by KYW’s Hadas Kuznits
M. Night Shamalyan’s ”The Last Airbender” opens this week. The Philadelphia-area film maker shot the movie, in part, in our region.

Actress Nicola Peltz is one of the movie’s stars:

“I play Katara and I’m the last Waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe and my character has a very big heart and has a great relationship with her brother Sokka, but at the same time she’s very mentally and physically strong.  So I had to learn Kung Fu and Tai Chi for the role.”

Actor Jackson Rathbone plays her brother:

“I play a character named Sokka who is a young warrior from the Southern Water Tribe who, along with his little sister Katara, discover this mysterious boy trapped in the ice and he ends up being The Last Airbender, the last of his kind and so we go on a quest with him to basically save the world from the Fire Nation.”

Rathbone also stars in “Twilight: Eclipse,” which also opens this week.  What do his friends think about his movie star status?

“They were never really excited about the “Twilight” films, but as soon as I landed “The Last Airbender,” all my guy friends were like, ‘Aw yeah man, that’s what it’s about right there!’ “