the good night Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited and Ang Lee's Lust, Caution continued to duel one another for the top spot on the indie box office charts. Both expanded from their extremely limited Manhattan engagements last weekend, with The Darjeeling Limited earning $28,950 on average at 19 locations and Lust, Caution pulling in $21,530 at each of 17 locales, according to estimates by Leonard Klady of Movie City News.

The top earners in limited release were Michael Clayton, the heavily-advertised legal thriller starring George Clooney, which averaged $46,130 at 15 locations, and Blade Runner: The Final Cut, which earned $45,600 at just two locations. In his review of Michael Clayton, our own James Rocchi wrote: "I was hoping for a film along the lines of classic '70s Sidney Lumet or Alan J. Pakula; what I got was something more along the lines of an above-average '90s John Grisham adaptation." After a brief theatrical run, Blade Runner: The Final Cut will hit DVD in various incarnations on December 18.

Among new releases, Justin Lin's Finishing the Game scored the highest, bringing in $14,700 at one theater in Manhattan, while widely-discussed documentaries My Kid Could Paint That (average $3,390 on eight screens), Kurt Cobain: About a Son (average $4,700 on two screens) and Lake of Fire ($2,330 at one theater) struggled to find audiences. Jake Paltrow's The Good Night scored $6,250 each at two locations.

Several specialty releases increased their theater counts and at least three held up well. Sean Penn's Into the Wild expanded onto 135 screens and earned $9,410 on average, artful Western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford rolled onto 61 screens and made $6,610 per screen, and Julie Taymor's musical Across the Universe played well at 364 theaters, averaging $5,030 per screen.

It can't be easy bringing your first film to Sundance as the son and brother of famous film people, but Jake Paltrow -- the son of the late Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Danner, and brother of Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow -- seems to be handling the pressure well. Jake Paltrow's feature writing and directing debut, The Good Night, starring Martin Freeman, Danny DeVito, Penelope Cruz, and Gwyneth Paltrow made its premiere here at Sundance 2007. Jake very kindly took time out of his busy Sundance schedule to sit down with Cinematical to chat about his film.

Cinematical: What inspired you to make and write this film?

Jake Paltrow: I woke up one day and had the majority of the story in my head, and not so much because I had a dream about the story but because I felt that kind of emotion that everyone's experienced where it's like, if I could just have had five more minutes in that dream ...

Cinematical: Sure, I have that happen all the time where I wake up and just want to go back in and find out how the dream ends.

JP: Right, that's the thing, a lot of people do, and I felt we hadn't seen that. And so I worked on the outline and after a few days I felt I had a story and it that it worked.

More after the jump ...

First-time feature director Jake Paltrow explores the line between dreams and reality in The Good Night, which had its premiere at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. Gary Sheller (Martin Freeman), a British ex-pop star living in New York City, is stuck in a stagnant relationship with his long-term girlfriend, Dora (Gwyneth Paltrow). Gary's relationship with Dora is adrift in a sea of ambivalence, and he feels Dora doesn't support him emotionally . Gary and Dora live in the same apartment, share the same bed, but there might as well be an ocean between them; the bridge of communication seems to have long since shut down. Meanwhile, Gary's best friend and former bandmate Paul (Simon Pegg) works for an ad agency and has become Gary's boss, while Gary is relegated to writing jingles that "sound like 'Cheers'."

Then one night, Gary dreams of Anna (Penélope Cruz), a strikingly beautiful woman who exists for the sole purpose of telling Gary how wonderful he is, encouraging him in his music, and fulfilling his sexual fantasies. The trouble is, Gary finds himself more and more not wanting to leave the dream state where he can be with Anna. She makes him feel better about himself, and he finds that he wants to be with her all the time. He seeks out lucid dreaming "expert" Mel (Danny DeVito), who teaches Gary how to enter his dream world any time he wants. But how can Gary ever hope to save his relationship with Dora if he lives more and more in his dreams?

We're just over six weeks away from the Sundance Film Festival, and it's shaping up to be a fun fest. I love film festivals, and thankfully, haven't yet gotten so jaded that I don't get excited when fest lineups are announced (seriously, if I ever get to the point that I'm not excited about the possibility of finding a wonderful film or two a fest, someone please just shoot me and put me out of my misery). We've already told you about the competition films and the Midnight offerings, which Scott Weinberg will be covering extensively for us at Sundance, once he recovers from his deep disappointment at the lack of horror there this year.

Now it's time to unwrap the big, shiny packages labled "Premiere", "Spectrum" and "New Frontier" and take a peek at what's inside ...