Snow Angels Tagged Articles at Cinematical

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

With awards season in full bore, I thought I would go back and look at some of the year's most wonderful sleepers, the films that "fell through the cracks" and are not appearing in awards lists or on top ten lists -- one reason being that they came out earlier in the year and were not issued on "for your consideration" Academy DVD screeners. I'd like to start with one of the most overlooked great films of the year, one that was virtually ignored by both the press and the public: The Dark Knight.

Just kidding. Let's start by looking at The Violin, which is very much worth tracking down. 2006 was the year of the much-publicized "Mexican New Wave," and most writers focused on three major films (Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men and Babel), while passing over of the terrific smaller ones, like Duck Season and Battle in Heaven. Directed by Francisco Vargas, The Violin was made at around the same time, but didn't surface until 2007 in film festivals, and then early in 2008 for a tiny theatrical release. At the risk of cheapening the film with a cursory plot summary, it's the story of an aged, one-handed man who -- more or less -- helps his guerrilla son by serenading a sensitive but sinister military captain (he has to strap the violin bow to the stump of his hand). Vargas shoots in gorgeous black-and-white, cannily switching between hand-held and still shots.

Near the end of last week, Defamer spread the rumor that Picturehouse, once the indie arm of New Line Cinema and currently dangling from the edge of the hulking entity known as Warner Bros., has its days numbered. Now that New Line is history and Warners, like many studios, has faced increasing cutbacks, it may give short shrift to the shingles responsible for handling artier fare. Along with Picturehouse, this also includes Warner Independent Pictures, whose recent release slate includes David Gordon Green's magnificent Snow Angels.

Defamer suggested that Picturehouse president Bob Berney might wind up at WIP or head up a new, currently anonymous company. On Friday, Variety's Anne Thompson put it in more coherent terms: It appears quite likely that WIP and Picturehouse will merge together as a single company, with current WIP president Polly Cohen working alongside Berney. Whatever happens, let's just hope that the final result still leaves room for the sharp selection of independent and foreign titles that Picturehouse has handled since its birth three years ago. Defamer points out that Marion Cotillard's unexpected Oscar win for La Vie en Rose matters less than the flop of Run, Fatboy, Run, while the John Simpson-directed horror film Amusement might get dumped on DVD. It was just last year, however, that the company helped edgy fare like The Orphanage and Rocket Science get the sort of release most studios would never try. Let's hope that bravery lives on, somewhere.

Not many people care to admit it, but Hollywood is run by fear. Fear is an emotion generated by things that are not known or understood, and in the movie business, no one ever knows what's going to happen. (William Goldman was right when he said, "Nobody Knows Anything.") All those accountants, producers, publicists, entertainment TV shows, ad campaigns, etc. are all an attempt to get a handle on the unknown, an attempt to control the uncontrollable. Anything can happen. The world's biggest movie star can jump up and down on a couch and suddenly become a weirdo outcast. Or the star of a dismal turkey like Showgirls can turn around and find herself cast in a Woody Allen film. This fear, in essence, is why so many movies are so bad. The more investors and business people try to control their investment, the more they clamp down on it, and the more it gets smothered.

See, movies can live and breathe like an organic life form, but they have to have a chance. If brave producers step back and let the movie come to life in the hands of a genuine artist, they could wind up with something extraordinary like Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men (229 screens), a film that somehow pleased critics both highbrow and middlebrow, won a handful of Oscars and has nearly grossed $75 million. This film has already entered the cultural canon as a classic of cinema. More or less the same can be said of Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (224 screens), which, having lost the Oscar for Best Picture, is now in a position of being an underrated underdog. But those are exceptions to the rule. No one is immune to the fear: a few years back the Coen Brothers teamed up with sleazy producer Brian Grazer, of all people, and came up with their first dud, Intolerable Cruelty.

Faced with the prospect of checking out several new releases or luxuriating in a new print of Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt, audiences overwhelmingly chose Godard's 1963 classic. Playing at a single location (Film Forum in New York City), Contempt earned $13,100 over the weekend, according to estimates compiled by Leonard Klady of Movie City News. Distributor Rialto Pictures has the film booked at Film Forum until March 27, and then perhaps will tour the print, though no details are provided on their site.

Indie holdovers also did better than the newest offerings. David Gordon Green's Snow Angels (Warner Independent) made $8,666 per screen at three theaters in its second week out, per Box Office Mojo, while Oscar winner The Counterfeiters (Sony Pictures Classics) pulled in $6,263 per-screen at 72 locations in its fourth week. Ira Sachs' Married Life (Sony Pictures Classics), Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park (IFC) and Jacques Rivette's The Duchess of Langeais (IFC) also performed well; the first two in their second week of release, and the latter in its fourth week.

Michael Haneke's remake of his own Funny Games (Warner Independent) did very little business, grabbing just $1,800 per screen at 289 engagements, which is disappointing since our own James Rocchi called it "a great film ... it's hard to say which Funny Games stirs up more -- your guts, or your brain." Meanwhile, Bill Maher's Sleepwalking (Overture) was right behind at $1,640 per screen at 30 locations. In the review by Cinematical's Jeffrey M. Anderson, he concluded: "Worst of all is that title, which is exactly the kind of title that filmmakers should stay away from if they want to avoid a fairly obvious one-word film review."

With each picture since his 2000 debut George Washington, David Gordon Green has taken at least a small step backward. That gradual regression becomes a full-fledged precipitous decline with Snow Angels, a film in which the director (working from a novel by Stewart O'Nan) flails about in search of poetry, and comes up with only trivial stylistic flourishes that compound his story's overwrought faux-naturalism. Considering the lyrical grace of his heralded first feature, Green's devolution from one of American cinema's most promising talents to his current status as just another middling indie lightweight is tough to fathom. Yet with his latest, Green misses the mark in so many respects -- from a multi-strand plot devoid of insight, to performances that are generally overcooked, to a mise-en-scène that comes up largely empty in the department of inspired grace and beauty -- that it makes one wonder if his upcoming foray into director-for-hire work (with this summer's raunchy stoner comedy The Pineapple Express) isn't a shrewd attempt to escape his own increasingly faulty auteurist instincts.

Our friends over at indieWIRE continue their ongoing series of discussions with filmmakers at the Apple Store Soho by bringing in director David Gordon Green (George Washington, All the Real Girls) to show scenes from and discuss his latest film, Snow Angels, which opens March 7. Snow Angels, which stars Sam Rockwell, Kate Beckinsale, Amy Sedaris, Olivia Thirlby, and Griffin Dunne, is about two romantic relationships -- one just beginning, and one beginning to end. If you live in NYC, this should be a great filmmaker discussion to check out. The event happens Wednesday, March 5 from 7:00-8:00PM at the Apple Store Soho, 103 Prince St.; seating is first-come, first-served, so you might want to get there early.

In the meantime, you can read our review of Snow Angels from Sundance 2007, and listen to James Rocchi's interview with David Gordon Green from that fest.

After screening at Sundance last year, a trailer for Snow Angels has finally hit the net, which you can check out above. The latest from indie filmmaker David Gordon Green, Angels follows his small-town formula, but this time, with dueling stories of happiness and darkness. On the one hand, there's the burgeoning love story between Michael Angarano (the cutie from flicks like Almost Famous and Sky High) and Olivia Thirlby (who you might recognize as Juno's helpful best friend). On the other, there's a complicated familial story focusing on Kate Beckinsale, her estranged husband Sam Rockwell, and their young daughter. Making the whole deal even more tasty -- there's also the likes of Griffin Dunne, Amy Sedaris, and Nicky Katt.

If the trailer is any indication of the film, it should be a great cinematic experience. (But be warned: it does give a lot of detail into the film, as many trailers love to do.) However, if you need more of a reason to go see it, you can check out James Rocchi's glowing review from Sundance, as well as his interview with Green. On the flipside, you can check out Kevin Kelly's review, which was a bit less praising.

[via Empire]

Despite the seemingly never-ending delay of The Assassination of Jesse James by The Coward Robert Ford, there is still plenty of news for fans of Sam Rockwell. The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Rockwell, along with Toby Jones and Matthew Macfadyen have signed on for the film version of the Peter Morgan play Frost/Nixon. The play is based on a series of television interviews between disgraced president Richard Nixon and David Frost that took place in 1977, in which Frost managed to get Nixon to admit to his role in the Watergate break-in. Last year, Christopher reported that Ron Howard was set to direct, and the script was adapted by Morgan himself. Also returning to the project from the stage version are Frank Langella (Nixon) and Michael Sheen (Frost). Rockwell will be playing James Reston Jr., Frost's head researcher.

This latest announcement came just a few weeks after Monika reported that Rockwell had signed on to star in the Chuck Palahniuk adaptation Choke. Frost/Nixon is set to start production this summer, which might cause a bit of a tight schedule for Rockwell since Choke was reportedly set to start later this month. Rockwell also has the upcoming thriller Joshua set for release this July, and Snow Angels with Kate Beckinsale later this year. So even though Jesse James might still be in limbo, it doesn't look like Rockwell is having any trouble finding work.

One of my favorite living directors, David Gordon Green, is in final negotiations to direct the adaptation of John Grisham's The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, which we told you about in December when it was set up with George Clooney's and Grant Heslov's production company. The film will be distributed by Warner Independent Pictures, which also announced it had picked up distribution duties for Green's latest, Snow Angels. That film will be released sometime next year (why must they wait so long?), while The Innocent Man may take awhile to begin. Green just started filming the stoner comedy The Pineapple Express (Seth Rogen and James Franco reunited!) and he has also written an adaptation of Brad Land's memoir Goat, which is in the pre-production stage, so it isn't clear where Green will fit the Grisham project in.

It is interesting to see such an amazing writer as is Green tackle more projects that aren't original concepts, especially since I haven't yet seen his first adapted work (Snow Angels). Our own James Rocchi wrote of Snow Angels that, "It's still a film that's identifiably his, even as it has the potential to turn him from a lesser-known indie director into an A-level dramatist." That is reassuring enough for me. I do have worries that Green will be too limited to confined spaces like prison cells and courtrooms with the Grisham, but I'm just being a brat because I love his outdoor cinematography so much. Additionally I continue to be saddened every time I hear of another project Green becomes attached to that isn't A Confederacy of Dunces.

Snow Angels is one of those films that you run into frequently at Sundance: a movie that has great moments in it, but doesn't hold together as a whole experience. This was unfortunate because this was one of the films I was most looking forward to seeing at Sundance. Based on the novel by Stewart O'Nan, writer and director David Gordon Green does a great job of capturing snapshots of life in a small town, but overall it misses the mark emotionally.

This film has a disturbing event that serves as a pivotal moment and involves a small child, but it hasn't been talked about much due to the controversy surrounding Hounddog, which might unfortunately work to its disadvantage. Any publicity is good publicity, and hopefully the current media windstorm around the Dakota Fanning film won't hurt this one, but chances are that if you mention "the film at Sundance with the young girl in it," people will think about the other one, and not this.