Gemma Arterton talks about 'Alice Creed'

For Arterton, being tied up meant liberation as a serious actress

During her first day of filming "The Disappearance of Alice Creed," actress Gemma Arterton got thrown into a van with a bag over her head, then was stripped naked, gagged and handcuffed spread-eagled to a bed. The gritty kidnapping drama marked a major change of pace for the British actress. Coming off such blockbusters as "Clash of the Titans" and "Prince of Persia," she hankered for a challenge.

"Even though 'Alice Creed' was the most grueling job I've ever done, it was also one of the most satisfying," she says. "I'd been on 'Prince of Persia' for six months and wanted to exercise my acting skills. When you're doing something like 'Clash of the Titans,' you sit around most of the day, so there's a lot of time to worry about how to deliver some not very well-written lines. I wanted to show that I was prepared to strip back all the nonsense that you sometimes get when making a Hollywood movie and just go for it."

Arterton, 24, trained at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and landed the role of Strawberry Fields in the James Bond movie "Quantum of Solace."

"The Bond film took me into that 'hottie' category," she says. "It's easy for people to put you in that 'hot girl' slot. I don't want to play those characters anymore. That's why I did 'Alice Creed.'

"Now I'm starting to be in the kinds of films I would go see: quirky and interesting and not particularly blockbustery."

'Crosshair' asks: What if hero is the villain?

Comic-Con International served as the backdrop for a weekend's worth of intense negotiations last month: While sci-fi fans walked the San Diego streets dressed in costumes, Mandeville Films executives hammered out contracts to acquire movie rights to Top Cow comic book "Crosshair."

Creator Marc Silvestri's story follows a CIA assassin turned family man who has 48 hours to disable a program in his brain that would turn him back into a killer.

" 'Crosshair' has a unique premise, in which the main character is both the hero and the villain," Mandeville partner Todd Lieberman says. "This dichotomy makes a fantastic twist for audiences."

A jazz man whose life wasn't just Peanuts

Vince Guaraldi was a short man with stubby fingers, a handlebar mustache and a fierce determination to get his music heard. Through his monster instrumental "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" and hit scores for Peanuts TV specials, the San Francisco jazz pianist reached millions. "The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi," which screens Saturday at the Sausalito Film Festival, takes a look at the man and his music.

The core of the documentary draws from black-and-white footage shot in 1963 for jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason's public television program, "Anatomy of a Hit." When a master-quality copy of the film turned up behind an orange-crate bookcase in the Gleason family home a couple of years ago, the music journalist's son Toby Gleason and director Andrew Thomas decided to expand its focus.

"We started out with the idea of doing bonus material to add to the original for a potential home-video release," says Gleason, a producer on the film.

But after they began interviewing contemporaries, including Jon Hendricks, Dave Brubeck and comedian Dick Gregory, the filmmakers shifted gears.

"There was so much more to Vince's career than was covered in my father's original program, which basically stopped at 'Cast Your Fate to the Wind,' " Gleason says. "We realized Vince's career spanned so much other stuff that there was a larger story to tell."

The new material and archival footage sheds light on Guaraldi's role as a wry hipster who anchored the house band at North Beach's fabled hungry i nightclub. By the time he died in 1976, Guaraldi had also captivated mainstream pop culture with his themes for "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and other Peanuts specials.

"Part of what made Vince special is he created music that adult that kids could relate to," Gleason says, "and he did it without talking down to the children." {sbox}

E-mail Chronicle correspondent Hugh Hart at pinkletters@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page Q - 29 of the San Francisco Chronicle