Alexandros Avranas’ suicide drama claimed the Orpheus Award for best feature as the 8th Annual Los Angeles Greek Film Festival (Lagff) concluded over the weekend (June 8).
In other highlights at the awards ceremony at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, top documentary honours went to Spyros Teskos’ Crossed Lives, which contrasts and compares the political crisis in Greece with the country’s struggles during World War II.
Crossed Lives also won the Audience Choice Award.
Best Short Film went to Asimina Proedrou’s Red Hulk, about a young man struggling to cope with life and all the problems thrown his way.
Fox Filmed Entertainment nchief Jim Gianopulos took to the stage to present an honourary award to 12 Years A Slave producer Anthony Katagas. When Harry Met Sally co-producer Steve Nicolaides also received an honourary award.
Photo: Orpheus Awards hosts Christos Vasilopoulos and Chryssa Loucas. Photo by Alex Vacca.
In other highlights at the awards ceremony at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, top documentary honours went to Spyros Teskos’ Crossed Lives, which contrasts and compares the political crisis in Greece with the country’s struggles during World War II.
Crossed Lives also won the Audience Choice Award.
Best Short Film went to Asimina Proedrou’s Red Hulk, about a young man struggling to cope with life and all the problems thrown his way.
Fox Filmed Entertainment nchief Jim Gianopulos took to the stage to present an honourary award to 12 Years A Slave producer Anthony Katagas. When Harry Met Sally co-producer Steve Nicolaides also received an honourary award.
Photo: Orpheus Awards hosts Christos Vasilopoulos and Chryssa Loucas. Photo by Alex Vacca.
- 6/10/2014
- ScreenDaily
By Sean O’Connell
Hollywoodnews.com: A handful of stellar titles with Oscar aspirations have been programmed into this year’s Austin Film Festival schedule, which begins on Oct. 20 with an as-yet-unnamed Opening Night selection.
In between, Aff audiences will get their first looks at Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants,” Steve McQueen’s “Shame,” Lynne Ramsay’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” Rodrigo Garcia’s “Albert Nobbs” and Sean Durkin’s “Martha Marcy May Marlene” – all films with awards hopes that will screen as part of the festival’s Marquee category.
“We’re proud to be taking our program in some exciting new directions while maintaining our focus on strong writing and engaging stories,” said new Film Programmers Stephen Jannise and Stephen Belyeu.
In addition, the fest has set up special screenings of “Toy Story” (presented by John Lasseter), an “Edward Scissorhands” screening, and a tribute to Polly Platt...
Hollywoodnews.com: A handful of stellar titles with Oscar aspirations have been programmed into this year’s Austin Film Festival schedule, which begins on Oct. 20 with an as-yet-unnamed Opening Night selection.
In between, Aff audiences will get their first looks at Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants,” Steve McQueen’s “Shame,” Lynne Ramsay’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” Rodrigo Garcia’s “Albert Nobbs” and Sean Durkin’s “Martha Marcy May Marlene” – all films with awards hopes that will screen as part of the festival’s Marquee category.
“We’re proud to be taking our program in some exciting new directions while maintaining our focus on strong writing and engaging stories,” said new Film Programmers Stephen Jannise and Stephen Belyeu.
In addition, the fest has set up special screenings of “Toy Story” (presented by John Lasseter), an “Edward Scissorhands” screening, and a tribute to Polly Platt...
- 9/20/2011
- by Sean O'Connell
- Hollywoodnews.com
Updated through 6/27.
This year's Los Angeles Film Festival, running through June 26, opens tonight with the latest from Richard Linklater, and Steven Zeitchik talks with him for the Los Angeles Times: "'It was my most difficult one to get made,' he said flatly. 'It took 12 years to happen, and even then it was tough. People can say shooting in 22 days makes a movie better. It doesn't.' … Bernie is a shaggy, idiosyncratic work, possibly the strangest yet in a career full of strangeness. Set in the small town of Carthage, Texas, it tells of an effeminate, musical-loving mortician named Bernie Tiede [Jack Black] who befriends and then commits a horrible crime against a repressed wealthy matriarch [Shirley MacLaine], leaving him to face the wrath of a local prosecutor [Matthew McConaughey]. The movie is a dramatization of an actual case — the script was based on a 1998 Texas Monthly article about Tiede, and Linklater, who attended Tiede's trial,...
This year's Los Angeles Film Festival, running through June 26, opens tonight with the latest from Richard Linklater, and Steven Zeitchik talks with him for the Los Angeles Times: "'It was my most difficult one to get made,' he said flatly. 'It took 12 years to happen, and even then it was tough. People can say shooting in 22 days makes a movie better. It doesn't.' … Bernie is a shaggy, idiosyncratic work, possibly the strangest yet in a career full of strangeness. Set in the small town of Carthage, Texas, it tells of an effeminate, musical-loving mortician named Bernie Tiede [Jack Black] who befriends and then commits a horrible crime against a repressed wealthy matriarch [Shirley MacLaine], leaving him to face the wrath of a local prosecutor [Matthew McConaughey]. The movie is a dramatization of an actual case — the script was based on a 1998 Texas Monthly article about Tiede, and Linklater, who attended Tiede's trial,...
- 6/27/2011
- MUBI
Twenty years ago this July, an unknown 23-year-old USC student named John Singleton released his first feature film, Boyz n the Hood. The drama, which stars Cuba Gooding Jr., Ice Cube and Morris Chestnut as a group of childhood friends growing up in South Central Los Angeles, earned Singleton Academy Award nominations for Best Director (making him the youngest person ever nominated) and Best Original Screenplay. Last night, the Los Angeles Film Festival honored Boyz n the Hood during a special anniversary screening and panel in which Singleton, Cuba Gooding Jr., producer Steven Nicolaides and former Columbia executive Stephanie Allain shared their memories from and thoughts on the project two decades later.
- 6/24/2011
- Movieline
If Revolution Studios could slap a Twilight Zone imprint on The Forgotten, the whole thing would make much more sense. In that legendary Rod Serling TV series, the norm was abnormality and the surreal was real. Disappearing children, space aliens, the paranoid and paranormal -- everything was fair game once you entered the Twilight Zone. The Forgotten, in which many scenes appear to have been shot at twilight, is set in a gloomy and seemingly real world, but as the psychological thriller moves steadily into science fiction, the switch in genres is never convincing.
The movie stars Julianne Moore as one of her distraught women on the verge of a nervous breakdown, which should give the Joseph Ruben-directed thriller a boxoffice boost. Revolving as it does around the iron strength of maternal love, the film should appeal to women of all ages, so business looks average or slightly above in urban areas.
Things begin on a note of emotional devastation. Moore's Telly Paretta is immobilized by grief over the loss of her 8-year-old son Sam in a plane crash 14 months earlier. Her concerned husband, Jim (Anthony Edwards), and dedicated shrink Dr. Munce (Gary Sinise) cannot get her to move on with her life.
Then comes an even greater shock. Both men, as gently as possible, tell her she suffers from a delusion: Sam never existed. Stunned and angry, she searches for photos and videotapes of Sam but finds nothing. She desperately tracks down Ash Correll (Dominic West), an alcoholic ex-hockey player whose daughter died in the same crash. Yet he denies he ever had a daughter and calls police to take this crazy woman away.
The police arrive, but National Security agents abruptly intervene and demand the prisoner. At this point, Telly achieves a breakthrough. She manages to trigger in Ash a glimmer of memory about his daughter. Ash distracts the federal agents, allowing them both to escape, and the race is on: Can the two parents figure out what happened to their kids before the feds find them? Who is the mysterious man with a smirk (Linus Roache) who turns up everywhere? Will the police detective assigned to their case (Alfre Woodard) believe their incredible story? And who is behind all the erased memory that has grown to include Jim's recollection of his own wife?
Ruben is a savvy director who maximizes the emotions in each sequence and is very good at administering unnerving shocks. Designer Bill Groom and cinematographer Anastas Michos' somber, muted interiors and darkened streets in Brooklyn and surrounding boroughs sustain the creepy atmosphere. And once you realize that Telly and Ash are not fruitcakes but rather despairing parents tormented by their "forgotten" children, a rooting interest takes hold.
The problem is you are all too aware of the fictional contours of their ordeal and the arbitrary nature of the story's twists and shocks. What's worse, the payoff to the psychological thriller seems to come from another movie that is more horror/sci-fi. One really shouldn't invite a shrink and a space alien to the same cocktail party.
That the film works as well as it does is a tribute to the actors. Moore and West credibly push their characters to the point that they are capable of anything. Woodard and Sinise anchor the increasingly far-out story in a bedrock of reality, albeit an ill-defined one. James Horner's score achieves a hypnotic, melancholy feel that nicely tickles the nerves.
THE FORGOTTEN
Columbia Studios
Revolution Studios presents a Jinks/Cohen production
Credits:
Director: Joseph Ruben
Screenwriter: Gerald Di Pego
Producers: Bruce Cohen, Dan Jinks
Executive producers: Steve Nicolaides, Todd Garner
Director of photography: Anastas Michos
Production designer: Bill Groom
Music: James Horner
Costume designer: Cindy Evans
Editor: Richard Francis Bruce
Cast:
Telly: Julianne Moore
Ash: Dominic West
Dr. Munce: Gary Sinise
Anne Pope: Alfre Woodard
Jim: Anthony Edwards
Friendly Man: Linus Roache
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running time -- 90 minutes...
The movie stars Julianne Moore as one of her distraught women on the verge of a nervous breakdown, which should give the Joseph Ruben-directed thriller a boxoffice boost. Revolving as it does around the iron strength of maternal love, the film should appeal to women of all ages, so business looks average or slightly above in urban areas.
Things begin on a note of emotional devastation. Moore's Telly Paretta is immobilized by grief over the loss of her 8-year-old son Sam in a plane crash 14 months earlier. Her concerned husband, Jim (Anthony Edwards), and dedicated shrink Dr. Munce (Gary Sinise) cannot get her to move on with her life.
Then comes an even greater shock. Both men, as gently as possible, tell her she suffers from a delusion: Sam never existed. Stunned and angry, she searches for photos and videotapes of Sam but finds nothing. She desperately tracks down Ash Correll (Dominic West), an alcoholic ex-hockey player whose daughter died in the same crash. Yet he denies he ever had a daughter and calls police to take this crazy woman away.
The police arrive, but National Security agents abruptly intervene and demand the prisoner. At this point, Telly achieves a breakthrough. She manages to trigger in Ash a glimmer of memory about his daughter. Ash distracts the federal agents, allowing them both to escape, and the race is on: Can the two parents figure out what happened to their kids before the feds find them? Who is the mysterious man with a smirk (Linus Roache) who turns up everywhere? Will the police detective assigned to their case (Alfre Woodard) believe their incredible story? And who is behind all the erased memory that has grown to include Jim's recollection of his own wife?
Ruben is a savvy director who maximizes the emotions in each sequence and is very good at administering unnerving shocks. Designer Bill Groom and cinematographer Anastas Michos' somber, muted interiors and darkened streets in Brooklyn and surrounding boroughs sustain the creepy atmosphere. And once you realize that Telly and Ash are not fruitcakes but rather despairing parents tormented by their "forgotten" children, a rooting interest takes hold.
The problem is you are all too aware of the fictional contours of their ordeal and the arbitrary nature of the story's twists and shocks. What's worse, the payoff to the psychological thriller seems to come from another movie that is more horror/sci-fi. One really shouldn't invite a shrink and a space alien to the same cocktail party.
That the film works as well as it does is a tribute to the actors. Moore and West credibly push their characters to the point that they are capable of anything. Woodard and Sinise anchor the increasingly far-out story in a bedrock of reality, albeit an ill-defined one. James Horner's score achieves a hypnotic, melancholy feel that nicely tickles the nerves.
THE FORGOTTEN
Columbia Studios
Revolution Studios presents a Jinks/Cohen production
Credits:
Director: Joseph Ruben
Screenwriter: Gerald Di Pego
Producers: Bruce Cohen, Dan Jinks
Executive producers: Steve Nicolaides, Todd Garner
Director of photography: Anastas Michos
Production designer: Bill Groom
Music: James Horner
Costume designer: Cindy Evans
Editor: Richard Francis Bruce
Cast:
Telly: Julianne Moore
Ash: Dominic West
Dr. Munce: Gary Sinise
Anne Pope: Alfre Woodard
Jim: Anthony Edwards
Friendly Man: Linus Roache
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running time -- 90 minutes...
- 10/14/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Screened
Toronto International Film Festival
"The School of Rock" rocks. This audience-pleaser comes from writer Mike White and director Richard Linklater, names usually associated with independent filmmaking. For that matter, the moviemakers have fun with their own filmography as the movie does comic riffs on the world of slackers, disaffected outsiders and other anti-Establishment types. White and Linklater team up with actor-musician Jack Black to create a high-energy comedy that takes its hero seriously when he declares, "I serve society by rocking!" Paramount has a winner in this Scott Rudin production.
"The School of Rock" gets going slowly as the film's first 20 minutes let Black go over the top to establish his slacker credentials. A hapless and aging rocker with no record deal or even next month's rent to show for years devoted to rock 'n' roll, Black's Dewey Finn is in a bad way. On the same day, he gets fired from his own band and receives a none-too-subtle eviction notice from roommate Ned White), egged on by Ned's exasperated girlfriend, Patty (Sarah Silverman).
Desperate to earn some bread, Dewey pretends to be Ned, who works as a substitute schoolteacher. Dewey takes a job for several weeks at a snooty private elementary school run by anal principal Rosalie Mullins (Joan Cusack). Dewey is content to institute daylong recess until he hears his youngsters play in orchestra class. Impulsively, he decides to mold these musical prodigies into a rock band. He junks the curriculum in favor of rock history, rock music appreciation and a pledge of allegiance that gives him "creative control" of the band.
Watching Black's deadbeat rocker teach a class of uniformed, rigidly disciplined youngsters how to adopt nonconformist, antisocial attitudes proves a rich source of comedy. Watching Dewey teach the theory and practice of rock, we realize this guy really does have an instinct for teaching -- as long as the subject inspires his passion. Soon his kids start acting like kids, not miniature adults, and Dewey dons the mantle of adult responsibility for the first time.
The filmmakers threw out a wide casting net to snare talented young musicians and singers to play the preteens in Dewey's high-voltage rock band, kids who can musically "kick ass" and "melt some faces." The young performers all prove up to their acting chores as well. They create forceful personalities, ranging from Joey Gaydos Jr.'s Zack, who really loosens up to get into the physicality of being a lead guitar player, to Maryam Hassan's Tomika, whose rich voice helps her overcome shyness and insecurity, and Miranda Cosgrove's Summer, the band's manager, who switches from books on geometry to those dealing with the economics of music and the career of David Geffen.
The film hits another comic mother lode in the byplay between Black and Cusack when he persuades her to agree to a class "field trip" by playing her favorite rock music in a grunge tavern.
Where this is all headed is imminently predictable, but getting there is no less fun. The climatic debut of the school band, which the youngsters name the School of Rock, is the film's highlight. Black's own rock talents contribute to the socko finish.
Good rock music runs throughout the movie. Some songs were written by Black and White. (Hey, that's a catchy name for a songwriting duo.) The New York band Mooney Suzuki wrote the fictional band's signature song, "School of Rock".
Shot in New York and New Jersey, "The School of Rock" benefits from Rogier Stoffers' fluid cinematography, Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer's theatrical lighting design for the final number and Karen Patch's amusing costumes that transform school uniforms into outlaw garb.
THE SCHOOL OF ROCK
Paramount Pictures
A Scott Rudin production
Credits:
Director: Richard Linklater
Screenwriter: Mike White
Producer: Scott Rudin
Executive producers: Steve Nicolaides, Scott Aversano
Director of photography: Rogier Stoffers
Production designer: Jeremy Conway
Music: Craig Wedren
Costume designer: Karen Patch
Editor: Sandra Adair
Cast:
Dewey Finn: Jack Black
Rosalie Mullins: Joan Cusack
Ned Schneebly: Mike White
Patty: Sarah Silverman
Zack: Joey Gaydos Jr.
Tomika: Maryam Hassan
Freddy: Kevin Clark
Katie: Rebecca Brown
Lawrence: Robert Tsai
Running time -- 108 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
Toronto International Film Festival
"The School of Rock" rocks. This audience-pleaser comes from writer Mike White and director Richard Linklater, names usually associated with independent filmmaking. For that matter, the moviemakers have fun with their own filmography as the movie does comic riffs on the world of slackers, disaffected outsiders and other anti-Establishment types. White and Linklater team up with actor-musician Jack Black to create a high-energy comedy that takes its hero seriously when he declares, "I serve society by rocking!" Paramount has a winner in this Scott Rudin production.
"The School of Rock" gets going slowly as the film's first 20 minutes let Black go over the top to establish his slacker credentials. A hapless and aging rocker with no record deal or even next month's rent to show for years devoted to rock 'n' roll, Black's Dewey Finn is in a bad way. On the same day, he gets fired from his own band and receives a none-too-subtle eviction notice from roommate Ned White), egged on by Ned's exasperated girlfriend, Patty (Sarah Silverman).
Desperate to earn some bread, Dewey pretends to be Ned, who works as a substitute schoolteacher. Dewey takes a job for several weeks at a snooty private elementary school run by anal principal Rosalie Mullins (Joan Cusack). Dewey is content to institute daylong recess until he hears his youngsters play in orchestra class. Impulsively, he decides to mold these musical prodigies into a rock band. He junks the curriculum in favor of rock history, rock music appreciation and a pledge of allegiance that gives him "creative control" of the band.
Watching Black's deadbeat rocker teach a class of uniformed, rigidly disciplined youngsters how to adopt nonconformist, antisocial attitudes proves a rich source of comedy. Watching Dewey teach the theory and practice of rock, we realize this guy really does have an instinct for teaching -- as long as the subject inspires his passion. Soon his kids start acting like kids, not miniature adults, and Dewey dons the mantle of adult responsibility for the first time.
The filmmakers threw out a wide casting net to snare talented young musicians and singers to play the preteens in Dewey's high-voltage rock band, kids who can musically "kick ass" and "melt some faces." The young performers all prove up to their acting chores as well. They create forceful personalities, ranging from Joey Gaydos Jr.'s Zack, who really loosens up to get into the physicality of being a lead guitar player, to Maryam Hassan's Tomika, whose rich voice helps her overcome shyness and insecurity, and Miranda Cosgrove's Summer, the band's manager, who switches from books on geometry to those dealing with the economics of music and the career of David Geffen.
The film hits another comic mother lode in the byplay between Black and Cusack when he persuades her to agree to a class "field trip" by playing her favorite rock music in a grunge tavern.
Where this is all headed is imminently predictable, but getting there is no less fun. The climatic debut of the school band, which the youngsters name the School of Rock, is the film's highlight. Black's own rock talents contribute to the socko finish.
Good rock music runs throughout the movie. Some songs were written by Black and White. (Hey, that's a catchy name for a songwriting duo.) The New York band Mooney Suzuki wrote the fictional band's signature song, "School of Rock".
Shot in New York and New Jersey, "The School of Rock" benefits from Rogier Stoffers' fluid cinematography, Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer's theatrical lighting design for the final number and Karen Patch's amusing costumes that transform school uniforms into outlaw garb.
THE SCHOOL OF ROCK
Paramount Pictures
A Scott Rudin production
Credits:
Director: Richard Linklater
Screenwriter: Mike White
Producer: Scott Rudin
Executive producers: Steve Nicolaides, Scott Aversano
Director of photography: Rogier Stoffers
Production designer: Jeremy Conway
Music: Craig Wedren
Costume designer: Karen Patch
Editor: Sandra Adair
Cast:
Dewey Finn: Jack Black
Rosalie Mullins: Joan Cusack
Ned Schneebly: Mike White
Patty: Sarah Silverman
Zack: Joey Gaydos Jr.
Tomika: Maryam Hassan
Freddy: Kevin Clark
Katie: Rebecca Brown
Lawrence: Robert Tsai
Running time -- 108 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
- 10/23/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Rene Russo makes like a distaff Doctor Dolittle in "Buddy", Sony's family-oriented fare about a 1920s eccentric New York socialite who rescues an ailing baby gorilla from the zoo and raises it in the comfort of her own home along with her other animals: chimps, geese, rabbits, horses and talkative parrots.
Based on the real-life exploits of Gertrude Lintz, the film might seem like a natural for the kiddies. Instead, "Buddy" is considerably less fun than its barrel of monkeys, despite the impressive menagerie.
Written and directed by Caroline Thompson ("Black Beauty"), it's often too dark and brooding for most youngsters and, given the subject matter, it could have benefited from a much nimbler pace.
Still, given a fairly empty family berth in the market, this Jim Henson Pictures vehicle might nevertheless sneak in a little pre-"Hercules" business before hitting the video racks.
Like all mothers, Gertrude "Trudy" Lintz learns that the hardest thing about love is letting go, even if her children happen to be much hairier than most. When mama's boy Buddy grows up, no amount of coddling or dressing him in tailor-made Bergdorf Goodman threads can allay his jungle roots. As the animatronic ape begins to have less control over his own strength and primal urges, Trudy is forced to make the decision that will be best for all concerned.
Russo, whose classically exotic looks serve the period piece well, puts in a dedicated performance as the colorful matron who's regarded with constant bemusement by her physician husband (Robbie Coltrane) and loyal assistant (Alan Cumming) and with frequent eyebrow elevation by her long-suffering housekeeper (Irma P. Hall).
Problems surface behind the scenes. As the situation grows more serious, Thompson suddenly seems to be directing "Wuthering Heights", complete with ominous shadows and storms, with the moody Buddy standing in for Heathcliff. Even the supposedly lighter, meant-to be-funny sequences have sinister tones, including a scene in which a pair of out-of-control chimps hurl a meat clever at each other across a kitchen.
As for the effects, the folks at Jim Henson's Creature Shop have done their usual impressive work in bringing the various stages of Buddy to life through stand-alone animatronics or, when Buddy gets bigger, combining suited-up actors with remote-controlled facial movements.
The only trouble is, when placed alongside those real-life, truly animated, mischievous chimps (who are constantly stealing the show), even the most advanced state-of-the-art technology feels mechanically awkward by comparison, like plopping Steven Seagal in the middle of Cirque du Soleil.
Elsewhere, production values are crisp and colorful, from cinematographer Steve Mason's bright, airy compositions to costume designer Colleen Atwood's whimsical fabrics.
BUDDY
Sony Pictures
A Columbia Pictures release
Jim Henson Pictures presents
an American Zoetrope production
Director-screenwriter Caroline Thompson
Screen story William Joyce and
Caroline Thompson
Based on the book "Animals Are My Hobby" by
Gertrude Davies Lintz
Producers Steve Nicolaides and Fred Fuchs
Executive producers Francis Ford Coppola, Stephanie Allain and Brian Henson
Director of photography Steve Mason
Production designers David Nichols and
Daniel Lomino
Editor Jonathan Shaw
Music Elmer Bernstein
Costume designer Colleen Atwood
Casting Carrie Frazier
Color/stereo
Cast:
Trudy Lintz Rene Russo
Dr. Lintz Robbie Coltrane
Dick Alan Cumming
Emma Irma P. Hall
Professor Spatz Paul Reubens
Buddy (adult) Peter Elliott, Mak Wilson
Running time -- 84 minutes
MPAA rating: PG...
Based on the real-life exploits of Gertrude Lintz, the film might seem like a natural for the kiddies. Instead, "Buddy" is considerably less fun than its barrel of monkeys, despite the impressive menagerie.
Written and directed by Caroline Thompson ("Black Beauty"), it's often too dark and brooding for most youngsters and, given the subject matter, it could have benefited from a much nimbler pace.
Still, given a fairly empty family berth in the market, this Jim Henson Pictures vehicle might nevertheless sneak in a little pre-"Hercules" business before hitting the video racks.
Like all mothers, Gertrude "Trudy" Lintz learns that the hardest thing about love is letting go, even if her children happen to be much hairier than most. When mama's boy Buddy grows up, no amount of coddling or dressing him in tailor-made Bergdorf Goodman threads can allay his jungle roots. As the animatronic ape begins to have less control over his own strength and primal urges, Trudy is forced to make the decision that will be best for all concerned.
Russo, whose classically exotic looks serve the period piece well, puts in a dedicated performance as the colorful matron who's regarded with constant bemusement by her physician husband (Robbie Coltrane) and loyal assistant (Alan Cumming) and with frequent eyebrow elevation by her long-suffering housekeeper (Irma P. Hall).
Problems surface behind the scenes. As the situation grows more serious, Thompson suddenly seems to be directing "Wuthering Heights", complete with ominous shadows and storms, with the moody Buddy standing in for Heathcliff. Even the supposedly lighter, meant-to be-funny sequences have sinister tones, including a scene in which a pair of out-of-control chimps hurl a meat clever at each other across a kitchen.
As for the effects, the folks at Jim Henson's Creature Shop have done their usual impressive work in bringing the various stages of Buddy to life through stand-alone animatronics or, when Buddy gets bigger, combining suited-up actors with remote-controlled facial movements.
The only trouble is, when placed alongside those real-life, truly animated, mischievous chimps (who are constantly stealing the show), even the most advanced state-of-the-art technology feels mechanically awkward by comparison, like plopping Steven Seagal in the middle of Cirque du Soleil.
Elsewhere, production values are crisp and colorful, from cinematographer Steve Mason's bright, airy compositions to costume designer Colleen Atwood's whimsical fabrics.
BUDDY
Sony Pictures
A Columbia Pictures release
Jim Henson Pictures presents
an American Zoetrope production
Director-screenwriter Caroline Thompson
Screen story William Joyce and
Caroline Thompson
Based on the book "Animals Are My Hobby" by
Gertrude Davies Lintz
Producers Steve Nicolaides and Fred Fuchs
Executive producers Francis Ford Coppola, Stephanie Allain and Brian Henson
Director of photography Steve Mason
Production designers David Nichols and
Daniel Lomino
Editor Jonathan Shaw
Music Elmer Bernstein
Costume designer Colleen Atwood
Casting Carrie Frazier
Color/stereo
Cast:
Trudy Lintz Rene Russo
Dr. Lintz Robbie Coltrane
Dick Alan Cumming
Emma Irma P. Hall
Professor Spatz Paul Reubens
Buddy (adult) Peter Elliott, Mak Wilson
Running time -- 84 minutes
MPAA rating: PG...
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