In the aftermath of nuclear warhead explosions, the apocalypse escalated to an even deadlier level in Fear The Walking Dead Season 7, and if you're looking to catch up on the latest radioactive adventures of Morgan and friends before season 8 premieres on AMC in 2023, then you may be pleased to know that season 7 is coming to Blu-ray (including Digital) and DVD on January 10th via Lionsgate, and we have a look at the cover art and full list of special features:
Program Description
The follow-up to the world’s most in-demand TV series, “The Walking Dead,” “Fear the Walking Dead” Season 7 arrives on Blu-ray™ + Digital and DVD January 10 from Lionsgate. Following the highest-rated season yet, “Fear the Walking Dead” Season 7 features executive producers Gale Anne Hurd, Two-time Primetime Emmy® Award winner Greg Nicotero (“The Walking Dead”), David Alpert, Andrew Chambliss (“Once Upon a Time”), Robert Kirkman, and producer Frank Hildebrand. The...
Program Description
The follow-up to the world’s most in-demand TV series, “The Walking Dead,” “Fear the Walking Dead” Season 7 arrives on Blu-ray™ + Digital and DVD January 10 from Lionsgate. Following the highest-rated season yet, “Fear the Walking Dead” Season 7 features executive producers Gale Anne Hurd, Two-time Primetime Emmy® Award winner Greg Nicotero (“The Walking Dead”), David Alpert, Andrew Chambliss (“Once Upon a Time”), Robert Kirkman, and producer Frank Hildebrand. The...
- 11/15/2022
- by Derek Anderson
- DailyDead
The company has acquired Us distribution rights from Voltage Pictures to the Pierce Brosnan thriller.
John Moore, an action-thriller veteran whose credits include Good Day To Die Hard and Max Payne, directed It from a screenplay by Dan Kay and William Wisher Jr.
Anna Friel, Stefanie Scott and James Frecheville round out the key cast on the story about a self-made man who fights back when his life and family are threatened by an It consultant.
Rlje (Rlj Entertainment) plans a September theatrical and VOD launch. Voltage handles international sales.
David T. Friendly produced It with Brosnan’s business partner Beau St. Clair, Voltage Pictures chief Nicolas Chartier and Craig J. Flores.
Brosnan serves as executive producer alongside Dominic Rustam, Frank Hildebrand, Elika Portnoy and Valentina Gardani.
John Moore, an action-thriller veteran whose credits include Good Day To Die Hard and Max Payne, directed It from a screenplay by Dan Kay and William Wisher Jr.
Anna Friel, Stefanie Scott and James Frecheville round out the key cast on the story about a self-made man who fights back when his life and family are threatened by an It consultant.
Rlje (Rlj Entertainment) plans a September theatrical and VOD launch. Voltage handles international sales.
David T. Friendly produced It with Brosnan’s business partner Beau St. Clair, Voltage Pictures chief Nicolas Chartier and Craig J. Flores.
Brosnan serves as executive producer alongside Dominic Rustam, Frank Hildebrand, Elika Portnoy and Valentina Gardani.
- 7/27/2016
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
In a future devastated by a nuclear war, major conflicts are settled with big robot brawls. Scream Factory's Blu-ray of Stuart Gordon's Robot Jox hits home media on Blu-ray beginning July 7th, complete with audio commentaries and interviews aplenty.
Press Release -- "In the distant future, mankind has forsaken global wars for battles of single combat. The world has been divided into two opposing super powers, with each side represented by trained champions. Their weapons are huge robotic machines, capable of battle on land, sea and in the air. From celebrated director Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, From Beyond) and executive producer Charles Band comes Robot Jox, a riveting sci-fi action adventure. Directed by Stuart Gordon, the film stars Gary Graham (TV’s Alien Nation), Anne-Marie Johnson (TV’s In The Heat of the Night, Jag), Paul Koslo (Voyage of the Damned), Robert Sampson (Re-Animator, The Dark Side of the Moon), Danny Kamekona (Hawaii Five-o,...
Press Release -- "In the distant future, mankind has forsaken global wars for battles of single combat. The world has been divided into two opposing super powers, with each side represented by trained champions. Their weapons are huge robotic machines, capable of battle on land, sea and in the air. From celebrated director Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, From Beyond) and executive producer Charles Band comes Robot Jox, a riveting sci-fi action adventure. Directed by Stuart Gordon, the film stars Gary Graham (TV’s Alien Nation), Anne-Marie Johnson (TV’s In The Heat of the Night, Jag), Paul Koslo (Voyage of the Damned), Robert Sampson (Re-Animator, The Dark Side of the Moon), Danny Kamekona (Hawaii Five-o,...
- 5/14/2015
- by Derek Anderson
- DailyDead
After about a week to 10 days into production, the Bruce Willis-starring indie Wake has shut down due to financial woes, sources tell Deadline. “It was headed in that direction for a while,” said one source with knowledge of the production issues. The thriller directed by John Pogue, which also stars Ben Kinglsey, Ellen Burstyn and Piper Perabo, is being produced by Michael Benaroya, Tobin Armbrust, David Alpert and Chris Cowles, with Frank Hildebrand listed as executive…...
- 2/26/2015
- Deadline
NEW YORK -- Mitch Horwits has been hired as president of indie production/financing outfit River Road Entertainment.
Horwits will report to River Road founder and CEO Bill Pohlad, whose company produced Focus Features' top grosser Brokeback Mountain and Picturehouse's A Prairie Home Companion. Working from Los Angeles, the former Spelling Films president will oversee day-to-day management while developing business and partnerships with studios and distributors.
River Road's core execs -- Robin Schorr, Frank Hildebrand and Deborah Zipser -- will now report to Horwits. Pohlad will continue to provide the overall strategic and creative direction for the company.
Horwits began his six-year stint at Spelling in 1993, helping it grow from a sales company handling one film a year to a full-service production and distribution company handling six films a year. Features developed under his tenure include Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects, Frank Oz's In and Out, the Wachowskis' Bound, Sidney Lumet's Night Falls on Manhattan, Richard Attenborough's Shadowlands and Robert Altman's Short Cuts.
The exec joined Constantin Film in 2000 as a producer and president supervising all English-language productions, including the Resident Evil franchise.
Horwits will report to River Road founder and CEO Bill Pohlad, whose company produced Focus Features' top grosser Brokeback Mountain and Picturehouse's A Prairie Home Companion. Working from Los Angeles, the former Spelling Films president will oversee day-to-day management while developing business and partnerships with studios and distributors.
River Road's core execs -- Robin Schorr, Frank Hildebrand and Deborah Zipser -- will now report to Horwits. Pohlad will continue to provide the overall strategic and creative direction for the company.
Horwits began his six-year stint at Spelling in 1993, helping it grow from a sales company handling one film a year to a full-service production and distribution company handling six films a year. Features developed under his tenure include Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects, Frank Oz's In and Out, the Wachowskis' Bound, Sidney Lumet's Night Falls on Manhattan, Richard Attenborough's Shadowlands and Robert Altman's Short Cuts.
The exec joined Constantin Film in 2000 as a producer and president supervising all English-language productions, including the Resident Evil franchise.
- 9/20/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
This review was written for the festival screening of "Into the Wild".Telluride Film Festival
SAN FRANCISCO -- The romance of the open road has proved irresistible to adventurous young men from Jack London to Jack Kerouac and, more recently, Christopher McCandless, a troubled college grad who in the early 1990s burned his cash, junked his car and disappeared into the north Alaskan territories, where he died an agonizing death from starvation, alone.
Writer-director Sean Penn's "Into the Wild", based on Jon Krakauer's book, is an extravagantly ambitious, unfocused film that chronicles this tragic episode with flights of brilliance, self-indulgence and thrilling nature cinematography.
"Wild" has appeal for young audiences and baby boomers alike. Although Penn has an uneven track record as a director, his reputation as an actor, coupled with exciting outdoor adventure sequences, should spell respectable boxoffice. Paramount Vantage releases the film domestically Sept. 21.
McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a bright loner, flees a fractious home headed by a distant, raging father (an underused William Hurt) and an alcoholic mother Marcia Gay Harden). After graduating from Emory, he takes off on his cross-country odyssey without telling anyone. When he reaches Alaska, he camps in an abandoned bus that will become his tomb, hunts animals for food and memorializes his experiences in a journal, a course of events vividly realized in the film.
Penn flashes back and forth in time with alacrity, aided by seamless transitions from editor Jay Cassidy, his frequent collaborator. Eric Gautier's astounding cinematography is visceral whether he is shooting the adrenaline rush of running the rapids, the serenity of limitless Western vistas or the punishing stillness of the wilderness.
Skillfully constructed, the film is hampered by a reliance on McCandless' pretentious, facile ruminations. Although he occasionally shows him in an unflattering light, Penn doesn't question whether McCandless' anti-materialist, "absolute truth/freedom through nature" creed is a cover story for running away from responsibility and himself, nor does he probe into why he pursues the extreme isolation that costs him his life.
While the material seems to warrant understated, direct storytelling, along the lines of Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man", Penn opts for epic proportions and clutters his narrative with gimmicks. For the most part, it works. What's missing is the perspective and insight that would illuminated the inner dimensions of a driven young man who is preachy and downright irritating. It's unclear if it's a function of the screenplay, the callowness of the character or a flat lead performance, but McCandless remains opaque, so the movie is saddled with a cipher at its center.
Hirsch doesn't project the magnetism that would give credence to McCandless' supposed liberating effect on the people he encounters. As he heals the marital strife of a hippie couple (Catherine Keener, Brian Dierker), expands the horizons of a lonely widower (Hal Holbrook) and steals the heart of a shy singer (Kristen Stewart), one wonders if he's a legend in his own mind. Vince Vaughn, playing a rowdy combine worker, gives the film a welcome jolt of humor that helps relieve the earnestness.
McCandless wouldn't be the first young man to mythologize himself or imagine he's the star of his own movie, which, ironically, he has become. It's difficult to stifle the impulse to chide, "Oh, grow up", but he never had that chance.
INTO THE WILD
Paramount Vantage
Paramount Vantage and River Road Entertainment present a Square One C.I.H./Linson Film production
Screenwriter-director: Sean Penn
Producers: Sean Penn, Art Linson, Bob Pohlad
Executive producers: John J. Kelly, Frank Hildebrand, David Blocker
Director of photography: Eric Gautier
Production designer: Derek R. Hill
Music: Michael Brook, Kaki King, Eddie Vedder
Costume designer: Mary Claire Hannan
Editor: Jay Cassidy
Cast:
Christopher: Emile Hirsch
Billie: Marcia Gay Harden
Walt: William Hurt
Ron: Hal Holbrook
Jan: Catherine Keener
Carine: Jena Malone
Tracy: Kristen Stewart
Wayne: Vince Vaughn
Rainey: Brian Dierker
Running time -- 147 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
SAN FRANCISCO -- The romance of the open road has proved irresistible to adventurous young men from Jack London to Jack Kerouac and, more recently, Christopher McCandless, a troubled college grad who in the early 1990s burned his cash, junked his car and disappeared into the north Alaskan territories, where he died an agonizing death from starvation, alone.
Writer-director Sean Penn's "Into the Wild", based on Jon Krakauer's book, is an extravagantly ambitious, unfocused film that chronicles this tragic episode with flights of brilliance, self-indulgence and thrilling nature cinematography.
"Wild" has appeal for young audiences and baby boomers alike. Although Penn has an uneven track record as a director, his reputation as an actor, coupled with exciting outdoor adventure sequences, should spell respectable boxoffice. Paramount Vantage releases the film domestically Sept. 21.
McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a bright loner, flees a fractious home headed by a distant, raging father (an underused William Hurt) and an alcoholic mother Marcia Gay Harden). After graduating from Emory, he takes off on his cross-country odyssey without telling anyone. When he reaches Alaska, he camps in an abandoned bus that will become his tomb, hunts animals for food and memorializes his experiences in a journal, a course of events vividly realized in the film.
Penn flashes back and forth in time with alacrity, aided by seamless transitions from editor Jay Cassidy, his frequent collaborator. Eric Gautier's astounding cinematography is visceral whether he is shooting the adrenaline rush of running the rapids, the serenity of limitless Western vistas or the punishing stillness of the wilderness.
Skillfully constructed, the film is hampered by a reliance on McCandless' pretentious, facile ruminations. Although he occasionally shows him in an unflattering light, Penn doesn't question whether McCandless' anti-materialist, "absolute truth/freedom through nature" creed is a cover story for running away from responsibility and himself, nor does he probe into why he pursues the extreme isolation that costs him his life.
While the material seems to warrant understated, direct storytelling, along the lines of Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man", Penn opts for epic proportions and clutters his narrative with gimmicks. For the most part, it works. What's missing is the perspective and insight that would illuminated the inner dimensions of a driven young man who is preachy and downright irritating. It's unclear if it's a function of the screenplay, the callowness of the character or a flat lead performance, but McCandless remains opaque, so the movie is saddled with a cipher at its center.
Hirsch doesn't project the magnetism that would give credence to McCandless' supposed liberating effect on the people he encounters. As he heals the marital strife of a hippie couple (Catherine Keener, Brian Dierker), expands the horizons of a lonely widower (Hal Holbrook) and steals the heart of a shy singer (Kristen Stewart), one wonders if he's a legend in his own mind. Vince Vaughn, playing a rowdy combine worker, gives the film a welcome jolt of humor that helps relieve the earnestness.
McCandless wouldn't be the first young man to mythologize himself or imagine he's the star of his own movie, which, ironically, he has become. It's difficult to stifle the impulse to chide, "Oh, grow up", but he never had that chance.
INTO THE WILD
Paramount Vantage
Paramount Vantage and River Road Entertainment present a Square One C.I.H./Linson Film production
Screenwriter-director: Sean Penn
Producers: Sean Penn, Art Linson, Bob Pohlad
Executive producers: John J. Kelly, Frank Hildebrand, David Blocker
Director of photography: Eric Gautier
Production designer: Derek R. Hill
Music: Michael Brook, Kaki King, Eddie Vedder
Costume designer: Mary Claire Hannan
Editor: Jay Cassidy
Cast:
Christopher: Emile Hirsch
Billie: Marcia Gay Harden
Walt: William Hurt
Ron: Hal Holbrook
Jan: Catherine Keener
Carine: Jena Malone
Tracy: Kristen Stewart
Wayne: Vince Vaughn
Rainey: Brian Dierker
Running time -- 147 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 8/31/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Telluride Film Festival
SAN FRANCISCO -- The romance of the open road has proved irresistible to adventurous young men from Jack London to Jack Kerouac and, more recently, Christopher McCandless, a troubled college grad who in the early 1990s burned his cash, junked his car and disappeared into the north Alaskan territories, where he died an agonizing death from starvation, alone.
Writer-director Sean Penn's "Into the Wild", based on Jon Krakauer's book, is an extravagantly ambitious, unfocused film that chronicles this tragic episode with flights of brilliance, self-indulgence and thrilling nature cinematography.
"Wild" has appeal for young audiences and baby boomers alike. Although Penn has an uneven track record as a director, his reputation as an actor, coupled with exciting outdoor adventure sequences, should spell respectable boxoffice. Paramount Vantage releases the film domestically Sept. 21.
McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a bright loner, flees a fractious home headed by a distant, raging father (an underused William Hurt) and an alcoholic mother Marcia Gay Harden). After graduating from Emory, he takes off on his cross-country odyssey without telling anyone. When he reaches Alaska, he camps in an abandoned bus that will become his tomb, hunts animals for food and memorializes his experiences in a journal, a course of events vividly realized in the film.
Penn flashes back and forth in time with alacrity, aided by seamless transitions from editor Jay Cassidy, his frequent collaborator. Eric Gautier's astounding cinematography is visceral whether he is shooting the adrenaline rush of running the rapids, the serenity of limitless Western vistas or the punishing stillness of the wilderness.
Skillfully constructed, the film is hampered by a reliance on McCandless' pretentious, facile ruminations. Although he occasionally shows him in an unflattering light, Penn doesn't question whether McCandless' anti-materialist, "absolute truth/freedom through nature" creed is a cover story for running away from responsibility and himself, nor does he probe into why he pursues the extreme isolation that costs him his life.
While the material seems to warrant understated, direct storytelling, along the lines of Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man", Penn opts for epic proportions and clutters his narrative with gimmicks. For the most part, it works. What's missing is the perspective and insight that would illuminated the inner dimensions of a driven young man who is preachy and downright irritating. It's unclear if it's a function of the screenplay, the callowness of the character or a flat lead performance, but McCandless remains opaque, so the movie is saddled with a cipher at its center.
Hirsch doesn't project the magnetism that would give credence to McCandless' supposed liberating effect on the people he encounters. As he heals the marital strife of a hippie couple (Catherine Keener, Brian Dierker), expands the horizons of a lonely widower (Hal Holbrook) and steals the heart of a shy singer (Kristen Stewart), one wonders if he's a legend in his own mind. Vince Vaughn, playing a rowdy combine worker, gives the film a welcome jolt of humor that helps relieve the earnestness.
McCandless wouldn't be the first young man to mythologize himself or imagine he's the star of his own movie, which, ironically, he has become. It's difficult to stifle the impulse to chide, "Oh, grow up", but he never had that chance.
INTO THE WILD
Paramount Vantage
Paramount Vantage and River Road Entertainment present a Square One C.I.H./Linson Film production
Screenwriter-director: Sean Penn
Producers: Sean Penn, Art Linson, Bob Pohlad
Executive producers: John J. Kelly, Frank Hildebrand, David Blocker
Director of photography: Eric Gautier
Production designer: Derek R. Hill
Music: Michael Brook, Kaki King, Eddie Vedder
Costume designer: Mary Claire Hannan
Editor: Jay Cassidy
Cast:
Christopher: Emile Hirsch
Billie: Marcia Gay Harden
Walt: William Hurt
Ron: Hal Holbrook
Jan: Catherine Keener
Carine: Jena Malone
Tracy: Kristen Stewart
Wayne: Vince Vaughn
Rainey: Brian Dierker
Running time -- 147 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
SAN FRANCISCO -- The romance of the open road has proved irresistible to adventurous young men from Jack London to Jack Kerouac and, more recently, Christopher McCandless, a troubled college grad who in the early 1990s burned his cash, junked his car and disappeared into the north Alaskan territories, where he died an agonizing death from starvation, alone.
Writer-director Sean Penn's "Into the Wild", based on Jon Krakauer's book, is an extravagantly ambitious, unfocused film that chronicles this tragic episode with flights of brilliance, self-indulgence and thrilling nature cinematography.
"Wild" has appeal for young audiences and baby boomers alike. Although Penn has an uneven track record as a director, his reputation as an actor, coupled with exciting outdoor adventure sequences, should spell respectable boxoffice. Paramount Vantage releases the film domestically Sept. 21.
McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a bright loner, flees a fractious home headed by a distant, raging father (an underused William Hurt) and an alcoholic mother Marcia Gay Harden). After graduating from Emory, he takes off on his cross-country odyssey without telling anyone. When he reaches Alaska, he camps in an abandoned bus that will become his tomb, hunts animals for food and memorializes his experiences in a journal, a course of events vividly realized in the film.
Penn flashes back and forth in time with alacrity, aided by seamless transitions from editor Jay Cassidy, his frequent collaborator. Eric Gautier's astounding cinematography is visceral whether he is shooting the adrenaline rush of running the rapids, the serenity of limitless Western vistas or the punishing stillness of the wilderness.
Skillfully constructed, the film is hampered by a reliance on McCandless' pretentious, facile ruminations. Although he occasionally shows him in an unflattering light, Penn doesn't question whether McCandless' anti-materialist, "absolute truth/freedom through nature" creed is a cover story for running away from responsibility and himself, nor does he probe into why he pursues the extreme isolation that costs him his life.
While the material seems to warrant understated, direct storytelling, along the lines of Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man", Penn opts for epic proportions and clutters his narrative with gimmicks. For the most part, it works. What's missing is the perspective and insight that would illuminated the inner dimensions of a driven young man who is preachy and downright irritating. It's unclear if it's a function of the screenplay, the callowness of the character or a flat lead performance, but McCandless remains opaque, so the movie is saddled with a cipher at its center.
Hirsch doesn't project the magnetism that would give credence to McCandless' supposed liberating effect on the people he encounters. As he heals the marital strife of a hippie couple (Catherine Keener, Brian Dierker), expands the horizons of a lonely widower (Hal Holbrook) and steals the heart of a shy singer (Kristen Stewart), one wonders if he's a legend in his own mind. Vince Vaughn, playing a rowdy combine worker, gives the film a welcome jolt of humor that helps relieve the earnestness.
McCandless wouldn't be the first young man to mythologize himself or imagine he's the star of his own movie, which, ironically, he has become. It's difficult to stifle the impulse to chide, "Oh, grow up", but he never had that chance.
INTO THE WILD
Paramount Vantage
Paramount Vantage and River Road Entertainment present a Square One C.I.H./Linson Film production
Screenwriter-director: Sean Penn
Producers: Sean Penn, Art Linson, Bob Pohlad
Executive producers: John J. Kelly, Frank Hildebrand, David Blocker
Director of photography: Eric Gautier
Production designer: Derek R. Hill
Music: Michael Brook, Kaki King, Eddie Vedder
Costume designer: Mary Claire Hannan
Editor: Jay Cassidy
Cast:
Christopher: Emile Hirsch
Billie: Marcia Gay Harden
Walt: William Hurt
Ron: Hal Holbrook
Jan: Catherine Keener
Carine: Jena Malone
Tracy: Kristen Stewart
Wayne: Vince Vaughn
Rainey: Brian Dierker
Running time -- 147 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 8/31/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Telluride Film Festival
SAN FRANCISCO -- The romance of the open road has proved irresistible to adventurous young men from Jack London to Jack Kerouac and, more recently, Christopher McCandless, a troubled college grad who in the early 1990s burned his cash, junked his car and disappeared into the north Alaskan territories, where he died an agonizing death from starvation, alone.
Writer-director Sean Penn's "Into the Wild", based on Jon Krakauer's book, is an extravagantly ambitious, unfocused film that chronicles this tragic episode with flights of brilliance, self-indulgence and thrilling nature cinematography.
"Wild" has appeal for young audiences and baby boomers alike. Although Penn has an uneven track record as a director, his reputation as an actor, coupled with exciting outdoor adventure sequences, should spell respectable boxoffice. Paramount Vantage releases the film domestically Sept. 21.
McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a bright loner, flees a fractious home headed by a distant, raging father (an underused William Hurt) and an alcoholic mother Marcia Gay Harden). After graduating from Emory, he takes off on his cross-country odyssey without telling anyone. When he reaches Alaska, he camps in an abandoned bus that will become his tomb, hunts animals for food and memorializes his experiences in a journal, a course of events vividly realized in the film.
Penn flashes back and forth in time with alacrity, aided by seamless transitions from editor Jay Cassidy, his frequent collaborator. Eric Gautier's astounding cinematography is visceral whether he is shooting the adrenaline rush of running the rapids, the serenity of limitless Western vistas or the punishing stillness of the wilderness.
Skillfully constructed, the film is hampered by a reliance on McCandless' pretentious, facile ruminations. Although he occasionally shows him in an unflattering light, Penn doesn't question whether McCandless' anti-materialist, "absolute truth/freedom through nature" creed is a cover story for running away from responsibility and himself, nor does he probe into why he pursues the extreme isolation that costs him his life.
While the material seems to warrant understated, direct storytelling, along the lines of Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man", Penn opts for epic proportions and clutters his narrative with gimmicks. For the most part, it works. What's missing is the perspective and insight that would illuminated the inner dimensions of a driven young man who is preachy and downright irritating. It's unclear if it's a function of the screenplay, the callowness of the character or a flat lead performance, but McCandless remains opaque, so the movie is saddled with a cipher at its center.
Hirsch doesn't project the magnetism that would give credence to McCandless' supposed liberating effect on the people he encounters. As he heals the marital strife of a hippie couple (Catherine Keener, Brian Dierker), expands the horizons of a lonely widower (Hal Holbrook) and steals the heart of a shy singer (Kristen Stewart), one wonders if he's a legend in his own mind. Vince Vaughn, playing a rowdy combine worker, gives the film a welcome jolt of humor that helps relieve the earnestness.
McCandless wouldn't be the first young man to mythologize himself or imagine he's the star of his own movie, which, ironically, he has become. It's difficult to stifle the impulse to chide, "Oh, grow up", but he never had that chance.
INTO THE WILD
Paramount Vantage
Paramount Vantage and River Road Entertainment present a Square One C.I.H./Linson Film production
Screenwriter-director: Sean Penn
Producers: Sean Penn, Art Linson, Bob Pohlad
Executive producers: John J. Kelly, Frank Hildebrand, David Blocker
Director of photography: Eric Gautier
Production designer: Derek R. Hill
Music: Michael Brook, Kaki King, Eddie Vedder
Costume designer: Mary Claire Hannan
Editor: Jay Cassidy
Cast:
Christopher: Emile Hirsch
Billie: Marcia Gay Harden
Walt: William Hurt
Ron: Hal Holbrook
Jan: Catherine Keener
Carine: Jena Malone
Tracy: Kristen Stewart
Wayne: Vince Vaughn
Rainey: Brian Dierker
MPAA rating R, running time 147 minutes.
SAN FRANCISCO -- The romance of the open road has proved irresistible to adventurous young men from Jack London to Jack Kerouac and, more recently, Christopher McCandless, a troubled college grad who in the early 1990s burned his cash, junked his car and disappeared into the north Alaskan territories, where he died an agonizing death from starvation, alone.
Writer-director Sean Penn's "Into the Wild", based on Jon Krakauer's book, is an extravagantly ambitious, unfocused film that chronicles this tragic episode with flights of brilliance, self-indulgence and thrilling nature cinematography.
"Wild" has appeal for young audiences and baby boomers alike. Although Penn has an uneven track record as a director, his reputation as an actor, coupled with exciting outdoor adventure sequences, should spell respectable boxoffice. Paramount Vantage releases the film domestically Sept. 21.
McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a bright loner, flees a fractious home headed by a distant, raging father (an underused William Hurt) and an alcoholic mother Marcia Gay Harden). After graduating from Emory, he takes off on his cross-country odyssey without telling anyone. When he reaches Alaska, he camps in an abandoned bus that will become his tomb, hunts animals for food and memorializes his experiences in a journal, a course of events vividly realized in the film.
Penn flashes back and forth in time with alacrity, aided by seamless transitions from editor Jay Cassidy, his frequent collaborator. Eric Gautier's astounding cinematography is visceral whether he is shooting the adrenaline rush of running the rapids, the serenity of limitless Western vistas or the punishing stillness of the wilderness.
Skillfully constructed, the film is hampered by a reliance on McCandless' pretentious, facile ruminations. Although he occasionally shows him in an unflattering light, Penn doesn't question whether McCandless' anti-materialist, "absolute truth/freedom through nature" creed is a cover story for running away from responsibility and himself, nor does he probe into why he pursues the extreme isolation that costs him his life.
While the material seems to warrant understated, direct storytelling, along the lines of Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man", Penn opts for epic proportions and clutters his narrative with gimmicks. For the most part, it works. What's missing is the perspective and insight that would illuminated the inner dimensions of a driven young man who is preachy and downright irritating. It's unclear if it's a function of the screenplay, the callowness of the character or a flat lead performance, but McCandless remains opaque, so the movie is saddled with a cipher at its center.
Hirsch doesn't project the magnetism that would give credence to McCandless' supposed liberating effect on the people he encounters. As he heals the marital strife of a hippie couple (Catherine Keener, Brian Dierker), expands the horizons of a lonely widower (Hal Holbrook) and steals the heart of a shy singer (Kristen Stewart), one wonders if he's a legend in his own mind. Vince Vaughn, playing a rowdy combine worker, gives the film a welcome jolt of humor that helps relieve the earnestness.
McCandless wouldn't be the first young man to mythologize himself or imagine he's the star of his own movie, which, ironically, he has become. It's difficult to stifle the impulse to chide, "Oh, grow up", but he never had that chance.
INTO THE WILD
Paramount Vantage
Paramount Vantage and River Road Entertainment present a Square One C.I.H./Linson Film production
Screenwriter-director: Sean Penn
Producers: Sean Penn, Art Linson, Bob Pohlad
Executive producers: John J. Kelly, Frank Hildebrand, David Blocker
Director of photography: Eric Gautier
Production designer: Derek R. Hill
Music: Michael Brook, Kaki King, Eddie Vedder
Costume designer: Mary Claire Hannan
Editor: Jay Cassidy
Cast:
Christopher: Emile Hirsch
Billie: Marcia Gay Harden
Walt: William Hurt
Ron: Hal Holbrook
Jan: Catherine Keener
Carine: Jena Malone
Tracy: Kristen Stewart
Wayne: Vince Vaughn
Rainey: Brian Dierker
MPAA rating R, running time 147 minutes.
- 8/31/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
River Road Entertainment, riding high on the success of Brokeback Mountain and A Prairie Home Companion, is expanding its Los Angeles office with three key executive hires. The company, based in Minneapolis and Los Angeles, has appointed former Sobini Films president of production Robin Schorr as head of creative production, veteran producer and executive Frank Hildebrand as head of physical production and former Film Finance Corporation Australia investment manager Deborah Zipser as head of business affairs. The company also announced the appointment of Teodora Kerkeniakova as director of production and development. "We had a vision for River Road to not only make great films but also to build an environment that supports and nurtures distinctive and challenging films and filmmakers," company topper Bill Pohlad said. "Hopefully with films like 'Brokeback Mountain' and 'A Prairie Home Companion' we have started to deliver on the first part of that vision. Now, with the addition of this remarkably talented team, we're set to deliver on the rest."...
- 10/19/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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