I was at a dinner party recently, and the conversation turned to movies. Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999) came up, accompanied by the usual groans of disapproval and boredom. I felt obligated to say what I usually say in such situations, to say something that results in shock and disbelief: that Eyes Wide Shut is the best movie I've seen since I have been a professional movie critic.

The initial responses to Eyes Wide Shut revolved around the following: 1) The MPAA, their threat of an NC-17 rating and Warner Bros' decision to alter the offending scene by censoring it with "digital figures." 2) Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's marriage and how it was affected by the filming. 3) Kubrick's death in March of 1999 and whether or not the released film was as he intended. 4) The fact that the film was set, but not shot in New York City and didn't look at all like the real thing; that Kubrick was an exile who hadn't actually been to New York for more than three decades. There were other rumors, and specific complaints about certain scenes that colored nearly everyone's opinion, but none of these had anything to do with the movie itself, as it actually exists.

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.

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]

I'm getting ready to interview Todd Field -- one of those deals where the professional in you has to fight the movie-nerd: I'm gonna meet someone who worked with frickin' Kubrick! -- so I'm a little nervy about that. I also dealt with recompression last night -- after a week on Hawaii's Big Island, walking down Market to the Metreon (or, rather, Metreon) to go see Flags of Our Fathers, and the change from tree-lined lava paths to conventioneer-lined city boulevards is a little nervy as well: Where did all these people come from? And, to quote The Old 97's, how soon can they leave? So today I'm sort of mulling over the Eastwood in preparation to write it, and that's a little nervy too -- it's one of those deals where, like The Passion of the Christ or World Trade Center, judging the film is not connected to judging the events it covers, and yet it feels like there's that correlation. And speaking of Jesus, how did I miss the story about Keisha Castle-Hughes, star of The Nativty, getting pregnant? I mean, you can make your own joke here -- Talk about method acting! Or Wow, that's some immaculate promotion! -- but then you realize you're talking about, like, a human being. And that realization makes you nervy. And that you need to cut down on coffee and irony in equal measure.

What's getting you nervy?

J.

Todd Field's adaptation of the novel Little Children by Tom Perrotta posed a lot of problems as he tried to cram the entire novel into a feature film ... so he rewrote it, literally. He hated the ending, and made some major changes, collaborating with Perrotta, who also shares a screenwriting credit on the film. They both worked together to make significant changes in order to adapt the book for into a film.

This isn't the first adaptation for either. Field wrote and directed Oscar-nominated In The Bedroom , which was based on an Andre Dubus short story. However, Dubus died two years before the film came out, which made it impossible for Field to colloborate with him. Perrotta's novel Election was adapted into a movie written by director Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor. Perrotta didn't work on that script, however, since it was the first one of his novels to be optioned, and the movie development went into high gear and was in theaters only a few months after the book came out.

(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.

I have a lot of admiration for screenwriters. They are the unsung heroes of the film business; without their stories, no film would ever be made. Being a writer is hard, anxious and often lonely work. You stare at the blank screen. It waits to be filled, it must be filled, and so you start to write, praying that the end result is worth the effort you give to it. I've started and not finished countless screenplays whose stories just wouldn't go anywhere, written and completed eight full drafts of an absolutely dreadful romantic comedy and, through various writing groups I've belonged to over the years, read a lot of developing screenplays that will, thankfully, never see the light of day. I'm such a geek, in fact, that I often read the scripts for films I love, over and over again, just to feel rhythm of the words on the page, and to get a sense for how those words translated into the finished film on the screen.

As so often happens, Anne Thompson at The Hollywood Reporter has written an astute piece on screenwriting that is so obvious it seems it should be carved into granite above the entrance to every studio in Hollywood: Great writing makes for great movies. The film with which Thompson explores this hypothesis is Stranger Than Fiction, which debuted at Toronto (sadly, I missed it there), and she makes her point about great writing by enumerating how many big stars wanted to be in the film based on the script alone. Some truly great films have come out of a script that speaks its truth to actors so purely and loudly that they simply must see the film get made. They'll work for scale, drop other projects, shuffle their schedules around, all for the sake of that golden opportunity to be in a film so good that it demands to be made, whatever the sacrifice. When critics and cinephiles bemoan the dismal quality of so many films sludging their way out of Hollywood, very often what we are really bemoaning is the lack of originality in storytelling, the lack of passion in penning that story, and mostly, the lack of truth that seems to permeate so many films.

If you're someone who grew up in the 1970s and early '80s, then you definitely know who Jackie Earle Haley is. If only for his performance as Kelly Leak in the Bad News Bears trilogy (and his great turn as Moocher in Peter Yates' Breaking Away), Jack Haley made for a memorable little character actor. After co-starring with a then-unknown actor named Tom Cruise in 1983's Losin' It (which was directed by none other than Curtis Hanson), Haley kind of fell off the Hollywood radar -- in a big way. Aside from a few quick moments in Murder, She Wrote and MacGyver episodes, Jackie Earle Haley could be seen in titles like Dollman, Nemesis and Maniac Cop 3. And unfortunately he didn't work often enough to gain much of a Campbell-type cult following.

So imagine my pleasant surprise when I sat down to watch All the King's Men and noticed that -- hey, isn't that Jackie Earle Haley playing Sean Penn's ultra-tough bodyguard dude?!? How cool to see him back in a movie again! Granted, he didn't have many lines, but it was still great to see an old pal after so many years. And then I headed off to see a dark comedy / suburban drama called Little Children ... and there was Jackie again, this time with a much meatier role: He plays a convicted sex offender who moves into a cushy suburban neighborhood that most definitely doesn't want him around. And the guy gives a great performance in a really difficult role.

So who knows what's next for Mr. Haley? This New York Times article does a fine job of summing up the guy's comeback, and I think that both of the directors involved (Steven Zaillian and Todd Field) deserve a hearty round of praise for pulling Jackie Earle out of obscurity and giving him another shot in the spotlight. Based on the two performances I just witnessed, I suspect Haley will be popping up a lot more frequently in the near future.

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.