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 Cast members Bill Pullman (R) and Jessica Alba pose with director of the movie Michael Winterbottom (L) at the premiere of "The Killer Inside Me" during the 2010 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah January 24, 2010. (REUTERS) |
PARK CITY, Utah — Days after its explosive world premiere, controversy continues to pummel Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me.
In the noir thriller, Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson are pulverized into bloody pulps by Casey Affleck’s sociopathic small-town sheriff. But off-screen, Sundance film festival audiences have been delivering the blows — blasting a rattled Winterbottom for Killer’s extreme violence (all of it against the female, not male, characters).
Alba, who helped introduce the movie, left midway through the Sunday screening. Was the violence too much for her to stomach? No, her publicists say now. They insist Alba supports the film — she just had to catch a plane back to Los Angeles.
Damage control aside, it’s the reaction from those movie goers, not Alba, that will give potential distributors pause. Controversy can sell, but buyers these days want a safe investment. Controversy can mean too steep of a risk.
NEW DIRECTION: Mark Ruffalo has had his heart broken one too many times.
“Acting to me is like loving a very beautiful woman who doesn’t quite love you back,” he says, explaining why he turned to directing with Sympathy for Delicious, which debuted this week at Sundance.
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Written by Ruffalo’s old friend Christopher Thornton — who was paralyzed early on in his acting career — the movie chronicles how a DJ named Delicious copes with life after an accident strands him in a wheelchair.
While Ruffalo will next be seen back in front of the camera in Martin Scorsese’s psychological thriller Shutter Island, he says he is anxious to direct again. “I do know I would like to focus on a career in directing, if I can cobble one together.”
WALKING THE PLANK: The fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie is leaving port without Orlando Bloom. So what’s next? A music career perhaps?
“He has a great voice!” says actress-turned-rocker Juliette Lewis, who co-stars with Bloom in Ruffalo’s Sympathy for Delicious.
“(Rock stars) have a lot of fun,” Bloom says. “I don’t think I’m going to be doing an album anytime soon, but I really enjoyed it. I loved wailing around and having a lot of fun.”
In the black comedy, Bloom and Lewis play goth rockers. And there is a Canadian connection: Do Make Say Think and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, both from the Great White North, are part of Ruffalo’s sonic-scape.
EVIL RULES: It’s no mystery why the made-in-Calgary hillbilly horror send-up Tucker & Dale vs. Evil has become a festival sensation: It’s an unabashed crowd-pleaser.
At Wednesday night’s screening, director Eli Craig said he set out to “dismantle” the clichés of such killer redneck gore-a-thons as The Hills Have Eyes and Wrong Turn, among others. And he does — to hilarious effect.
The movie, about a pair of affable hillbillies (Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine) mistaken for homicidal maniacs, has been smartly snapped up by Maple Pictures for Canadian distribution.
IN GOOD COMPANY: In the recession-themed The Company Men, Tommy Lee Jones is one of the white-collar workers coping with corporate downsizing. As an actor, though, he points out he’s never had job security. “Don’t have any, never have had any.”
Nor is the drama — despite the presence of Jones, Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner and Chris Cooper — a lock for distribution. It has yet to be snapped up, meaning it may never reach a theatre near you.
Not that Jones needs to worry. He has, after all, one sure-fire sequel up his sleeve: Men in Black III, which has been written and could shoot within the next year. Not that you’d know that from Jones, who, when asked if he can talk about it, responds with a laugh and a succinct: “No!”
X-MAN ON ICE?: Canadian Shawn Ashmore learns about the X-Men franchise like any other fanboy: from the Internet.
“What I understand from reading online — it’s not anything anyone’s told me — is that Bryan (Singer) is coming back to do X-Men: First Class, an origins kind of story.”
Yet because the movie’s a prequel, his character, Bobby Drake/Iceman, may be too young to appear.
“I always keep my fingers crossed they’ll call me up and ask, ‘Hey, do you want to do another X-Men film?’ So who knows? I’m always anxious to hear about another X-Men film. But I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
In the meantime, Ashmore is keeping cool, starring in the thriller Frozen, which opens in limited release next Friday.
kevin.williamson@sunmedia.ca