Lauren Ambrose Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Next to the table of contents in the new book Heads On and Then We Shoot: The Making of Where the Wild Things Are, there's a list of songs that Spike Jonze says were influential and inspirational in the making of his adaptation of Maurice Sendak's children's classic. Among them are plenty of melancholy mood pieces, including The Smiths' "Cemetry Gates," "Maps" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, whose lead singer composed original tunes for the film, and perhaps most obviously, Arcade Fire's "Wake Up," which ultimately appeared in Wild Things' theatrical trailer. But in my opinion, the most telling track included on that list was Langley Schools Music Project's devastating cover of The Beach Boys "God Only Knows" sung by a chorus of Canadian schoolchildren in the late 1970s, it captures the deeper sentiment of desperation and loneliness in Brian Wilson's lyrics even as it reverberates with the naïve, wholesome enthusiasm of voices unfamiliar with real heartbreak.

In the best possible way, Jonze's film also harnesses that contradiction: it feels like a grown-up story told by kids, where all of its emotional weight is buried in the story or otherwise ignored because nobody seems to know better than to emphasize it. Bereft of nostalgia, much less a cinematic style that lends itself easily to conventional spectacle, Spike Jonze brings Where the Wild Things Are to life in a way that no one could have possibly expected, but thankfully in one better than they could have ever imagined.

I often come across news that makes me jump with excitement, and just as I go to whip up a post about it, I reconsider. Will anyone else feel the same joy upon reading that Joe Morton has been cast in a small prison indie? To many, he's nothing more than Miles Dyson from Terminator 2. Will anyone care about that cool, but unknown new actor that popped up on a few shows here or there? Or, does anyone else believe that Danny Huston in Clash of the Titans is much more alluring than Fiennes, Worthington, Neeson, and the rest?

Before I started writing about movies, my friends would dub me the expert because I would always pick out some face on the screen and do a little happy dance while the rest of the theater only oggled over the stars. But it wasn't so much knowing everyone and everything, but being drawn to the secondary actors, and remembering them from all of their other parts. While many seem to have bit-part blindness, these actors' faces would always stick in my mind.

I cheer the arrival of Nicky Katt in all of his blockbuster bit parts -- Sin City, Grindhouse, The Dark Knight, whilst wondering why he can't get better work (he's been on the scene since '77 for cripes sakes!). Lauren Ambrose was always recognizable, even before Six Feet Under, for her stints in Can't Hardly Wait and the insanity that is Psycho Beach Party.

Part of it is being ahead of the rush -- waiting patiently for that mainstream gig that will zip talents into superstardom. But for some it's the eternal wait -- seeing talent year after year, part after part, and knowing that the world-at-large will never swoon for them. Which actors and actresses, invisible to most of the world, do you love?

Riding a wave of near-unanimous praise, Andrew Wagner's Starting Out in the Evening began its box office sojourn at the top, earning an estimated $11,610 per screen at seven theaters, according to Leonard Klady at Movie City News. Wagner previously made the fascinating dysfunctional family comedy drama The Talent Given Us, which starred his own family, but this time performances by non-family members Frank Langella and Lauren Ambrose have been roundly acclaimed. (Check out reviews by Cinematical's James Rocchi and Ryan Stewart.)

Todd Haynes' I'm Not There has received some ecstatic critical response, which translated into "encouraging but less than superlative response," in the words of Mr. Klady. By the numbers, the film made an estimated $5,310 per screen at 130 engagements, which actually sounds pretty good for an unconventional film that even the critics have had difficulty getting a handle on. (Read more: Cinematical reviews by James Rocchi and Jeffrey M. Anderson.)

The third new specialty release, Izuru Narushima's Midnight Eagle, barely opened, earning an estimated $1,630 per screen at two theaters. The action thriller also opened the Tokyo Film Festival but is probably most notable because it's the first time in memory that a Japanese film has opened day and date in Japan and the United States. Sadly, it was slaughtered by the few US critics who saw it, as recorded at Rotten Tomatoes.

Margot at the Wedding expanded from two to 35 theaters and continued to perform well, raking in $11,200 per screen, while No Country for Old Men jumped out into 860 theaters and made an estimated $9,000 per engagement. Mr. Klady pointed to three holdovers: Sean Penn's Into the Wild ($1,920 per screen), Alejandro Monteverde's Bella ($1,970 per screen) and Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead ($3,190).

No, it's not another sequel to the Neve Campbell/Denise Richards classic! The extremely likable Lauren Ambrose (Claire on Six Feet Under, Denise Fleming in Can't Hardly Wait) will voice a character in the upcoming adaptation of Maurice Sendak's beloved childrens' book -- Where the Wild Things Are. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ambrose is playing KW -- "one of the giant characters in the land of the Wild Things. When a young boy named Max visits their strange world, KW and company turn him into their king."

Ambrose is taking over the role from Michelle Williams. Apparently Williams got along well with the filmmakers, but "her voice didn't match their original vision of how the Wild Things should sound." Where the Wild Things Are mixes flesh-and-blood actors, computer animation, and live-action puppetry. I can't wait to see it, I adored the book as a kid and I love pretty much everyone involved with the film. Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation -- a couple of my favorite flicks) will direct, and wrote the screenplay with Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, one of my favorite books). You can go into the Wild in Fall 2008.

A good indicator of an unnecessary subplot is one that never seems to cross paths with the A-story -- it's a problem that afflicts the new film, Starting out in the Evening, starring Six Feet Under's Lauren Ambrose and film and stage veteran Frank Langella. Ambrose plays Heather, a feisty graduate student obsessed with the works of a minor, undervalued novelist, Leonard Schiller, played by Langella. Schiller is long past the point of imagining that he will be widely recognized in his lifetime for his work, and has settled into the quietude of old age, but Heather is so determined to gain access into his private world that she brazenly positions herself as a sexual thrill for the 70-something man, and he somewhat half-heartedly takes the bait, leading to a believable but half-cocked courtship and an interesting exploration of a completely lop-sided relationship. Good fodder for a feature-length motion picture, but for some reason director Andrew Wagner also shoehorns in an entire relationship drama centered about Lili Taylor, playing the lovesick, 40-something daughter of Schiller.

The notoriously press-shy Lauren Ambrose was not readily available to speak about her role during the film's recent press jaunt, but that's a shame, because her character is far and away the most intriguing aspect of the film. Heather is very believable as one of those early-20s graduate students who seem to have crammed a lifetime's worth of reading into the years when they could have gotten some fun out of life, making for an inherently sad but also clever and resourceful personality, able to stand toe to toe intellectually with someone who has fifty years on her. The best scenes in Starting Out come closer to the beginning of the film than the ending, when Schiller is continually rejecting Heather's entreaties to be his chronicler-muse-companion. Although he keeps telling her no, she keeps coming up with reasons to jam her foot back in the door, like some kind of bookworm stalker who knows exactly how to keep from being confronted with a final, stern rejection. These early scenes are spot-on and very well-executed.

Technical advances bring artistic opportunities. Admittedly, I've seen my share of indifferent films shot on digital video, but at the same time, DV's also given us some of the best performances in recent memory -- Vera Farmiga in Down to the Bone, Patricia Clarkson in Pieces of April, Maggie Gyllenhaal in Sherrybaby. And, to that list, we can now add Frank Langella's performance in Starting Out in the Evening -- and those of Lauren Ambrose and Lili Taylor, as well. Langella plays Leonard Schiller -- a novelist trying to finish one more book, even though his other works are seemingly long-forgotten. But a graduate student, Heather (Ambrose), comes to call; she's working on a thesis about his earlier novels, and would like to interview Leonard for it. He's not interested -- too much work, too little time -- but something about her tenacity and insight wins him over. ...

... and perhaps it shouldn't. Ambrose's Heather is captivating and complex from the outset -- left to her own devices in Leonard's apartment she immediately starts casing the joint. She's smart and swift and manipulative -- but, in a weird way, not maliciously so. And soon she gets the measure of Leonard's life -- writing, writing and more writing, punctuated by the company of his daughter Ariel (Taylor) from time to time. Ariel's breezy and mostly together -- and in a relationship she's not crazy about, still thinking about her ex, Casey (Adrian Lester). Ariel would very much like to be a mom, but things aren't working out that way; maybe they never will.

So many motion pictures are driven by big conflict and big concepts that the subtlety and small-scale motions of Starting Out in the Evening sneak up on us; both Leonard and Ariel are so obsessed by the idea of how much time they have left that they're missing out on what's happening during the time they have now. And both of them come to a very different understanding of time and its unstoppable forward motion. ...

There's an indie film that has been off the Cinematical radar, but might just be something to look out for in the future. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Roadside Attraction has secured the worldwide distribution rights to Andrew Wagner's indie drama called Starting Out in the Evening, based on the 1999 novel by Brian Morton. The film, which premiered at Sundance in January, boasts an impressive cast of Lauren Ambrose, Frank Langella and Lili Taylor. Roadside plans to release it in the states this November, just in time for a nice awards push for Langella's performance -- it's one that THR gushingly called "astounding." What might be even more-so is the fact that the performance could come from a shoot that lasted only 18 days.

The story revolves around a forceful grad student named Heather (Ambrose). She's writing her thesis on a novelist named Leonard Schiller (Langella), and hopes this will be a huge step to her own literary success. She meets him, finding him to be: "Old, fat, bald, leaning awkwardly on a cane" -- the vision of her literary hero a bit dashed. Meanwhile, he's been struggling on the same book for ten years, as his health deteriorates. There is also Schiller's daughter (Taylor), who is struggling with her desire for a child and her marriage to a man who doesn't want to have one. Heather invades his world, a seductive and challenging pressure in his life. I'm not sure how much more you can ask for -- an interesting story, great actors, glowing reviews and some indie flavor.

If you're a fan of mild-mannered dramedies about small-town life, you could do a lot worse than Diggers. Scripted by television actor Ken Marino -- he also plays the main dramatic role and plays it well -- the film centers on the trials and tribulations of a community of blue-collar clam-diggers in mid-70s Long Island. There's a big corporate entity that is moving in on the island and intends to squeeze the locals out of the clam business once and for all. Some of them, like Hunt (Paul Rudd) are thinking of shaking up their lives, trying their luck in the big city and starting new relationships, while others like Lozo (Marino) are reluctant to embrace any kind of change, small or large. Lozo is such a traditionalist, in fact, that his old-fashioned view of the world ends up setting the stage for the film's most effective scene, a confrontation with his wife over her desire to end a pregnancy she doesn't want. Women's rights and Jaws references -- this is a film 70s-lovers can really warm to.

Maura Tierney, most known from TV's ER, plays Gina, the central female character. She's a sister to Hunt and love interest to a local do-nothing called Jack (Ron Eldard) and is a general anchor-character of the story -- one that all the other characters sort of swirl around. In fact, one of the things Diggers usually does well is to make most of the significant characters seem like they are the central character whenever its time for their story to kick into gear. A lot of thought clearly went into the film's structuring, which is refreshing. The mixture of comedy and drama is a little more uncertain, though -- some scenes feel like the script said 'comedic hijinks ensue at this point' and the actors sort of had to wing it. The comedy gets a little too physical for my taste. Marino has certainly shown here that he has the chops to write a real story with real dramatic and comedic moments, and the film would have benefitted by leaving some of the artificial comedy on the cutting room floor.

About a week ago, I went to see a screening of Diggers, which is an ensemble dramedy opening in late April, starring Paul Rudd, Lauren Ambrose and a few other notable names. It's a passable assemblage of talent with a few laughs and a few interesting moments, but I didn't give it much more thought than any of the dozens of other movies I've seen recently. Over the weekend, however, much to my surprise, someone pointed me to a listing on Amazon for the film's DVD, which is dropping in stores in early May! I had completely forgotten that Diggers was a film from Mark Cuban's company, and considering that most day-day style releases have thus far chosen to beat people over the head with their day-dateness, I guess this new strategy of not drawing attention to the day-dateness is a more successful one, since people like me never gave a second's thought to the film's near-simultaneous theatrical-DVD release when watching or evaluating the film.

I'm still a little ambivalent over the whole day-date issue, although I know that companies like Cuban's are out to make legitimate, quality films and not the kind of dreck that we usually associate with 'straight to DVD.' Still, if I were just a movie-goer instead of someone reviewing films for a living, I think my inherent laziness might have made me miss the theatrical release and just wait for the DVD, and I know a lot of other people would make that choice as well. And I do believe it's a sad thing in general that we have that choice, since nothing can come close to replicating the experience of actually going to a movie theater. I will have to give this issue some more weighty thought as I search through my Easter basket for any missed bubble gum.

Such is this business that sometimes you see the movie before you see the preview. I saw Diggers at a screening a few days ago, and now the trailer has popped up over at Moviefone. I can tell you that the trailer is a pretty fair representation of the film, which is about a bunch of clam diggers in mid-70s Long Island, who struggle with life, love and dreams of moving away to the big city. There's a pretty even balance between humor and drama, as the trailer depicts, but the one thing that struck me as odd -- I'll be writing about this in my review of the film as well -- is that even though Lauren Ambrose of Six Feet Under fame is second-billed in the trailer and touted as the film's leading lady, she has only a few, truncated scenes and her character has substantially less time than the other players. As a fan of her work, that was a little disappointing.

Aside from Ambrose, the main players are Paul Rudd and Maura Tierney as a brother and sister who just lost their lifelong clam-digger father, Ron Eldard as a comedic lowlife who is trying to date Maura Tierney and Ken Marino as a hothead father who struggles with whether or not he should give in to the corporate bad guys who are trying to take over his territory. Marino has a couple of knockout scenes, and overall I'd say his role is the cherry of the bunch and could propel him into more substantial acting roles after this. There's also a good gag in the film about Jaws still playing in theaters -- I believe it takes place in September 1976 -- but was Jaws really still in theaters, even with the old releasing style, over a year after it opened? I wonder. Anyway, Diggers is scheduled to drop on April 27.