DominiqueSwain Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Rogue

I don't care how many times they push it back, or how much potential for hackneyed disaster there is in a film about a killer crocodile -- I'm looking forward to Rogue, mostly because there was a lot that impressed me about Greg Mclean's debut film, 2005's Wolf Creek. For one thing, it was bold enough to defy several horror cliches, such as foreshadowing dread in the early scenes -- the first thirty minutes of Wolf Creek could be part of an Aussie road drip dramedy, with three aimless kids taking their rickety car way too far into unsafe areas of the Outback. It's also a film that's completely unrelenting in the psychic trauma it wants to inflict on the audience. By the time the slaughtering starts, we know these characters -- we care about them. Frankly, Mclean seems like he'd be completely bored with making a standard slasher/monster film with paper-thin characters. Therefore, I'm going to be first in line for his killer croc movie, and wait for my enthusiasm to blow up in my face.

Friday the 13th

I have no idea if this will get to theaters by late 2008, but I know that Platinum Dunes does have the gears grinding, so it's a possibility. In fact, a little birdie recently told me something hilarious -- Corey Feldman went in and pitched himself as the star of this thing. For those who don't remember, Feldman played Vorhees foe Tommy Jarvis in two installments of the original series, and he apparently had designs on making the Friday remake his newest comeback vehicle. There's really nothing you can do with Jason at this point other than remake him, but how? Word is that PD wants the remake to feature both Jason and his trademark mask -- two elements that didn't congeal until Part III of the original series, so I'm imagining a smelting together of the first three films, set in modern day and with a lot of in-jokes. I guess it will be a film about a little boy who drowns in a lake and immediately morphs into an overgrown, lumbering killer with a machete. Sounds intriguing.

You could be forgiven for reading today's casting news and thinking it was 1987. Two of the eighties' most reliable manly men, Tom Berenger and Michael Biehn, are teaming up for the crime thriller Stiletto. The film will be directed by actor/writer/producer/director Nick Vallelonga, who you might remember as "Prison Inmate Sitting Behind Henry" in Goodfellas. No? "Courtroom guard arresting Sean Connery" in Family Business? I'll move on. Stiletto stars Stana Katic from TV's Heroes, as "an assassin whose seemingly random killings puzzle her lover, her clients and the detective following her rising body count." Berenger will play her boyfriend, "whose rise in organized crime is offset by his love for her and his Mafia co-hort," played by Biehn. I assume it's a platonic love with Biehn -- any Sopranos fan knows mobsters aren't too understanding of alternative lifestyles.

Actor Paul Sloan wrote the script -- his first -- and will also play the detective trailing Katic. Dominique Swain (remember her from that Jeremy Irons version of Lolita? Yowza!), Kelly Hu (Again...yowza!) Diane Venora (loved her as Pacino's wife in Heat), Amanda Brooks, William Forsythe, and model human Tom Sizemore round out the cast. I've been saying for years that a Berenger comeback is long overdue. Nominated for an Oscar for his stellar work in Platoon, perfect in Major League, he still does tons of films, but I wonder where he went off Hollywood's "Big Time Star" radar and into the realm of B-movies. Maybe Sliver had something to do with it. Same goes for Michael Biehn, who made something of a triumphant return as Sheriff Hague in Grindhouse. Maybe if Eli Roth's proposed expansion of Thanksgiving actually takes place, Biehn will have another plum role -- he was great in the trailer. Either way, the guy's always got work as long as James Cameron is making films.