While Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried were in San Francisco, they made an appearance at Macy’s. I took some footage with my Mino and thought I would make a little video using my broadcast media skills (please note the lower case “b” in “broadcast”).

Here’s what I came up with:

My friend said that my commentary sounded like I hated everyone – and I kinda had the tone of Dwight Schrute.

I don’t know if I should take that as an insult or a compliment.

While answering a question, she caught a whiff of something and, well….just have a listen:

Amanda likes Chanel

I was sitting quite far from her and she smelled my cologne from across the table! All that from my daily single spritz of Chanel on my wrist! She really has a powerful nose. I wonder if she is an X-man with a mutant ability to identify luxury fragrances.

After the interview, she came around the table and asked to smell it one more time. I felt really flattered…and a bit nervous. I never had a talented actress smell my wrist before.

She walks into the cavernous room towering in these killer heeled boots and she has a look of concern. She walks over to our table and says, “My child is sick.”

I didn’t know she had a child.

Then she says, “My dog.”

“Awwws” fill the room and she explains that her doggy back home has a runny nose. Luckily, her dog sitter is taking him to the vet. But alas, she composes herself in order to chat with us.

Savannah (Seyfried) reads a heartfelt letter from her dear John

Amanda has a resume of diverse characters and in Dear John, she plays Savannah a love interest that is too perfect for John – but love prevails. At the same time, the character is conflicted because John is overseas serving the country as a soldier in the Army Special Forces. That said, the first topic brought to the table was: how did she feel like playing a romantic lead?

“I felt like I had to fit into this mold when the script came out. I thought, ‘Wow, how cool would it be to play a romantic lead.’ That was my dream. I wanted to be Claire Danes in Romeo and Juliet when I was 12,” she laughs. “This is my chance to inspire other girls to fall in love.”

She goes on to say that it was a challenge fitting that role:

Amanda on Beauty

Then again, she says that playing a role like this is good for her. Being one of the emerging talents in Hollywood, tons of scripts get sent to her – but she says she doesn’t read them. That’s her agent’s job. “She knows exactly what I want to do – I trust her 100 percent,” she says. “People know that I can do more than play myself.”

And that she does – especially in an upcoming movie that she just finished.

Amanda on Scripts

Relating to prostitutes is one thing, but working with a director like Lasse Hallström is another thing. Working with someone that has foreign symbols in their name has to be intimidating, right?

Working with Lasse

“I grew up watching his movies,” she adds. “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape is one of the best movies ever made. He’s just really good. You sometimes worry that he doesn’t know what he wants, but he’s just chill. He’s laid back.”

Savannah and John (Tatum) have a scientific, yet romantic, discussion about the moon

Throughout the movie, Savannah grows with her relationship with John. She goes through some pretty emotional bumps but still manages to keep her head on straight – a characteristic that Amanda admires.

“Savannah is way more confident than I am,” she says. “In the beginning of the movie she’s 21 and she knows who she is and what she wants. She’s way cooler than I’ll ever be.”

I don’t think Savannah is necessarily “cooler” than Amanda. One common bond they share is music. They both sing well. And that is something Amanda wants to explore in the near future.

Amanda and her music

And then there’s the whole ordeal about working with Henry Thomas.

Amanda talks about Henry Thomas

But if anything, Amanda wants people to walk away from the movie with the overall theme: Love.

Amanda on love

“We can all relate to it,” she adds. “You can take a lot from the movie. It shines a light on autism – it’s something we should know about. There’s a lot of elements that make it easy to watch even if you’re not a 12 to 17 year old girl. It’s not just Channing Tatum with his shirt off.”

Speaking of a shirtless Channing, Amanda feels that at times, people seem to be more interested in him than her when it comes to this movie – but she jokes about it and understands why this press tour is becoming Channing-palooza.

Amanda on the sidelines

Amanda may be correct, but if it wasn’t for her, Channing’s character wouldn’t have found his heart. He also would’ve been making out with himself throughout the entire movie. Although that might be good for some, it wouldn’t necessarily make an ideal movie-going experience for the masses.

’Dear John’ is in theaters February 5. Read my interview with Channing Tatum by clicking here.

What to watch on TV…

LOST. There’s nothing else worth watching this week. The beginning of the final season airs on Feb. 2. I am actually really turned on by it. It’s like waiting for prom night.

What to watch in the theaters…

In case you haven’t noticed from my Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried, Dear John hits theaters this Friday, Feb. 5. John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers can also be seen in the action-packed operative film, From Paris With Love.

Some DVDs that you might want come Tuesday Feb. 2…

- Adam
- Amelia (buy at your own risk)
- Beverly Hills 90210: The Ninth Season (hell to the yeah!)
- Love Happens (it’s the movie with Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart…yeah, I had to look it up too.)
- The Mary Tyler Moore Show: The Complete Sixth Season
- More Than a Game
- Murder, She Wrote: The Complete Eleventh Season
- New York, I Love You (think Paris Je t’aime but not as good)
- Ong Bak 2: The Beginning
- Universal Soldier: Regeneration (JVCD + Dolph Lundgren = AWESOME)
- Zombieland (I’ve had this one pre-ordered since it was in the theaters)

As far as fashion goes, nothin’ is in the works…except for New York Fashion Week! (but more on that next week).

It’s hardly the greatest use of space.

We sat there chatting about what we were going to ask Channing. We mentioned the whole “burned hot dog incident” and although we heard he is pretty open about the ordeal, we thought it would be better not to mention it.

John (Channing Tatum) reads a letter from his boo in ‘Dear John’

As I sat there, I couldn’t help but think of how hungry I was. I am always hungry before these roundtable interviews. The Fiji Water from the refreshment table wasn’t cutting it. Why couldn’t they have some cookies or croissants on the table? Or maybe even an entire breakfast buffet?

I was also thinking, “Why couldn’t we do this interview some where more casual? Like a Starbucks? Borders? Somewhere out in public where people could see me chatting with Mr. Tatum.

As I was contemplating where I was going to eat after the interview, Channing Tatum walked in. He was looking casually sharp in a vest/button-down/tie/jeans combo. His hair was longer than it was in the movie Dear John and it was effortlessly combed with a hint of disheveled charm.

His latest film, Dear John is cut from the same cloth as The Notebook. Maybe because it was based on the book written by the same author: Nicholas Sparks. Channing plays John, a rough-around-the-edges sun-kissed dude in the Army Special Forces. His relationship with his father (Richard Jenkins) isn’t the greatest and he has gotten into his fair share of trouble. While home on leave, he falls for Savannah (Amanda Seyfried) and – well – you can guess what happens from here.

“The weather here is crazy,” he says as he approaches the table. By “crazy” he means it’s a little chilly. He should be lucky it wasn’t raining.

He looks just like he did onscreen: handsome with a kick of Southern edge. We all start chatting casually as he makes the effort to go around the table and shake all of our hands. It was very Southern of him.

We get down to it and start asking him questions – a lot of them had to do with being a fictitious military character in three movies.

“G.I. Joe wasn’t a real soldier to me – it was like X-men,” he says. “It’s not like we were trying to depict what a real soldier was like and what he has to go through. In Stop-Loss, we went through pretty intense training.”

He says that no matter how much training he has done, he – or anyone else for that matter – will never know what it’s like to be a soldier.

Channing’s sympathy for soldiers

Channing isn’t necessarily new when it comes to the military. His grandfather was a soldier in the Korean War – but he didn’t have the opportunity to talk with him about it because he lost the ability to speak before he could ask him. This is explains Channing’s fascination with the military. He has always wondered if he had what it takes to be in the military. He even thinks he may have enlisted if it weren’t for his football scholarship to Glenville State College in West Virginia.

By observation, he has learned a couple of things about being in the military – and it doesn’t necessarily involve basic training or guns.

“I have a lot of friends that are soldiers after doing some of these movies – they tend to surround you with them,” he says. “All the guys in Dear John were really (Army Special Forces) guys except for four of them. You talk them all the time and some of them have family. It’s mind-boggling in what they have to go through. I just can’t imagine being away from my wife or my family for 10 months at a time – sometimes more – being in harm’s way and not knowing what’s going to happen. Everyone deals with it different – some people don’t deal with it.”

Channing points out that these soldiers are just normal, everyday girls and guys. “They are just trying to figure out what’s going on in their lives,” he says. “They are just in extraordinary circumstances.”

From this, he figures that Dear John goes beyond war.

Channing on war and love

At this point of the interview, we are in really deep. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting the thoughtfulness of Channing’s answers. I underestimated him because I was expecting something along the lines of his character from Step Up – which, by the way, I loved.

He proved me wrong and thensome.

The relationship with Savannah isn’t the only thing John has to deal with in the movie. Channing points out that the development of John and his father is just as important – and it reflects that of today’s children. It just so happens that the father-son relationship in the movie is a heightened experience of that.

John and Savannah have some good ol’ fashioned summer lovin’

“Everyone can understand where there is a misunderstanding between parents and children – I definitely do,” he admits. “ John’s father has no social skills so he never taught him social tact. I think that’s why John joined the military – so he can learn to be a man and have skills to deal with the world.”

Then Savannah comes along to change all that:

The father-son relationship

As we talk about the emotional heft of the movie, I, being the unemotional robot I am, break the flow with the question, “Why should single guys see this movie?”

Why should guys see this movie?

Point taken.

He continues, “I think if you do have a father, brother, sister – it’s a good family movie. I think kids could see the movie – I don’t think it’s too bad. There is one racy scene, but I think it’s done tastefully.”

We have seen Channing in a multitude of roles, most of them being dramatic, but can we expect anything else?

Channing’s roles

Channing is just full of surprises. I wouldn’t have expected him to be such a character-driven kinda guy. That’s very un-jockish of him.

With his career in full stride and with comparisons to Marlon Brando under his belt (which Channing laughs and says “That is ridiculous!”), could it be possible that this Southern boy has lost a sense of humility? Has Hollywood corrupted him?

Channing’s sense of humility

“I have friends at home who will never let me forget who I am,” he adds with a smile. “They smack me in the face with it everyday. I’m just normal, idiot Chan!”

You can also take a gander at my interview with Amanda Seyfried. ‘Dear John’ is in theaters February 5, 2010

Jesus Christ, I only could imagine what will happen to those first 200 people who will get to meet them. My guess is spontaneous combustion.