RhonaMitra Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Boys, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the latest Megan Fox rumor has been shot down by the actress herself.

Latino Review first brought the rumor (which apparently originated in Spain) that Megan Fox was in line to revive the Tomb Raider franchise. It seems only natural, since Fox is slowly becoming Angelina 2.0.

However, the rumor machine was wrong again, just like when Fox was reportedly set to become Wonder Woman. io9 contacted her spokesperson, who denied Fox was involved with Tomb Raider in any way, shape, or form.

I breathe a sigh of relief at this, as Lara Croft is a character rather near and dear to my heart. I've cherished a secret hope they would revive the films (and even wrote about it, which I'm kind of embarrassed about in retrospect). Fox may be hot, but she's no Lara. And if io9 is actually going to champion her for the part, then I'll start my own grassroots campaign and champion Rhona Mitra. Not only was she the original Lara Croft model (here's some photos, you're welcome), but she's racking up a respectable B-movie action career. The best part? She's actually British, so no wonky accents.

Anyway, I sincerely doubt there will ever be another Tomb Raider film (and I don't even know if there ever should be)
but Fox's fan base is such that we must report all rumors and rumblings. Meanwhile, here's her gallery. You're welcome.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present for your consideration the first candidate for Best Actor for next year's Academy Awards. Michael Sheen gives a blistering, fierce, and romantic performance as the enslaved hero of Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, which opens in wide release today. It ain't art, but it is hellaciously entertaining.

No one is more surprised than me. The first film in the series, Underworld (2003) brought a centuries-long blood feud between vampires and lycans (AKA werewolves) to a head in the modern day. The sequel, Underworld: Evolution (2006), explored what might happen if the two feuding clans could somehow be brought together through the presence of a hybrid wolf / bat / human. Both movies were directed by Len Wiseman, both movies were stylish to the point of being mannered, both featured CGI werewolves * transformations, and both were defined by the heroics of the murderous Kate Beckinsale, memorably packed into a skintight, black leather bodysuit atop monstrous black boots.

Without Beckinsale and Wiseman, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans charts its own path, aided immeasurably by the return of Sheen and Bill Nighy. The two had supporting roles in the first film -- Sheen as the rebel werewolf leader Lucian, and Nighy as imperious vampire lord Viktor -- and have been elevated to top billing, joined by Rhona Mitra as Sonja, Viktor's willful, defiant daughter and Lucian's love interest.

As a whole, the picture lives up to the juicy lead performances, neatly leaping over.the stumbling blocks so common in prequels (and third installments in a series), and delivering generous amounts of fast-paced action and bloody battles to satisfy both faithful fans and curious newcomers.

Naturally, today's release of Saw V (read our review) brings with it numerous trailers for early '09 horror offerings. Earlier this week, we received the first trailer for that Friday the 13th remake (which you can see here), and now we have two others.

First up is My Bloody Valentine 3D, the crotch-targeting poster for which Scott made mention of earlier today. Lionsgate is going to have trouble actually marketing this in 3-D, as family-friendly fare continues to dominate that format; thus, we have this somewhat hokey green-band number courtesy of IGN. (For what it's worth, several little birdies who had the good fortune to see some footage recently -- in all its R-rated, three-dimensional glory -- were seriously impressed. Nothing sells quite the same as airborne eyeballs...)

Finally, there's Underworld: Rise of the Lycans: third in the franchise to date, but first in our hearts terms of story continuity. Since Rhona Mitra came to so very much resemble Kate Beckinsale in last spring's Doomsday, it only makes sense that she formally take up the mantle in the war between werewolves and vampires. Be sure to check out this recently released trailer if you also want to see what it looks like when Michael Sheen isn't feuding with the werewolf-like Nixon.

We've had superheroes who actually hold some sort of power, and we've had normal folks pretending their super, but how about possible delusion, or secret superhero traits that lead you to spell poorly? As The Hollywood Reporter posts, Woody Harrelson and Sandra Oh are starring in a new film called Defendor, and Playlist-loving Kat Dennings is looking to join in on the fun. Woody will play a man who thinks he has a secret superhero identity, while Oh plays his shrink and Dennings would play a teen he becomes friends with. As a superhero, what sort of powers would suit Woody best? Leaping over buildings in a single bound? Tingling Spider sense? Stay tuned!

In the rumor realm, we've got buzz bubbling about a third Coco Chanel project (like two aren't enough). Beyond the TV movie with Shirley MacLaine and the feature with Audrey Tatou, The Guardian posts that there might be a third starring, believe it or not, Demi Moore. I guess the look is right, but could Mrs. Kutcher pull off a period piece -- one focused on an icon no less? (And just in case Coco isn't enough for you, the report also states that there are rumors about Vivienne Westwood and Kate Moss heading to the big screen.) *UPDATE: Westwood is on her way, with Kate Winslet signed to play the icon.

Now this next bit isn't exactly casting news, but it could become that -- Variety reports that Kevin Bacon is executive producing a new series for Showtime that dips into the life of Honest Abe's infamous assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Considering how well John Adams did, I wouldn't be surprised if Bacon grabs Booth's role for himself. There's a fair likeness.

Plus: Ex-Boston Legal star Rhona Mitra is heading to Separation City, and the ever lovely Beth Grant is dabbing in Extract.

British filmmaker Neil Marshall earned a legion of new fans with 2005's The Descent, a genuinely scary flick that put me, for one, off spelunking forever. And for his next act? An energetic but derivative apocalyptic adventure that Rogue Pictures has unceremoniously dumped into theaters without press screenings or even much promotion.

Being one of Hollywood's Shameful Secrets™ (movies not screened for critics before they open) gives a film a certain stench, and it's too bad that Doomsday is stuck with it. It's not great -- I'm not even sure I'd call it "good" -- but the studios have certainly screened films that were worse. Heck, the studios have screened films that were worse this week (including one whose name rhymes with Mever Mack Mown). Doomsday is perfectly acceptable as a C+ movie, the kind that you don't see on purpose but that will certainly amuse you if you happen to stumble into the theater accidentally.

It begins with florid narration by Malcolm McDowell, who tells us that a horrific virus -- subtly called the Reaper Virus -- wiped out much of England. Then a wall was built to divide the infected northern half of Britain from the clean southern half, and all the sick people up north were left to die in chaos. "Social order decayed along with the corpses," McDowell says.

Actress Rhona Mitra is definitely no stranger to the ways of the law. She spent a good deal of time on The Practice, and then jumped ship for the ultra-wacky law show Boston Legal. Since then, well, she's not only got nipped and tucked, but she's taken some time for Skinwalkers, the flop that is The Number 23, and Shooter. Now The Hollywood Reporter has posted that she's going to co-star in a new indie thriller called The Boy in the Box -- written by actor Glenn Taranto and helmed by Anders Anderson.

No, this is not a retro celebrity biopic about Corey Hart. Rather, it's about a "small-town police chief (Jon Hamm, We Were Soldiers ) determined to discover the truth behind the mummified remains of a boy who was murdered a half-century earlier." Mummification -- that's not something that pops up in a thriller every day. Or in life for that matter. Anyway, Mitra will play "the police chief's wife, who is trying to move on after the disappearance of their own son eight years earlier." No wonder he's obsessed.

But there's even more cast on this sucker. The film is re-teaming Mitra with Sweet Home Alabama co-star Josh Lucas, who will play the slain child's dad. I imagine that means flashbacks -- since Lucas sure as hell isn't old enough to have a son who has been dead for 50 years. Wrapping things up, there's Dawson Leary / James Van Der Beek, Marcus Thomas (You Kill Me), the young tyke Jimmy Bennett (Evan Almighty) -- who I imagine will play the slain kid, and Jessica Chastain (Law and Order). I'll just go out on a limb and say Dawson did it! He's got a good creepy look to him when he wants to. As for you Buffy and Grey's fans out there, Box also has the vengeance demon/overachieving doctor Kali Rocha.

It'll be a little while before this film gets up and running. Having tackled the skinwalkers, Mitra is about to head for New Zealand and face lycans in Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.

There's a funny moment about twenty minutes into Skinwalkers, when a balding protagonist, played by Elias Koteas, has to explain what's going on to a confused Rhona Mitra. "We're called Skinwalkers," he says. "You would call us werewolves." Oh, thanks. That clears it up. It turns out that Mitra's character is more or less the only non-wolf character in the entire film. She's caught in the middle of an idealogical war between opposing clans of werewolves, some of whom believe that being a werewolf is a bad thing and want an out, and those on the other side who believe being a wolf is fun and have formed themselves into a motorcycle gang of marauding lycanthropes. There's a nice little moment when a pistol-packing granny throws down against the gang when they ride into town looking for trouble, but I'm already stretching to be nice. The good moments are actually few and far between. Only Stan Winston completists or late-to-the-party casting agents wanting a good look at Mitra in action will find much on offer here.

The entire premise of a war between reluctant and self-righteous monsters has already been done (and better) by the X-Men series, which is the obvious inspiration here. There's even a blatant rip-off in the form of a 'boy cure,' which was the plot-engine in the third X-Men film. (To be totally fair, Skinwalkers could have been written long before that film, for all I know.) The boy in this film, played by Matthew Knight, has some kind of special, rare blood that can turn werewolves back into men, or something like that, so he was long ago spirited away to a small town to live with his in-the-dark mother, played by Mitra, all the while secretly protected by good wolves who never let anyone know they're even wolves at all. At night, these good wolves strap themselves into harnesses so that when the moon is full and they wolf-out (thanks to the drama coach in Teen Wolf for that phrase) they won't cause damage. Every night, from sundown to sunup, they howl and thrash, harmlessly.

The last casting announcement we got from the sci-fi thriller Doomsday, was an exclusive from the director Neil Marshall (The Descent), to our own Chris Ullrich. Now Empire Online has reported that Malcolm McDowell is the latest addition to the cast. The story takes place 30 years after a plague has wiped out a good chunk of the population; inspiring a quarantine that mainly entails walling off the infected. Of course, the virus doesn't stay contained for very long and an elite team is put together to stop the disease from spreading. Written and directed by Marshall, the film also stars Bob Hoskins, Rhona Mitra, and Alexander Siddig. McDowell has signed on to play Kane, a global expert on the virus who advises the team on how to fight the spread of the disease.

It seems slightly out of character to have McDowell in a good-guy role in a film. Despite his varied career, nobody can play the steely-eyed villain like McDowell. Well, maybe Paul Bettany, but I guess that example might not really count. McDowell is currently doing his bad-guy best as Linderman on the NBC series Heroes right now, but there is no solid word on whether his work on the show is firmly in the guest star camp, or whether he has signed on for the long haul. Production on Doomsday began back in February, and between his turn as Dr. Loomis in Rob Zombie's Halloween remake later this year and his possible TV commitments, it looks like we will be seeing plenty of McDowell soon.

One of the cool things about working here at Cinematical is that we often get info on films, casting, directors and the like before it gets announced to the rest of the world. Such is the case today with some casting news about director Neil Marshall's latest film, Doomsday. As I reported before, the pic currently stars the super-hot Rhona Mitra, and now, according to our new info, she will be joined in the film by the Oscar-nominated actor Bob Hoskins. The post-apocalyptic pic, also being written by Marshall, concerns a lethal virus that has spread throughout a major country and wiped out most of the populace. To contain the virus, authorities enforce a brutal quarantine by walling-off the infected parts of the country.

This puts an end to the threat, until it resurfaces years later in another major city, forcing an elite team of specialists, led by Eden Sinclair (played by Mitra), to enter the quarantine area on a desperate mission to find a cure. Hoskins will play cop Bill Nelson, who nominates Mitra's character for the perilous mission and monitors her progress while giving, one would assume, nuggets of wisdom and aide along the way. In addition to Hoskins, other cast members include e Alexander Siddig, recently of Fox's 24, as well as previous Marshall alumni such as Sean Pertwee and MyAnna Buring. Production on the film begins February 9.

Right up front I'll say that Neil Marshall's horror film The Descent is one hell of a scary piece of filmmaking. I've seen a few horror films in my time (ok, more than a few) but this one actually scared me at many points while I was watching it. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say The Descent is one of the scariest, most well done, horror films I've seen in many years. Certainly, it's far superior to the majority of the Splat-packing Saw clones we've been graced with at the theaters of late.

Plus, keep in mind that The Descent was not Marshall's first film. He also directed the very impressive, but less scary, Dog Soldiers. So, The Descent was no fluke; this guy has got some talent. That said, what does my nominee for best horror director of the last few years do for an encore? Not another horror film, exactly -- although from the description it does seem to have some horror elements. Instead, according to Sci-Fi Wire, Marshall will follow up The Descent with a futuristic action thriller called Doomsday for Rogue Pictures and producers Steven Paul and Benedict Carver.

Marshall will also be writing the script for Doomsday, which tells a story set three decades after a biological catastrophe that leads citizens of a city to close themselves off from the rest of the world by building a large wall around their city. Then, when the biological agent that caused the catastrophe resurfaces in another country, an elite group is sent to that country to find a cure. In addition to Marshall's involvement with Doomsday, it was also announced that the stunning Rhona Mitra, recently of the TV series Nip/Tuck and the upcoming films Skinwalkers and The Number 23 with Jim Carrey, will be joining the cast of Doomsday. Mitra will play the leader of the elite team sent into the plague-ridden wasteland in search of the cure.

As a huge fan of Marshall, his films and the super-hot Rhona Mitra, I'm especially interested in seeing this. To me, it sounds like Marshall is combining the best elements of The Descent and Dog Soldiers to make this new film. If he's successful (and I have every confidence he will be) Doomsday could definitely turn out to be a worthy successor to The Descent. No word on other casting but production is scheduled to begin in early 2007.