Some people assume that if you are in the acting profession, you are also automatically super paid and can buy whatever you want and be generally decadent and carefree around town. Not so! This is especially apparent when it comes to getting furniture upholstered – that stuff is expensive.

So, if you’re a lady/gentleman on a budget and you want to make your house/apartment dope and extravagant without spending all of your precious, precious coconut water dollars, try this ridiculously simple DIY project:

“No Sew” Upholstery

I know what you’re thinking. You’re like, “Dennings, upholstery is a job best left to professionals.” And I’m like, “Shhhhh. Open your heart.”

Read the rest at the source.

Click on Kat’s tweet to be taken to her tumblr!

Kat was also on People’s 25 Beauties at 25 list.

With a billowing mane, full lips and a curvy physique, the actress – known for her witty characters in The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist could pass for Scarlett Johansson’s younger sister. Yet, as the Philadelphia native, who appears in Thor this May, tells it, “People … wanted me to get a tan, fix my teeth, and get a breast reduction. No joke!”

And there is a new Daydream Nation trailer about!

“The Renee Project,” the Renee Yohe ‘To Write Love on Her Arms’ film we told you about several weeks ago in this space has begun production in and around Orlando.

The movie is about a troubled young woman whose issues with self-esteem, substance abuse and self-injury (“cutting”) will star the formidable Kat Dennings, with Chad Michael Murray and Rupert Friend (“The Young Victoria”) also in the cast.

Dennings, who has a prominent role in the summer blockbuster “Thor,” is best known for such films as “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” “Charlie Bartlett” and “The House Bunny.” She’ll play Renee Yohe, the central Florida girl who inspired “To Write Love on Her Arms.” (TWLOHA)

Murray is best known for the TV series “One Tree Hill.” He’ll play Jamie Tworkowski, who helped found TWLOHA.

Friend has largely made his mark in period pieces in the UK (“Cherie,” “Pride & Prejudice,” “The Last Legion”).

Corbin Bleu from “High School Musical” also has a role.

Nathan Frankowski, who just directed “No Saints for Sinners” but who is best known for the Creationism documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” will direct and co-wrote the script with Kate King Lynch.

“The story follows 19-year-old Renee (played by Kat Dennings) who has always loved fairy tales: the idea of a princess, a hero and a happily ever after. But Renee’s life is that of a darker tale: she’s a young woman battling addiction, depression and self-injury. In a creative blend of artistic fantasy balanced with harsh reality, the movie follows Renee on her courageous journey towards recovery.”

Music and musicians have been a big part of TWLOHA (the T-shirts are a youth music phenomenon) and Travie McCoy and singer/songwriter Rachael Yamagata, among others, will perform on camera in this film, which producers describe as a blend of gritty reality and fantasy.

“Renee” is produced by Cameron “Kim” Dawson, David Blair McKenna, and David Nixon with Executive Producers Tom Swanson and Jayson Stringfellow rounding out the producing team. Paul Sirmons is the Line Producer.

The combination of subject matter and on camera talent, a popular charity/cause that is a big deal in youth culture and the music community make “The Renee Project” (better title needed) the most promising Major Motion Picture to be shot here since the Oscar winning “Monster.”

Production will wrap March 29.

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“The Renee Project,” the working title of a film being produced locally, is attracting big name talent to its cast.

Kat Dennings, the absolutely adorable Norah of “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist,” will star in it. Go to Renee’s Facebook fanpage and you’ll see how right the pale Dennings seems for the part, no matter what the hair color.

We knew something was up when Kat started following @Reneeyohe on twitter.

And there’s a part in the film for Rupert Friend, the prince who romanced and married “The Young Victoria.”

And Chad Michael Murray, of TV’s “One Tree Hill” is in it.

That’s a serious cast.

The director is the fellow who did Ben Stein’s Creationism documentary, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” Nathan Frankowski.

N.E.R.D. is the band of choice for the soundtrack.

Producer Kim Dawson (“Bobby Jones: A Stroke of Genius”) describes the film as “Trainspotting’ meets ‘Across the Universe,’” which suggests dark subject matter treated with fantasy elements. It is based on the life of Renee Yohe, the young Florida woman whose life inspired “To Write Love on Her Arms,” an awareness group/charity aimed at young people going through depression, substance abuse and self-injury, aka “cutting.”

Shooting is slated to begin on this ambitious project sometime around Feb. 14, says Dawson. They got a bit of Florida Film Incentive money for the film. Producer, sometime director and second unit director and ex-state film commissioner Paul Sirmons is on board. And they’re working with Valencia College’s film program, which will provide some gear and student on-the-job trainings/sweat equity in the production, which keeps helps keep production costs down.

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Co-executive produced by Michael Patrick King, “Two Broke Girls” centers on two under-employed New Yorkers trying to make it in the big city.

Kat Dennings has closed a deal to co-star in comedian Whitney Cummings’ CBS pilot Two Broke Girls.
The single-camera comedy from Warner Bros. revolves around two under-employed New Yorkers trying to make it in the big city. Cummings wrote the pilot and will executive produce with Sex and the City alum Michael Patrick King.

It’s not the first time Dennings has worked with King; the actress broke out when she landed a part on a 2000 episode of Sex and the City playing a precocious 13-year-old who hires Samantha to do publicity for her bat mitzvah. She went on to land supporting roles in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Big Momma’s House 2 and Kenneth Branagh’s upcoming Thor.

Stalwart comedy director James Burrows will direct the Two Broke Girls pilot, which should give Girls a fighting chance if past experience is any guide. Burrows — a co-creator of Cheers – has directed myriad pilots including Will & Grace, The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men. Last year, he directed the pilots for CBS’ Mike & Molly, $#*! My Dad Says and Better with You.

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Not everyone in Los Angeles had Golden Globes fever this past weekend. Hundreds of film industry types were schmoozing and seeing movies at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Big names turned up again this year – everyone from Michael Douglas to Natalie Portman – and attention was given to films that might otherwise have trouble finding traction in this awards-saturated season, like Peter Weir’s The Way Back. Another of those films is Daydream Nation, an angst-y tale about a brainy and manipulative girl (Kat Dennings) who shakes up a small town when she begins a love affair with her teacher (Josh Lucas). The film won over many of the festival’s younger fans, who were, lets be honest, in short supply at the open-to-the-public festival in one of America’s retirement hotbeds.

“I was listening to Daydream Nation a lot when I was writing the movie. I wanted to make a film that had the feeling of that record,” writer/director Mike Goldbach said of his decision to use Sonic Youth’s seminal 1988 record as the title of his film. He evened named one of the characters Thurston, an homage to Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore. “It’s beautiful and ethereal, but then all of a sudden the movie will swerve, just like the record, and become violent and atonal,” he continued.

On Saturday, a sold-out third screening of the film enthralled movie fans, who swooned over the film’s music-nerd soundtrack. Two Sonic Youth songs, “5 or 6” songs from Devendra Banhart, a Sebadoh track, a Beach House song, a Stars song, several songs by Metric’s Emily Haines (including a cover of Neil Young’s “Expecting to Fly”), and a Lou Reed number are all featured in the film and on the forthcoming soundtrack, from Last Gang Records.

The film was scored by Broken Social Scene’s Ohad Benchetrit, but despite the presence of a stellar songwriting throughout the film, the story mostly unfolds sans sound, musing on sex, death, and relationships in a rain-soaked small town. “It’s a dreamy, hazy, occasionally violent and scary bipolar movie,” Goldbach said. “When you name a film after an album by Sonic Youth, it sets the bar really high,” the director continued. “You want to live up to the promise.”

This past weekend in Palm Springs, Goldbach’s film did just that.

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Actors set for ‘Saints’
Lithgow, Ryan among those set for ensemble film
By PAMELA MCCLINTOCK

Meg Ryan, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, John Lithgow, Joe Anderson and Kat Dennings will topline writer/director Chris Rossi’s ensemble drama “Lives of the Saints” for BCDF Pictures.

Pic is set to begin lensing Nov. 13 in Los Angeles.

Film tells the intertwining stories of a group of Angelenos seeking redemption for past mistakes, only to find that forgiveness comes from unlikely places.

Kevin Zegars, Anthony Anderson and Esai Morales also star in the pic, packaged by the Gersh Agency.

Ellen Wander’s Film Bridge Intl. will launch “Saints” at the American Film Market.

Matt Tauber is producing with Claude Dal Farra and Daniel Swee. Exec producers are Brice Dal Farra, Lauren Munsch and Paul Prokop of BCDF Pictures, along with Danny Leiner and Jennifer Levine of Untitled Entertainment. Terry Leonard is co-producer.

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Thor has a few lovely ladies in his life. There’s Siff, the fellow Asgardian warrior. There’s Jane Foster on earth. The movie even adds a third, Darcy. Kat Dennings plays Foster’s student assistant.

Kat Dennings Talks Thor

“I think the Darcy role was expanded as we went through the rehearsal process,” Dennings said. “So she started out as something and ended up as something else. It was pretty great. There is a pretty great female presence in the film with Jane Foster and Darcy and Siff also and Friga, Thor’s mother.”

Dennings’ focus was on scenes with Natalie Portman. “Darcy makes food for Jane and mixes her Kaschi in the morning and basically she’s a new invention. She’s not in the comics. She just sort of hopes to be like Jane one day. She’s a hesitant student. Not to be biased, but I really like our relationship in the movie. I mean, we haven’t seen any of it but I know. I feel like our love in real life came out.”

Even though she was a new character, Dennings knew her Thor. “I’ve read a lot of the comic books just growing up, and I sort of felt for me anyway that I should sort of view the script as its own thing and not try to compare and contrast the previous stuff and just treat it like its own little universe. And Darcy wasn’t in the comics so I didn’t have to worry about continuity or anything like that.”

It was also Dennings’ first big budget blockbuster superhero film. “Our first AD had his own voice throwing equipment so he was standing in video village and he’d be like, ‘Back to ones.’ His voice would echo through the whole outside. There were hidden things. It was pretty big budget I would say, pretty nuts. And everyone was so good at their job. If you were like, “Oh, man, I could really use a piece of toast made out of rubber,” somebody would be like, FWING! They were so prepared it was amazing. I had come off of something that was done for like two dollars and then I came and did this. I was like oh my god. This is awesome. It felt good. I’m not going to lie. It was pretty great. I don’t know how many more movies I’ll be in like this but it was good to have one.”

Thor opens to theaters on May 6, 2011.

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Kat appeared on the Comic Con 2010 Thor Panel in San Diego, and as promised, here are pictures :) Kenneth Branagh, Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston and Clark Gregg were also on the panel, and are scattered throughout the photos.

MTV did a play-by-play of the entire panel, which you can read if you press

There was no small amount of news and blazing-hot footage coming out of this year’s Marvel movie panel at Comic-Con. So without any further introduction, here’s what happened:

6:45
After a late start due to, well… a stabbing incident… things got underway with Kevin Feige taking the stage.

“I think by the end of this panel that skepticism might go away,” said Feige of the uncertainty that has long surrounded Marvel’s ambitious movie plan. “It’s extremely difficult and it’s never been done before… for a reason. Everyone needs to be assembled properly.”

And like the “Green Lantern” panel, this one kicked off with some early footage, offering the first official look at Chris Evans in costume. Here’s what the footage entailed:

- A voiceover repeated the famous Pearl Harbor declaration of December 7, 1941, as a “day that will live forever in infamy.”

- Over clips of WWII headlines and footage, the text narration revealed that “one story has never been told,” and the camera pans out to show Captain America’s shield.

- “Every army starts with one man,” it continues, and we’re given a full-body silhouette of Captain America. The camera then offers up a close-up profile shot of Chris Evans as Cap, as he turns to face the camera.

- The “Captain America” title flashes, and then… a quick shot of Cap slinging the shield!

6:49
“Captain America” director Joe Johnston took the stage along with the rest of the film’s major cast members. Johnston says the film is not going to feel like a war movie made in 1942. We have one chance to tell the origin story of Captain America and that’s what we’re going to do.”

6:50
Chris Evans on playing Cap: “It’s a little intimidating, a little daunting, but it’s exciting. … “The suit’s fantastic.”

Hugo Weaving on perfecting his performance as Red Skull: “He’s German, so I spent a lot of time listening to famous German artists. I’ve synthesized their voice into the voice of Red Skull.”

6:52
Chris Evans on the early debates surrounding his casting: “People here might have had an opinion one way or the other, but at the end of the day I’m trying to make a character come to life. … Hopefully if we do our job right and the movie’s good, no one will have a problem with it. I hope.”

Joe Johnston said he was partial to the Ed Brubaker version of Captain America, though “we’re borrowing visually from that version [and] … going slightly more modern than the original Captain America, which was basically a pair of pajamas with the stars and stripes on them.”

Kevin Feige was quick to point out that the suit seen in early concept art and in the footage was still just a “test version of the suit.” “What you saw was only a snippet from the costume test — it’s something that’s unequivocally the Captain America uniform, but can fit that period.”

6:55
Chris Evans says he “loves origin pieces” and “I think it’s great when you see who the person was before they’re given these amazing gifts.”

6:57
Hugo Weaving: “We’ve only been at this a couple of weeks.”

According to Weaving, his Red Skull mask is “a pretty extraordinary creation” and is composed of “a series of lightweight pieces on my face.”

“It looks fantastic,” he added.

And to further whet our appetites, attendees were treated to yet another piece of footage from the film — an unfinished scene that still included the timecodes.

In the footage, a castle wall is blown inward, killing one of the two men inside. As the dust settles, we see a group of Nazis emerge, with orders to open up a tomb in the center of the room. As they struggle to open it, everyone turns to face a recent arrival — a pre-scarring Red Skull.

“It’s taken me a long time to find this place,” he tells the caretaker.

“What you seek is just a legend,” the caretaker responds.

“Why make such an effort to conceal it,” responds Weaving’s character.

The soldiers remove the lid form the tomb, revealing an ancient skeleton holding a sword and a transparent cube (the Cosmic Cube?). Red Skull holds up the cube, calling it a Tesseract — the gem of Odin’s treasures — and drops it, breaking it.

Red Skull then locates a secret panel on the wall and removes a small box coiled with golden serpents. He opens it, and is engulfed in a blue glow.

“Ordinary men were not meant to look upon it,” says the caretaker.

“Exactly,” says Red Skull.

And thus ends the footage… and the “Captain America” portion of the panel.

ThorUp next was the “Thor” team, with Kenneth Branagh, Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Clark Gregg, Kat Dennings, and Tom Hiddleston.

7:06
When asked about Mjolnir, Chris Hemsworth said, “it’s a huge part of the character … [and] wearing the costume does a lot of the work for you.”

Kat Dennings said her character, Darcy, is “a new creation” and “she’s not in the comic books — she’s like Jane Foster’s little helper gnome.”

7:10
Tom Hiddleston: “The great challenge for me was that he is both the agent of chaos and the damaged younger brother. [He's] the jealous brother, the one who’s overlooked. [He's] the one who could’ve been the guy — but can’t be the guy because I dont have the guns this guy has (motioning to Hemsworth).”

“He’s a great liar,” said Hiddleston. “It was fun to play with whether he’s lying or telling the truth.”

Clark Gregg said he “loves being the glue that holds the Marvel Universe together.” The actor went on to reveal that he had no idea of the role he’d play between all of the Marvel movies, and even had to ask what his line in “Iron Man 2″ about needing to go to New Mexico meant.

And now… “Thor” footage!

There’s a lot to absorb here (in 3-D, no less), and it went something like this:

- The footage opens with scenes of Thor wailing on various people while Gregg’s Agent Coulson says, “You made my men look like a bunch of minimum wage mall cops.”

“Who are you?” he asks. And the camera goes in close on Hemsworth’s face.

We then get a look at Asgard as the camera flies overhead. We see Odin on the throne, as well as shots of the Warriors Three, Sif, Loki, Heimdall, and Frigga. Odin condemns Thor, who responds by telling him, “You are an old man and a fool!”

Odin casts him out, and the view suddenly flies through a galaxy of stars, finally landing on a shot of Hemsworth crumpled on the ground.

After Darcy and Jane Foster discover him, Thor opens his eyes and tells them, “Oh no, this is Earth, isn’t it?”

We get a few shots of Thor acclimating to Earth and talking with Foster, telling her all her questions will be answered when he finds what he’s looking for on Earth.

Cue: Thor ripping a sheet of plastic off a wall, revealing his hammer. When he tries to lift his hammer, he’s unable to do so — and he falls to the ground, screaming.

We then see Odin dying — a single tear falls down his cheek — and Loki ascending to the throne.

Various battle scenes unfold as Thor and The Warriors Three battle some unknown foe. It all culminates with a shot of Thor throwing a goblet into the fire as everything fades to black. A few seconds later, Agent Coulson is back on the screen, approaching some unseen object in the desert. As the dust clears, it’s revealed to be DESTROYER!

“Is it one of Stark’s?” an agent asks Coulson.

“I don’t know,” he responds. “That guy never tells me anything.”

Destroyer then open fires on the agents’ vehicles with a massive blast of energy from his facemask, and the screen fades to the “Thor” title — with rain dripping on the letters as they fade toward the camera.

The “Thor” Q&A session then begins:

Branagh told one fan, “We have some Donald Blake surprises in this movie,” and “there will be some touches that we think will be pleasing” regarding shout-outs to comic fans.

7:21
Asked about future films in Marvel movie-verse, Natalie Portman said, “I am not in ‘The Avengers’ but I am in the future ‘Thor’ films if and when they happen.”

A fan then approached the microphone and said he had just one thing to say to Feige: “Ed Norton!”

“He’s not here today,” said Feige. “We love consistency and we love continuity, but as he said in his very well-worded statement, Hulk is bigger than all of us.”

7:27
Feige then added a note that made many fans raise an eyebrow, telling a fan who asked about R-rated Marvel movies that “Frank Castle is under the roof of Marvel Studios now and we hope to bring him into the fray shortly.”

And with that, the “Thor” panel ended… but wait, there’s more!

AvengersAfter showing the “Thor” footage one more time, the film changed to a narration by Sam Jackson as Nick Fury, revealing an “Avengers” logo.

7:40
Jackson soon appears on stage to introduce Gregg, Hemsworth, and Evans back to the stage as well as a special guest: Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr.

Saying he initially thought Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” was an ambitious movie, he soon changed his mind. “Marvel Studios is going to take all their characters and put them into the same movie? That is most ambitious,” he yelled.

Downey then went on to introduce the new members of the “Avengers” lineup: Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, and director Joss Whedon.

“I have had a dream all my life and it was not this good,” laughed Whedon. “This is the Avengers!”

The whole group then gathered on stage for the requisite photo op, closing one of Comic-Con’s most impressive panels of the year.

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As you all hopefully know by now, Defendor is being released in cinemas across Canada tonight! And then in LA on Monday, where our own Rachel won a pass for two to the premiere. It will be awesome to hear what she has to say about the film over the weekend. :)

Have a pre-film interview with Kat from the Province:

She grew up toddling on the rolling green lawns of Bryn Mawr, Penn. — home to the world’s best women’s’ college and Katharine Hepburn’s alma mater — but Kat Dennings says while she fell in love with the classics, it wasn’t exactly a literary thing.

“I love the old musicals like Top Hat and An American in Paris,” says Dennings, who registered as a bona fide blip on the ingenue radar in the wake of playing Norah opposite Michael Cera’s Nick of Infinite Playlist fame.

“I didn’t want to be an actress from the very start. I went through a ballet stage first. Then I wanted to be a mermaid.”

Now starring in actor-turned director Peter Stebbings’s debut feature Defendor, Dennings says she has no problem taking on a variety of different roles, or even playing the crack-addicted sex trade worker (as she does in Defendor), as long as she maintains her personal and professional integrity along the way.

“I don’t really care if the choices I make are good or bad, but it’s important to me that they’re honest,” she says.

When it came to Defendor, Dennings says she was interested in taking on a low-budget project that seemed, in many ways, to be a labour of love for director Stebbings — as well as an ode to the steely-hearted city of Hamilton.

The story of a mentally challenged man who decides to clean up “the Hammer” by donning black clothing and taping a big “D” to his chest with duct tape, Defendor tells a familiar vigilante story with a human twist.

Stebbings says he was well aware of the archetypal source material he was working with, but wanted to strip it down to the basic mechanics of good and bad, and stick as close to the baseline as possible.

“I think people need to see how a lot of people in our society live. We turn a blind eye to all the invisible people out there, whether they are dealing with drug addiction or a disability,” says Stebbings.

“I spent a lot of time in Vancouver and I used to go to the First United Church at Hastings and Gore. I definitely saw how the other half lived,” he says.

Dennings wasn’t all that familiar with that other half, but in order to play the role of a teenage prostitute in this Canadian take on Taxi Driver, she did spend some time with a spokesperson for sex trade workers.

“I worked with a woman who was very familiar with this world and it was really helpful because this character [ironically named Kat] isn’t anything like me at all. She has nothing to hang on to,” says Dennings.

“I have a great family and supportive friends and I’ve been blessed in so many areas of my life. Kat, the character, has none of what I have. She’s got nothing to latch on to,” she says.

“I have to say, being in Hamilton for four or five weeks was also a huge help. That city certainly gets you in the right mood to smoke crack,” she says, her tone a perfect deadpan.

Starring opposite Oscar nominee Woody Harrelson, who plays Arthur Poppington (a. k.a. Defendor), Dennings says she found all the support she needed on set because Harrelson is the kind of actor who commits completely.

“If Woody hadn’t been there, the movie would have fallen apart. You have to believe in Arthur, and I swear, every time we were in a scene together and I looked into his eyes, I believed. He really transformed into Arthur — without tricks or anything — and that kind of made the experience for me.”

Dennings says she has no overall design on her career. She’s going to take it one part at a time, and right now, that would mean playing Darcy in the forthcoming Thor movie directed by Kenneth Branagh.

“Ah. I don’t know. I want to keep growing. Hopefully, I can do more comedy. I really like it and I think growing up, my favourite two actresses were Bernadette Peters and Madeline Kahn. They were great actors who made funny look easy. And that’s probably the hardest thing there is to do,” says Dennings.

“If they ever remake The Jerk, I’m going to fight to be in it.”

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