light pact promise he (unknowingly) made to protect her. She’s pissed he’s already being a deadbeat dad.
-Alcide is helping (sans shirt!) his pops with a silver fence to keep out idiot vamps, his dad thanks him with some microwave chili and by cross-bowing a vamp that was about to kill his son.

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Can you believe we’re close to the end? Patrick sure can, after being shot by Terry and Arlene he was eaten by smokey last week. Sookie narrowly escaped getting fed to some pigs by a lady hillbilly named Dragon who’s behind the supe murders, but was saved by Sam, Luna, Andy and Jason, but Hoyt was looking like his ass was ham. Russell took puppy Emma and gave her to Steve Newlin as a pet, much to Martha’s shrieks. And there’s a new vamp sheriff in town, and he’s sitting in Pam’s chair. The biggest upset of the night though, was Bill snitching on Eric to Salome, foiling his plan to escape and getting him locked up by The Authority. Will this fence mend by season’s end? Let’s see if Bill visits Eric in jail…

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The last time we rode the TB rollercoaster, Hoyt joined the redneck supe killer troop then quit it to save Jessica, then get Hoytnapped. Both Sookie and Lafayette tapped into spirits for some truth from the other side (for Sookie, to find out a vamp named Warlow killed her folks, while for LaLa, to be told by the Ifrit lady that Pat and Terry had to kill one or the other to settle their debt). Luna turned into Sam and there was talk of her dying. And Bill had the MVV (most valuable vampire) idea of blowing up the TruBlood factories to force mainstreaming vamps back to the vein. For last night’s ups and downs, lets get the little ones out of the way first…

Loaded Guns
-Terry gives Arlene a dramatic (albeit brief) speech and kisses her goodbye to go fight Patrick in a may the best man win battle.
-Arlene is wearing a beautiful satiny hooded sweatshirt to open Merlotte’s, when Patrick holds her hostage at gunpoint (not for crimes of fashion, surprisingly).
-Terry comes to save his lady, but Arlene ends up saving him. Terry shoots Patrick and the Ifrit takes Patrick’s body, so they don’t even have to bother burying him! The mob needs an Ifrit “cleaner.”
-On a road trip we get “Alcide The Teen Years”: Alcide’s dad looks like Scott Weiland from Stone Temple Pilots, Young Debbie Pelt looks like Topanga from Boy Meets World and Young Alcide looks like the We Need To Talk About Kevin Kevin.
-Alcide shows up at his gambling pappy’s trailer to drink a beer and Alcide is like “I’m nothing like you!” because obviously there’s some daddy issues for us to explore.
-Russell gives the Shreveport pack some blood, and punishes abstainer Martha by taking puppy Emma as a pressie for his new bestie (lover?) Rev. Steve.

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Last week we found out how vamps like to celebrate a coup d’état: get high with a little Lilith juice, trip out on the streets of New Orleans and have a bloody hallucination of lady God. Others had less of a good time: Hoyt joined the hillbilly vigilantes who are killing supes (and shot Sam and Luna), Lafayette found Jesus (well, his head) and almost got sacrificed, Alcide trained his lips on his second in command and Sookie found out there’s a limit to her fae powers. Let’s find out how the Lilith blood hangover feels…

Sam in the Mirror
– Thanks to Sam, the sheriff arrests a supe-hating redneck.
– A still-unhealed Luna shifts into Sam. (Is this a side effect of her antibiotics? She should just eat some yogurt and get her good bacteria back up.)
– Jessica is captured by the rednecks so Hoyt can exact payback on her as some kind of initiation into the club. He gives Jessica a speech about how she wronged him, but frees her regardless.
– Hoyt leaves Jessica at the house, but gets lost and is picked up by someone in a truck with a gun. (So that could be anyone in Bon Temps, pretty much.)
– Sheriff Andy, Sam and Luna-Sam come to Jessica’s rescue, and Luna-Sam sniffs out a Cheeto-loving lady as recently having been at the house. (Britney Spears?)
– Luna-Sam is maybe dying and she and Sam have a heart to heart (or a Sam to Sam) and then his kiss turns her back into Luna like a fairy tale—but not really, as she throws up.
– Alcide and Rikki have taken to training in the bedroom, and she gets him to ask her to be his girlfriend. We guess “second in command” wasn’t enough of a commitment.
– It’s the packmaster battle between JD and Alcide (rhymey names!) and the old guy has a sick V-fueled plan to murder the local track star, but Alcide intervenes and the two fight until Martha stops JD with a mom speech. JD tells Alcide to find a new pack.

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You guys! Stuff happened last week that we’re still kind of recovering from. True Blood killed off Roman. That’s like killing the Pope of the vampires. Is this a Dan Brown novel? So yeah, Russell was captured, but someone slipped him the key to his handcuffs and he offed Roman as the rest of The Authority top brass looked on. Oh, and some other stuff: Hoyt got van-napped by the supe shooting hillbillies (who Sam is hunting down with Sheriff Andy), Alcide was challenged for packmaster, Terry left Arlene so the fire curse wouldn’t feel threatened by her fire engine red locks, Lafayette’s mom told him Jesus needed his help and Jason and Sookie visited that fae club to see Hadley and learn more about their parents’ death.

Last week, our mystery teams found: Russell Edgington at the old asylum (Sookie, Alcide, Eric and Bill), and crazy, fire-obsessed Brian Ellar (Terry, Patrick). Sam and Luna got shot by the same crew (presumably) who shot their shifter buddies; a faery-hungover Jason dream-united with his parents and his pjs; Jessica offered to be Tara’s big vampire sister; and Lala couldn’t shake the brujo so he called on Jesus to help him and got a vision of his dead ex’s severed head in return. This week, it really felt like our characters divided into teams (or solo) to go on their own adventures, so it will be interesting to see how, in the second half of the season, they all start coming together again.

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Sookie confessed to Alcide about killing Debbie, Tara was frying herself to death, Bill and Eric had trust sex with Salome and Pam flashed back to a 1905 night of lovemaking and wrist-slashing with Eric. This week, there are no flashbacks (would’ve liked to see the fall out from Pam’s change), sex (boo!) or much bloodsucking, but there are friendship necklaces, a Lohan-level car crash and a drunken make-out (yes!)—it all evens out.

Stuntin’ Like My Daddy
– Sookie screeches a plaintive sorry as Alcide screeches out in his truck; Lafayette spazzes at her for spilling the murder beans even though she didn’t mention him, and calls her the “angel of death” for all the death fall out her actions cause.
– Sookie barges in on Jason and confesses to killing Debbie Pelt; he tells her to keep quiet and lay low, there’s no way he’s putting his sister behind bars.
– Jason is way more upset at Sookie for turning Tara into a vampire and as he gives her a major you-done-wrong lecture Jessica pops up to weigh in on what’s going on (and as promised, she’s in sweats for their slumber party).
– At work, hearing everyone at Merlotte’s brains calling her an awful person makes Sookie freak out and hide in Sam’s lodge office.
– Lafayette has clearly not cooled on his anger at Sooks. His shirt has “Eternity” bedazzled on it, and he’s clearly thinking of doing something eternal. He goes all brujo on her cute little yellow Honda and turns it into an evil Herbie the Love Bug.
– Sookie narrowly does the stunt roll out of her car before it crashes into a pole on its own evil accord—Lindsay Lohan is clearly going to use this story the next time (and we’re certain there’ll be one) she crashes her Porsche.

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So last week we totally thought Eric and Bill were both going to meet the true death at the hands of the Authority, and Tara was going to kill Sookie and Lafayette and the show would just be about Pam, Sam and Terry the rest of the season. No, we did not think that at all, but that’s basically the gist of episode two’s danger scale. Will anyone die this week? Nope, but there is lots of sex, which is way better.

Roman’s Empire
– Back at the bloodsucker boardroom, the chancellors loudly debate what to do with Bill and Eric for not ending Edgington. That little kid chancellor makes us think of those Frosted Mini Wheats commercials where adults who love fibre turn into kids who love sugar—his suit should fit too big or something.
– Roman kicks the squabblers out and gives a speech about Russell being a martyr that will give the Sanguinista movement more momentum, so he needs to be stopped.
– Bill promises to catch Russell or die trying (Eric is, uh, silent). Roman dismisses them for his next meeting with the “new Nan Flan” who is… Steve Newlin. Who else would it be?
– Roman and Steve talk strategy. Steve thinks humans will buy anything he sells. Roman puts his cockiness in check: they’re not just talking meat, they’re vamp ancestors. More talk of Sanguinistas bad, Authority good. We feel like we could teach a theology course on vampires by this point: The Rise of Modern Vampirism.

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We’re back into the thrills and bloodspills of True Blood, and last week we saw season four’s cliffhangers resolved with Tara becoming a vampire thanks to Sookie and Lafayette (and a begrudging Pam), Bill and Eric (and his sister Nora) getting captured by the Vampire Authority trying to escape punishment for their Nan Flanagan execution, Sam almost getting killed by Marcus’s pack until Alcide stepped in and confessed, and the return of a now-vamp Steve Newlin and Russell Edgington (we think). Let’s get our fangs on…

Tara Attack
– Vamp Tara is about to drain Sookie until a joyful Pam puts an end to it—she wants to redeem her future favour.
– Tara whirling dervishes around Sookie’s house, won’t drink any True Blood, until finally Lafayette and Sookie have to force her into the cubby using silver.
– At Stake House (we love stores with punny names), Sookie goes shopping for anti-vamp supplies as the clerk watches Steve Newlin come out on TV: no, he doesn’t announce he’s a gay vampire-American, just a vamp.
– Sookie stops Lafayette from staking a sleeping Tara, explaining to him that all baby vamps have growing pains. (Uh, Tara is seething, not teething, Sookie.)
– A pissed Tara wakes up, stares daggers at Lafayette (he has don’t-be-mad puppy eyes) and Sookie (I-love-my-best-friend eyes) and says she’ll never forgive them before shooting off into the night.

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