Coming Soon To A Theater Near You.. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Adventures of Sebastian Cole | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
It's 1983, but for Sebastian Cole, it just isn't his year. He's not the best student. He's not the best athlete. But what Sebastian is going through, is nothing compared to his Dad? John Irving meets John Hughes in this spirited and poignant glimpse into a young man's adolescence during the 80's. Newcomer Adrian Grenier is Sebastian Cole, a boy growing up too fast during his junior year of high school especially since his step-dad has just announced to the family that he intends to become a woman. Grenier, in his first major film role, makes Sebastian's "adventures" both hilarious and captivating and signals the arrival of a major new talent. And not since The World According to Garp's Roberta Muldoon has there been such an incredibly human portrayal of a man who knows that inside he is a woman as Clark Gregg's Hank/Henrietta. In short, it's just another story of a boy and his dad. The Adventures of Sebastian Cole is not, however, your average coming-of-age story, much like The Catcher in the Rye it is told with unfettered honesty and integrity. Growing up in upstate New York, seventeen-year-old Sebastian Cole (Adrian Grenier) has hit the doldrums of his junior year in high school, and restlessly bides his time by reading the "wrong" books and underachieving in school, in spite of his natural intelligence. He is tired of "normal," bored with the ordinariness of his relatively stable family and the mundane small town they live in. He wants to get out and find adventure, new experiences. Little does he know, life has plenty in store for him. Sebastian's family is suddenly thrown into a fantastic tailspin when his stepfather Hank (Clark Gregg) announces that he is going to become a woman. In response, Sebastian's sister runs off to California with her boyfriend, and his hysterical mother Joan (Margaret Colin) whisks him back with her to her native England. Unhappy with his new surroundings and his mother's coping through inebriation, Sebastian returns to New York. Instead of living with his phenomenally egocentric biological father Hartley (John Shea) and his new trophy wife, Sebastian moves back in with Hank, now a macho pre-op named Henrietta. The two form an unlikely family. In his quest for inspiration and self-discovery, Sebastian lives further and further out on the edge, delighting in life's absurd moments. Through his exploits, Sebastian comes to find that sometimes life itself is the most extraordinary adventure of all. The Adventures of Sebastian Cole stars Adrian Grenier, Clark Gregg, Margaret Colin, Rory Cochrane, Aleska Palladino and John Shea. | |||||||||||||||||||
| All The Little Animals | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
CANNES (Variety) - Veteran British producer Jeremy Thomas makes a creditable directorial debut with ``All the Little Animals,'' a drama about an outcast teen, which draws simultaneously on the pastoral and eccentric traditions in English storytelling. Boosted by a fine character turn from John Hurt, the picture is modest in ambition and accomplishment, and its oddball, unclassifiable nature will make it difficult to market. Another handicap is a title that makes the film sound like something along the lines of ``All Things Bright and Beautiful,'' which it decidedly is not. Overly melodramatic at its worst, but disarmingly offbeat at its best, this nicely mounted adaptation of the late Walker Hamilton's novel centers on an emotionally damaged boy's search for a place in the world within an animal rights/ ''civilization''-vs.-nature context. The story's key psychological revelations and violent confrontations smack of the routine and familiar, but the many sequences on the road and in the countryside convey a quiet, appealing sensitivity to life on the unpopulated fringes of society. Related by the young fellow in retrospect, the tale lays out the grim repercussions of his mother's premature death on Bobby (Christian Bale), a misfit from a well-to-do family. Bobby seems a bit slow, with the maturity of someone perhaps half his late-teens age, the result of a head injury in a childhood auto accident. His stepfather, De Winter (Daniel Benzali), whom Bobby calls ``The Fat", is a stern, sinister figure who considers his charge "subnormal'' and has one aim only: to induce Bobby to sign over complete ownership in the family department store, then put him away for good. Sniffing out this nefarious scheme isn't too tough even for Bobby, thanks to the one-dimensional evil with which the Fat is written and acted, and so the boy hits the road and hitches a couple of rides that get him to Cornwall, in the distant west of England. The trip comes to an abrupt halt, however, when Bobby creates a wreck trying to prevent the lorry driver from deliberately running over a fox on the road. The crash kills the driver, but the first person Bobby encounters at the scene, a Mr. Summers (Hurt), blithely ignores the human body in favor of a rabbit that got hit instead of the fox. As Summers takes over, the story enters its most interesting stretch. Summers is not only a hermit par excellence, but an antisocial extremist of the first order. ``People are of no value at all as far as I'm concerned,'' the aging coot tells Bobby, as he begins making his daily rounds collecting and burying the remains of road kill and other critter casualties. Only grudgingly welcoming, Summers has little choice but to let Bobby stay at his humble home, a shack without electricity or other modern amenities. But he's surprised at Bobby's avid embrace of his attitudes and vocation, and takes the boy under his wing. Once they've shared numerous small adventures, played both for comic and suspenseful effect, Summers reveals the self-incriminating story of his criminal past that led to his isolation. Bobby accepts it, as well as the man's insistence that they return to London to confront the Fat and settle matters with him once and for all. The elodramatic conclusion, with the Fat running amok in the countryside, borders on grotesquery. Still, the central section is solid, and Thomas -- whose father, Ralph Thomas, was a prominent British director -- shows a sure hand behind the camera, staging the action fluently and evincing a strong feeling for the settings and sentiments involved. Working comfortably in widescreen on locations in Cornwall and the Isle of Man, Thomas and cinematographer Mike Molloy serve up strong visuals without being showy about it, and Richard Hartley's score adds considerable warmth and flavor. Hurt is excellent as the confirmed old crab who resolutely lives according to his beliefs, and whose long-ago left turn in life turns out to be quite plausibly motivated. Bale nimbly walks a fine line between Bobby's handicap and an increasingly mature comprehension of what he must do to survive. Unfortunately, Benzali has not been encouraged to express a human center beneath the Fat's nastiness, rendering the man a cardboard villain. | |||||||||||||||||||
| SCREENING LIST | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
We do promotional WOM screenings in Austin, Dallas ,Houston, New Orleans and San Antonio... If you live in these cities-email your name, age and address and you will be added to our mailing lists. If you do not live in the above cities, do not email a request because we not do screenings there and cannot do anything with your info. ALSO WE ARE NOT CASTING A MOVIE... WE CANNOT HELP YOU WITH YOUR FILM CAREER SO DON'T ASK!! | |||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||
|
This page has been visited
|