after.life Tagged Articles at Cinematical

By: Peter Hall

Horror Squad just got our hands at a swath of exclusive images from the upcoming film After.Life, starring Liam Neeson, Christina Ricci, and Justin Long. The film, written by Paul and Agnieszka Wojtowicz Vosloo, tells the story of a woman (Ricci) drifting between her corporeal life and the after life while under the care of a funeral director (Neeson) who may or may not be intentionally trying to bury the poor woman alive.

Those details may seem vague at this point and you may never have heard of the writer/director Vosloo team, but considering the acting talent attracted to the material, I'm willing to plant After.Life firmly on my radar. If anything, the gallery bellow should help whet your appetite until more information bubbles to the surface. After. Life is currently in post-production and is due out in 2010. Special thanks to the mysterious source who passed along these images.

Check out the gallery of exclusive images over at Horror Squad

Josh Charles started out strong, but sure fizzled, didn't he? I mean, he started his career with Hairspray, before heading to the Dead Poets Society, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, and soon after, the sexually dysfunctional Threesome. But now he's cameo guy, and there's a new one on the way.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Charles and Justin Long are joining the Christina Ricci and Liam Neeson-starring After.Life. Long will play the boyfriend of a woman caught between life and death (Ricci), while Charles plays his friend. (Poor guy, relegated to token roles.) This is that long-in-gestation feature that once starred Kate Bosworth, and even had a poster released waaaay back in February of 2007. But it finally seems to be moving forward.

Meanwhile...

Four Leaf Tayback, also known as Nick Nolte, has grabbed a role in My Own Love Song, according to Variety. Pretty much nothing like his last release film, Tropic Thunder, this project follows a former singer in a wheelchair during a road trip to Memphis with her friend. Renee Zellweger and Forest Whitaker star, but there's no word on who Nolte will play. Maybe her dad?

Here's some stuff (and things) currently making waves online ...

-- If you, like me, were really hoping Hollywood would bring back He-Man and do the character justice on the big screen, we all may be sh*t out of luck. That's because those basterds over at Latino Review tell us the latest version of He-Man (script written by wonder boy Justin Marks) is dead in the water. Because of executive shifts and a few high profile directors (Bryan Singer, Doug Liman) shying away from the project, it seems He-Man no longer has a home. LR suggests Warners put it into turnaround in the hopes someone else will take a chance on the blonde badass.

-- Liam Neeson will join Christina Ricci (odd pairing indeed) in the film After.Life, which marks Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo's feature directorial debut and tells of a young woman stuck between life and death. Neeson will play a funeral director who "appears to have the gift of transitioning the dead, but may be intent on burying her alive." Freaky. [The Hollywood Reporter]

-- They're hosting A Christmas Story convention in Cleveland at the end of November in honor of the film's 25th anniversary. Said convention boasts a reunion of eight original cast members (Scut Farkus? I'm there! Did you know he has yellow eyes? Yellow eyes!), as well as the premiere of two docs and a special preview of the upcoming A Christmas Story - The Musical (where can I buy tickets?). The downside? It's in Cleveland ... at the end of November. I'm cold just thinking about that. [more info at A Christmas Story House, via Slashfilm]

-- Remember the film Once? It won an Oscar? The song made people cry (not me, shut up, wanna fight about it)? Well, seems Once is becoming a musical, and is shaping up to hit Broadway for the 2010-2011 season. Both Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are expected to be involved. So, if Once - The Musical hits it big, will Hollywood then re-cast and remake Once, the indie? That's what you all need to be thinking about during dinner this evening. No questions asked! [Variety]

That's right. Kate Bosworth finally has someone to bury her in After.Life, the film she was negotiating to star in earlier this year. In January, I alerted you to her involvement in the project, and in February, Chris Ullrich shared the film's ghostly poster. Now iF Magazine says that Alfred Molina is her co-star, and we're all assuming that makes him the funeral director who buries her. What originally seemed like a possible movie-to-ignore has just gotten a little sweeter. I'm still not big on Bosworth Boos, but a good director (Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo) and a little Oc can definitely change my mind. Look at those eyes -- they're crazy!

With the cast in place, the search is on for the ideal, creepy funeral home in upstate New York. What they're looking for: "Preferably brick or aged stone - the house should be stately and old (e.g. Second Empire of Gothic Revival) with a sense of timelessness, history and permanence. It should be tall (at least two stories) with interesting architectural details (e.g. gables, mansard roof). The house should feel masculine with gravitas and understated elegance. It should be semi-secluded with a prominent front door and driveway. Surrounding large grounds a plus." Okay, now I'm not sure how many of you readers have traveled through upstate New York, but there is one house that is just screaming to be the IT locale.

Skene Manor. It is a sinister-as-hell house that is perched up on a hill. It's definitely got the architectural details and all the creepiness needed for a ghost story. Hell, it has its own eerie tale as well. While it was built by a Judge Potter in the 1860's, it became synonymous with the famous Skene family. Years ago, I had dinner there when it was a restaurant, and there's an old legend that Mrs. Skene was a woman with money and that after her death, her husband Philip would only continue to receive money if her remains were kept "above ground." To cash in, the restaurant created a fake coffin behind the bar, with a hand sticking out. After struggling to bring it back to its glory after it fell into disrepair in the '90's, I think some good, Hollywood money is just the thing the Manor needs. And really, is any place more perfect?

Kate Bosworth, star of the surfing chick-flick Blue Crush and, of course, Superman Returns, has taken on a new and different kind of role with her most recent project After.Life -- that of a woman caught in the twilight world between life and death. When our own Monika Bartyzel told you about this film before, we had a few plot details, a star and a director to tell you about but not much else that gave real insight into the film.

Now, thanks to Bloody-Disgusting, we have art too -- in the form of a shiny new poster for the film. Unfortunately, the poster doesn't do very much to help us out in the insight department either. Sure, it shows Bosworth semi-reclined on what appears to be a table or bed, half-covered with some sort of sheet. But really, what does that say? To me, it looks like she's just tired and decided to take a little nap -- not exactly a compelling image making me eager to rush out and see the film.

Granted, this is just the teaser poster and in all likelihood a more comprehensive, and hopefully more exciting, poster will be forthcoming. Maybe its just me, but I kinda miss the days when marketing departments tried a little harder when it came to posters. Sure, there are still some really interesting ones, such as the posters for Crash, Walk the Line or An Inconvenient Truth but mostly they are just shots of the film's stars against a blue or white background and that's about it. Not that exciting. Let's hope the next poster, and the film, prove to be more interesting.

Kate Bosworth is slowly staking out her piece of Hollywood as she wracks up a film or two a year. She's had a number of fictional turns from surfer babe in Blue Crush to winning a date with Tad Hamilton. At the same time she's also taken a little bit of yin and yang in the biopic world, having both starred as Sandra Dee in Kevin Spacey's Beyond the Sea, and as Dawn Schiller, John Holmes' teen paramour, in Wonderland. And, obviously, she took on the famous Lois Lane for Superman Returns.

Now the flaxen-haired actress is zeroing in on a deal to star in After.Life, the first feature film for Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo, which Erik Davis first mentioned in August. The film follows a woman who is somehow stuck between life and death, but is about to be buried by a funeral director. If she's not alive, nor dead, I'm not sure how she can fight to not be buried. However, considering the strangeness that is Wojtowicz-Vosloo's short film, Pâté, which is like a mash-up of David Lynch and Baz Luhrman, I'm sure there will be some sort of other-worldly logic to be applied. The film already has a cinematographer in two-time Oscar nominee John Mathieson, whose work I particularly like in Plunkett & Macleane. Production will begin later in the year, and I'm sure in the upcoming months we'll have more information on the film, and if Bosworth seals the deal. Honestly, for all the quirk of Pâté, I'm not sure how Bosworth fits in a surreal world. She seems a bit to, for lack of a better word, vanilla for a strange landscape, unless this will be a much more subdued cinematic offering.

Odds and ends from Friday:

• Not long ago, I told you how Bryan Bertino (not Boitano) signed on to write and direct a film called The Strangers for Rogue Pictures. Pic tells the story of a couple who return home on their wedding night, only to be terrorized by three masked strangers. Well, Liv Tyler has hopped onboard the film and is set to play the female half of the couple. Though no one else has been officially cast, production will begin this fall with a tentative release in October 2007.
• Agnieszka Vosloo has signed on to direct After.Life for the new production outfit Constellation Entertainment. Pic, which marks Vosloo's feature debut, revolves around a girl, caught somewhere between life and death, who fights to avoid being buried alive. Yeah, that can't be a fun situation.
• Those of you itching to buy Pixar's Cars on DVD will be happy to hear the film will arrive in your living room on November 7. According to USA Today, the DVD (priced at around $30) will include two short films (Mater and the Ghostlight, One Man Band), a behind-the-scenes feature which tells how writer/director John Lasseter went about creating the film, deleted scenes and a preview of next summer's Ratatouille. [via Coming Soon]