kyra sedgwick Tagged Articles at Cinematical

A colleague of mine once observed that the very manner by which Chev Chelios had to keep himself alive in the Crank films respectively represented the approach that writing/directing team Neveldine/Taylor took for each of them, which is to say that Crank 1 was all about keeping our hearts racing and Crank 2 was all about shocking us as an audience. It's a simple, literal assessment that nonetheless cleared up why yours truly was a fan of the first and yet let down by the second -- I'd rather be excited than appalled any day.

And at the intersection of 'thrill' and 'shock' is precisely where N/T's latest, Gamer, falls, and it succeeds considerably more when it's shooting for the former than when it's reveling in the latter.

ComingSoon got an early look at the first teaser poster and some of the artwork for the new techno-thriller, Game. Written and directed by Crank creators, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the film stars Gerard Butler as the consummate player of a virtual game with some pretty heavy real-life consequences. The story is "set in a dystopian future of implanted nano-devices, where the ultimate online simulation environment is humans remote-controlling other humans in mass-scale, multi-player online gaming. The lead character, played by Butler, is a worldwide sensation, and the top-ranked warrior in a game called "Slayers." With his every move tracked by millions, he battles to regain his identity and bring down the entire system". Joining Butler are Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) and Dexter's Michael C. Hall as the game's evil creator.

Butler has been picking up parts right and left after the success of 300; everything from romantic weepies to crime drama -- and I know which one I'd be more inclined to shell out my hard-earned dollars for, how about you? Butler is going to have one less commitment to worry about this year since it turns out he will not be taking on the role of Snake Plissken in the update of Escape from New York. Christopher brought us the 'good' news recently citing 'creative differences' as the catalyst for Butler leaving the project. So that film is now officially without a director or a star. So I don't think it is just me, but I wouldn't count on seeing Escape any time soon considering the rate people are dropping from the project. As for Game, the film is currently in production and expected to be released in 2009.

UPDATE: It seems the artwork has been taken down; not sure why. Sorry about that folks.

It's not just because I've done some work for MrSkin.com that I'm a huge fan of the site. I give the Skinbosses credit for making nudity light and fun, especially in an internet world where sexuality is usually as harsh and nasty as you could possibly imagine. But Mr. Skin still recalls a time when 14-year-old boys would go absolutely ballistic (and justifiably so) when a bare of bare boobies would bounce across the movie screen. (We didn't rent Halloween just for the scares, you know...) Plus the website does really fun stuff like The Year's Top Ten Nude Scenes, and who wouldn't enjoy talking about THAT for 25 minutes or so??

So who made the list? Well, I don't want to spoil anything, but this just in: Salma Hayek has one seriously amazing body, and apparently she wasn't too shy about showing it off in Robert Towne's Ask the Dust -- and that's why she earned 2006's #1 spot! Other bare-chested award-winners include Gretchen Mol, Kyra Sedgwick, Jennifer Aniston and one of those amazingly evil hotties from Hostel. For a full run-down of the clothing-deficient cuties, Zap2it.com has a fairly solid breakdown -- although I think it's cheating for Mr. Skin to include direct-to-video titles in the mix. Those flicks deserve their very own category!

So aside from the ten already spotlighted, what stands as your most memorable piece of cinema skin from 2006? (I can only assume the Skinjedi have yet to see Kate Winslet shine in Little Children.) And yes, that includes half-naked men, I suppose. Wouldn't want to alienate the ladies!

[Thanks to USA Today's PopCandy for the tip!]