We're celebrating twins daily at 2:22 pm while we're in Gemini
Gratuitous Anecdote! I've always loved to draw and in my high school years it's what people knew me for. I won the High School's Departmental Award in Art (Do they still have departmental awards? Hell, do they still have art classes?) in that heady stretch of graduation celebrations where they keep honoring star pupils. One day early in my senior year or maybe it was at the end of my junior year, the art teacher asked one of the students to pose for the class. A guy I didn't know volunteered and I felt totally inspired. Instant crushing helps. He loved my drawing and we became fast friends after the class. The first day I went to his house after school I was stunned to see a whole house full of doppelgangers. He had one of those families...
Gratuitous Anecdote! I've always loved to draw and in my high school years it's what people knew me for. I won the High School's Departmental Award in Art (Do they still have departmental awards? Hell, do they still have art classes?) in that heady stretch of graduation celebrations where they keep honoring star pupils. One day early in my senior year or maybe it was at the end of my junior year, the art teacher asked one of the students to pose for the class. A guy I didn't know volunteered and I felt totally inspired. Instant crushing helps. He loved my drawing and we became fast friends after the class. The first day I went to his house after school I was stunned to see a whole house full of doppelgangers. He had one of those families...
- 6/13/2012
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
Film review: 'Deep End of the Ocean'
Playing a mother whose 3-year-old son vanishes and remains missing for nine years, portraying possibly the worst type of prolonged anguish inflicted on human beings, Michelle Pfeiffer dives into one of her best roles and pulls the viewer into the stormy waters of director Ulu Grosbard's involving adaptation of Jacquelyn Mitchard's darker 1996 novel.
While its boxoffice take will be ducky at best, a tsunami of tears will flow from the target audience of women and mature couples. "Deep End" should more than tread water internationally and has a successful voyage ahead in ancillary seas. Teenage girls may also show more than passing curiosity when word gets around about Emmy winner Jonathan Jackson's career-making performance as the eldest son who flounders in a dysfunctional riptide in the wake of family tragedy.
Destined to be remembered next awards season, Pfeiffer's performance is heartfelt and unmanipulative. Grosbard's unobtrusive yet carefully calibrated direction, accompanied by Elmer Bernstein's fluty orchestral score, showcases the actors and employs few of the standard tension-building techniques or storytelling shortcuts, though the black clouds hanging over the characters tend to block out most scenes of normal, relaxed interaction.
With her three children, photographer Beth (Pfeiffer) motors from Madison, Wis., to Chicago for her 15th high school reunion. In a jammed hotel lobby, middle child Ben Michael McElroy) disappears without a trace. Friends help Beth look for him, and a reassuring police detective (Whoopi Goldberg) shows up with a small army. But the hours tick off, and there's no news. Unable to maintain her composure, Beth bursts into hysterics. Husband Pat (Treat Williams), arriving in an agitated state, tries to take charge -- but still no Ben.
Oldest son Vincent (Cory Buck) and Pat are the unintended victims of Beth's severe depression that results from Ben's unknown fate. Beth almost brings the family down by neglecting her baby daughter, never getting out of bed and giving up her career.
The story takes a nine-year leap, with too-quickly matured Vincent (Jackson) evolved into a high schooler with a sullen, seen-it-all attitude, though the family appears to be back to normal.
One day a young boy named Sam (Ryan Merriman) mows the family's lawn, and Beth starts to believe in miracles. Goldberg's character swings into action again when it's proven that the boy is indeed Ben and a possible kidnap victim. At this point, the details of the disappearance and the plot in general flirt with the unbelievable, but the focus settles on Sam's dilemma -- should he go to his real family or remain with the adopted Father John Kapelos) who has loved and nurtured him most of his life.
At first, Vincent is a jerk because he's never known the love and attention lavished on Sam -- who moves back home and shows up his Big Brother in basketball for starters. But the bonding of the brothers is presented as the only hope to reconstructing a family long-ago torn asunder. The tough truth is Kapelos' character is such a decent bloke -- as shocked and devastated as the others by the turn of events -- that Sam's return is not necessarily permanent.
Keeping pace with Pfeiffer and Jackson, Merriman (HBO's "Lansky") is superb as the sad but precocious Sam. In one giddy scene, he leads a party group in the dance from "Zorba the Greek", but he also shines brightly in intensely emotional exchanges with his co-stars. Williams is solid as the father and husband caught in a nightmare that finally ends with a tidy, optimistic finale.
THE DEEP END OF THE OCEAN
Columbia Pictures
Mandalay Entertainment presents
A Via Rosa production
Director: Ulu Grosbard
Screenwriter: Stephen Schiff
Based on the book by: Jacquelyn Mitchard
Producers: Kate Guinzberg, Steve Nicolaides
Executive producer: Frank Capra III
Director of photography: Stephen Goldblatt
Production designer: Dan Davis
Editor: John Bloom
Costume designer: Susie DeSanto
Music: Elmer Bernstein
Casting: Lora Kennedy
Color/stereo
Cast:
Beth: Michelle Pfeiffer
Pat: Treat Williams
Vincent: Jonathan Jackson
Sam/Ben: Ryan Merriman
Young Vincent: Cory Buck
George: John Kapelos
Candy: Whoopi Goldberg
Young Ben: Michael McElroy
Running time -- 108 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
While its boxoffice take will be ducky at best, a tsunami of tears will flow from the target audience of women and mature couples. "Deep End" should more than tread water internationally and has a successful voyage ahead in ancillary seas. Teenage girls may also show more than passing curiosity when word gets around about Emmy winner Jonathan Jackson's career-making performance as the eldest son who flounders in a dysfunctional riptide in the wake of family tragedy.
Destined to be remembered next awards season, Pfeiffer's performance is heartfelt and unmanipulative. Grosbard's unobtrusive yet carefully calibrated direction, accompanied by Elmer Bernstein's fluty orchestral score, showcases the actors and employs few of the standard tension-building techniques or storytelling shortcuts, though the black clouds hanging over the characters tend to block out most scenes of normal, relaxed interaction.
With her three children, photographer Beth (Pfeiffer) motors from Madison, Wis., to Chicago for her 15th high school reunion. In a jammed hotel lobby, middle child Ben Michael McElroy) disappears without a trace. Friends help Beth look for him, and a reassuring police detective (Whoopi Goldberg) shows up with a small army. But the hours tick off, and there's no news. Unable to maintain her composure, Beth bursts into hysterics. Husband Pat (Treat Williams), arriving in an agitated state, tries to take charge -- but still no Ben.
Oldest son Vincent (Cory Buck) and Pat are the unintended victims of Beth's severe depression that results from Ben's unknown fate. Beth almost brings the family down by neglecting her baby daughter, never getting out of bed and giving up her career.
The story takes a nine-year leap, with too-quickly matured Vincent (Jackson) evolved into a high schooler with a sullen, seen-it-all attitude, though the family appears to be back to normal.
One day a young boy named Sam (Ryan Merriman) mows the family's lawn, and Beth starts to believe in miracles. Goldberg's character swings into action again when it's proven that the boy is indeed Ben and a possible kidnap victim. At this point, the details of the disappearance and the plot in general flirt with the unbelievable, but the focus settles on Sam's dilemma -- should he go to his real family or remain with the adopted Father John Kapelos) who has loved and nurtured him most of his life.
At first, Vincent is a jerk because he's never known the love and attention lavished on Sam -- who moves back home and shows up his Big Brother in basketball for starters. But the bonding of the brothers is presented as the only hope to reconstructing a family long-ago torn asunder. The tough truth is Kapelos' character is such a decent bloke -- as shocked and devastated as the others by the turn of events -- that Sam's return is not necessarily permanent.
Keeping pace with Pfeiffer and Jackson, Merriman (HBO's "Lansky") is superb as the sad but precocious Sam. In one giddy scene, he leads a party group in the dance from "Zorba the Greek", but he also shines brightly in intensely emotional exchanges with his co-stars. Williams is solid as the father and husband caught in a nightmare that finally ends with a tidy, optimistic finale.
THE DEEP END OF THE OCEAN
Columbia Pictures
Mandalay Entertainment presents
A Via Rosa production
Director: Ulu Grosbard
Screenwriter: Stephen Schiff
Based on the book by: Jacquelyn Mitchard
Producers: Kate Guinzberg, Steve Nicolaides
Executive producer: Frank Capra III
Director of photography: Stephen Goldblatt
Production designer: Dan Davis
Editor: John Bloom
Costume designer: Susie DeSanto
Music: Elmer Bernstein
Casting: Lora Kennedy
Color/stereo
Cast:
Beth: Michelle Pfeiffer
Pat: Treat Williams
Vincent: Jonathan Jackson
Sam/Ben: Ryan Merriman
Young Vincent: Cory Buck
George: John Kapelos
Candy: Whoopi Goldberg
Young Ben: Michael McElroy
Running time -- 108 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13...
- 3/1/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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