stellan skarsgard Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Last November, when I interviewed Melissa George for the horror film Turistas, we ended up talking about another project on her horizon, the psychological thriller Waz, with Stellan Skarsgard. George said the film had a "genius storyline" but sort of went around the world when describing it, not wanting to be pinned down on an actual plot description. "It's about altruism in nature and whether you'd kill someone you love in order to survive yourself," she said. When pressed, she gave me a monkey analogy. "In nature there are some animals who will put themselves on the front line to be killed in order to save the kingdom, because they are the same gene pool. They don't care. They just want to survive. One monkey will go out in front of another and get killed in order to save 300 of them behind him. You know what I mean? Whereas, humans, we're a separate gene pool." Hmmm ...

Anyway, the trades are reporting that just as the Cannes fest was closing, the Weinsteins made a couple of last-minute deals, and one of them was to pick up North American home video rights to Waz. The film, which is described in the article as "the story of a detective (Skarsgard) stalked by a serial killer," will be released through the Genius home video label, although when hasn't been specified. In addition to Waz, the Weinsteins also picked up North American rights to the Joy Division biopic Control and Australian rights to the animated film Persepolis -- both of the latter were reviewed by our own James at Cannes.

Directed by Benjamin Ross (RKO 281), this film is only 18-minutes long, perhaps because the very idea of its subject -- sonderkommandos -- is too mind-blowing for a feature film to accommodate. The sonderkommandos, of course, were Jewish slaves who were kept alive in the concentration camps to perform such ungodly tasks as to convince the new arrivals that nothing bad was afoot and to assist in processing them through the 'showers' and then disposing of the remains afterwards. Torte Bluma, which is showing as an add-on short with the print of Two Or Three Things I Know About Him at Manhattan's Film Forum, stars Stellan Skarsgard as Franz Stangl, an SS officer at Treblinka who repeats the phrase "I walk this world but once" to himself repeatedly throughout the piece, quietly pondering his own moral fiber as he debates over issues like whether to grant his own sonderkommando, Blau (Simon McBurney) the privilege of walking his father to an immediate death after he arrives in the camp. This deep thought process is interrupted only when Stangl gets a hankering for Torte Bluma, an expensive jam.

The debut film from Fox Atomic, Turistas, opening this Friday, is an action/horror melange about a group of clueless tourists from America, Sweden and Australia who travel off the beaten path during a trip to Brazil and end up in the crosshairs of a human organ smuggling operation. Melissa George stars as Pru, a bikini-clad Australian who speaks some rudimentary Portuguese and becomes the unofficial leader of the desperate band. You're probably familiar with George even if you don't yet know her name. She arrived on the scene in 1998, nearly walking away with Alex Proyas' Dark City in a tiny role as May, a gorgeous prostitute being targeted by a killer. Since then, the Aussie actress has bounced between stints on television shows like Alias and roles in low-expectation films like the Amityville Horror remake. In the past year, however, something has clicked for George and she's lined up several intriguing starring roles.

She's currently shooting 30 Days of Night, a big-budget horror film from producer Sam Raimi about a colony of vampires that tries to take over a small Alaskan town where the sun rarely shines. George co-stars alongside expressionless heartthrob Josh Hartnett as two local cops who try to fight back. Also lined up is the psychological thriller Waz, in which she'll co-star with Stellan Skarsgard, and the period drama Music Within about a disabled Vietnam veteran. Cinematical recently called up George in Los Angeles, hours before she was about to hop a plane back to New Zealand to continue filming 30 Days of Night.

I've heard a lot of people talking about this thriller, Waz, which is coming out sometime next year, but no one seems to know exactly what it's about.

MG: Waz is going to come out around May. It's about altruism in nature and about whether you'd kill someone you love in order to survive yourself. It's a very cool film. In nature, there are some animals who will put themselves on the front line to be killed in order to save their kingdom, because they are the same gene pool. They don't care. They just want to survive. One monkey will go out in front of another and get killed in order to save 300 of them behind him. You know what I mean? Whereas, humans, we're a separate gene pool. So we are exploring the idea that if someone said to you 'I will stop doing this to you if you kill your lover'...how much pain would you take, before you kill somebody that you love? It's very awesome. It's got a genius storyline.

Growing up, your dreams and goals constantly change and evolve as you experience this little thing called life. I can't even count how many times I've been asked the question, "So, what do you want to be when you grow up?" From parents, to teachers ,to friends, to that weird guy who hung around the 24-hour convenient store (no, not Matthew McConaughey), we're forever on a quest to discover ourselves.

The following films all feature characters thrown into different situations in which they are forced to come to terms with who they really are. How should a Queen go about leading her country at a time of severe crisis? How can singers turn their love of performing into a lucrative career? How far can a life of crime really take a man? Oh, and why do three-day holiday weekends always seem so short? Welcome to this week's Trailer Park ...