First on the schedule was The Oranges, from director Julian Farino, who's best known work to date has been as a director on TV series such as Entourage, The Office and Big Love. The movie takes place in a friendly New Jersey suburb (known as The Oranges) and centers around the relationships and entanglements between members of two families, the Wallings and the Ostroffs.
David and Paige Walling (Hugh Laurie and Catherine Keener) have a beautiful home, long marriage, two grown children in Toby (Adam Brody) and Vanessa (Alia Skawkat) and very little happiness in their lives. Terry and Carol Ostroff (Oliver Platt and Allison Janney) live across the street and have a grown daughter of their own, Nina (Leighton Meester), who hasn't been home to visit in years. Nina's return for the holiday season throws just about everything into turmoil. There's the friendship that she and Vanessa used to share when they were pre-teens that disintegrated in high school, her pushy mother hoping that she and Toby would get together and then most disastrously, the relationship that springs up between her and her father's best friend.
I really liked the movie. Now, I'm admittedly a pretty big Hugh Laurie fan (and frankly could totally see why a 24 year old would hop into bed with him) so I didn't have as much of an issue with the central relationship as people might. And really, while the David/Nina relationship is the pivot point of the movie, there is also so much else going on with the people around them. Alia Shawkat stole every scene as the daughter dealing with her former friend's betrayal, her anger and disillusionment with her father and her ambivalence as to her own future as she continues to live at home and put off starting her own life. Allison Janney and Catherine Keener were similarly wonderful as women dealing with disappointments and anger in their own ways.
Director Farino showed up to introduce the film and to do a Q&A following the screening. He talked quite a bit about the delicate balance he felt he had to maintain in the movie so as not to make the relationship seem predatory. He was asked if Meester was cast because she had previously played a somewhat similar role with Laurie on an arc of House and he said that while that wasn't why she was cast he thought it helped them with establishing the necessary chemistry between the actors. He was also very complimentary about the city of Toronto and the festival and how film-literate people seem to be (he's not the first or last filmmaker to pander to us...but we still appreciate it). The film doesn't have a distribution deal at this point but I'd imagine you'll see it in theatres some time next year.
Up this evening was the documentary Undefeated, which follows the 2009 season of the inner city Memphis Manassas Tigers who are attempting to have a winning season after years of losses with the goal of winning the first ever playoff game in the school's 100+ year history.
I had selected this movie because in reading the description I basically felt like it sounded like the real life version of a season of Friday Night Lights (and that show rocks). And really, it kind of was...with a little bit of The Blind Side thrown in for good measure.
The film follows the team's season highlighting the leadership of Coach Bill Courtney and the stories of three of the team members, O.C. Brown, the big, fast, talented player who is struggling academically and hoping to get to play football in college, Montrail "Money" Brown, the studious team leader, too small to play football beyond high school and hoping academics are the way out and Chavis Daniels who is fresh out of a 15 month stint in a junior penitentiary and is struggling with anger issues and how to be a member of a team.
The film is very well done and you find yourself getting swept along in the story as if it were a scripted sports film. The stories of the players and the town and the Coach and his family are all very moving. Are they successful and do they win their playoff game in the end? I'm not going to tell you and you shouldn't check before you see it because it's a much better experience to go in without knowing. The movie premiered at the South by Southwest festival earlier this year and was picked up by The Weinstein Company so I'm sure you'll get an opportunity to see it in a theatre or on the movie network at some point in the next year.
Filmmakers Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin along with Coach Bill Courtney himself were there and held a Q&A after the screening. Coach was given a standing ovation from the crowd as he was introduced. The season shown here was the last year he coached the team at Manassas (he was there as a volunteer coach for 6 years and worked with many of these players all the way through) and he's now coaching at the high school where his two oldest daughters are students and his sons will be attending and playing in the next couple of years. We got updated on where the players are today and how they are doing. Lindsay and Martin talked about how they decided to make this film and how they dealt with some unexpected events during the process.
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