AlexanderSkarsgard Tagged Articles at Cinematical

One of the silliest pleasures of revisiting older films is seeing actors in small roles, back before you had any idea who they were. Sometimes it's the only reason to watch something over again -- after all, why else would you rent 1990's Tales From the Darkside: The Movie if not to giggle at Julianne Moore being terrorized by a mummy controlled by Steve Buscemi, or pick up Leprechaun other than to mock the performance of the young Jennifer Aniston?

Sometimes the now-familiar faces pop up in stuff that's still worth watching, as with Laurence Fishburne as Cowboy Curtis on TV's Pee-Wee's Playhouse, or Johnny Depp in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. That's a bonanza. And when the earlier role is vastly different from the sort of thing they've settled in to playing now, it's all the more delightful.

Take, for example, Alexander Skarsgard, who sets hearts a-flutter on HBO's campy vampire series True Blood. As Eric, the 1,000 year old, once-Viking "sheriff" who bosses around the show's regional office of the undead, Skarsgard was called Vampire McSteamy and "TV's hottest set of fangs" by Newsweek. The son of actor Stellan Skarsgard, he'll also be seen in Rod Lurie's remake of Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, and alongside Jason Statham, Ray Liotta and Mickey Rourke in 13, director Géla Babluani's reworking of his 2006 crime thriller 13 Tzameti. He also showed up the music video for Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi."

After the cut: A surprising early performance by everyone's favorite Norse bloodsucker.

We're entering into a frustrating trend with Thor news now. Excellent actors continue to sign on, but we have no idea who they are playing, which certainly keeps things interesting, but hurts when it comes to the geek discussions we could be having. The latest to reportedly join the cast is a Skarsgard, but not the one who you might expect.. According to Swedish news site Ystands Allehanda, Stellan Skarsgard has joined the cast of Thor in an unspecified role.

As you Thor fans undoubtedly remember, Stellan's son Alexander was in the running to play Thor. Skarsgard confirmed that he was so close as to have tried on the costume, and was one of the last contenders cut before Kenneth Branagh chose Chris Hemsworth. (Every episode of True Blood I see, I think Hemsworth has to be something really special if they cut Skarsgard, who would have been my pick.) If the elder Skarsgard is indeed part of the cast, I would like to be a fly on the wall for that family phone call.

Read the rest over at SciFi Squad

When I went to see Metropia (and reviewed it) at Fantastic Fest on Saturday night, all I knew about Alexander Skarsgard was that he had a role in the film, and that he was the son of actor Stellan Skarsgard -- I hadn't seen him in anything. Metropia director Tarik Saleh had told me earlier in the day that Alexander Skarsgard was in Shreveport shooting Straw Dogs, but would drive down here for the screening, and I thought that was awfully nice of him. I hoped the screening would have a full house so the actor wouldn't feel like his efforts were wasted.

I don't watch the TV show True Blood, and had no idea that Skarsgard had such a following of female fans. The theater was packed, and many attendees were nicely dressed women. During the Q&A, more audience members than usual were snapping photos. Admittedly, Skarsgard is very easy on the eyes. But I was completely taken aback when, after the Q&A, a crowd of women mobbed the Alamo Drafthouse lobby to get photos taken with Skarsgard. As a friend of mine remarked, it was as though a cloud of estrogen had descended upon the film festival -- there are plenty of women at Fantastic Fest, but they aren't usually clamoring around a male movie star.

Some people go to Fantastic Fest to focus on horror films; me, I grab the rare opportunity to see animated movies made for grownups. I especially like animation that looks and feels a little different than the mainstream -- for example, the rotoscoped look of A Scanner Darkly. Metropia touches on some of the same themes as A Scanner Darkly, but this animated feature looks like nothing else you've seen onscreen lately.

Metropia is set in Europe in 2024, in a grim future where natural resources have dried up, financial collapse has left most people struggling, and the biggest corporation in the world is Trexx, which runs a giant Metro system (subway) all across the continent. Roger (Vincent Gallo), a Swedish call-center worker, is considered paranoid for worrying about whether Trexx, and the Metro, are involved in some sort of oppressive conspiracy. When his bike is broken and he's forced to ride the underground train, he has to fight a voice in his head that doesn't quite sound like his own, as well as the urge to follow his dream girl, Nina (Juliette Lewis), whose face adorns popular shampoo ads and bottles everywhere.

Some mid-week casting nibblets:

The wonderful Willem Dafoe is about to make a trip to Mars. The Hollywood Reporter posts that Dafoe has signed on to play Tars Tarkas in the Civil War/space project John Carter of Mars. Seeing Dafoe take a slight pause from his horror-filled schedule is nice, and it's even better that Tarkas is both a great warrior and compassionate man -- a gig that Dafoe should be able to tackle easily. But there is a twist -- Dafoe is once again going green for a gig. This is what Tarkas looks like.

And it's been a while since we got casting news for Rod Lurie's Straw Dogs remake, but now Variety reports that Kate Bosworth and Alexander Skarsgard are joining the roster. Bosworth will play James Marsden's wife, as they leave Hollywood for her Mississippi hometown. Skarsgard will play her old high school boyfriend and ex-football hero. One things for certain: this isn't the usual crop of names one would see on such an epically violent story.

Meanwhile, Christine Baranski will play Jennifer Aniston's mom in her Gerard Butler comedy Bounty Hunter, according to Variety. There's still no word on just what kind of fugitive Aniston is, and why, but Baranski should make things interesting.

And finally, Patrick Dempsey is changing things up a bit with a new big-screen role. Variety reports that he'll star in Universal's adaptation of The Art of Racing in the Rain. Yes, it's a racing movie, but not exactly a racing movie. See, it's fueled by memories from "Enzo, a family dog with a near-human soul and philosopher's mind, who evaluates his life through the lessons learned by his human owner, the race-car driver Denny Swift." No romance and fairy tale quirk this time around, just a little Marley magic and a bit of Dempsey's own race car driving ways.

Sometimes cinemaniacs get rewarded for stepping outside the theater. Scott Weinberg, his tongue possibly in cheek, thinks a viral 4-minute internet video is the best movie of the year. I am convinced that the year's best fiction-on-film (so far -- though I have trouble imagining anything topping it) is currently airing on HBO. That would be Generation Kill, the seven-part, eight-hour Iraq War miniseries from David Simon and Ed Burns (The Wire). I know, I know: this is Cinematical, not TV Squad. But Generation Kill is something no movie lover should ignore.

Fans of The Wire already know of Simon and Burns's uncanny, unparalleled ability to weave together hyper-realism, trenchant commentary and riveting drama, but even they may be stunned, as I was, by what this smaller-scale project has to offer. It is, quite simply, the deepest and most sympathetic portrayal of the military -- any military -- I have ever seen. It may also be the first "Hollywood" take on the Iraq War that is genuinely thoughtful and de-politicized. Rather than offering a polemic, the series (adapted from a book by Evan Wright, a reporter who rode with the 1st Recon Marine Unit) just observes -- and, by all accounts, gets close to the truth.

Have no fear -- Vincent Gallo isn't going to become the next Tim Allen -- one of those unlikely men whose interesting past is buried as they become a bright and shiny Disney name. And no, this new project is not a big-screen version of the Canadian TV drama. Metropia is gearing up to be adult fare with a Swedish twist, and Variety reports that Gallo and Juliette Lewis are leading the film's voice cast.

According to ATMO... "Metropia is taking place in a not-so-distant, terrifying Europe. The world is running out of oil, and the net of undergrounds has been connected, creating a gigantic web underneath Europe. Roger from Farsta (a suburb of Stockholm) tries to stay away from the underground. He think it's unpleasant and he sometimes hears strange voices in his head." Then, this dude finds out that every detail of his life is being controlled. (But I ask, if every detail was controlled, could you actually discover that and change it?) The best part: "To succeed, he needs supermodel Nina to help him. Or, is it maybe Nina that needs Roger?" The best way to survive the scary future: supermodels!

Since Gallo and Lewis are leading the voice cast, I imagine they will be Roger and Nina. Are they the people you would pick for a guy suffering from strange voices and a future-saving supermodel? Joining them -- Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgard, Sofia Helin, Shanti Roney, and Alexander Skarsgard. In the works for a handful of years now, this project should be pretty interesting -- the plan is to blend live action with animation, and Tarik Saleh, the film's director, says: "The border between animation and regular fiction film is blurring. In the future, the audience will not categorize films in the way we tend to do today. Metropia is steps ahead." Well, we'll find out fairly soon -- the film's release is slated for Spring 2009.