Tom Sizemore Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It wasn't until fairly recently that voice acting in video games was done by either no-name actors trying to pay the bills or B- and C-list actors who were, well, also trying to pay the bills. The Command and Conquer games began employing a mixed bag of actors in its 1999 iteration, Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun, when they managed to snag Luke Skywalker's big daddy James Earl Jones, but otherwise continued casting random character actors like Udo Kier and Barry Corbin in future games like Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2.

Grand Theft Auto III changed the game, literally, with its roster of recognizable names and voices like Joe Pantoliano, Michael Madsen, Michael Rapaport, Debi Mazar, and Kyle MacLachlan all playing parts in the free-for-all crime cape that make Rockstar Games just that. With GTA III's massive sales and buzz (particularly from angry parents), the scene was set for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, which boasted an over-the-top cast particularly appealing to its target audience: Dennis Hopper, Danny Trejo, Gary Busey, Lee Majors, Debbie Harry, Ray Liotta, Tom Sizemore, and Jenna Jameson, just to name a few.

Don't mess with a man's best friend! I'm borrowing that phrase from our own Eric D. Snider, who used it to describe the plot of Red, a thriller starring the great Brian Cox as a man on a mission to avenge the death of his beloved dog at the hands of a bunch of teenage punks.

As Eric noted, Magnolia Pictures picked up distribution rights for the movie and planned a late summer release. Well, it must be later than we thought, because Dread Central now tells us that Red will be unleashed to theaters in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, August 8, followed by a "slow rollout" to more theaters nationwide.

"An emotionally gripping if slightly overwrought drama," is how Eric described Red in his review from Sundance, where the film premiered. Later he called it "a solid B-minus effort, and Cox's performance makes it eminently watchable." In addition to Cox, the cast includes Tom Sizemore as a bad father, Kim Dickens as a TV reporter, and Robert Englund and Amanda Plummer as white trash parents of one of the juvenile delinquent kids responsible for the death of the titular dog.

I've loved Brian Cox in many roles (Braveheart to Manhunter to 25th Hour to X2: X-Men United to Zodiac), so I have to believe he's a major plus for audiences looking for something a little different in August. How about you? Do you have any interest in seeing the Cox-avenging Red?

My, how actors can fall. It might have been painful to watch Jeff Conaway -- aka Kenickie in Grease -- sing a little bit of Tiffany's I Think We're Alone Now in Jawbreaker, but now we'll get to see him try to get clean on reality television. While he doesn't get the gossip numbers of someone like La Lohan, he's had his own share of turmoil. After he got kicked from his last reality show to enter rehab back in 2005, things must have gotten rough once again, because he's going to be one of the stars of VH1's latest reality trip -- Celebrity Rehab.

This latest foray into celeb mockery stars Dr. Drew as the man who will set the stars straight -- including actors Conaway, Brigitte Nielsen, and Daniel Baldwin, according to A Socialite's Life, plus Tom Sizemore and Andy Dick, according to IMDb. I don't know what's their "reality," and whether any are recreations, but in that link above you can see some snorting and toilet kissing screencaps from ET. Lovely, eh? Is there any barrier that won't be crossed by reality television? My guess is that we'll soon get movies-behind-the-scenes, where films get made with people who are feuding, who have short tempers, drug addictions, or have a tendency to hop into bed with their co-stars. After that, maybe Celebrity Dick -- a skilled private eye digs up dirt on your favorite celebrities?

But it does put things into perspective. There's actors who get mocked for personal tidbits that get leaked to the press, and then there's those who choose to deal with them for the enjoyment of the public. Poor Kenickie. Maybe he can get a job with Michelle Pfieffer in Grease 3?

Drug abuse is a terrible thing, kids. It land you in jail, ruin your reputation and turn you from a busy character actor into an uninsurable pariah. Case in point: Crazy Tom Sizemore just got fired from pre-production on a flick called The I Scream Man -- and if you can't hold on to a job in a movie with that sort of title, then you're definitely living life a little too hard. I know his drug problems are entirely of his own creation, but I really do feel for the guy. He went from working with Michael Mann, Oliver Stone and Steven Spielberg -- to a public dismissal on The I Scream Man. Ouch.

According to STYD.com, Mr. Sizemore was fired from the upcoming horror flick and replaced by sometimes co-worker Michael Madsen. The reason for his dismissal? Another visit from the "drugs and jail time" fairy. It might sound like I'm cruelly mocking the guy, but the truth is I feel really rotten for Mr. Sizemore. Here's hoping he can right the ship, toss that monkey off his back and mount a small comeback of sorts. In the meantime, J.T. Mollner's The I Scream Man will go into production this summer with Madsen, Dee Wallace, Haylie Duff, Fred Ward, Judd Nelson and the entertainingly bizarre Crispin Glover as ... The Ice Cream Man. (Yes, it's a horror movie.)

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.

Internet buzz is all John Penney needed to give his flick some much needed press. Zyzzyx Road has been in the online gossip circuit for the past week -- it all started with Chud and quickly made its way around the net, eventually landing in Variety (who, as most of you know by now, failed to credit Chud as its source) For those completely out of the loop, Zyzzyx Road made a total of $30 during its release in Texas over the span of a week. Well, not a week, rather, six days back in late February. Thirty dollars. That equaled six movie tickets total! Pretty brutal, even considering Katherine Heigl -- who is on Grey's Anatomy, currently one of the top five rated TV shows -- is the lead actress in the film.

Zyzzyx Road is a story about a cheating husband (Leo Grillo) who heads to Vegas to become entagled in a passionate romance with -- from what the trailer depicts -- a female (Heigl) with multiple identities. She's a con artist maybe? I'm not positive. Said woman's threatening boyfriend (Tom Sizemore) jumps back into the picture and is murdered by the couple. The body disappears and the horror begins as Heigl and Grillo defend their lives against an unidentifiable threat.

The synopsis given by John Penney and the trailer found on YouTube tell different tales; neither of which sound interesting. Grillo, who was also executive producer, explains (in a brand new Variety article that actually credits Chud, yet hysterically refers to their own plagarism as a "throwaway non-mention") the film's lack of box office success as a way to abide by SAG work standards without sacrificing possible American buyouts for theatrical release or DVD sales.

This unexpected Internet attention isn't a bad position for Grillo to be in. Especially as Internet companies -- Myspace and Netflix -- are playing the roles of producers and distributors. All of this much needed attention could land Zyzzyx Road a deal, veering it off of its dead end path.

Related stories:

The original Zyzzx Road box-office piece.

Variety Snubs Chud

Now here's an amusing little story, courtesy of Dangerous Devin Faraci over at CHUD.com ...

You know how we always spend so much time poring over the box office numbers, arguing with friends about how profitable a big movie might be, and scanning the year-end tallies to see which flicks were the most popular? Well here's a funny little flipside: Last February 25, inside of one Texas movie theater, a movie called Zyzzyx Road was released. The flick stars Tom Sizemore, Katherine Heigl and executive producer Leo Grillo.

So what makes this obscure little indie worthy of special mention? How about it made 30 bucks during its entire theatrical run. 30 bucks! That's like 3.5 tickets sold, or maybe 6.5 if that one theater happened to be a discount-rate movie-house. Can this be accurate? It sure looks like Faraci did his research, so I believe it, but ... 6 tickets? Yowch. Obviously this was a direct-to-video piece that had to hit at least one theater to accommodate a few contractual clauses, but jeez, less than 10 tickets sold in 6 days? For the record, Zyzzyx Road was written and directed by John Penney, he of Legend of the Mummy, The Contaminated Man and Return of the Living Dead Part 3, and John probably learned himself a pretty valuable lesson here: No matter how low-budget or Sizemore-laden your movie might be, give it a title that people can actually, y'know, pronounce. I don't hear many people saying "Hey, let's go see that zaxxazisz movie! I bet it's awesome!"

After reading this amusing story I was reminded of another indie flick that did so poorly in a limited release that it actually inspired a few magazine articles: Eric Red's Cohen and Tate (starring Roy Scheider and Adam Baldwin), which was released to 75 theaters in early 1989, only to earn about $64,000 in the process. Needless to say, Cohen and Tate is freakin' Titanic compared to Zyzzyx Road -- but now I kinda wanna see it!

Tom Sizemore is like a freaking cat with nine lives. He was convicted for harassing, annoying and physically abusing Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, he's currently fighting a conviction for violating a drug-use order following a possesion charge and has spent the last two years in and out of court on two different cases, and he said last year he was flat broke after shelling out for all his legal fees. Then he became the father of twins. Oh, and a bunch of sex tapes he made by hiding videocameras around his house (ewwwww) were supposedly stolen and started turning up on the internet after he was diagnosed as being sexually insatiable. 

In spite of all that, the man has five current films up on IMDB, and now IMDB reports he's going to star in Furnace, a film about a haunted prison, and upcoming indie flick Toxic, opposite Bai Ling and rapper Master P. It's hard to say how accurate that information is though - an IMDB search for Furnace turns up zip, and Toxic doesn't list Sizemore, Bai Ling, OR Master P in its credits, so maybe someone at IMDB was writing stories after partying all night or something, or just making stuff up at random to see who wouldn't catch it. At any rate, Sizemore is definitely listed for five films, so let's see...use lots of drugs,  beat up women, hide video cameras around your house and film yourself having sex with lots of women, and you'll get rewarded in Hollywood with a slew of new films to fatten your bank account. How does that work, exactly?