Voltage Pictures has acquired foreign rights to Stallion Media's horror pic HybridHybrid," directed by Eric Valette (One Missed Call). Oded Fehr (Resident Evil: Apocalypse/Extinction, The Mummy) and Shannon Beckner topline the pic about a female mechanic in a Chicago police garage who spends a night of terror with a hybrid car. Stallion Media partners Oliver Hengst and Elizabeth Wang-Lee are producing with Kevin DeWalt of Minds Eye Entertainment and Tim Kwok of Convergence Entertainment. Alex Leung (Studio 407), Tim McGrath (Picture Park) and Christian Arnold-Beutel (Tadora) will exec produce. The pic's budgeted at more than $10 million. Shooting will begin this week around Regina, Saskatchewan. "Hybrid" is written by Neal Marshall Stevens ("Thirteen Ghosts").
- 3/29/2008
- bloody-disgusting.com
This review was written for the festival screening of "First Snow".Santa Barbara International Film Festival
Blending noirish mystery and big questions about fate in an evocative Southwestern landscape, "First Snow" is a first-rate psychological thriller. Guy Pearce, no newcomer to playing a man obsessed, adds another exquisite performance to his resume as Jimmy Starks, the tightly wound Type A personality who unravels trying to forestall his death foretold. Dealing with nothing less than our awareness of mortality, the film is a genre riff with something to say. Every scene of the vivid drama pulses with the question of how we choose to live -- whether we treat that awareness as a gift or a curse.
First-time helmer Mark Fergus and his writing partner, Hawk Ostby -- two of the credited scripters on "Children of Men" and the upcoming "Iron Man" -- use elegant storytelling to craft an involving and provocative tale. Upping the impact are the production team's ace contributions, particularly Eric Edwards' atmospheric widescreen lensing of New Mexico locations and Cliff Martinez's spare, pulse-quickening score. After the film opens March 23 in New York and Los Angeles, positive reviews and word-of-mouth will pave its road to other art-house markets.
The contemporary Southwest, with its big sky, untouched Americana and faux-adobe housing developments, is the perfect setting for a story in which nostalgia is the source of both hope and doom. Pearce's Jimmy is a longhaired rebel in a suit, an Albuquerque flooring salesman with plans to make a small fortune selling vintage Wurlitzer jukeboxes. Waiting for his car to be repaired in a desolate high-desert town -- really just a collection of trailers and vending stands -- he kills time buying a $10 fortune from Vacaro (J.K. Simmons). The laconic fortuneteller assures Jimmy that his business venture will succeed, but when a momentary seizure takes hold of him during the reading, he won't explain to Jimmy what he saw that disturbed him so.
Back home, Jimmy finds the good things Vacaro predicted coming true, one by one. But seeing the fortuneteller's abilities validated, Jimmy can't rest until he knows the details of the flip side. Back at Vacaro's trailer, he insists on a second reading, and the reluctant man tells him that his time will run out with the first snow.
Thus begins the jangle-nerved Jimmy's restless search for the cause of his impending demise. The world becomes charged with omen. A medical checkup detects a possible heart problem. He senses ill intent from Andy (Rick Gonzalez), recently fired from the flooring company. In the static on the other end of persistent phone calls to his home, he hears something threatening. But it's when he learns that an old friend has been released from prison that Jimmy believes he has found the source of that dark blotch on his lifeline. Trying to prevent a fatal encounter with Vince, the single-minded Jimmy indirectly initiates contact with the troubled man and sets off a series of cataclysmic events. Along the way, he confides not in his increasingly alienated girlfriend, Deirdre (Piper Perabo), but in his skeptical co-worker and pal Ed (an excellent William Fichtner).
The actors, all strong, give the lyrical but never artificial dialogue the ring of life. Pearce is riveting as a go-getter who finds himself trapped between a murky past and a future defined by ambition. And well before his nemesis Vince appears onscreen, Shea Whigham makes the character a menacing presence in quietly chilling phone messages and conversations with Jimmy. Even so, the question of Jimmy's sanity is never far from the surface, and Fichtner is especially enjoyable as a foil for the unhinged protagonist.
FIRST SNOW
Yari Film Group Releasing and El Camino Pictures present a Furst Films and Kustom Entertainment production in association with MHF Zweite Academy Film
Credits:
Director: Mark Fergus
Screenwriters: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby
Producers: Bryan Furst, Sean Furst, Tom Lassally, Robin Meisinger, Bob Yari,
Executive producers: Oliver Hengst, Ernst August Schnieder
Director of Photography: Eric Edwards
Production designer: Devorah Herbert
Music: Cliff Martinez
Co-producers: Chris Miller, Todd Williams, Wolfgang Schamburg
Costume designer: Lahly Poore-Ericson
Editor: Jay Cassidy
Cast:
Jimmy Starks: Guy Pearce
Deirdre: Piper Perabo
Ed: William Fichtner
Vacaro: J.K. Simmons
Vincent: Shea Whigham
Andy Lopez: Rick Gonzalez
Maggie: Jackie Burroughs
Running time -- 102 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Blending noirish mystery and big questions about fate in an evocative Southwestern landscape, "First Snow" is a first-rate psychological thriller. Guy Pearce, no newcomer to playing a man obsessed, adds another exquisite performance to his resume as Jimmy Starks, the tightly wound Type A personality who unravels trying to forestall his death foretold. Dealing with nothing less than our awareness of mortality, the film is a genre riff with something to say. Every scene of the vivid drama pulses with the question of how we choose to live -- whether we treat that awareness as a gift or a curse.
First-time helmer Mark Fergus and his writing partner, Hawk Ostby -- two of the credited scripters on "Children of Men" and the upcoming "Iron Man" -- use elegant storytelling to craft an involving and provocative tale. Upping the impact are the production team's ace contributions, particularly Eric Edwards' atmospheric widescreen lensing of New Mexico locations and Cliff Martinez's spare, pulse-quickening score. After the film opens March 23 in New York and Los Angeles, positive reviews and word-of-mouth will pave its road to other art-house markets.
The contemporary Southwest, with its big sky, untouched Americana and faux-adobe housing developments, is the perfect setting for a story in which nostalgia is the source of both hope and doom. Pearce's Jimmy is a longhaired rebel in a suit, an Albuquerque flooring salesman with plans to make a small fortune selling vintage Wurlitzer jukeboxes. Waiting for his car to be repaired in a desolate high-desert town -- really just a collection of trailers and vending stands -- he kills time buying a $10 fortune from Vacaro (J.K. Simmons). The laconic fortuneteller assures Jimmy that his business venture will succeed, but when a momentary seizure takes hold of him during the reading, he won't explain to Jimmy what he saw that disturbed him so.
Back home, Jimmy finds the good things Vacaro predicted coming true, one by one. But seeing the fortuneteller's abilities validated, Jimmy can't rest until he knows the details of the flip side. Back at Vacaro's trailer, he insists on a second reading, and the reluctant man tells him that his time will run out with the first snow.
Thus begins the jangle-nerved Jimmy's restless search for the cause of his impending demise. The world becomes charged with omen. A medical checkup detects a possible heart problem. He senses ill intent from Andy (Rick Gonzalez), recently fired from the flooring company. In the static on the other end of persistent phone calls to his home, he hears something threatening. But it's when he learns that an old friend has been released from prison that Jimmy believes he has found the source of that dark blotch on his lifeline. Trying to prevent a fatal encounter with Vince, the single-minded Jimmy indirectly initiates contact with the troubled man and sets off a series of cataclysmic events. Along the way, he confides not in his increasingly alienated girlfriend, Deirdre (Piper Perabo), but in his skeptical co-worker and pal Ed (an excellent William Fichtner).
The actors, all strong, give the lyrical but never artificial dialogue the ring of life. Pearce is riveting as a go-getter who finds himself trapped between a murky past and a future defined by ambition. And well before his nemesis Vince appears onscreen, Shea Whigham makes the character a menacing presence in quietly chilling phone messages and conversations with Jimmy. Even so, the question of Jimmy's sanity is never far from the surface, and Fichtner is especially enjoyable as a foil for the unhinged protagonist.
FIRST SNOW
Yari Film Group Releasing and El Camino Pictures present a Furst Films and Kustom Entertainment production in association with MHF Zweite Academy Film
Credits:
Director: Mark Fergus
Screenwriters: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby
Producers: Bryan Furst, Sean Furst, Tom Lassally, Robin Meisinger, Bob Yari,
Executive producers: Oliver Hengst, Ernst August Schnieder
Director of Photography: Eric Edwards
Production designer: Devorah Herbert
Music: Cliff Martinez
Co-producers: Chris Miller, Todd Williams, Wolfgang Schamburg
Costume designer: Lahly Poore-Ericson
Editor: Jay Cassidy
Cast:
Jimmy Starks: Guy Pearce
Deirdre: Piper Perabo
Ed: William Fichtner
Vacaro: J.K. Simmons
Vincent: Shea Whigham
Andy Lopez: Rick Gonzalez
Maggie: Jackie Burroughs
Running time -- 102 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Santa Barbara International Film Festival
Blending noirish mystery and big questions about fate in an evocative Southwestern landscape, "First Snow" is a first-rate psychological thriller. Guy Pearce, no newcomer to playing a man obsessed, adds another exquisite performance to his resume as Jimmy Starks, the tightly wound Type A personality who unravels trying to forestall his death foretold. Dealing with nothing less than our awareness of mortality, the film is a genre riff with something to say. Every scene of the vivid drama pulses with the question of how we choose to live -- whether we treat that awareness as a gift or a curse.
First-time helmer Mark Fergus and his writing partner, Hawk Ostby -- two of the credited scripters on "Children of Men" and the upcoming "Iron Man" -- use elegant storytelling to craft an involving and provocative tale. Upping the impact are the production team's ace contributions, particularly Eric Edwards' atmospheric widescreen lensing of New Mexico locations and Cliff Martinez's spare, pulse-quickening score. After the film opens March 23 in New York and Los Angeles, positive reviews and word-of-mouth will pave its road to other art-house markets.
The contemporary Southwest, with its big sky, untouched Americana and faux-adobe housing developments, is the perfect setting for a story in which nostalgia is the source of both hope and doom. Pearce's Jimmy is a longhaired rebel in a suit, an Albuquerque flooring salesman with plans to make a small fortune selling vintage Wurlitzer jukeboxes. Waiting for his car to be repaired in a desolate high-desert town -- really just a collection of trailers and vending stands -- he kills time buying a $10 fortune from Vacaro (J.K. Simmons). The laconic fortuneteller assures Jimmy that his business venture will succeed, but when a momentary seizure takes hold of him during the reading, he won't explain to Jimmy what he saw that disturbed him so.
Back home, Jimmy finds the good things Vacaro predicted coming true, one by one. But seeing the fortuneteller's abilities validated, Jimmy can't rest until he knows the details of the flip side. Back at Vacaro's trailer, he insists on a second reading, and the reluctant man tells him that his time will run out with the first snow.
Thus begins the jangle-nerved Jimmy's restless search for the cause of his impending demise. The world becomes charged with omen. A medical checkup detects a possible heart problem. He senses ill intent from Andy (Rick Gonzalez), recently fired from the flooring company. In the static on the other end of persistent phone calls to his home, he hears something threatening. But it's when he learns that an old friend has been released from prison that Jimmy believes he has found the source of that dark blotch on his lifeline. Trying to prevent a fatal encounter with Vince, the single-minded Jimmy indirectly initiates contact with the troubled man and sets off a series of cataclysmic events. Along the way, he confides not in his increasingly alienated girlfriend, Deirdre (Piper Perabo), but in his skeptical co-worker and pal Ed (an excellent William Fichtner).
The actors, all strong, give the lyrical but never artificial dialogue the ring of life. Pearce is riveting as a go-getter who finds himself trapped between a murky past and a future defined by ambition. And well before his nemesis Vince appears onscreen, Shea Whigham makes the character a menacing presence in quietly chilling phone messages and conversations with Jimmy. Even so, the question of Jimmy's sanity is never far from the surface, and Fichtner is especially enjoyable as a foil for the unhinged protagonist.
FIRST SNOW
Yari Film Group Releasing and El Camino Pictures present a Furst Films and Kustom Entertainment production in association with MHF Zweite Academy Film
Credits:
Director: Mark Fergus
Screenwriters: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby
Producers: Bryan Furst, Sean Furst, Tom Lassally, Robin Meisinger, Bob Yari,
Executive producers: Oliver Hengst, Ernst August Schnieder
Director of Photography: Eric Edwards
Production designer: Devorah Herbert
Music: Cliff Martinez
Co-producers: Chris Miller, Todd Williams, Wolfgang Schamburg
Costume designer: Lahly Poore-Ericson
Editor: Jay Cassidy
Cast:
Jimmy Starks: Guy Pearce
Deirdre: Piper Perabo
Ed: William Fichtner
Vacaro: J.K. Simmons
Vincent: Shea Whigham
Andy Lopez: Rick Gonzalez
Maggie: Jackie Burroughs
Running time -- 102 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Blending noirish mystery and big questions about fate in an evocative Southwestern landscape, "First Snow" is a first-rate psychological thriller. Guy Pearce, no newcomer to playing a man obsessed, adds another exquisite performance to his resume as Jimmy Starks, the tightly wound Type A personality who unravels trying to forestall his death foretold. Dealing with nothing less than our awareness of mortality, the film is a genre riff with something to say. Every scene of the vivid drama pulses with the question of how we choose to live -- whether we treat that awareness as a gift or a curse.
First-time helmer Mark Fergus and his writing partner, Hawk Ostby -- two of the credited scripters on "Children of Men" and the upcoming "Iron Man" -- use elegant storytelling to craft an involving and provocative tale. Upping the impact are the production team's ace contributions, particularly Eric Edwards' atmospheric widescreen lensing of New Mexico locations and Cliff Martinez's spare, pulse-quickening score. After the film opens March 23 in New York and Los Angeles, positive reviews and word-of-mouth will pave its road to other art-house markets.
The contemporary Southwest, with its big sky, untouched Americana and faux-adobe housing developments, is the perfect setting for a story in which nostalgia is the source of both hope and doom. Pearce's Jimmy is a longhaired rebel in a suit, an Albuquerque flooring salesman with plans to make a small fortune selling vintage Wurlitzer jukeboxes. Waiting for his car to be repaired in a desolate high-desert town -- really just a collection of trailers and vending stands -- he kills time buying a $10 fortune from Vacaro (J.K. Simmons). The laconic fortuneteller assures Jimmy that his business venture will succeed, but when a momentary seizure takes hold of him during the reading, he won't explain to Jimmy what he saw that disturbed him so.
Back home, Jimmy finds the good things Vacaro predicted coming true, one by one. But seeing the fortuneteller's abilities validated, Jimmy can't rest until he knows the details of the flip side. Back at Vacaro's trailer, he insists on a second reading, and the reluctant man tells him that his time will run out with the first snow.
Thus begins the jangle-nerved Jimmy's restless search for the cause of his impending demise. The world becomes charged with omen. A medical checkup detects a possible heart problem. He senses ill intent from Andy (Rick Gonzalez), recently fired from the flooring company. In the static on the other end of persistent phone calls to his home, he hears something threatening. But it's when he learns that an old friend has been released from prison that Jimmy believes he has found the source of that dark blotch on his lifeline. Trying to prevent a fatal encounter with Vince, the single-minded Jimmy indirectly initiates contact with the troubled man and sets off a series of cataclysmic events. Along the way, he confides not in his increasingly alienated girlfriend, Deirdre (Piper Perabo), but in his skeptical co-worker and pal Ed (an excellent William Fichtner).
The actors, all strong, give the lyrical but never artificial dialogue the ring of life. Pearce is riveting as a go-getter who finds himself trapped between a murky past and a future defined by ambition. And well before his nemesis Vince appears onscreen, Shea Whigham makes the character a menacing presence in quietly chilling phone messages and conversations with Jimmy. Even so, the question of Jimmy's sanity is never far from the surface, and Fichtner is especially enjoyable as a foil for the unhinged protagonist.
FIRST SNOW
Yari Film Group Releasing and El Camino Pictures present a Furst Films and Kustom Entertainment production in association with MHF Zweite Academy Film
Credits:
Director: Mark Fergus
Screenwriters: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby
Producers: Bryan Furst, Sean Furst, Tom Lassally, Robin Meisinger, Bob Yari,
Executive producers: Oliver Hengst, Ernst August Schnieder
Director of Photography: Eric Edwards
Production designer: Devorah Herbert
Music: Cliff Martinez
Co-producers: Chris Miller, Todd Williams, Wolfgang Schamburg
Costume designer: Lahly Poore-Ericson
Editor: Jay Cassidy
Cast:
Jimmy Starks: Guy Pearce
Deirdre: Piper Perabo
Ed: William Fichtner
Vacaro: J.K. Simmons
Vincent: Shea Whigham
Andy Lopez: Rick Gonzalez
Maggie: Jackie Burroughs
Running time -- 102 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
This review was written for the festival screening of "The Good Night".PARK CITY -- There is a fine idea for a romantic comedy in Jake Paltrow's "The Good Night" but the writer-director, in his debut feature, never develops it much beyond the idea stage. An odd casting choice and awkward methods of exposition get the film off to a halting start. Then Paltrow compounds the erratic storytelling by making every character thoroughly unlikable. Actually pathetic would be a better adjective since the film is about male-female relationships and everyone seems to have lost the manual.
Burdened with a nothing title and coming off like a third-rate Woody Allen movie, "The Good Night" must pin its boxoffice appeal on the casting of Jake's sister, Gwyneth, and Penelope Cruz. That may not be enough since neither actress has a worthy role.
Gary (Martin Freeman), a British musician of modest talent, is miserable with his life despite having a beautiful live-in girlfriend Dora (Paltrow) and a stable career in New York. He retreats into his dreams where the girl of his dreams is Anna (Cruz), a fantasy figure that demands nothing but non-stop lovemaking.
Despairing over her deteriorating relationship with Gary, Dora flees to a work assignment in Europe. This allows Gary To make elaborate preparations for his dream life, sound proofing the bedroom and cutting off all exterior light. He even consults a dream guru (Danny DeVito in a wasted role).
Paltrow throws in complications in the marital life of Gary's best friend and colleague Paul (Simon Pegg) that add little to the story. Then he hits upon one potentially interesting twist. Gary discovers that Anna actually does exist: She is a supermodel with whom Paul manages to hook Gary up. Predictably, things go badly.
Freeman does not make a very interesting or resourceful leading man. All too often he seems to be channeling the late Dudley Moore doing an imitation of Woody Allen. The women in the film are lovely to behold, but their male writer-director hasn't dug deep enough into their characters to see what makes them tick. Despite the top-billed glamour queens, this is a very male-centric movie.
The screenplay feels like a first draft with ideas and characters still in raw form. The movie begins in the mode Allen's "Husbands and Wives" with interviews establishing several back stories. Then the film virtually abandons this methodology and few of the interviewees play any role in the story.
Characters argue incessantly about very little, as if Paltrow is still trying to figure them out. No one captures your sympathy, certainly not a guy who dreams his life away or his philandering best friend or the lover who denigrates her boyfriend's talents or the fantasy figure who turns out to be a shallow bitch.
The film, shot mostly in London and nearby Ealing Studios but supposedly taking place in Manhattan, has no distinctive visual flair in its depiction of either the real or dream life. The film just makes you sleepy.
THE GOOD NIGHT
An Inferno Distribution and Tempesta Films presentation of an MHF Zweite Academy Film production in association with Grosvenor Park Media
Credits:
Writer/director: Jake Paltrow
Producers: Donna Gigliotti, Bill Johnson
Executive producers: Jim Seibel, Robert Whitehouse, Oliver Hengst, Ernst-August Schneider
Director of photography: Giles Nuttgens
Production designer: Eve Stewart
Music: Alec Puro
Costume designer: Verity Hawkes
Editor: Rick Lawley
Cast:
Gary: Martin Freeman
Dora: Gwyneth Paltrow: Anna: Penelope Cruz
Paul: Simon Pegg
Mel: Danny DeVito
Running time -- 93 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Burdened with a nothing title and coming off like a third-rate Woody Allen movie, "The Good Night" must pin its boxoffice appeal on the casting of Jake's sister, Gwyneth, and Penelope Cruz. That may not be enough since neither actress has a worthy role.
Gary (Martin Freeman), a British musician of modest talent, is miserable with his life despite having a beautiful live-in girlfriend Dora (Paltrow) and a stable career in New York. He retreats into his dreams where the girl of his dreams is Anna (Cruz), a fantasy figure that demands nothing but non-stop lovemaking.
Despairing over her deteriorating relationship with Gary, Dora flees to a work assignment in Europe. This allows Gary To make elaborate preparations for his dream life, sound proofing the bedroom and cutting off all exterior light. He even consults a dream guru (Danny DeVito in a wasted role).
Paltrow throws in complications in the marital life of Gary's best friend and colleague Paul (Simon Pegg) that add little to the story. Then he hits upon one potentially interesting twist. Gary discovers that Anna actually does exist: She is a supermodel with whom Paul manages to hook Gary up. Predictably, things go badly.
Freeman does not make a very interesting or resourceful leading man. All too often he seems to be channeling the late Dudley Moore doing an imitation of Woody Allen. The women in the film are lovely to behold, but their male writer-director hasn't dug deep enough into their characters to see what makes them tick. Despite the top-billed glamour queens, this is a very male-centric movie.
The screenplay feels like a first draft with ideas and characters still in raw form. The movie begins in the mode Allen's "Husbands and Wives" with interviews establishing several back stories. Then the film virtually abandons this methodology and few of the interviewees play any role in the story.
Characters argue incessantly about very little, as if Paltrow is still trying to figure them out. No one captures your sympathy, certainly not a guy who dreams his life away or his philandering best friend or the lover who denigrates her boyfriend's talents or the fantasy figure who turns out to be a shallow bitch.
The film, shot mostly in London and nearby Ealing Studios but supposedly taking place in Manhattan, has no distinctive visual flair in its depiction of either the real or dream life. The film just makes you sleepy.
THE GOOD NIGHT
An Inferno Distribution and Tempesta Films presentation of an MHF Zweite Academy Film production in association with Grosvenor Park Media
Credits:
Writer/director: Jake Paltrow
Producers: Donna Gigliotti, Bill Johnson
Executive producers: Jim Seibel, Robert Whitehouse, Oliver Hengst, Ernst-August Schneider
Director of photography: Giles Nuttgens
Production designer: Eve Stewart
Music: Alec Puro
Costume designer: Verity Hawkes
Editor: Rick Lawley
Cast:
Gary: Martin Freeman
Dora: Gwyneth Paltrow: Anna: Penelope Cruz
Paul: Simon Pegg
Mel: Danny DeVito
Running time -- 93 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 1/29/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
This review was written for the festival screening of "The Good Night".PARK CITY -- There is a fine idea for a romantic comedy in Jake Paltrow's "The Good Night" but the writer-director, in his debut feature, never develops it much beyond the idea stage. An odd casting choice and awkward methods of exposition get the film off to a halting start. Then Paltrow compounds the erratic storytelling by making every character thoroughly unlikable. Actually pathetic would be a better adjective since the film is about male-female relationships and everyone seems to have lost the manual.
Burdened with a nothing title and coming off like a third-rate Woody Allen movie, "The Good Night" must pin its boxoffice appeal on the casting of Jake's sister, Gwyneth, and Penelope Cruz. That may not be enough since neither actress has a worthy role.
Gary (Martin Freeman), a British musician of modest talent, is miserable with his life despite having a beautiful live-in girlfriend Dora (Paltrow) and a stable career in New York. He retreats into his dreams where the girl of his dreams is Anna (Cruz), a fantasy figure that demands nothing but non-stop lovemaking.
Despairing over her deteriorating relationship with Gary, Dora flees to a work assignment in Europe. This allows Gary To make elaborate preparations for his dream life, sound proofing the bedroom and cutting off all exterior light. He even consults a dream guru (Danny DeVito in a wasted role).
Paltrow throws in complications in the marital life of Gary's best friend and colleague Paul (Simon Pegg) that add little to the story. Then he hits upon one potentially interesting twist. Gary discovers that Anna actually does exist: She is a supermodel with whom Paul manages to hook Gary up. Predictably, things go badly.
Freeman does not make a very interesting or resourceful leading man. All too often he seems to be channeling the late Dudley Moore doing an imitation of Woody Allen. The women in the film are lovely to behold, but their male writer-director hasn't dug deep enough into their characters to see what makes them tick. Despite the top-billed glamour queens, this is a very male-centric movie.
The screenplay feels like a first draft with ideas and characters still in raw form. The movie begins in the mode Allen's "Husbands and Wives" with interviews establishing several back stories. Then the film virtually abandons this methodology and few of the interviewees play any role in the story.
Characters argue incessantly about very little, as if Paltrow is still trying to figure them out. No one captures your sympathy, certainly not a guy who dreams his life away or his philandering best friend or the lover who denigrates her boyfriend's talents or the fantasy figure who turns out to be a shallow bitch.
The film, shot mostly in London and nearby Ealing Studios but supposedly taking place in Manhattan, has no distinctive visual flair in its depiction of either the real or dream life. The film just makes you sleepy.
THE GOOD NIGHT
An Inferno Distribution and Tempesta Films presentation of an MHF Zweite Academy Film production in association with Grosvenor Park Media
Credits:
Writer/director: Jake Paltrow
Producers: Donna Gigliotti, Bill Johnson
Executive producers: Jim Seibel, Robert Whitehouse, Oliver Hengst, Ernst-August Schneider
Director of photography: Giles Nuttgens
Production designer: Eve Stewart
Music: Alec Puro
Costume designer: Verity Hawkes
Editor: Rick Lawley
Cast:
Gary: Martin Freeman
Dora: Gwyneth Paltrow: Anna: Penelope Cruz
Paul: Simon Pegg
Mel: Danny DeVito
Running time -- 93 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Burdened with a nothing title and coming off like a third-rate Woody Allen movie, "The Good Night" must pin its boxoffice appeal on the casting of Jake's sister, Gwyneth, and Penelope Cruz. That may not be enough since neither actress has a worthy role.
Gary (Martin Freeman), a British musician of modest talent, is miserable with his life despite having a beautiful live-in girlfriend Dora (Paltrow) and a stable career in New York. He retreats into his dreams where the girl of his dreams is Anna (Cruz), a fantasy figure that demands nothing but non-stop lovemaking.
Despairing over her deteriorating relationship with Gary, Dora flees to a work assignment in Europe. This allows Gary To make elaborate preparations for his dream life, sound proofing the bedroom and cutting off all exterior light. He even consults a dream guru (Danny DeVito in a wasted role).
Paltrow throws in complications in the marital life of Gary's best friend and colleague Paul (Simon Pegg) that add little to the story. Then he hits upon one potentially interesting twist. Gary discovers that Anna actually does exist: She is a supermodel with whom Paul manages to hook Gary up. Predictably, things go badly.
Freeman does not make a very interesting or resourceful leading man. All too often he seems to be channeling the late Dudley Moore doing an imitation of Woody Allen. The women in the film are lovely to behold, but their male writer-director hasn't dug deep enough into their characters to see what makes them tick. Despite the top-billed glamour queens, this is a very male-centric movie.
The screenplay feels like a first draft with ideas and characters still in raw form. The movie begins in the mode Allen's "Husbands and Wives" with interviews establishing several back stories. Then the film virtually abandons this methodology and few of the interviewees play any role in the story.
Characters argue incessantly about very little, as if Paltrow is still trying to figure them out. No one captures your sympathy, certainly not a guy who dreams his life away or his philandering best friend or the lover who denigrates her boyfriend's talents or the fantasy figure who turns out to be a shallow bitch.
The film, shot mostly in London and nearby Ealing Studios but supposedly taking place in Manhattan, has no distinctive visual flair in its depiction of either the real or dream life. The film just makes you sleepy.
THE GOOD NIGHT
An Inferno Distribution and Tempesta Films presentation of an MHF Zweite Academy Film production in association with Grosvenor Park Media
Credits:
Writer/director: Jake Paltrow
Producers: Donna Gigliotti, Bill Johnson
Executive producers: Jim Seibel, Robert Whitehouse, Oliver Hengst, Ernst-August Schneider
Director of photography: Giles Nuttgens
Production designer: Eve Stewart
Music: Alec Puro
Costume designer: Verity Hawkes
Editor: Rick Lawley
Cast:
Gary: Martin Freeman
Dora: Gwyneth Paltrow: Anna: Penelope Cruz
Paul: Simon Pegg
Mel: Danny DeVito
Running time -- 93 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 1/29/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
PARK CITY -- There is a fine idea for a romantic comedy in Jake Paltrow's "The Good Night" but the writer-director, in his debut feature, never develops it much beyond the idea stage. An odd casting choice and awkward methods of exposition get the film off to a halting start. Then Paltrow compounds the erratic storytelling by making every character thoroughly unlikable. Actually pathetic would be a better adjective since the film is about male-female relationships and everyone seems to have lost the manual.
Burdened with a nothing title and coming off like a third-rate Woody Allen movie, "The Good Night" must pin its boxoffice appeal on the casting of Jake's sister, Gwyneth, and Penelope Cruz. That may not be enough since neither actress has a worthy role.
Gary (Martin Freeman), a British musician of modest talent, is miserable with his life despite having a beautiful live-in girlfriend Dora (Paltrow) and a stable career in New York. He retreats into his dreams where the girl of his dreams is Anna (Cruz), a fantasy figure that demands nothing but non-stop lovemaking.
Despairing over her deteriorating relationship with Gary, Dora flees to a work assignment in Europe. This allows Gary To make elaborate preparations for his dream life, sound proofing the bedroom and cutting off all exterior light. He even consults a dream guru (Danny DeVito in a wasted role).
Paltrow throws in complications in the marital life of Gary's best friend and colleague Paul (Simon Pegg) that add little to the story. Then he hits upon one potentially interesting twist. Gary discovers that Anna actually does exist: She is a supermodel with whom Paul manages to hook Gary up. Predictably, things go badly.
Freeman does not make a very interesting or resourceful leading man. All too often he seems to be channeling the late Dudley Moore doing an imitation of Woody Allen. The women in the film are lovely to behold, but their male writer-director hasn't dug deep enough into their characters to see what makes them tick. Despite the top-billed glamour queens, this is a very male-centric movie.
The screenplay feels like a first draft with ideas and characters still in raw form. The movie begins in the mode Allen's "Husbands and Wives" with interviews establishing several back stories. Then the film virtually abandons this methodology and few of the interviewees play any role in the story.
Characters argue incessantly about very little, as if Paltrow is still trying to figure them out. No one captures your sympathy, certainly not a guy who dreams his life away or his philandering best friend or the lover who denigrates her boyfriend's talents or the fantasy figure who turns out to be a shallow bitch.
The film, shot mostly in London and nearby Ealing Studios but supposedly taking place in Manhattan, has no distinctive visual flair in its depiction of either the real or dream life. The film just makes you sleepy.
THE GOOD NIGHT
An Inferno Distribution and Tempesta Films presentation of an MHF Zweite Academy Film Production in association with Grosvenor Park Media
Credits:
Writer/director: Jake Paltrow
Producers: Donna Gigliotti, Bill Johnson
Executive producers: Jim Seibel, Robert Whitehouse, Oliver Hengst, Ernst-August Schneider
Director of photography: Giles Nuttgens
Production designer: Eve Stewart
Music: Alec Puro
Costume designer: Verity Hawkes
Editor: Rick Lawley
Cast:
Gary: Martin Freeman
Dora: Gwyneth Paltrow: Anna: Penelope Cruz
Paul: Simon Pegg
Mel: Danny DeVito
Running time -- 93 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Burdened with a nothing title and coming off like a third-rate Woody Allen movie, "The Good Night" must pin its boxoffice appeal on the casting of Jake's sister, Gwyneth, and Penelope Cruz. That may not be enough since neither actress has a worthy role.
Gary (Martin Freeman), a British musician of modest talent, is miserable with his life despite having a beautiful live-in girlfriend Dora (Paltrow) and a stable career in New York. He retreats into his dreams where the girl of his dreams is Anna (Cruz), a fantasy figure that demands nothing but non-stop lovemaking.
Despairing over her deteriorating relationship with Gary, Dora flees to a work assignment in Europe. This allows Gary To make elaborate preparations for his dream life, sound proofing the bedroom and cutting off all exterior light. He even consults a dream guru (Danny DeVito in a wasted role).
Paltrow throws in complications in the marital life of Gary's best friend and colleague Paul (Simon Pegg) that add little to the story. Then he hits upon one potentially interesting twist. Gary discovers that Anna actually does exist: She is a supermodel with whom Paul manages to hook Gary up. Predictably, things go badly.
Freeman does not make a very interesting or resourceful leading man. All too often he seems to be channeling the late Dudley Moore doing an imitation of Woody Allen. The women in the film are lovely to behold, but their male writer-director hasn't dug deep enough into their characters to see what makes them tick. Despite the top-billed glamour queens, this is a very male-centric movie.
The screenplay feels like a first draft with ideas and characters still in raw form. The movie begins in the mode Allen's "Husbands and Wives" with interviews establishing several back stories. Then the film virtually abandons this methodology and few of the interviewees play any role in the story.
Characters argue incessantly about very little, as if Paltrow is still trying to figure them out. No one captures your sympathy, certainly not a guy who dreams his life away or his philandering best friend or the lover who denigrates her boyfriend's talents or the fantasy figure who turns out to be a shallow bitch.
The film, shot mostly in London and nearby Ealing Studios but supposedly taking place in Manhattan, has no distinctive visual flair in its depiction of either the real or dream life. The film just makes you sleepy.
THE GOOD NIGHT
An Inferno Distribution and Tempesta Films presentation of an MHF Zweite Academy Film Production in association with Grosvenor Park Media
Credits:
Writer/director: Jake Paltrow
Producers: Donna Gigliotti, Bill Johnson
Executive producers: Jim Seibel, Robert Whitehouse, Oliver Hengst, Ernst-August Schneider
Director of photography: Giles Nuttgens
Production designer: Eve Stewart
Music: Alec Puro
Costume designer: Verity Hawkes
Editor: Rick Lawley
Cast:
Gary: Martin Freeman
Dora: Gwyneth Paltrow: Anna: Penelope Cruz
Paul: Simon Pegg
Mel: Danny DeVito
Running time -- 93 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 1/29/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Deep into Richard Kelly's miasmic 160-minute fantasy Southland Tales, an actor who used to call himself The Rock places a gun at his temple and says, "I could pull the trigger right now and this whole nightmare will be over," and every impulse screams: "Do it!"
It comes too late, however, as the will to live is lost in the first reel when ex-Rock Dwayne Johnson, playing a $20-million-a-film movie star, tells of an infant that has not had a bowel movement in six days and warns that a thermonuclear baby fart could blow up the world.
Written and directed by Richard Kelly and employing most of the creative team of his 2001 film Donnie Darko, the picture was conceived in tandem with three graphic novels that tell the story leading up to the end-of-the-world scenario depicted in Southland Tales.
The film strives to rank alongside such classics as Brazil and Blade Runner but falls more into the category of "Mars Attacks!" and 1941, and boxoffice potential will rely on very tolerant young audiences.
Kelly, cinematographer Steven Poster, production designer Alexander Hammond and costumer April Ferry succeed in putting some impressive images on the screen as the city of Los Angeles sees its final days. But the English term "shambolic" best describes a slow-paced, bloated and self-indulgent picture that combines science fiction, sophomoric humor and grisly violence soaked in a music-video sensibility.
The opening sequence shows a nuclear mushroom cloud bursting over Abilene, Texas, but the after-effects aren't too bad because by 2008, the Venice natives in Los Angeles remain pretty much as they've always been.
A new fuel called "fluid karma," using hydroelectric power drawn from the ocean, promises to save the future, though scientists, corporations, the Pentagon and big government inevitably start to fight over it.
Several factions want in on the action, including a Marxist group, a porn actress bent on blackmail and assorted gun-toting freaks. Somewhere at the heart of things is the movie star who has written a screenplay detailing a geological phenomenon that he imagined but turns out to be actually happening. It has something to do with a breach in the space/time continuum, the usual stuff.
There's also a police officer who exists in two forms (both played by Seann William Scott), and it becomes important that the two incarnations meet. Or don't meet, something like that. Not that it matters. Sequences exist for themselves, and few would be missed, though one or two are quite entertaining. Justin Timberlake, who doesn't have much to do as some kind of soldier, features in a bizarre dance number to the fabulous Killers track All These Things That I've Done that has MTV rotation written all over it.
Familiar faces including John Larroquette, Jon Lovitz, Miranda Richardson and unbilled Janeane Garofalo pop up here and there to no great effect. Wallace Shawn and Zelda Rubinstein are on hand, as you would expect, as mad scientists.
Scott, Johnson and Sarah Michelle Gellar, as the porn star, do their best with the lame material, but it's uphill work. There was more fun and greater character development in Starship Troopers.
SOUTHLAND TALES
Universal Pictures and Cherry Road Films
A Cherry Road/Darko Entertainment and MHF Zweite Academy Film production
Credits: Writer-director: Richard Kelly; Producers: Sean McKittrick, Bo Hyde, Kendall Morgan, Matthew Rhodes; Executive producers: Bill Johnson, Jim Seibel, Oliver Hengst, Katrina K. Hyde, Judd Payne, Tedd Hamm; Director of photography: Steven Poster; Production designer: Alexander Hammond; Editor: Sam Bauer; Music: Moby.
Cast: Boxer Santaros: Dwayne The Rock Johnson; Roland Taverner: Seann William Scott; Krysta: Sarah Michelle Gellar; Dr. Soberin Exx: Curtis Armstrong; Brandt Huntington: Joe Campana; Cyndi Pinziki: Nora Dunn; Starla Von Luft: Michele Durrett; Dr. Inga Von Westphalen/Marion Card: Beth Grant; Dion: Wood Harris; Vaughn Smallhouse: John Larrroquette; Serpentine: Bai Ling; Bart Bookman: Jon Lovitz; Madeline Frost Santaros: Mandy Moore; Sen. Bobby Frost: Holmes Osborne; Zora Carmichaels: Cheri Oteri; Veronica Mung/Dream: Amy Poehler; Martin Kefauver: Lou Taylor Pucci; Nana Mae Frost: Miranda Richardson; Shoshana: Jill Ritchie; Dr. Katarina Kuntzler: Zelda Rubinstein; Fortunio Balducci: Will Sasso; Baron Vin Westphalen: Wallace Shawn; Hideo Takehashi: Sab Shimono; Simon Theory: Kevin Smith.
No MPAA rating, running time 160 minutes.
It comes too late, however, as the will to live is lost in the first reel when ex-Rock Dwayne Johnson, playing a $20-million-a-film movie star, tells of an infant that has not had a bowel movement in six days and warns that a thermonuclear baby fart could blow up the world.
Written and directed by Richard Kelly and employing most of the creative team of his 2001 film Donnie Darko, the picture was conceived in tandem with three graphic novels that tell the story leading up to the end-of-the-world scenario depicted in Southland Tales.
The film strives to rank alongside such classics as Brazil and Blade Runner but falls more into the category of "Mars Attacks!" and 1941, and boxoffice potential will rely on very tolerant young audiences.
Kelly, cinematographer Steven Poster, production designer Alexander Hammond and costumer April Ferry succeed in putting some impressive images on the screen as the city of Los Angeles sees its final days. But the English term "shambolic" best describes a slow-paced, bloated and self-indulgent picture that combines science fiction, sophomoric humor and grisly violence soaked in a music-video sensibility.
The opening sequence shows a nuclear mushroom cloud bursting over Abilene, Texas, but the after-effects aren't too bad because by 2008, the Venice natives in Los Angeles remain pretty much as they've always been.
A new fuel called "fluid karma," using hydroelectric power drawn from the ocean, promises to save the future, though scientists, corporations, the Pentagon and big government inevitably start to fight over it.
Several factions want in on the action, including a Marxist group, a porn actress bent on blackmail and assorted gun-toting freaks. Somewhere at the heart of things is the movie star who has written a screenplay detailing a geological phenomenon that he imagined but turns out to be actually happening. It has something to do with a breach in the space/time continuum, the usual stuff.
There's also a police officer who exists in two forms (both played by Seann William Scott), and it becomes important that the two incarnations meet. Or don't meet, something like that. Not that it matters. Sequences exist for themselves, and few would be missed, though one or two are quite entertaining. Justin Timberlake, who doesn't have much to do as some kind of soldier, features in a bizarre dance number to the fabulous Killers track All These Things That I've Done that has MTV rotation written all over it.
Familiar faces including John Larroquette, Jon Lovitz, Miranda Richardson and unbilled Janeane Garofalo pop up here and there to no great effect. Wallace Shawn and Zelda Rubinstein are on hand, as you would expect, as mad scientists.
Scott, Johnson and Sarah Michelle Gellar, as the porn star, do their best with the lame material, but it's uphill work. There was more fun and greater character development in Starship Troopers.
SOUTHLAND TALES
Universal Pictures and Cherry Road Films
A Cherry Road/Darko Entertainment and MHF Zweite Academy Film production
Credits: Writer-director: Richard Kelly; Producers: Sean McKittrick, Bo Hyde, Kendall Morgan, Matthew Rhodes; Executive producers: Bill Johnson, Jim Seibel, Oliver Hengst, Katrina K. Hyde, Judd Payne, Tedd Hamm; Director of photography: Steven Poster; Production designer: Alexander Hammond; Editor: Sam Bauer; Music: Moby.
Cast: Boxer Santaros: Dwayne The Rock Johnson; Roland Taverner: Seann William Scott; Krysta: Sarah Michelle Gellar; Dr. Soberin Exx: Curtis Armstrong; Brandt Huntington: Joe Campana; Cyndi Pinziki: Nora Dunn; Starla Von Luft: Michele Durrett; Dr. Inga Von Westphalen/Marion Card: Beth Grant; Dion: Wood Harris; Vaughn Smallhouse: John Larrroquette; Serpentine: Bai Ling; Bart Bookman: Jon Lovitz; Madeline Frost Santaros: Mandy Moore; Sen. Bobby Frost: Holmes Osborne; Zora Carmichaels: Cheri Oteri; Veronica Mung/Dream: Amy Poehler; Martin Kefauver: Lou Taylor Pucci; Nana Mae Frost: Miranda Richardson; Shoshana: Jill Ritchie; Dr. Katarina Kuntzler: Zelda Rubinstein; Fortunio Balducci: Will Sasso; Baron Vin Westphalen: Wallace Shawn; Hideo Takehashi: Sab Shimono; Simon Theory: Kevin Smith.
No MPAA rating, running time 160 minutes.
- 5/22/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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