House of Wax Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Jaume Collet-Serra has directed three films thus far - the slasher film House of Wax, a slasher film that was marketed largely on the prospect of seeing Paris Hilton die; Goal II: Living The Dream, which answered many of the burning questions left over from the original Goal; and Orphan, starring Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga as adoptive parents who invite an unholy terror into their homes. During the press day for Orphan, which opens Friday nationwide, Collet-Serra indicated he already has his fourth film lined up and ready to go.

"It's coming," Collet-Serra said of Unknown White Male, a thriller that reunites him with his House of Wax and Orphan producer Joel Silver. "It's shooting in the winter in Berlin, and that's a great script. It's a search for identity, which is something that everybody is looking for in their lives, like who they are, so that's a great thing. The premise is just fantastic, the first 15 minutes, a guy waking up from a coma and realizing that he's been replaced by somebody else, I think that's one of the greatest first 15 minutes that I've read."

As for its stars? Collet-Serra declined to offer names, but when a journalist indicated that they'd spoken to Liam Neeson, he replied, "yeah," but added, "I don't have the contract on my desk. We don't really have anybody official yet."

Variety reports that Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga (The Departed) have joined the cast of Dark Castle's Orphan. In a nod to Bad Seeds everywhere, the film focuses on a young couple (Sarsgaard and Farmiga) that have recently lost a child and decide to adopt a young girl to fill the void. Of course, nothing is ever that easy and the girl "is not nearly as innocent as she claims to be". David Leslie, a relative newcomer, wrote the screenplay based off an idea by Alex Mace. Already signed to direct is House of Wax helmer, Jaume Collet-Serra. Serra started off directing TV commercials and music videos, and Wax was his first big-budget production. Orphan seems like a definite step up for Serra; when your casting pool goes from Paris Hilton to Peter Sarsgaard you must be doing something right.

Sarsgaard has already completed the Philip Roth adaptation Elegy with Penelope Cruz, and is wrapping up work on two more literary adaptations. First up is In the Electric Mist; based on James Lee Burke's novel about "A detective in the deep South is led into a series of surreal encounters with a troop of Confederate soldiers" and Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Farmiga is currently filming Nothing But The Truth, a political drama with Kate Beckinsale and will next star in a literary adaptation of her own called The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas for Mark Herman (Brassed Off). Orphan is set to start shooting next week on location in Toronto and Montreal, Canada.

Sexy is as sexy does, I guess. Picking the hottest chicks of horror is a pretty tricky business. Not only are my picks completely subjective, slaves to my personal whims and moods, but also they are likely to change from day to day. Already, since I submitted my picks, I'm regretting not mentioning Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil, or Eihi Shiina in Audition. And what can I do with more obscure hotties from other eras like Jenny Wright in Near Dark, or Britt Ekland in the original The Wicker Man, or Simone Simon in Cat People? Do they not deserve a shot at hotness? Well, in any case, here are the seven I wound up with -- in chronological order -- and in all honesty, they're all pretty darn easy on the eyes and a little spooky besides.

1. Fay Wray in King Kong
In a movie entirely populated by men and beasts, Fay is a welcome bit of softness. If King Kong had been made two years later, the Hays Code would have required Fay to wear a high-necked negligee with bloomers and probably several other layers of underthings. But thankfully for generations of young boys, the film was made in 1933, and Fay was able to wear her flimsy, silky number that clung and flapped in the breeze. Likewise, the movie was better able to suggest the subversive relationship between beauty and beast. (Watch the trailer ... or head straight to the gallery!)

2. Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Elsa was the ultimate goth chick in cinema. Many came in her wake, including Barbara Steele (Black Sunday) and the little known but easily recognizable Carroll Borland (Mark of the Vampire). But make no mistake: even without her two-foot fright wig with the silver piping up the side, Elsa was a hottie in her time. You can see it in the film's prologue; she plays Mary Shelley, freshly emerged from penning her chilling magnum opus. She has cat eyes, and a devilish grin that entrances even the strongest men. One question: if Dr. Frankenstein was able to build such a sex bomb, why did his male monster come out so ugly and blocky? (Watch the trailer ... or head straight to the gallery!)

Vurdalak, huh? Now there's a term you don't hear too often. Usually when I hear the word I think of Mario Bava's 1963 film I Tre Volti Della Paura (known here in the states as Black Sabbath) in which Boris Karloff played a vurdalak, a vampire that preys only on those it loved most in life. A report in Variety tells us Vurdalak is a "neo-medieval" tale to be produced by Spain's Andres Vicente Gomez and directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, whose best-known film is probably the 2005 remake of House of Wax. I haven't seen that flick, but I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the man who directed Paris Hilton's on-screen demise.

The film is described as a tale of vengeance between two bloodthirsty warlords. A character named Safet is the only survivor following the mass slaughter of his family at the hands of Prince Verjik. Driven by hate, Safet becomes a living dead vurdalak, which would seem to eliminate the whole preying on his loved ones angle used in the Bava film. Collet-Serra will also serve as screenwriter, and he has already turned in a first draft. The film is being produced through Gomez's RadioPlus, and San Francisco's Massive Black studio has started pre-visualizations and digital design.

Gomez is also very interested in the video game potential of the film. According to the Variety piece, Spanish revenue from theatrical and DVD movies has dropped 5 to 6% because of online piracy, but video game sales have increased by 18% in Spain in 2006 as opposed to the European average of 10%. Hey, if we can kill Paris Hilton in the video game, sign me up!

You might recall that last year's opening Midnight Madness title was a little movie called Borat. Things were going swimmingly until the projector broke down and chaos ensued. Our own Kim Voynar was on hand to report all the details. This year the honor went to Dario Argento's The Mother of Tears, which debuted Thursday at Midnight. Argento did not enter the theater riding on a donkey, but the crowd did reportedly sing "Happy Birthday" to him before the movie began.

I'm surprised that non-horror experts Stephanie Zacharek of Salon and David Poland of The Hot Blog liked the film, though they each take great pains to explain why. Zacharek admits that she doesn't "have a taste for contemporary horror pictures" -- she was "dismayed at the protracted, sadistic quality of the violence" in the remake of House of Wax -- nor has she seen any of Argento's recent work. Still, she feels that The Mother of Tears "is so unapologetically loopy and lush and ridiculous that I found it irresistible." Though she acknowledges "some sick stuff" in the movie, she prefers "Argento's sick violence" because it's "of the old-school kind." The movie "is sick as hell. But at least it's got class."

As Poland notes, he was "deeply offended" by Eli Roth's Hostel 2. He then describes some of the violence and nudity in The Mother of Tears and asks, "So why isn't it pushing my buttons? Because you can feel the feelings of the man sitting in the director's chair. And while there is a real cruel streak, towards both sexes, in Eli Roth, you get the distinct feeling that while he is raising the stakes endlessly, Dario Argento is just having a nasty good time. ... It feels like good clean fun."

Cinematical's Scott Weinberg will have the final word for us -- will it be "sick," "classy" or "fun"? The festival's official Midnight Madness blog has information on the pre-premiere party. The blog itself is filled with posts on the films, breaking news, photos and videos -- including some archival interviews with Maestro Argento.

The latest Hollywood actor to play a famous painter is Jared Padalecki, who has been cast as still-living artist Thomas Kinkade (aka "Painter of Light"). Though he probably won't go down in cinematic history like Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh, Jeffrey Wright as Basquiat or (yet to be seen) Al Pacino as Dalí, Padalecki will be supported by a possibly memorable performance from the great Peter O'Toole, who will play the artist Glen Wessler, a mentor to the young Kinkade. He will also have the benefit of playing the artist in a trilogy. After the first movie, The Christmas Cottage, which follows Kinkade as a teen on the verge of deciding to become an artist, there will be two more pics portraying the artist as a young man (unless Lionsgate plans to wait years between movies and use Padalecki a la Jean-Pierre Léaud -- which I doubt).

When the news was out that Lionsgate would make a movie based on Thomas Kinkade's painting The Christmas Cottage, I had thought the artwork was simply serving as inspiration for a fictional holiday movie set in the depicted wintry home (Yawn). Now that I know the movie actually focuses on the life of Kinkade I am no more interested, but it at least makes more sense to me. Living commercial artists, especially those as commercial as Kinkade, aren't very worthy of biopic treatment, but Kinkade is so popular that it could attract a lot of his fans. I must point out, though, that as popular as Gustav Klimt is these days (ever been in a female art student's dorm/apartment?), his recent biopic has not been a big success. So, Lionsgate has to do a good job of getting people in seats for Cottage, particularly if they hope for there to be audiences for its two sequels (which paintings will be used for those titles?).

• Christa McAuliffe: Reach For The Stars - Massachusetts native Christa McAuliffe has become quite inseparable from the image of the ghastly tendrils of smoke hanging over the Florida sky after the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in January 1986, but she's also remembered as a schoolteacher who never stopped teaching. It is this second image on which first-time filmmakers Renée Sotile and Mary Jo Godges focus, going beyond blindly reverent fluff and digging into the humanity that made the loss of McAuliffe and the subsequent grounding of the Shuttle so much of a tragedy. With a warm, comforting narration by Susan Sarandon and a note-perfect song track by Carly Simon (whose tapes McAuliffe brought aboard Challenger), the film captures the spirit of exploration and discovery through McAuliffe's example, and not by just stating she was a shining star we should all try hard to emulate.