WEIRDLAND: Red Riding Hood: Amanda Seyfried, Reese Witherspoon, Anna Paquin, Christina Ricci

Friday, March 11, 2011

Red Riding Hood: Amanda Seyfried, Reese Witherspoon, Anna Paquin, Christina Ricci

Amanda Seyfried and Catherine Hardwicke attending the premiere of "Red Riding Hood" on 7th March 2011 in Los Angeles


In this weekend's Red Riding Hood, Amanda Seyfried stars as a more grown-up version of the titular lady in red. We recently chatted with Seyfried about the film, which she joined thanks to Catherine Hardwicke's directorial prowess on Twilight as well as Leonardo DiCaprio's involvement as producer. Find out what Seyfried had to say about her costars Max Irons and Shiloh Fernandez, including which actor she had better chemistry with.

Check out "Amanda Seyfried’s eerie acoustic cover of Sam the Sham & The Pharoahs’ “L’il Red Riding Hood” at EW’s Music Mix: Much like that folk tale, this song is probably stored somewhere in the recesses of your mind. Just think, "Hey there Little Red Riding Hood, you sure are looking good" sung in the voice of the "Woolly Bully" guy" Source: music-mix.ew.com

"The Twilight films have proven that audiences go crazy over hot, supernatural, cross-species action. This Friday, the doe-eyed Amanda Seyfried will attempt to grab a piece of that box office gold with her starring role in Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood, a dark, sexy take on the classic fairy tale. Seyfried is hardly the first starlet to have played a version of Little Red. In fact, several of Hollywood's biggest young actresses have used the role as a stepping stone in their careers. Here are five who've donned the iconic crimson cape.

In 1996, Reese Witherspoon was still best known as the sweet girl who'd been in The Man in the Moon and Jack the Bear. A few years before she would hit her dark, twisted stride with Cruel Intentions and Election, she made Freeway. In this cult favorite, Witherspoon plays Vanessa, a prostitute's daughter who gets picked up by a serial killer and rapist on her way to her grandmother's trailer park. The psychopath's name? Bob Wolverton. Best part of the trailer: Watching Witherspoon pretend to be illiterate, and then hearing her ask Kiefer Sutherland, "Are you going to do sex to me now?"

Anna Paquin as Laurie/Red Riding Hood in "Trick 'r Treat" (2007)

In 2007—the year before she became the belle of Bon Temps on True Blood—Anna Paquin starred in a direct-to-video horror-comedy called Trick ‘r Treat. In one of the film's four Halloween-set storylines, Paquin plays a virgin who gets lost in the woods while costumed as Little Red Riding Hood. But—spoiler alert—this damsel has a secret.

Ellen Page as Hayley Stark in "Hard Candy" (2005)

Hard Candy was essentially Ellen Page's debut. Two years before Juno, she played a 14-year-old girl who goes all vigilante against a man whom she's convinced is a pedophile. Her character wears a red hoodie, but the filmmakers claimed that any resemblance to the fairy tale was strictly coincidental. ("The hood was red," said Page, "and I like to put my hood up.") Still, like Freeway, Hard Candy fits neatly into the Little Red-Strikes-Back school of revisionist fantasy.

In 2005, the year before she made her breakout hit The Devil Wears Prada (as another girl who makes some striking fashion choices), Anne Hathaway provided the voice of Amanda "Red" Puckett in Hoodwinked, an animated whodunit inspired by Charles Perrault, Rashomon, and The Usual Suspects.

Remember when Christina Ricci was a weird little moon-faced Goth girl? In 1997, she starred in an 12-minute black-and-white adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood. (Actually, it owes more to the version known as "The Tale of the Grandmother.") In director David Kaplan's ode to the silent film era, Wednesday Addams engages in cannibalism, performs a way-too-knowing striptease, and outwits the wolf—who bears a striking resemblance to Magical Mr. Mistoffelees"
Source: www.slate.com

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