Quote from: modage on May 26, 2006, 04:57:30 PM
he shot an entire movie and is editing it and not one word leaked out about this till now? jeezus christ, that is quiet.
from the Premiere interview with Kate Beckinsdale...
PREMIERE: What else do you have in the works?KATE BECKINSDALE: I've just done a drama, an independant called
Snow Angels with David Gordon Green, who did
All The Real Girls and
Undertow. I'm a waitress with a young daughter, and my ex-husband, Sam Rockwell, has become a crazy born-again Christian, slightly obsessive, wanting to get back with me.
Holy hELL! He's completed Snow AngELS?! And with RockwELL and BeckinsdALE?!
Wow, where was I in December?
Beckinsale is Green's New "Angel"
Monday, Dec. 19, 2005
Variety reports that Kate Beckinsale will star in indie darling David Gordon Green's "Snow Angels," which begins shooting early next year.
"Kate Beckinsale has signed on for a lead role in David Gordon Green's latest pic, "Snow Angels." Sam Rockwell and Olivia Thirlby also star in the indie, which starts shooting in February.
Beckinsale will play a small-town waitress who has suffered through a tumultuous relationship with her estranged husband (Rockwell).
Gordon Green adapted the script from the novel by Stewart O'Nan."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0453548/
preview of the film for Sundance here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmCZUyvFfXs&mode=related&search=/)
...
PARK CITY '07 REVIEW | Quiet Anger: David Gordon Green's "Snow Angels"
by Steve Ramos; indieWIRE
The moment in "Snow Angels" that qualifies stand-alone filmmaker David Gordon Green as the most artful of film masters occurs when Glenn (Sam Rockwell), a broken man, dances with two drunken patrons at a rundown tavern in the small Pennsylvania town he calls home. A birthday cake sits on a nearby pinball table without explanation. The room is dark, so dark that it's hard to say if one of the shuffling patrons holding Glenn is a man or woman. But everything is placed with the same attention to perfect detail as his previous three feature films, "Undertow," "All the Real Girls" and his best film, "George Washington."
Glenn's dance brims with true human feeling. It's a brave sequence, something I can't imagine another American filmmaker attempting. That's what separates Green's filmmaking from all others - his bravery for tackling unique storytelling.
Glenn (Rockwell) and his pretty wife Annie (Kate Beckinsale) have separated and both struggle to piece their lives back together. Glenn wants reconciliation with his wife and young daughter. Meanwhile, she embarks on an affair with a married man. As bad decisions lead to tragedies, "Snow Angels" makes a turn midway and shifts from family melodrama to a a thriller with a climax alongside a frozen lake. Of course, this is a thriller done the David Gordon Green way, meaning it's quiet, subtle and completely natural.
Sam Rockwell gives a physical performance, bashing his head against his pick-up truck. Rockwell does what Green needs everyone to do - he comes off believably as a regular Joe. Michael Angarano puts his aw-shucks personality to good use as Arthur, an affable teen who works with Annie. Olivia Thirlby stands out as Arthur's nerdy girlfriend. Theirs is the sweetest on-screen kiss in recent memory.
The only false notes belong to the too beautiful Kate Beckinsale. It's as if she's the only cast member who refused to wipe away her Hollywood make up for the sake of the story. "Snow Angels" is Green's first film shot above the Mason Dixon line as well as the first feature he adapted from a novel instead of his own writing. Yet, "Snow Angels" syncs perfectly with everything Green has shown audiences up to this point (including beautiful work from his regular cameraman Tim Orr). Green's growth is his ability to craft suspense.
The undeniable truth of Green's filmmaking is that there is no ambivalence about his movies. You either love his sense of deliberately paced naturalism or you find it lulling. Point Blank: I am a fan and will always celebrate his work.
a little spoilerish
Variety Review
Mysteriously structured around two broken families and two fateful gunshots, "Snow Angels" reps a chilly departure for David Gordon Green. Tackling his first literary adaptation, the acclaimed writer-director has assembled a rich but uneven panorama of human suffering in a small town, awkwardly filtered through a young man's coming-of-age story. Emotionally harrowing and gentle by turns, this well-acted winter's tale is a more narrative-driven experience than Green's more lyrical Sundance entries, "George Washington" and "All the Real Girls," which may help it generate marginally stronger returns in specialized release despite mixed critical response.
The very title of Green's new project suggests an icy remove from the grime and sweat of his 2004 Southern-gothic thriller "Undertow," as well as "George Washington" and "All the Real Girls," which were both set in North Carolina. "Snow Angels" was shot in the much cooler climes of Nova Scotia, though unlike Stewart O'Nan's original novel — set in western Pennsylvania in 1974 — the film unspools in an unspecified location in the present day.
The opening shot of a high school marching band practicing on a football field, the camera weaving lazily in and out of their formations, at first seems entirely consistent with Green's poetic sensibility. But the narrative engine soon kicks in when the band members, including trombone player Arthur Parkinson (Michael Angarano), are caught off-guard by the distant but unmistakable sound of gunfire.
The film flashes back to weeks earlier, laying out two parallel threads that we now know are destined to converge. Arthur, 16, works part-time at a Chinese restaurant alongside Annie Marchand (Kate Beckinsale), a beautiful thirtysomething on whom he's always held an innocent crush.
Annie is having an affair with Nate Petite (Nicky Katt), who's married to her tough-talking friend and co-worker, Barb (Amy Sedaris, in a small triumph of offbeat casting). Meanwhile, Annie's ex-husband Glenn (Sam Rockwell), a recovering alcoholic and born-again Christian, persistently tries to get back into the good graces of her and their four-year-old daughter, Tara (Grace Hudson). Annie and Glenn rightfully assume center stage as the most tortured and conflicted figures in the drama, as Annie's perfidy is revealed and Glenn subsequently falls off the wagon — allowing his violent, controlling nature to re-emerge, often in the name of religion.
Next to all this emotional turmoil, Arthur's story exists at a curious remove from the action, and is muted and low-key by comparison. Coping with his own parents' recent separation, the shy teen begins hanging out with Lila (Olivia Thirlby), a girl with a winningly offbeat personality and a talent for photography. As he demonstrated in "All the Real Girls," Green has a gift for capturing the tenderness and spontaneity of young love, and Angarano and Thirlby's moments together have a sweet, unabashedly sincere ring to them.
For audiences, pinpointing the elusive connection between the two threads will prove the heart of the matter. Aside from the fact that in each instance, a rejected father attempts to reconcile with wife and child, the film's most understated and resonant suggestion is that Annie and Glenn were once as passionately in love as Arthur and Lila are.
An unforeseeable accident at the midpoint confirms the film's superficial resemblance to other wintry examinations of family tragedy like "The Sweet Hereafter" and "The Ice Storm." For the most part, Green maintains an impressive control over the script's shifts in tone, even adding some wry humor to what could have been an oppressively bleak picture. It's the director's way of saying that domestic life (and drama, for that matter) is more than just the sum of its miseries.
Yet that sensibility ends up costing the film some credibility in its final, violent moments, and its explanation of those mysterious gunshots feels both agonizing and curiously rote. Green may be following O'Nan's text, but this wouldn't be the first such film to use a climactic tragedy to resolve what should, in theory, be unresolvable.
In the end, "Snow Angels" is perhaps best understood as a study in community isolation, in which personal connections are inevitably fleeting and the private pain of others, as suggested by the final shot, is all too easily forgotten.
Rockwell's wounded, self-lacerating histrionics capture Glenn's rapid transformation from an eager-to-please guy to a frighteningly unstable personality, his cocktail of booze and religious fanaticism no less moving for being so misguided. Beckinsale firmly holds the screen against him, and her emotional range expands rewardingly as Annie's rejections of Glenn become angrier and more pronounced.
The challenge of adapting someone else's material has resulted in a more concrete, earthbound work than one expects from Green, with fewer Terrence Malick-like visual abstractions. Still, the camera (wielded by the helmer's regular d.p., Tim Orr) does lurch poetically skyward on occasion, while the beautiful outdoor photography extends Green's fascination with nature as a realm of beauty and danger, a place where men, women and children alike experience their final reckonings.
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117932497.html?categoryid=2471&cs=1&query=snow+angels (http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117932497.html?categoryid=2471&cs=1&query=snow+angels)
usually only xixax reviews get me (even more) excited about certain movies, but somehow the indieWIRE one just shot my anticipation to the clouds :shock:
from an AICN review...
Quote from: Rav from AICN
It’s a very grim and dark picture, but I think it’s quite a worthwhile trip. I also think it’s the best film that David Gordon Green has made to date. In a way I kind of feel like All the Real Girls and Undertow were just larger-budget training for this film, because with Snow Angels Green has hit the ball way out of the park, I don’t think I will be seeing a better movie at Sundance than his film.
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/31314
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Snow Angels
Bottom Line: A grim tale of three relationships, naturalistically scoped for mature audiences.
Duane Byrge; Hollywood Reporter
PARK CITY -- A hard-scrabble Northern community is darkly scoped in filmmaker David Gordon Green's flinty depiction of three interrelated relationships. Ironically-titled "Snow Angels" is no happy depiction of the joys of winter or life, but rather a naturalistic and decidedly harsh glimpse into tangled, everyday lives. An appreciative, if muted audience, reacted positively to this naturalistic tale here at Sundance.
The three relationships distilled and cross-connected in "Snow Angels" might be separately labeled: beginning, middle and end. The beginning relationship centers on an observant high-school trombonist (Michael Angarano) who begins his first "serious" romance with a new-girl (Oliver Thirlby) photographer in school; the second perambulates on the trombonist's own parents who are navigating a separation, while the third courses through a marriage that has ended but is still savagely explosive.
Told contextually as filmmaker David Gordon Green interweaves the three "romances," "Snow Angels' is unsparing in its depiction of the pain of relationships. While often hard to watch because of its unflinching portrayal of the ugliness that love can take, "Snow Angels" succeeds because of the depth of its well-drawn characters. With no cinematic sugarcoating, it's an organic story that draws us in to these people's lives, as flawed and destructive as they may be.
The portrayals are across-the-board well-realized. In particular, Sam Rockwell is powerful as the addictive, grandiose ex-husband who malevolently clings to his once happy family. As his pressurized ex-wife, Kate Beckinsale is sympathetic as a working woman who bravely tries to endure. On the lighter/younger side, Michael Angarano is appealingly awkward as the love-smitten high-school student. Also, Griffin Dunne is convincing as his self-centered, philandering father, while Amy Sedaris is nicely spunky as a rag-tag waitress.
The technical contributions smartly congeal; specifically, the multi-parted storylines are brilliantly connected by William Anderson's lucid editing.
SNOW ANGELS
Crossroads Films and True Love Productions Present
A Crossroads Films Production
Producers: Dan Lindau, Paul Miller, Lisa Muskat, Cami Taylor; Screenwriter/director: David Gordon Green; Based on the novel by Stewart O'Nan; Executive producer: Jeanne Donovan-Fisher; Director of photography: Tim Orr; Production designer: Richard Wright: Music: David Wingo, Jeff McIlwain: Casting: Billy Hopkins, Suzanne Crowley, Kerry Barden, Paul Schnee. Cast: Annie Marchand: Kate Beckinsale; Glenn Marchand: Sam Rockwell; Arthur Parkinson: Michael Angarano; Don Parkinson: Griffin Dunne; Nate Petite: Nicky Katt; Mr. Chervenick: Tom Noonan; Warren Hardesky: Connor Paolo; Barb Petite: Amy Sedaris; Lila Raybern: Olivia Thirby
No MPAA Rating, Running time -- 106 minutes
Sundance Review: Snow Angels
Source: Cinematical
With his first three films -- George Washington, All the Real Girls and Undertow -- writer-director David Gordon Green swiftly established his aesthetic: His films explore small-town life in the modern world, set in communities large enough to feel lost in but small enough to feel confining; they're all shot with a flat-yet-artful look that finds art in the real; they each feature strong performances that manage to make an impression without ever feeling forced; their dialogue is natural and human yet engaged and energetic. Snow Angels, Green's fourth film, keeps within that range, telling the story of lives and loves lost and found in a small New England town at winter time, but it's also a departure; it's Green's first adaptation (of a novel by Stewart O'Nan), and with actors like Sam Rockwell, Kate Beckinsale and Griffin Dunne, it features his biggest-name cast to date. It's still a film that's identifiably his, even as it has the potential to turn him from a lesser-known indie director into an A-level dramatist.
Glenn (Rockwell) and Annie (Beckinsale) Marchand are separated; Annie's trying to raise their daughter Tara, while Glenn's born again with Jesus and killing himself slowly with alcohol. Annie works at the local Chinese restaurant -- the sort of place where the staff have to wear pseudo-Asian tops -- alongside Arthur (Michael Angarano), a teen she used to babysit. Arthur's parents (Dunne and Jeanetta Arnette) are splitting up, even as Arthur's becoming friends and more with new transfer student Lila (Olivia Thirlby). Both Glenn and Annie are leaning on their parents -- Glenn's moved back in with his folks, pretty much, while Annie's relying on her mom as cheap childcare while juggling work and an affair with Nate, (Nicky Katt), a co-worker's husband. Things grind along for all the characters -- the blend of small victories and petty defeats that makes up life -- until, one day, one simple thing goes horribly, terribly wrong. And everyone, everything is changed.
Snow Angels' plot may evoke other small-town dramas -- I felt echoes of Atom Egoyan's Exotica, for one -- but at the same time, the film speaks to much more than any plot synopsis can capture. Many of the characters here are in that miserable middle ground where you have a child and yet are a child -- having maturity thrust upon you and wrenched away in the span of a few short minutes. And John Lennon's classic aphorism -- that life is what happens while you're making other plans -- is acted out as well, from Annie's affair with the kind-yet callow Nate to Arthur's slow, sweet relationship with Lila.
If there's a weakness in Snow Angels -- or, rather, one moment that's not as superbly crafted and impressive as all the others around it -- it might be in the characterization of Thirlby's Lila. The quirky-cute, smart-hot plucky life-affirming sprite female character is fast becoming a cliché in modern indie film -- look to Natalie Portman's dime-thin characterization in Garden State for an example of the phenomenon at it's worst -- and while Thirlby has a certain presence, Lila isn't as fully-crafted as some of the other lead characters.
But as ever, Green's skill and inate craft shine through, from the real unforced quality of the dialogue to the carefully-wrought performances. Beckinsale depicts Annie a good-hearted, slightly-overwhelmed woman; Rockwell brings Glenn's mix of good-natured charm and badly-intentioned confusion to life; Angarano makes Arthur feel like a true-life teen, rendered both comfortable and afflicted by his parent's money and separation. And Green, adapting O'Nan's novel, not only captures two seemingly polar experiences --- the warm confusion of young romance and the cold understanding of love's end -- but makes us understand and see how they are linked, even while holding out the cruel/kind possibility that they might not be.
I find lately (and never more so than at Sundance, where it's easy to feel smothered by a drama-lanche of pathos and passion) that when I go into a drama, I want -- no, I need -- to feel like it can convey the real nature of life: How wonderful it can be, and how horrible; how the is joy, and there is pain; how there are elegant dreams we can aspire to and ugly facts we must face; that the only thing as certain as death is the necessity of the fight against it. Snow Angels -- human, humane, funny, tragic, artful, real -- is one of the strongest dramas of Sundance 2007; more importantly, it has the craft and power to stand as one of the best dramas of the year, period.
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Sundance Audio Interview: 'Snow Angels' Director David Gordon Green
Source: Cinematical
With three amazing films to his name -- George Washington, All the Real Girls and Undertow -- David Gordon Green may be the best director you've never heard of. At this year's Sundance Film Festival, Green's Snow Angels has earned critical respect and audience praise; At the Kimball Arts Center, Green spoke with Cinematical about directing his first adaptation, working with Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale, and on his unexpected next film. The interview can be downloaded here. (http://www.cinematical.com/podcasts/Green.mp3)
If anyone is in Brooklyn in late May\early June , maybe you can catch Snow Angels before it's 2008 release in the Sundance at BAM series.
From TheReeler.com (http://thereeler.com)
Sundance at BAM Gets Local for '07
By S.T. VanAirsdale
The second year of Sundance at BAM is locked for May 31-June 10, with 16 dramatic and documentary features and 27 shorts from the 2007 Sundance Film Festival featured in the program. A few of my '07 favorites are here, including the Documentary Jury Prize winner Manda Bala, Jeffrey Blitz's brilliant narrative debut Rocket Science, the New York premiere of David Gordon Green's Snow Angels and the excellent shorts Death to the Tinman, Motodrom, Salt Kiss and God Provides. A few unusual choices that make geographic sense — the New Yorker-directed, current ND/NF selections Padre Nuestro and The Great World of Sound; the utterly awful NYC shutterbug/buddy flick Delirious — are showcased as well.
http://dgg.takethemoneyandrun.org/archives/124 (http://dgg.takethemoneyandrun.org/archives/124)
didnt modge or ghosty or someone here see this? and if so, how come no review?
i saw it. it was good. and i fell in love with this girl.
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(on the right)
she was actually at the screening too (along with DGG) and i actually ended up seeing her again a few weeks ago filming something in Soho. but she doesn't wear those horn rimmed glasses in real life so, it just wasn't the same.
Trailer here. (http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809421425/video/5454055)
mmmm.... The National AND horn-rimmed glasses girl! if i hadn't already seen this, i would be convinced.
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David Gordon Green, mainstream director?
Though he's being feted by the American Cinematheque, David Gordon Green is still young -- and busy.
By Brooke Hauser, Special to The Times
AFTER years of cutting his teeth in independent film, David Gordon Green is one of the big boys now. The youthful 32-year-old writer and director, who still happens to wear braces, says he no longer gets carded at bars. But his newfound maturity pales in comparison to the thrill of being invited to host his own three-night film retrospective this week at American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.
"My reaction? I would use the word 'flabbergasted,' " says Green, adding that the tribute "seems a little bizarre and backward, but it's quite an honor."
Audiences might not immediately recognize the wispy, shaggy-haired Southerner as the budding film legend they've come to see, when his latest effort, "Snow Angels," a bleak small-town drama featuring Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell, premieres Thursday night. Beckinsale, who plays a single mother struggling to keep her life on track after her daughter disappears, recalls that before she met Green, "I was warned that I might think he was the production assistant because he looks 13 years old."
Despite his unassuming air, Green has carved out a niche for himself in Hollywood as a master raconteur with an ear for lyrical dialogue and an eye for authentically American milieus. "If you can categorize filmmakers in a music way, David is a folk director," says Beckinsale, one of his biggest fans. "He's a magpie, but he doesn't go for the shiny things -- he goes for the busted tin can and the three-legged dog. I describe him as being like one of those Simon and Garfunkel songs that has all these little odd, interesting, quirky objects and details set to this amazing tune."
Green made his debut in 2000 with " George Washington," a critically hailed coming-of-age story about a black boy in the rural South who dreams of greatness while trying to blot out the stain of a summer tragedy. Next came 2003's "All the Real Girls," a naturalistic high-school love story. Green's idol Terrence Malick produced his third directorial effort, 2004's "Undertow," a backwoods thriller with hints of Huckleberry Finn.
Shot in Canada, "Snow Angels" marks a departure for the director, who also adapted the screenplay from Stewart O'Nan's novel of the same name. In addition to a bigger budget (twice that of the bare-bones "Undertow"), it features marquee names. Time will tell if the critically hailed movie, which played at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, will find an audience. By the director's own admission, none of his films has earned more than half a million dollars domestically.
"I guess I've been blessed with a lack of success in financial terms; I've been lucky to maintain an appetite," Green says, with a slight Texan twang. "I think that once a filmmaker or an artist or anyone who's building something doesn't have a hunger -- they're doing it for a paycheck -- they might as well go back to the factory."
Odd jobs
Green should know, having done his fair share of factory work and other odd jobs to help collect the $50,000 he needed to direct his first feature. In addition to working at a doorknob factory, the Arkansas native has been a janitor at a mental institution, a concierge at a casino and a clown at a children's hospital. "I'm a sucker for experience," he says.
According to his family, Green first fell in love with movies at 2 weeks old when his parents brought him to a showing of "Young Frankenstein" and he watched the screen without crying. Growing up outside Dallas, Texas, he dabbled in different pursuits, playing soccer (well, he was benched most of the time) and making art. To this day, he begins his writing process by drawing exploding brains and screaming faces in his sketchbook.
Despite his early efforts, Green always came away feeling like he was "half-assed at everything," he says. In high school, he was the guy at the senior talent show who decided to make peanut-butter sandwiches and throw them into the crowd, while his friends played in a band. "That was a transitional moment," Green recalls. "I thought, 'What a cool opportunity to either make my own strange, absurd artistic statement or get the attention of the pretty girl who I had a crush on.' " He laughs. "I got my midlife crisis out of the way when I was 16."
Eventually, the director realized that his greatest gift might be his ability to surround himself with other talented people. He relies on a tightly knit creative team including producer Lisa Muskat and cinematographer Tim Orr, whom he met while studying film at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem.
He also gets a thrill out of discovering talent. For "George Washington," Green handpicked a cast of mostly first-time actors from churches and YMCA casting calls around North Carolina. In terms of acting experience, he says he looks for "people who are either full-grown or have just been born." It's the recent acting school graduates who have just learned how to eliminate their regional accents that he tries to avoid.
Even with her real-life experience as a single mother of a little girl, Beckinsale initially worried that Green might not want her for "Snow Angels." "I was pretty sensitive: 'Oh, he's going to think I'm just this action chick,' " she recalls. But after a brief meeting, the director became convinced of her ability to inhabit the role of a mother who would do anything to protect her young daughter.
The scenes she shared with Rockwell, who plays her disturbed husband, were "some of the most exciting, interesting, risky moments I've ever had in my career," says Beckinsale, who appreciated it when her director provided some much-needed levity. "He was always threatening to take a picture wearing just his underpants and moon boots in the snow, meanwhile creating the most beautiful, profoundly emotional movie."
Stoners and witches
Audiences will get to see a lot more of Green's silly streak in "The Pineapple Express," his much-anticipated stoner comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco, produced by Judd Apatow, that hits theaters this summer. "Don't read anything about it. Just go see it. It's weird," says Green, who first read the script while visiting friends on the set of Apatow's "Knocked Up."
Having lived with "Snow Angels" for so long, "I was looking to add a little sunshine to my day and use some comedic and action sensibilities I had," he continues. "Nobody had opened the door or considered me for any comedic project, and now hopefully with some good word of mouth, I can have more options and career moves that I can still keep my fingerprints on."
Currently, Green is working on a slew of projects, including an adaptation of the John Grisham novel "The Innocent Man," for which he visited death row in an Oklahoma prison. He's also remaking Dario Argento's "Suspiria," a horror film about a coven of witches at a ballet school in Germany. It's all part of Green's plan to branch out into new territory.
But he's also heeding some sage advice from Malick. "He said to have a healthy film life, you need a real life, and you need to be protective of that," says Green, who lives in New Orleans when he's not traveling around the world with his films or mountain climbing in Colorado. "The way I've taken it to heart is to make sure your stories are coming from a true place."
'Snow Angels' To 'Pineapple Express': The Year Of David Gordon Green
The indie filmmaker explains why he took a left turn from his dramatic fare into Judd Apatow/ Seth Rogen territory.
By Larry Carroll; MTV
BEVERLY HILLS, California — There was Stanley Kubrick, who flexed his masterful adversity by giving us the hilarious "Dr. Strangelove" and the trippy outer-space meditation "2001: A Space Odyssey" back-to-back. There's also Steven Spielberg, who released sci-fi "War of the Worlds" and heavy "Munich" one after the other — in the same year! You could also mention Billy Wilder, Steven Soderbergh and the Coen brothers in the pantheon of directors who have made seamless transitions between movies of wildly different genres.
But has there ever been a director brave enough to attempt the back-to-back movie dexterity currently being navigated by David Gordon Green?
"It's lovely to see someone use all of himself," marveled Kate Beckinsale, who stars as a small-town waitress in a troubled marriage in Green's heavier-than-a-brick drama "Snow Angels." "And he hasn't even started; it's great to see him do that."
Beckinsale's "that" refers to the other film the 32-year-old auteur is finishing up these days: A crude stoner comedy called "Pineapple Express," for which he teams up with red-hot pun purveyors Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow.
"It was like, 'How do I spend a year of my life in an editing room laughing my ass off, rather than trying to find the emotional truth woven into a story [like "Snow Angels"]?' " Green said of his boundary-breaking 2008 gigs. "['Pineapple'] was something to let loose, shake ['Angels'] off and shoot in an environment that was warm and where I could learn how to film a car chase, and blow up stuff and have shootouts. [I want] to exercise the 12-year-old boy and the movie buff in myself."
Sadly, that's a statement you rarely hear from filmmakers, who've become increasingly content with the categories of action (Michael Bay), drama (Lasse Halström) and comedy (Shawn Levy) that keep them happily employed churning out variations on the same emotional notes. While the move may be surprising, the fact that it's coming from an indie maverick like Green is not.
"I got my start when I went to a college, a film school in North Carolina, and met a bunch of guys who had similar sensibilities," Green said of his early days, which yielded the low-budget, eye-popping cult dramas "George Washington," "All the Real Girls" and "Undertow." "It's been a fun road of taking professional steps with these guys and making professional transitions and throwing some stories together. Sometimes experimentally, sometimes more commercially, and seeing what we can do to entertain people and maybe inspire the next guy to come make a movie."
Michael Angarano, who plays a high school kid with a crush on Beckinsale's character in "Angels," witnessed Green's close-knit team in action. "When we were making 'Snow Angels,' he said that ['Pineapple'] is the biggest-budget movie he had ever done, with a crew that wasn't composed of all of his friends," laughed the 20-year-old "Sky High" star. "Green went to film college, and he basically met his production designer, who is his friend [Richard A. Wright]; his cinematographer, who is his friend [Tim Orr]; his sound guy, who is his friend [David Wingo]; and his producer [Lisa Muskat]."
"They've formed a really nice little niche for themselves," marveled "Juno" actress Olivia Thirlby, who plays a teen who helps Angarano's character after a heartbreaking death tears their small town apart in "Angels." "He spent a lot of time on 'Snow Angels.' ... He examines interactions, and he examines the nuances of relationships, and it does remain incredibly truthful to real life."
With that North Carolina School of the Arts team in place, Green has carved out the powerful reputation of an acclaimed filmmaker as independent as they come. His films haven't made a lot of money, but it seems like everyone in Hollywood knows them by heart.
"I liked 'All the Real Girls,' " Beckinsale said of her favorite Green film, a 2003 drama starring Zooey Deschanel. "I haven't seen a movie like that in a long time. The performances were so good, and it felt kind of poetic."
"Don't expect any fast-paced, plot-driven films; his films are always about people and circumstance," explained Thirlby. "His films are very quiet and moody. He is often very influenced by the climate and environment in which he stages his films. And they're subtle."
Angarano chimed in with additional descriptions that would make most filmmakers run for cover. "He's very interested in the details of everything — a lot of specific details of many things," he said. "So you might see one of his movies and go, 'Well, that sticks out. That's odd.' ... He is an old-school filmmaker — he's like Terrence Malick."
Yeah, but even the Oscar-nominated "Badlands" director wasn't crazy enough to take on a Cheech & Chong movie.
"I visited the 'Knocked Up' set right after I finished 'Snow Angels,' " remembered Green. "That's what really drew me to it — the common sensibility [people like Apatow, Rogen, Bill Hader and James Franco] had. The loyalty they had of their crew base, the freedom they give their actors and the risks that the director was encouraging everyone to take as a team. So, we blended the Apatow camp and the North Carolina mafia, and came up with something I think is pretty interesting."
"Pineapple Express" is a "Blues Brothers"-meets-"Harold & Kumar" comedy about two dimwitted potheads (Rogen and Franco) who run afoul of cops, dealers and henchmen after witnessing a murder. Green laughed at the recent perceived "leak" of an R-rated clip, which showed the main characters smoking up, and confessed that Apatow and his gang have once again begun leaking the goodies and confidently building the same demand they did for "Superbad" and "Knocked Up."
Rogen observed that, like Apatow, Green gives his actors room to improvise, but the latter emphasizes performance over line delivery. "Judd is very quick to give out new lines, different things to say, different jokes," Rogen said. "Dave, his direction is a lot more attitude-based, and he doesn't worry about changing the lines that much. But he'll give you a direction: 'Say it like a robot. Say it like a drunk robot. Now say it like you've got ear wax in your mouth.' He's much more a performance-based director."
"I've been privy to some of the [Apatow] rehearsal processes, and David has an ear for what is real too," Thirlby insisted. "When you improv with him, he has a good sense of how to let you simultaneously be free and knows how to guide you strongly in certain directions. Just as well, he knows what is heart-wrenching, and what is sad, and he knows what is funny."
Like its two central characters, "Pineapple" already has a huge buzz. And with "Snow Angels" garnering awards talk for Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell and the director, 2008 could very well become the year of David Gordon Green.
"I like when people say dramatic things in a funny tone, or when they're laughing while they're crying," he said of the real-life balance between comedy and drama that so few filmmakers can capture. "I'm into all those very fragile, vulnerable human moments. And you can make outrageous comedies out of those, or you can make intimate dramas out of those. You could make an epic war movie out of those. And all those possibilities, those cinematic scenarios, are what make me want to get up in the morning and go make a movie."
I really liked this movie. Saw it in L.A. a few weeks back. The release and publicity have been horrible. I found out it was playing almost by accident. It has disappeared from theaters, hopefully it will find a following on DVD and cable.
In any event, I enjoyed Green's previous films, but I think he's reached new heights with Snow Angels. This is a great character-based drama, in the wintry vein of Affliction. Very depressing, very uncompromising -- but great. Why does everything have to be upbeat. This film is about human weakness, and Sam Rockwell gives a brave performance. It is hard to play someone who is weak, like Nolte in Afflictino, but Rockwell does a great job. All of the acting is great, the atmosphere is great. I have the feeling that years from now this will be regarded as a classic. It all makes me hearken back 30 years ago, when I saw Straight Time, a film that was reviled by critics and ignored by audiences. Now Straight Time is considered a classic. Time will do that. I'm sure Snow Angels will follow the same trajectory.
I liked this alot. For the record, I never read the book. It really kept it's momentum. Usually movies that have intersecting storyline's always tend to have at least one storyline that I couldn't give a shit about, but I was thoroughly interested in all of them here. My favorite was definitely the teenage love story in the middle, if you can call it that. It's a pretty heartbreaking film and really hits you as it's winding down. It starts out real nice and sweet and eases you into things before it goes full speed ahead. Tim Orr is in fine form here. It's got a great cast.
Everyone should check it out when it comes out on video.
Excellent film. :yabbse-thumbup: Sam Rockwell's performance is astounding. Like Stefen said, each storyline is separate, yet all connected in terms of theme, done so with an accomplished craft of editing that gives each storyline and actor their time to shine. And I too, like mod, was smitten by Thirby.
Thirbly reminds me of that chick we all lost our viriginity to in high school. She's not hot, but she's got a certain something about her that makes you attracted to her.
watching it, I realized the kid in this is the young william miller in almost famous! I loved that kid!
I loved this. It's weird watching this after seeing Pineapple Express because this really showed a new level of maturity in DGG's filmmaking. He pretty much ditches all of his usual stylistic techniques. The pacing is pretty much perfect, the editing is great, and the characters feel so real (and i know its a cliche but) i sometimes forget i'm watching a film. The title is fucking stupid though.
spoilers
I thought it was a stroke of genius when Sam Rockwell cries out for the rabbit just before he shoots himself. I was on the verge of tears.