Canadian exclusive: Gary Oldman in Red Riding Hood (Hour Magazine, cover)
Father figure: Oldman as debauched-wolf-killer in RRH remake.
Ratings: You can’t live with ‘em, and you can’t make a studio movie without ‘em.
When director Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight, Lords of Dogtown) decided with her production team that she’d like to rejig the ancient folktale of Little Red Riding Hood as teen entertainment for the Twilight demographic, with elements of horror and supernatural gothic thriller, she must have known there’d be certain limitations: Though a PG-13 rating allows for some scary scenes and “sensual situations,” there certainly couldn’t be as much blood, guts or groans as you might expect from a film about a terrifying werewolf who is driven by human blood lust to eviscerate his victims by the light of a blood-red moon.
But still, it’s an erotic wolf-on-waif story about a ripe young innocent, Valerie (Amanda Seyfried from Mamma Mia and Big Love), caught in a love quadrangle with two very strapping young villagers (Shiloh Fernandez from Gossip Girl and Max Irons, Jeremy Irons’ son) and a strangely humanoid talking wolf.
It’s not the classic tale by any means: the scriptwriter (David Leslie Johnson, who scripted Orphan) changed the titular Red Riding Hood into a young woman rather than a child, perhaps one reason the movie has dropped the “little” off Red Riding Hood. (The other having to do with, according to Seyfried, “the size of my breasts.”) Read article
Posted: March 26th, 2011 under Gary Oldman, Hour Magazine, Movies, People.
Tags: carnivorous wolf, Catherine Hardwicke, Gary Oldman, Red Riding Hood