Coming to a Theatre Near You: America Olivo

Everyone who knows me, knows I rep about four things unconditionally: *NSYNC, PYT, Candy Coated Chaos, and Soluna.

Soluna was a four piece girl group signed to Dreamworks from around 1999 till the end of 2004. The had a "hit" single "For All Time" that peaked into the Top 40 in 2002. I was a big fan, helped run their street team, and met them several times. They were and are all very sweet girls.

Now, finally, I can begin to mention them on this blog with a smile on my face, as both T Lopez and America Olivo prep debut solo albums. But today's post is centered around Ms. Olivo, who, in addition to being a songbird, is also an aspiring actress.

America (pronounced "Am-Uh-Ree-Ca") has had guest appearances on a few TV shows, the most pronounced being "House, MD", which she appeared on twice as House's masseuse. She also had a cameo part in the film "Ironman", that was upsettlingly cut in post.

Now, in addition to having another cameo role in the upcoming "Transformers" sequel, America will be appearing in a slew of independant films, several of them being of the horror genre. Which suited me just fine until I heard the news last year that she would be appearing in Friday, the 13th, which also starred my future husband Jared Padalecki (who, I am definitely marrying now -- now that I have good words about his family thanks to my girl, Jen -- haha!).

While Jared is undoubtably the main male character, and Amanda Righetti and Danielle Panabaker share the main female character roles, my girl America does have a pretty big amount of screen time in the movie for a newcomer. I got to see the movie this past weekend by attending the New York City premiere (because I'm cool like that), and was almost as excited to see America, someone I know and have met multiple times, who I look up to, in a film with someone else I very much admire (Jared -- stay with me here).

The film is pretty run of the mill gore, and America does get killed off (but what do you expect?) relatively early in. Suffice to say, she is a friend of Amanda Righetti's character (who plays Jared's sister). What I wasn't expecting was getting to see America strip down to literally nothing in not just one sex scene, but another scene involving her exposing lady bits before the aforementioned scene. You know that the girls who give it away never make it out of horror movies alive...But the shock of seeing someone I call a friend of mine naked on a big screen with several other people around (including Derek Mears, who played Jason, two rows in front of me) needless to say made me vaugely uncomfortable.

However, in conjunction with the release of the movie, along with another independant film that stars America called "Bitchslap" (a kind of "Kill Bill" meets "Charlie's Angels", or so I'm told), she has premiered new music to her musical MySpace page.

Several of the tracks are old, in the sense that they were demos premiered a year or so ago, but they have gotten a remixed facelift, along with the knowledge that "Deja Vu" will be released as her first radio/club single through an offshoot of Universal Musical Group in the next few weeks. Another spotlight is "Ave Maria Divita", a sexy stomper which also feature's America's amazing ability to mesh pop music with opera (she dabbled in opera in college at Julliard...yeah, she's that good).

Check them both out, along with her other ace offerings ("Water From the Moon", "Porcelain Eyes" and "Summer") on her MySpace and let me know what you think. And check her out (literally), along with the hotness that is Jared Padalecki, in Friday the 13th, opening in theatres this week.