ROTTEN TOMATOES: Gong Li Joins Cast of Lecter Film

Gong Li Joins Cast of Lecter Film

by Binh Ngo | February 23, 2005

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Gong Li is joining the cast of "The Lecter Variation," Production Weekly reports. The film, directed by Peter Webber, will be filmed in France and Lithuania beginning in May. The film tells the tale of Hannibal Lecter's childhood in 1940s Europe. Li is best known in America for her work in "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Farewell My Concubine"; she will appear in the forthcoming "Memoirs of a Geisha."

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(1-9 of 9 posts) | Reply

inessalenin writes:
on Feb 23 2005 10:57 PM

Congratulation for her! I thought her age might not get a decent role for she's not young as Zhang Ziyi.

(Reply to this)

Ophiuchus writes:
on Feb 23 2005 11:32 PM

I hope this is better than Red Dragon.

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bastard_guy180 writes:
on Feb 24 2005 03:46 PM

[b]???[/b]
Red Dragon was wonderful, i doubt this will be better.

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ninjaandy writes:
on Feb 24 2005 05:38 PM

Red Dragon was ok; nowhere near as good as Silence (obviously), but a hell of a lot better than Hannibal.

I don't have high hopes for this one. Harris wrote Silence and Dragon before the movies were made, and they were the good ones. Hannibal he wrote just to be made into a movie. And it sucked. I think he did the same for this.

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renodc writes:
on Feb 24 2005 08:37 PM

In reply to this comment (#820074)
[b]Read "Hannibal" the book[/b]
Harris did write Hannibal very hastily and it wasn't as good as Silence and Dragon, but the book is decent and very different, especially the ending, from what ended up in the movie. Let's just say the ending of the book wouldn't be what you would call happy. A better description of the book would be sick and twisted, and I imagine the studios felt it wouldn't go over well with the general public. I didn't like the movie mainly because the ending was so whitewashed and not quite as dark and menacing as Silence, but the book Hannibal may have actually been a little too dark for my taste.
My main concern for Variations is will they be able to find an actor that can fill Anthony Hopkins' shoes.

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Dox writes:
on Feb 25 2005 09:11 PM

[b]?[/b]
Didn't Harris take about 10 years to write Hannibal before they could make that movie?..

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Ophiuchus writes:
on Feb 26 2005 03:51 AM

Well, you can't rush art. Not if you're a good writer, anyway.

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bastard_guy180 writes:
on Mar 01 2005 04:14 PM

[b]Loved the book...(Hannibal)[/b]
Wish they would have had the cajones to make it more like the book and not give us the choppy, silly ending we got in the film.

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BigDaddyChaCha writes:
on Mar 01 2005 05:45 PM

[b]Loved the books, loved the movies, love Gong Li.[/b]
Gong Li is a goddess among actresses as far as I'm concerned (To Live, Red Sorghum, and Chinese Box were all masterpieces, due in no small way to Li's acting.) Adding her to the solid Hannibal Lecter series is a surprising move, I think (how does a Chinese woman tie into Lecter's experiences at the hands of the Nazis?), but I doubt that they will do a bad job.

And, yes, I have read all three of the books so far in the Lecter series. I read them all when I heard that Hannibal was coming out, and yet I still appreciated both Hannibal and Red Dragon in their movie forms. Yes, they were both more "Hollywood" than Silence of the Lambs, but indie-cred doesn't last forever. And, no, Hannibal didn't end the same as in the book, but I think that the ending that they used was perfectly appropriate. I shudder to think of where Hannibal was going and what he was going to do when he got there with only one hand (in any other horror series, he would have a butcher knife or chainsaw attached to his stump by now, but this series maintains a pretty firm grip on reality, by comparison.) I await this latest film eagerly and with high hopes.

-The Cha.

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