MaryAndMax Tagged Articles at Cinematical

This morning, I got up and picked up my press pass at the Headquarters Marriott with a friend of mine, a fellow member of the press; after, we had a sit-down breakfast. And we talked -- about movies, sure, but about apartments and life and buffet etiquette and mutual friends and mutual enemies and their life in New York and my life in California. I laughed; I had a good time, a real conversation with someone I don't get to see often enough. And when it was done, I thought, Well, that was the last time you get to do that for the next ten days.

Because after that I had to double-check my interviews and double-check my screening times and cross-reference the schedule I'd made back in L.A. with the one here in Park City and call PR firms and then go back to the Marriot to pick up the hard ticket I needed for a public screening -- the public screening's on Sunday, but since I knew I had the time to go over there and I knew the PR person was there, better safe than sorry -- and do some writing before getting over to the Eccles for the opening night film Mary and Max and then heading over to the opening night party to shoot TV stand-ups with The Travel Channel and then head back here to write a wrap-up of the first day of Sundance.

Mary and Max, the opening night film of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, traces the 20 year friendship of two eccentric ugly ducklings who accidentally find each other through the mail and subsequently learn to love, feel, want, hurt, dream and accomplish through their letters. Although a tad sappy and heavy-handed at times, Mary and Max fidgets and wiggles its way into our good spirits by the time it reaches its endearing conclusion, as we're left to examine not just the relationships we have in our lives, but the ones we have with ourselves, too.

When we first meet Mary (voiced by Toni Collette) it's 1976 in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, and she's a slightly overweight dweeb-ish 8-year-old with a birthmark the color poo and a lonely life devoid of friends, but full of teasing from the bully at school, abandonment from her alcoholic mother and hobby-obsessed father, and complete isolation from the rest of the world. Mary spends her days eating chocolate and drinking sweet condensed milk, while watching her favorite cartoon show The Noblits -- for which she's created homemade dolls out of each Noblit character because her parents would never buy her such a thing. When she stumbles across a phone book for New York in the library, Mary decides to choose one random name and write this person a letter -- to find out, of course, whether babies, in America -- like in Australia -- are born on the bottom of beer mugs (a fact spoken to her by her mother while boozed up on the cooking Sherry).

Here are some stuff and things for your (very cold, if you're on the East Coast) Wednesday:

-- Nicole Kidman may join Joaquin Phoenix in actor's retirement land real soon as she told press in Australia that she's not too sure she wants to keep going at it. Kidman says, "In terms of my future as an actor and stuff, I don't know. I am in a place in my life where ... I've had some great opportunities and I may just choose to have some more children. I've no idea what is in my future but I am very at peace with where I want to be. There are many things I want to do besides act." Like ... become the next Top Chef? Which is worse for Hollywood: The loss of Kidman or Phoenix ... or do you not care much either way?

-- The 2009 Sundance Film Festival has announced its opening film ... and it's a clay-animated feature starring the voices of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette. Directed by Adam Elliot, Mary and Max "follows a 20-year, pen-pal friendship between an 8-year-old girl in Melbourne and an obese, 42-year-old man in New York." Calm down Dateline, it's only a film! Sundance director Geoffrey Gilmore says, "This portrait of a global friendship between two marvelously dysfunctional people is an exceptionally moving, funny and thought-provoking work." [Variety]

-- If you've been wondering where The Soloist (starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr.) has moved to, Variety reports that the current release date has been pushed to April 24 instead of March 13. In addition to this move, Paramount has shifted Paul Rudd's I Love You, Man from January 16 to March 20.