Dagny Mendelsohn is the front woman representing the 11 total owners at Macao Trading Company. Hailing from the other serious foodie city, San Francisco, once she set foot in New York, she learned the heart of the restaurant business from one of the best, Keith McNally. She embraced the underground hipster scene from being part of APT, as well as gaining an education from the the fashionistas (a.k.a. Richie Rich). At Macau, she brings it all together under one roof with dinners for people like Perry Farrell, Mick Rock and Morimoto.

As Sgt. Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming WWII revisionist epic Inglorious Basterds, Eli Roth could quite possibly have the best role in movie history. He’s not the star, so the film’s success does not rest on his shoulders. He gets to act alongside Brad Pitt, which, for eye candy purposes, is awesome in its own right. He’s getting paid to spit Tarantino dialogue, notoriously some of the best in the biz. And, perhaps best of all, he gets to annihilate, exterminate, and eradicate, in the most violent ways possible, f**cking Nazis. We spoke to the Hostel director about bringing Quentin home for the holidays, mimicking Brad Pitt at Cannes, and the ‘holy shit’ factor that comes with being in a Tarantino movie.

When Richard Linklater directed School of Rock—the first truly commercial success of his career—you’d think he’d stay in the world of profitable, A-list comedy. After all, the paychecks are bigger than what you’d make for say, directing a film that features Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy discussing abstraction and truth, uninterrupted on the streets of Paris. But Linklater has always followed his own path, and despite making some of the most memorable films of the last twenty years (Dazed and Confused, Waking Life), the director still struggles to get projects off the ground. I recently had the chance to speak to Linklater from his home in Austin, where we discussed his latest documentary, his upcoming period piece Me and Orson Welles starring Zac Efron and Claire Danes, and anything and everything about the movie business.

Formerly executive chef at the decadent GILT restaurant, chef Christopher Lee recently re-opened Charlie Palmer’s legendary at its new location in the Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park (that’s him in the photo above at right, Palmer smiling paternally at left). The Top Chef Masters competitor talks about manning the kitchen as executive chef at Aureole, his modest perspectives, and having a green thumb. Aureole will beoffering a 15% discount on all menus until the grand opening benefit gala for Citymeals-on-Wheels on September 15.

You had a streetball / Hip Hop show on an Ivy league jazz radio station. That’s not really a question, more of an observation.
And a good one. I had the world’s first-ever talk radio program discussing playground basketball on WKCR 89.9FM. It was called On the Fence, and came on earlier in the evening every Thursday before me and Stretch Armstrong’s hip hop show. I also wrote the first article on sneaker culture in media history, titled “Confessions of a Sneaker Addict.” It ran in Source magazine in 1991. I also hosted the first TV series ever dedicated to sneaker culture, called It’s the Shoes, which ran for two seasons on ESPN. I could go on but I’ll stop there!

What kicks do you have on permanent ice?
There is no pair on permanent ice in my closet—everything gets worn at some point! There are definitely joints that only come out on special occasion when they’ll be a good amount of heads that will understand what’s on the feet and can appreciate it.

BlackBook has a famous lineage of interns; we’ve yet again found another one amongst our unpaid ranks whose existence and presence has shocked, shaken, and amazed the staff in ways we didn’t think our interns were capable of doing. This one, like all the others, has a very special secret: her life’s ambition. No, it’s not a career in publishing. It’s finding and ravishing the man of her dreams (and those of every other girl aged 14 through 40): actor Robert Pattinson. While we simply talked to her about her obsession before, we’ve now given her time to explore it.

Fifteen years have passed since Jennifer Chambers Lynch released Boxing Helena, arguably the most problematic debut film of all time. It was originally slated to star Madonna as the mutilated object of a demented surgeon’s affection, but was later recast with Kim Basinger when Andrew Lloyd Webber threatened to revoke her starring-role in Evita. When Basinger later pulled out at the insistence of one of her handlers, a front-page court battle ensued, ending in the bankruptcy and eventual divorce of Basinger and then-husband Alec Baldwin. Lynch was only 23 when the backlash reached boiling point. She was unfairly attacked in the media as a hack, and worse, for being the hack whose father was cinematic icon David Lynch. Compelled to create Helena’s world of misplaced adulation and amputation by a car accident that destroyed her spine, she felt doubly punished when the film was released to frigid reviews and “audience venom.” After a series of life-changing events, Lynch sought refuge in the abuse of alcohol and drugs. Now sober, walking and demon-free, the controversial filmmaker comes out of hiding with this month’s deliciously amoral thriller Surveillance, a triumphant comeback in every sense of the word.

Maurizio “Irko” Sera calls himself an audio nutritionist—a man who devotes every ounce of his hustle to each piece of sound that comes across his mixing board. As a music fanatic and DJ from Venice, Irko has become one of the most sought-after audio engineers in the world of music. Having put his signature touch on mixes he’s done for Jay-Z, Jennifer Lopez, Kanye West, and Dilated Peoples, one of Irko’s latest projects has been his work on the 88-Keys album, The Death of Adam, that was acclaimed for it’s musical innovation as well as its sonic qualities. After starting the year as Sean “Diddy” Combs’ in-house engineer at Daddy’s House Studios, Irko’s latest musical conquest will be featured on EA Sports NBA Live 2010 and Ox of Soul One Inc. for Mad World on Wii game systems. It looks like the game has been good to Maurizio Sera.

Jessie James is a young, Southern belle, getting some recognition for some Billboard-friendly tunes about heartbreak and girl power that was on the soundtrack for some movie that was equally about heartbreak and girl power. Now she’s taking her act on the road, opening for the Jonas Brothers, showcasing that country twang to legions of squealing tweens in advance of the August 11 release of her debut album. Miss James called us from the road in Colorado to talk about who uses sex to sell and who doesn’t, enjoying Nickelback’s music, and her desire to take down the Third Reich.

Written by Mark Boal and directed by Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker features an elite squad of U.S. army soldiers, dismantling bombs in the most dangerous areas of Baghdad. The film’s anything but your typical big-budget war flick—avoiding sensationalism and without political agenda, it realistically portrays one of the most fascinating and underrepresented facets of the war in Iraq, in the process capturing the psychological complexity of soldiers who voluntarily deal with borderline-psychotic danger on a daily basis. Rising star Jeremy Renner taps into Sergeant William James, a member of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), who’s taken apart 873 bombs in the heat of combat. James and his subordinates Sanborn and Eldridge (Notorious star Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty, respectively) are specially trained to handle homemade bombs and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), which are responsible for more than half of America’s Iraq War casualties and the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Already winning awards at the Venice Film Festival and earning Renner and Mackie Independent Spirit Award nominations, this not-to-be-missed war flick hits theaters on Friday (don’t forget to check out the review from this month’s issue of BlackBook before you see it). In a car ride on his way to the airport, Renner gave us a ring to wax on recklessness and courage, and the bombs that he’s disarmed both in front of the camera and in his own life.