ChristinaRicci Tagged Articles at Cinematical

By: Peter Hall

Horror Squad just got our hands at a swath of exclusive images from the upcoming film After.Life, starring Liam Neeson, Christina Ricci, and Justin Long. The film, written by Paul and Agnieszka Wojtowicz Vosloo, tells the story of a woman (Ricci) drifting between her corporeal life and the after life while under the care of a funeral director (Neeson) who may or may not be intentionally trying to bury the poor woman alive.

Those details may seem vague at this point and you may never have heard of the writer/director Vosloo team, but considering the acting talent attracted to the material, I'm willing to plant After.Life firmly on my radar. If anything, the gallery bellow should help whet your appetite until more information bubbles to the surface. After. Life is currently in post-production and is due out in 2010. Special thanks to the mysterious source who passed along these images.

Check out the gallery of exclusive images over at Horror Squad

Vincent Gallo's persona is anything but brightly colored and melodic. In fact, it's mostly brooding, insane, and tense. He's lathered the hate on for who knows how many fellow actors and actresses, journalists, websites, and other bystanders he's come in contact with. He's redefined crude by offering to sell his sperm to light-complexioned people (the blonde and blue-eyed would even get a discount!). Nevertheless, some of his art can be undeniably and irresistibly sweet and melodic.

His CD "When" is an exercise in gentle soft sounds, and in the cinematic realm, there's nothing that compares to the Christina Ricci bowling alley dance scene in Buffalo 66. The lights dim, King Crimson's "Moonchild" purrs, and a spotlighted Ricci taps in time to the music. Sure, I'm a Crimson fan and I have a thing for under-saturated colors, but the gem of this scene lies in that wistful look in Ricci's eyes, as she's illuminated by the spotlight but still seemingly unnoticed. A whole movie plays out in one and a half minutes, and as much as I love the quirk that comes before and after this scene, I can't help but want more of these melodic moments.

Seeing nothing else of Gallo's work, one might tap him for the perfect person to overwhelm us with whimsy or dip into the land of fairy tales -- yet it's all housed in one of the most irascible names on the outskirts of Hollywood.

With an entire absence of color, Gallo can be seen this week in Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro.

Adam Sandler has broken out of his Happy Madison bubble and written something for a ... wait for it ... "porn title-friendly entity." But don't worry, it's not a skin flick, and it probably won't have him Jason Segeling. The Hollywood Reporter posts that Sandler as co-written a script with Jack Giarraputo called Born to Be a Star; Tom Brady (The Hot Chick) is directing, and Christina Ricci is the first to sign on.

This news would suggest that Ricci is going to spend some time as a petite porn star, but that's not the way this is playing out. The "porn-tinged" comedy focuses on a small-town nerdy guy in Iowa who discovers that his humble parents used to be famous porn stars in the '70s. The discovery doesn't make him cower in fear and trauma, however, as most kids would. Instead, he heads for Hollywood hoping to be just like them and become the biggest porn star in the world. Ricci will play his innocent girlfriend.

Production will kick into gear later this month, so we should hear more soon. Why does this nerdy dude head to Hollywood for porn rather than the internet? Will Rob Schneider get this gig too? He is one of Sandler's right hand men and was in Brady's first feature. Stay tuned!

In researching this list, I made two realizations: most horror films don't bother with supporting casts; the supporters are often ghosts and monsters and supernatural forces (the other humans tend not to listen). And also, there are more great performances by women in horror films. Consider just the list of women who were nominated for -- or won -- Oscars for horror films: Patty McCormack, Janet Leigh, Ruth Gordon, Linda Blair, Ellen Burstyn, Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Sigourney Weaver, Kathy Bates, Jodie Foster, Juliette Lewis, Toni Collette, etc. Perhaps women are more intuitively in touch with the supernatural. Either way, I think I came up with a pretty good list:

1. Maria Ouspenskaya in The Wolf Man (1941)
Her name's a mouthful, but once you learn to say it, you'll never forget it. She was born in 1876, which put her at about 65 when The Wolf Man was made. She was a theater actor, before the movies were invented, she became an acting teacher and she received two Oscar nominations prior to this role. She plays Maleva (what a great name!), the old gypsy woman, and mother to Bela (Bela Lugosi), who possesses the knowledge of all things werewolf. With eyes like obsidian, her line readings are quiet, mysterious, intelligent, and though she's practically half the size of star Lon Chaney Jr., she towers over him.

2. Christina Ricci in Addams Family Values (1993)
Every once in a while the movie gods smile down and create something wonderful, like the moment that young Ricci walked into the "Addams Family" auditions, hoping for the role of Wednesday. The resulting movie, released in 1991, wasn't very good, but the sequel was much improved and Ricci was so good in both that she clearly announced the beginning of a fascinating career full of brave, unusual choices. With her round, pale face, huge eyes and tiny mouth shaped like a talon, she was scary and funny and just a little bit odd, and when she grew older, she took on a dangerous kind of sexiness. She could be the direct genre descendant of Elsa Lanchester or Barbara Steele.

Here's some stuff (and things) currently making waves online ...

-- If you, like me, were really hoping Hollywood would bring back He-Man and do the character justice on the big screen, we all may be sh*t out of luck. That's because those basterds over at Latino Review tell us the latest version of He-Man (script written by wonder boy Justin Marks) is dead in the water. Because of executive shifts and a few high profile directors (Bryan Singer, Doug Liman) shying away from the project, it seems He-Man no longer has a home. LR suggests Warners put it into turnaround in the hopes someone else will take a chance on the blonde badass.

-- Liam Neeson will join Christina Ricci (odd pairing indeed) in the film After.Life, which marks Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo's feature directorial debut and tells of a young woman stuck between life and death. Neeson will play a funeral director who "appears to have the gift of transitioning the dead, but may be intent on burying her alive." Freaky. [The Hollywood Reporter]

-- They're hosting A Christmas Story convention in Cleveland at the end of November in honor of the film's 25th anniversary. Said convention boasts a reunion of eight original cast members (Scut Farkus? I'm there! Did you know he has yellow eyes? Yellow eyes!), as well as the premiere of two docs and a special preview of the upcoming A Christmas Story - The Musical (where can I buy tickets?). The downside? It's in Cleveland ... at the end of November. I'm cold just thinking about that. [more info at A Christmas Story House, via Slashfilm]

-- Remember the film Once? It won an Oscar? The song made people cry (not me, shut up, wanna fight about it)? Well, seems Once is becoming a musical, and is shaping up to hit Broadway for the 2010-2011 season. Both Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are expected to be involved. So, if Once - The Musical hits it big, will Hollywood then re-cast and remake Once, the indie? That's what you all need to be thinking about during dinner this evening. No questions asked! [Variety]

"Well, you tried it just for once, found it all right for kicks.
But now you found out that it's a habit that sticks,
and you're an orgasm addict." – The Buzzcocks

The new movie Choke, adapted from the Chuck Palahniuk novel, is about a sex addict (Sam Rockwell) who, in one element of the plot, hooks up with other sex addicts who attend the same Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings as him. Ah, the irony. The same thing happened to Sam Malone on Cheers, if I'm not mistaken, which makes the joke around 20 years old. Yet, despite that fact, sexual addiction as a term and a (non-DSM-recognized) medical problem seem fairly new to cinema.

Sure, there have been sex addicts in films for many decades, but they were more likely to be described as nymphomaniacs, lechers or typical men. Think of Dorothy Malone in Written on the Wind, a number of the female characters created by Tennessee Williams and certainly the locked up nymphos in Shock Corridor. In the past few years, however, there have been a slew of actual "sexaholics," both male and female, though some aren't exactly referred to in such a manner.

It's the movie that just keeps on going -- just like its subject matter on a 109 degree summer's day. The Hollywood Reporter says that Ye Olde Times, which saw Jack Black and Lindsay Lohan visiting the Ren Faire has now been revamped into All's Faire in Love. It lost Black and Lohan along the way, but it's aquired Christina Ricci, Owen Benjamin, Cedric the Entertainer, Bill Engvall, and Nadine Velazquez.

The plot sounds as though it has gone an overhaul as well -- the story is now centered on Benjamin, whose shiny new drama degree has landed him a job with a Renaissance Faire theater troupe. Reduced to being their fetch boy, he meets a Faire virgin played by Ricci. That's a virgin to the Renaissance Faire, not the Shakesperean sense of "a faire virgin." But his swashbuckling colleagues aim to disrupt his budding romance.

Cedric is taking the role of Professor Shockworthy, who narrates the story in the fairy-tale style. Of the original cast, only Matthew Lillard seems to remain. Everyone else ever associated with the project has vanished, and has been replaced by Ann-Margaret and Louise Griffiths. The director job has also shifted from writer Robert A. White to Scott Marshall.

So much upheaval is rarely good for a film -- and while I adore Ricci, and find her a trade up from Lohan, it bodes ill to lose Cary Elwes (who is necessary in any film with tights) and Black. As cheesy as the premise sounds, the world of Renaissance Faire is ripe for a really good comedy. I know, I've spent too many years there. I don't know if All's Faire will be the send-up I'm looking for, but I'd like to hope it is.

It's what I call a low fever week on DVD shelves this week, but let's see what we can find. Kim Voynar described Penelope as "a charming but fluffy little fable about a girl born under the shadow of a family curse." Christina Ricci stars as a woman with the face of a pig (!). James (Wanted) McAvoy, Reese Witherspoon, Catherine O'Hara and Peter Dinklage are also featured. The DVD includes a "making of" feature.

Other indie releases of interest this week: The Curiosity of Chance; Meet Bill; Monsieur Vincent; Never Forever; Times and Winds; The Year My Parents Went on Vacation.

Now that's we've covered the official business of this weekly post, let's talk oddities. The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell is a wild post-apocalyptic comedy that other people have enjoyed much more than I did (which is to say not at all), but what I find really odd is that the DVD comes complete with "National Lampoon Presents" plastered at the top. Now, the National Lampoon label has never embraced comedy that I'd call "nervy." Gross out comedy? Yes. Bad attempts at parody? Yes. Endless pale imitations of frat house laughers? Yes. Beach Party may not have succeeded for me, but at least it tries to push the boundaries of what it's OK to laugh about.

While she made a name for herself with her stint as Wednesday Addams, Christina Ricci has always dipped into brighter and colorful fare here and there. Before the goth, she was Kate in Mermaids, and after, she wiggled her colorful toe socks in The Ice Storm, performed that sexy, bowling alley dance in pale blue for Buffalo '66, and even went a shade of Pumpkin. But with the recent Speed Racer, she took it to another level: super, ultra-vibrant, unrealistic color.

But that's nothing compared to her next gig, which doesn't have her changing race like Robert Downey Jr., but has her going yellow. Crayon yellow. Luckily, it's not live-action. The Hollywood Reporter posts that she is going to voice the lead in a new animated CG feature called The Hero of Color City. She'll play a timid crayon called Yellow, who is one of many crayons threatened when "an evil tyrant" appears to remove color from their world. Could a timid, yellow gal be the hero? The picture was penned by J.P. McCormick, Rich Raczelowski, and Evan Spiliotopoulos, and will be directed by Becky Bristow.

There is already talk of "merchandise, art supplies, and educational products," so expect a big wave of crayon-centric marketing and coloring books coming our way. At least this marketing kick will inspire tykes to create things.

Ever since the numbers were released yesterday, anyone and everyone (as well as anyone who is everyone) has been talking Speed Racer -- specifically, how a $120 million Hollywood blockbuster could open with only $20 million at the box office. You can blame Iron Man, you can blame the marketing, you can blame the blogs for trashing the film all year long, you can blame Christina Ricci's weird haircut, or you can blame that judge on Project Runway for saying, "You can never have too much color!" Fact is, it missed the mark.

But what could've helped Speed Racer make more money in its opening weekend? The running time has been mentioned a lot in the past 24 hours, but a running time doesn't exactly woo audiences into the theater. Is the film's marketing 100% to blame? Should the trailers have been cut differently? Should they have stressed that this was a film for kids? Should they have added a little viral action into the mix? Or what about overall? From the beginning, were the Wachowski Brothers the right folks for the job? Should they have gone the animated route instead -- or maybe the animated 3-D route? Should they have made this a film for older kids; slap on a PG-13 rating?

In your opinion, what could've helped Speed Racer -- both in its opening weekend and in its development as a feature film?