Rosanna Arquette Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Stefan Ruzowitzky's The Counterfeiters tells the true story of a Nazi plot to flood the US and UK with forged currency, using concentration camp prisoners to do the dirty deeds. Christopher Campbell thought it was "not quite a great film," while Kim Voynar wrote: "At its core, this is a film about courage and morality." Critical consensus overall was 94% positive, according to Rotten Tomatoes. The DVD includes an audio commentary by the director, deleted scenes, a "making of," interviews, and more. The film is also available on Blu-ray.

Set some two decades after the events in The Counterfeiters, the much lighter, sentimental My Brother is an Only Child "follows two brothers through years of Italian history," wrote James Rocchi. Though comparisons to the more ambitious and effective period family drama The Best of Youth might be inevitable, James said My Brother is still "a handsomely made, brightly charming pleasure in its own right." The DVD appears to be a bare-bones edition without any extras.

First broadcast on network television in November 1982, The Executioner's Song left a very strong impression on me. Career criminal Gary Gilmore (Tommy Lee Jones in a powerful performance) tries to go straight, taking up with young Nicole Baker (Rosanna Arquette in a startling, sexy, star-making role) before returning to crime and eventually killing two people in brutal fashion. Sentenced to die, Gilmore insisted on paying the ultimate penalty as speedily as possible.

Bit by bit, the cast is falling into place. In March, Dermot Mulroney signed on to star in Run For Her Life -- the story of a father whose daughter needs a lung transplant. Since the young girl is low on the US list, he heads to Mexico to pay his way onto their list -- only to find out that they're killing thousands of kids for their organs. In June, Diane Kruger signed on to play his wife.

While there's still no young girl to be placed in the middle of all this (a Fanning maybe?), The Hollywood Reporter posts that Sam Shepard (The Notebook), Rosanna Arquette (Buffalo 66), Jordi Molla (Elizabeth: The Golden Age), and Vincent Perez (The Crow: City of Angels) have joined the mix. So, first is the source of all this intrigue -- Shepard is playing a DA who got an illegal heart transplant and persuades the couple to find one for their kid. Meanwhile, Arquette will play a pediatrician they talk to, Perez plays a doctor in a practice that "isn't quite what it seems to be," and Molla plays a corrupt cop.

Will Mulroney be a savior to everyone? Or, will he take some poor kids lungs to make his daughter better?

And here's another street-ballin' flick that wants you to know how tough it is to make it in life when the only thing not lyin' to your face is that dirty old basketball. Ball Don't Lie had a lot of potential and some sweeet b-ball sequences, but annoying editing and several mis-placed flashbacks ultimately hurt the film, which boasts appearances by Nick Cannon and Rosanna Arquette -- both of whom populated just about five to six minutes of the 102-minute feature. Chris "I'm Starting to Use My Real Name Instead of Ludacris" Bridges also shows up as a mentor who doesn't do much mentoring, except for schooling and then being schooled on the cement court.

He's not the only one: When it's not dazzling us with some fancy footwork, Ball Don't Lie schools us in the pitfalls of a broken foster care system; one that finds our hero, Sticky (newcomer Grayson Boucher), moving from one dysfunctional situation to the next. At some point, Sticky meets a girl who works at Foot Locker -- tries to find enough money to buy her a necklace for her birthday -- and then he gets beat up by a guy with a gun. The end. I don't mean to be harsh toward the movie, but it just doesn't serve a purpose -- it didn't go anywhere. I never read the book this was based on (written by Matt De La Pena), but I'd like to think it contained a little more than "What a sad situation for that poor boy."

Must every movie with a decent soundtrack be turned into a stage musical? The latest is Desperately Seeking Susan, the barely memorable 1985 movie starring Madonna and Rosanna Arquette. Directed by Susan Seidelman, who would go on to make much crappier movies like She-Devil and Cookie, the movie follows a bored housewife (Arquette) who gets amnesia and is then mistaken for the free-spirited woman (Madonna) she wishes she was. Despite the fact that it starred a young Madonna at a time when she was rising as a major pop star, the movie's soundtrack only featured one song from her, "Into the Groove." The rest of the music is staple movie stuff like "Lust for Life," "Respect" and "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)," but the movie is still better remembered for its soundtrack than for anything actually going on in the film (though I've always retained a clear mental image of that jacket with the pyramid on it).

So why turn it into a stage musical? Good question. The production, which will open for previews October 12 at London's Novello Theatre, doesn't even include "Into the Groove" or any of the film's other songs. Instead it features old music from Blondie like "Heart of Glass," "One Way or Another," "Atomic," "Dreaming," and "The Tide is High" (which wasn't written by Blondie, but whatever). The musical will also feature one new song written by Blondie's Debbie Harry. Originally scripted for the screen by Leora Barish (Basic Instinct 2), the stage version has been penned by Peter Michael Marino. Reportedly, the plot sticks very closely to that of the movie. Obviously, there is interest in bringing the musical to Broadway, and then who knows? Maybe we can have another movie-turned-musical-turned-musical-movie, like The Producers, Hairspray and the newly confirmed remake of Footloose. Hopefully Hollywood will listen to my plea for this trend to end, but I doubt it.

On a relatively slow news day, here's a story I found somewhat interesting. Prior to his death in 1994, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love were offered small roles in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. Had Cobain not turned down the role, pic would have marked his feature debut as an actor and, since he died shortly after, there's a possibility the film would have deterred him from committing suicide. But that's just my own wacky speculation.

Can you guess who the couple would have played? No, not Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) -- although that would have been rather hilarious and disturbing to watch. Had they hopped onboard, Cobain and Love would have taken on the roles of a neurotic drug dealer and his heavily pierced edgy girlfriend. However, after the Nirvana singer passed, Eric Stoltz and Rosanna Arquette came along and snatched the memorable characters up.

While I'm sure Love would have maintained the hyper-active absurdity Arquette brought to the role, I have a feeling Cobain might have toned down the comedic anxiety present in Stoltz's character. What do you think?