This is my favorite scene with Moira as Mandy. I wanted to put it by myself, but somehow I forgot and today I saw it on youtube. Here it is, I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I do. What a shame Moira’s character vanished so soon, I’m pretty sure it could be easily developed.

Local Sheriff Zach Watts (Craig Sheffer) investigates a murder among old college friends who have come to stay at a local bed and breakfast to celebrate a bridal shower. HALLMARK CHANNEL PHOTO

Former “One Tree Hill” star Craig Sheffer returns to TV this weekend in the Hallmark Channel movie “Lies Between Friends.” The film reunites Sheffer with his daughter’s mother – Gabrielle Anwar of “Burn Notice.” Anwar plays Joss, a woman who attends a bridal shower in a remote bed and breakfast with her college girlfriends. But when a murder disrupts the festivities, sheriff Zack Watts (Sheffer) begins an investigation that also bonds him to Joss.

Sheffer said when he first read the script, his mom, who he was visiting at the time, told him he had to take it because it reminded them of “Murder, She Wrote,” which she loved.

But working with Anwar was a huge draw. The couple have worked together numerous times, and they’ve stayed close. Sheffer is even the godfather of Anwar’s other children.

In fact, Anwar was required on the Vancouver set much more than Sheffer, so he was happy to play nanny for the kids in a hotel while Anwar was filming.

“Her kids we’re probably with me 80 percent of the time,” Sheffer said. “We had a great time.”

Among the shared credits of Sheffer and Anwar is the 1995 film “The Grave,” which was shot in Wilmington.

“Wilmington was a lot smaller,” Sheffer said. ‘The downtown changed dramaticaly from ‘95 to 2005. It really grew.”

Sheffer had been to Wilmington before — to visit a friend working on “Super Mario Brothers,” which starred Dennis Hopper and filmed in 1992. “Dennis and I had worked together, so I was down there golfing with Dennis and playing poker with those guys.”

And he was back in 1999 to film the period drama “The Pavilion,” mostly on Figure Eight Island. But it was his time spent playing gentle uncle Keith Scott on “One Tree Hill” that allowed him to most connect with Southeastern North Carolina.

Sheffer loved dining at Port City Chop House, where he often ordered shrimp on the half shell. He enjoyed margaritas from the sofa bar at Caprice Bistro and the spinach and ricotta rolled with tomato sauce from Circa 1922.

“The downtown area was great, man,” he said. “You know, there was a bar every two address numbers and a restaurant every three. You got to really know people.

While filming “One Tree Hill,” Sheffer stayed both in downtown Wilmington and at Wrightsville Beach.

“It was beautiful down there,” he said. “The beach is incredible. I like it so much more than the California beaches. The water’s so cold here and (there are) so many rocks on the water. And the people (in Wilmington) are just great. Southern people are just really laid-back and welcoming.”.

The experience would have been much different fo Sheffer had “One Tree Hill” filmed in Canada, as Sheffer said was a real possibility.

“They were deciding between Wilmington and Vancouver” to film the show, Sheffer said. “We didn’t know which one it would be. The studio , money wise, knew they could make it a lot cheaper in Vancouver. The (state’s film) incenntives weren’t quite what they are now. (Creator) Mark Schwahn and Joe Davola, the producer, fought really hard to get it in Wilmington and kept it in Wilmington.”

Talking with Sheffer about the show, it’s clear he’s more jazzed about the filming location than his even-keeled character.

“Keith is a very simple character,” Sheffer said, adding that characters like Keith aren’t the most fun to play. “I actually prefer more of a challenge. He wasn’t a hugely interesting charcter. But he was a good guy and he was just a really genuine human being with good intentions. And that’s a nice thing to play and come home at the end of the day. You don’t bring too much with you. We had some good scenes within the framework of a simple character, so there was some of that stuff to play, but also a lot of cheesy stuff.”

Sheffer said he enjoyed working opposite Moira Kelly (who played his romantic foil, Karen), but he said the highlights of filming were those scenes he shared with Paul Johansson, who plays Dan, Keith’s evil brother.

“That was the stuff where it was actually dramatic,” said Sheffer, whose characters was ultimately killed by Dan. “Those were the most fun scenes to play, and Paul and I always had a good time together.”

Sheffer sees similarities between his “Lies Between Friends” character and Keith. “Again, the character wasn’t super complicated,” Sheffer said, but I always enjoy having scenes with Gaby.”

Working with Anwar is especially fun when the couple plays romantic moments, he said.

“We have a lot of fun. I always tease her.”

“Lies Between Friends airs at 9 p.m. Saturday on Hallmark Channel

by Jeff Hidek

Hey, great news – D.B Sweeney’s movie – ‘Two Tickets To Paradise’ will be re-released! I can’t wait to see all extras and deleted scenes. I hope there will be a lot of Moira. Here’s an original article. LINK

D.B. Sweeney’s Two Tickets to Paradise Finally Gets a Proper Release
June 22, 2010

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D.B. Sweeney’s Two Tickets to Paradise comedy enjoyed a successful run on the film festival circuit before receiving a limited release on DVD in 2008 by First Look Studios. That limited release never went wide, until now.

Paramount Home Entertainment has announced plans to award Two Tickets to Paradise the wide release it’s been waiting years for. The release date is September 14 and the bonus features are all new: outtakes, deleted scenes and a feature-length commentary by Sweeney.

Synopsis: Unfortunately for Mark (McGinley), McGriff (Sweeney) and Jason (Paul Hipp, Waking The Dead), their best years seem to have been back in high school when the world saw them as a star athlete, a rock god and a genius. Twenty years later they can’t catch a break. Until they score two tickets for the biggest game of the year: The College Football Championship Bowl. Seeing it as their chance to break out and hit re-set, the guys take a road trip to Florida. But will their friendship survive hungry alligators, barroom losers and the most challenging obstacle of all: each other?

Two Tickets to Paradise on DVD carries an SRP of $14.99. Watch the trailer below (cut before it was renamed from Dirt Nap).

I watched With Honors directed by Alex Keshishian in 1994 when I was a bright-eyed college freshman at UP Los Baños.

The film is a tale about living life simply. It is a story about a homeless man who teaches some snobbish Harvard students a thing or two about life.

The film stars Brendan Fraser as Monty, the self-absorbed graduate student obsessed with finishing his thesis and graduating with honors to satisfy his demanding professor. In one unexpected incident, he loses his precious thesis in the basement of the library’s heating plant. It is found by a homeless man living there, Simon (played by Joe Pesci). Simon agrees to return the thesis one page at a time. Quid pro quo. Barter. Monty gets a page in return for certain favors. Since there is nothing Monty can do about it – else his beloved thesis goes up in smoke – he just lets Simon get his way.

Little does Monty know that his relationship with the bearded vagabond will change his life. It also affects the life of his housemates who include Everett (Patrick Dempsey), a wisecracking, happy-go-lucky radio host, immature and sex-obsessed Courtney (Moira Kelly), and the nerdy Jeff (Josh Hamilton). Simon becomes something of a father figure to the four students and provides an earthy balance to their overly academic viewpoint in life. Simon proves to be their equalizer.

Maybe it is practically an “unheard of” film. I was lucky I got the chance to watch it. Yes, it is simple, maybe even too juvenile for others to appreciate, but it taught me that not all things should be based on “books.”

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against books because I am a bookworm myself. Nor do I have a grudge against the academe that provides vital knowledge and readies us for the real world. But the film just strengthened the fact that not everything in life is taught within the four corners of the classroom. It also emphasized that experience is still the best teacher and that wisdom can also be acquired through other people who have gained it themselves.

In my appreciation of the movie, it helped that With Honors had a great soundtrack. I am not sure if it was only nominated or actually won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song in 1995 for Madonna’s I’ll Remember. But this I remember: After watching the movie, I immediately bought a copy of the soundtrack even if I had to spend part of my just-enough weekly allowance. Can you believe it?

With Honors is also one of the movies that did not make it to the list that “made” Brendan Fraser. Hunky as he was even before this film, With Honors featured the pre-Bedazzled, George of the Jungle, or Blast from the Past Fraser. But I think Brendan Fraser is really good here. Maybe With Honors was the one that actually jump- started his career.

On the other hand, Moira Kelly was already the pretty face she is in this movie. I was in high school when I first watched her glide on ice with DB Sweeney in Cutting Edge. She was just as beautiful, though her role here is not as “cool” and imposing. Patrick Dempsey is funny playing the curly-haired, easy-going disc jock compared to his recent role as the sleek New Yorker fiancé of Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama. But I was unfamiliar with the other projects of the younger Josh Hamilton aside from his peewee role as Miranda’s date in one Sex and the City episode.

The movie, for all its humor and some “kilig” moments shared by Monty and Courtney can really tug at your heartstrings. Compared to his other roles as the pesky police aid in Lethal Weapon or the villain for Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone, Joe Pesci is funny here, all right. But his character is the one that has the most profound effect on the lives of the other characters.

Simon has asbestosis, a lung disease he got when he worked in a mine, and he has no family to call his own. In his deathbed, he just wants Monty and the group to be with him, reading verses from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The part when he dies while being read a poem is one of the unforgettable moments of this film.

Monty does not finish his thesis on time. He argues history with his professor. He doesn‘t even graduate with honors. But the lessons he learned from Simon will prove to be the most important ones he and his friends will ever learn in life.