LittleChildren Tagged Articles at Cinematical

After Jack succumbed to the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean, did you ever think you'd get to see him reunited with Rose? (Aside from that weird ending, I mean). Well, ten years after Titanic, you can now at least see Leo reunited with Kate in this new still from the upcoming movie Revolutionary Road. We've already shown you some photos from the set of the movie, but this is the first in which the actor and actress are seen together. And isn't it wonderful? So, they don't really look anything like Jack and Rose anymore, and so, the time period is 40 years later -- just seeing those kids embracing brings tears to my eyes. Of course, there isn't much going on in the photograph other than Leo and Kate holding each other (are they dancing?). Someone could have just taken a pic of the actors in downtime sharing a hug and we'd have the same effect.

Directed by Kate's husband, Sam Mendes, Revolutionary Road tells of a bored, suburban married couple who move to France in order to find new fulfillment in life. Sounds kinda like Mendes' American Beauty mixed with Do Not Disturb. The script is by Justin Haythe, who penned the underrated Robert Redford movie The Clearing, and it is based on the novel from Richard Yates, co-writer of the 1969 war movie The Bridge at Remagen. In addition to reuniting Les o and Kate, the film also reunites the two with fellow Titanic star Kathy Bates. Kate also gets to work with her husband for the first time and she again gets to work with child actor Ty Simkins, who we last saw in Little Children as Patrick Wilson's son -- this time he plays Kate's (and Leo's) son. Revolutionary Road doesn't hit theaters for another 17 months, so hopefully the single photo satisfies you for awhile.

I haven't yet read Tom Perrotta's Little Children, the book writer/director Todd Field and Perrotta adapted together into the film of the same name. It is on my reading list -- I generally like to read the book a film has been adapted from, especially if I really liked the film, which is certainly the case with Little Children. When Field introduced the film at Telluride, he noted that when he and Perrotta set out to adapt the book, they weren't looking to just cut-and-paste the book into a film, but rather to create something entirely new based on the book as source material.

Over at 10 Zen Monkeys, Destiny has an interesting piece up on some bits from the book -- some sexy, some just fairly intense -- that were omitted from the screenplay, and questions whether the film would have been better with them in it. The post has a lot of spoilers, so if you haven't seen the film, you might want to hold off reading it until you get a chance to catch it. If you have seen the film, though, it's interesting to read and to imagine what the film might have looked like with these scenes in it.

Little Children was nommed for three Academy Awards, including one for adapted screenplay, and went home empty-handed. Why do you think that happened? Was the competition too tough? The film and the characters too dark and unlikable? Personally, I would have liked to see Jackie Earle Haley take Best Supporting Actor -- it's not easy to imbue an unrepentant pedophile with a sense of humanity and make the audience feel empathy for him, but Haley (along with Phyllis Somerville, who turned in a deeply moving performance as his mother) managed to accomplish that feat.

There is life after childhood stardom and for some that life consists of Academy Award nominations. I may be revealing my youth when I say that I didn't know that Jackie Earle Haley was a child star (The Bad News Bears) until reading this fact in today's Hollywood Reporter article. What I did know was that his performance in Little Children was both human and chilling. Haley played a child molester just released from prison and still struggling with the demons of his disorder. Haley brings humor, disgust, and childlike anguish to the role; he's a bad guy who makes you feel sorry for him in the end -- definitely a role that is worth an Oscar nomination and a performance worthy of any award.

The nomination itself is award enough for Haley in fact, he would like to "give every Academy member a hug" for the validation. Haley has spent the last 13 years struggling between acting jobs -- a huge gap in work for any actor and enough to question one's abilities as a performer. He filled his bank account with various jobs including limo driving and pizza delivery; thankfully all of that has changed for him now.

Haley is currently trying to make a decision on which project to work on next; he has a few to choose from and with this nomination I'm positive he'll have many to choose from for awhile -- remember when Adrien Brody's career blew up after his Oscar nomination and win for best actor in The Pianist? Luckily, the role that Jackie Earle Haley definitely won't have to choose from is alongside fellow child actors Corey Feldman and Christopher Knight on the reality T.V. show The Surreal Life.

Even if you consider Borat (full title not necessary) to be primarily a scripted work, it is still a film that works best in its unscripted sequences. This is debatable, sure, but I would like someone at the Writers Guild to tell me what was so great about the actual screenplay used. Personally, I think the scripted parts, as well as the adherence to the plot, are the weakest elements.

Nonetheless, Sacha Baron Cohen and his five collaborators are nominated for a Writers Guild Award for Adapted Screenplay. And despite my questioning of this recognition, I don't really prefer any of its competition. The other titles in the adapted category are Little Children, The Departed, The Devil Wears Prada and Thank You for Smoking. If I had to choose, I'd go with the last of these, but I think the prize will go to the overrated Little Children.

I also don't think the Original Screenplay category is that great, either. The nominees for that award are Little Miss Sunshine, Babel, United 93, Stranger Than Fiction and The Queen. Again, I'd have to go with the last of these, but predict the overrated first.

Hopefully, unlike with other guild awards, the WGA's honors will not reflect the Oscar nominations, which may recognize foreign films Volver and Pan's Labyrinth, which were ineligible here.

The Online Film Critics Society (of which Cinematical's own Scott Weinberg is a member) have spoken, and named their picks for the best films, performances and more of 2006. A recent arrival to the critic's boards awards season, the OFCS has been known for slightly off-center picks that often speak to very different sensibility than print and broadcast critics. As if to demonstrate this very point, a brief persual of the nominees and winners (designated in bold) after the jump will reveal that the OFCS has recognized a broad and fascinating slate of films in 2006 -- including Best Picture honors for United 93, plus individual wins for Oscar dark-horses like Borat, The Fountain, A Scanner Darkly and Children of Men. ...

Last week, the Alliance of Women Film Journalists (which includes our own Kim Voynar as a member, and which shouldn't be confused with the Women Film Critics Circle) announced the nominees for their first ever EDA Awards. Thankfully, for those of us who can't get enough from this awards season, it took the group only five days to announce the winners. Let me be the first to say that Borat was robbed of the coveted award for "Best Depiction of Nudity or Sexuality". The winner of that curious category was instead Little Children.

The winners of the other creatively conceived categories include Jesus Camp for the "Don't Stick Your Head in the Sand" award, Uma Thurman for the "Actress Most in Need of a New Agent" award, and Marie Antoinette for the "Movie You Wanted to Love But Just Couldn't" prize. Other unique mentions include Deepa Mehta and her film Water for the "Hanging in There for the Best Persistence" award and Dame Helen Mirren with a special recognition award for "An Actress Defying Age and Agism." Also, the AWFJ honored Dame Judi Dench with a Lifetime Achievement Award, Cate Blanchett with an "Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in the Film Industry" award and Angelina Jolie with an "AWFJ Award for Humanitarian Activism."

While surfing online this afternoon, I stumbled upon three pretty funny videos and wondered, "Gee, some of the readers over at Cinematical might enjoy these." Okay, I lied -- first I wondered whether or not I had any food in the fridge, and then came the videos. Check it out:

• Lots and lots of buzz is surrounding a few of the performances in Todd Field's Little Children, but did you ever wonder what the little children are saying about Little Children? Granted, the film itself is in no way targeted towards little children, but there is this comical teaser trailer over on YouTube called Little Sam's Promo for Little Children. Basically, it's just some kid telling us what the critics had to say about the film, but for some reason it made me laugh ... in that, "am I laughing because it's funny or because I'm really really bored" kind of way. [via MCN]
• We already brought you one fake Apocalypto trailer, in which its creator merged the Mel Gibson film with that Zach Braff film, The Last Kiss. Well, Saturday Night Live (God bless their little hearts for still trying to be funny after all these years) came up with their own fake trailer. And, although they're extremely late to the game with the anti-Jew jokes, it's still better than 94% of the crap that show shovels out each week. [via Hollywood Wiretap]
• It's not just audiences who are pissed about spending money on the recent horror flick Turistas, the people of Brazil (where the film was shot) are all up in arms over the nature of the pic and are afraid it will prevent people from visiting. Of course there's your standard boycott from one group, and Paris Filmes (the indie distributor releasing Turistas in Brazil) has already said they will show a text before each screening that claims Paris "is against anything that harms the image of Brazil." To further the protest, some folks got together to create this animated cartoon called Turistas 2, which reverses the roles and shows what happens when two Brazilian tourists visit America. As you can imagine, hilarity (and President Bush) ensues. (Note: Foul language included within) [via MCN]

It's not just because I've done some work for MrSkin.com that I'm a huge fan of the site. I give the Skinbosses credit for making nudity light and fun, especially in an internet world where sexuality is usually as harsh and nasty as you could possibly imagine. But Mr. Skin still recalls a time when 14-year-old boys would go absolutely ballistic (and justifiably so) when a bare of bare boobies would bounce across the movie screen. (We didn't rent Halloween just for the scares, you know...) Plus the website does really fun stuff like The Year's Top Ten Nude Scenes, and who wouldn't enjoy talking about THAT for 25 minutes or so??

So who made the list? Well, I don't want to spoil anything, but this just in: Salma Hayek has one seriously amazing body, and apparently she wasn't too shy about showing it off in Robert Towne's Ask the Dust -- and that's why she earned 2006's #1 spot! Other bare-chested award-winners include Gretchen Mol, Kyra Sedgwick, Jennifer Aniston and one of those amazingly evil hotties from Hostel. For a full run-down of the clothing-deficient cuties, Zap2it.com has a fairly solid breakdown -- although I think it's cheating for Mr. Skin to include direct-to-video titles in the mix. Those flicks deserve their very own category!

So aside from the ten already spotlighted, what stands as your most memorable piece of cinema skin from 2006? (I can only assume the Skinjedi have yet to see Kate Winslet shine in Little Children.) And yes, that includes half-naked men, I suppose. Wouldn't want to alienate the ladies!

[Thanks to USA Today's PopCandy for the tip!]

Welcome to yet another edition of Cinematical's podcast, Coming Distractions. As ever, I'm your host, Cinematical editor-in-chief James Rocchi, and this week's co-host is Cinematical's Scott Weinberg. This week, we're talking about everything from Google's acquisition of YouTube to the upcoming Oscar season -- as well as DVD picks and Pans, how it feels to be out of the Movie stream for a week while traveling and Todd Fields' Little Children. You can download the whole podcast right here, and, as ever, let us know what you'd like more of -- or anything you think we should be talking about!

(Music: "Overdose," Dumb)

(Note: This review previously ran during our TIFF coverage, and is rerunning again because the film opens this weekend. - ed)

What lies beneath the surface of life in a picturesque town, where mothers gather with their children at a neighborhood park, the town pool is the center of summer social life, and married couples lead what appear to be perfectly normal, happy lives with their families? What secrets hide beneath the facade of these seemingly idyllic lives? In Todd Field's Little Children, adapted with author Tom Perotta from his novel of the same name, people's lives intersect in unexpected and even dangerous ways, and nothing is quite as it seems.

Sarah (Kate Winslet) is a stay-at-home mom with an almost-PhD in English Lit. She is mired in deep unhappiness, almost an extended case of postpartum depression. Sarah chose to stay home with daughter Lucy, who is about three when we meet them, and she refuses to even consider child care; she's doing the stay-at-home mom thing, it seems, because it's the "right" thing to do, not because it's what she really wants. Sarah's depression and misery over the life she's found herself trapped in prevents her from really connecting with Lucy, this "unknowable little person" who is looking to her for love and nurturing. Sarah, to be blunt, is not good at the art of being a stay-at-home-mom -- and the other moms at the park let her know it in those subtle and insidious ways women use to attack each other.