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Hoodwinked! debuts at Clay Theatre

Written by Bruce Bellingham

Saturday, 31 December 2005

Maurice Kanbar, San Francisco’s peripatetic preeminent philanthropist, was honored last month at the Clay Theatre with a preview screening of the new big-budget animated feature film that he’s produced and a special proclamation from the Mayor of San Francisco. Maurice’s name also blazed on the marquee. December 11, 2005 was officially Maurice Kanbar Day in San Francisco. The declaration was read for the Mayor by Stephanie Coyote, the head of the SF Film Office, for a crowd that eagerly awaited the movie, Hoodwinked! The True Story of Little Red Riding Hood. The audience was not disappointed. The film, which moves at a dazzling pace, is witty, acerbic and clever. The jokes target a broad audience and the film is rife with grown-up allusions to The Thin Man, the James Bond movies, the classic cartoons of baby boomer youth such as Road Runner, the Fletch series, and even Stan Freberg. One of the bad guys bears a distinct resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenegger. “A pure coincidence,” claims Edwards. “We went to Maurice with an idea,” Corey Edwards, the director, told the audience. “He advised us to tackle something that’s been tried and true – such an old nursery rhyme. We went through them all, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Aesop, the whole thing. My brother, Todd, came up with the idea for telling Little Red Riding Hood with a Rashomon or Run, Lola, Run style of telling the story through several different points of view. We brought Maurice an example within a month. He liked it.” The film, featuring the voices of Glenn Close, Anne Hathaway, James Belushi, David Ogden Stiers and Chazz Palminteri, was made for just under $15 million, a rather frugal budget for a Hollywood feature. “We hired animators in Manila and in India,” said Edwards. “Otherwise we could not have kept the costs down like this.” Hoodwinked! will open in San Francisco and in 1,300 theaters around the country later this month.

Last Updated ( Saturday, 19 January 2008 )