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Thursday, July 8, 2010

August Rush

August Rush

August Rush

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Kirsten Sheridan
Produced by Richard Barton Lewis
Written by Nick Castle
James V. Hart
Paul Castro
Starring Freddie Highmore
Keri Russell
Jonathan Rhys Meyers
with Terrence Howard
and Robin Williams
Music by Mark Mancina
Cinematography John Mathieson
Editing by William Steinkamp
Distributed by Warner Bros. (USA)
Entertainment Film Distributors (UK)
Release date(s) November 21, 2007
Running time 114 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $25,000,000 (est.)
Gross revenue $66,121,062[1]
August Rush is a 2007 American drama film directed by Kirsten Sheridan and written by Paul Castro, Nick Castle, and James V. Hart, and produced by Richard Barton Lewis. It has been referred to as an up-to-date reworking of the Oliver Twist story by Charles Dickens.[2]

Contents

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Plot

12-year-old Evan Taylor (Freddie Highmore) grows up an outcast in a home for boys, all the while believing that his parents are alive. He can hear music in everything: the light, the wind, rustling leaves. He believes that he can hear the music from his parents. He believes that they always wanted him and would come and get him someday.
He meets a social service worker, Richard Jeffries (Terrence Howard), of the New York Child Services Department. Evan tells him he does not want to be adopted. Jeffries likes Evan and gives him his card. He wants Evan to confide in him if the need should ever arise.
Through a series of flashbacks, Evan's parents are revealed to be Lyla Novacek (Keri Russell), a famous teenage concert cellist, and Louis Connelly (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), an Irish guitarist and lead singer of a rock band. They met at the same party and spent a romantic night together. Due to Lyla's strict father, Lyla was unable to meet Louis where she'd agreed to and they parted, apparently never to see each other again.
Lyla became pregnant with their child. Her father did not approve of this, wanting instead for Lyla to have a successful career without the obstacle of a child. After an argument with her father, Lyla ran out of a restaurant and was hit by a car. While in the hospital, she gave birth to a son. The last thing she was aware of was the nurses telling her that the baby's heartbeat was falling. When she wakes, her father implies that the child didn't make it. Unbeknownst to her, the baby survived and her father had forged her signature on the adoption papers. Both Louis and Lyla gave up their performing careers after losing each other, and neither was aware of their son's existence.
Evan has a very strong faith that if he could learn to play the music, he will have a chance to be found by his parents. He believes that they will hear him. So he runs away to New York City, in the process losing Jeffries' card. He meets Arthur (Leon G. Thomas III), a pre-teen street-corner guitarist, playing in Washington Square Park. He follows Arthur home and is taken in by Maxwell "Wizard" Wallace (Robin Williams), who houses various orphans and runaways, teaching and employing them to play music on the streets and taking a large cut of their tips. Evan immediately proves to be a musical child prodigy. Wizard enlists him and gives him the name "August Rush", convincing him he will be sent back to the orphanage if his real name is ever discovered.
Lyla only discovers that her son is alive when her father, on his deathbed, confesses what actually happened. Lyla immediately sets out to New York to look for her now 12-year-old son. Louis, meanwhile, is harassed by his brother and former bandmate at a party, causing him to re-examine his life. He ultimately discovers Lyla's full name and whereabouts in Chicago, and quits his job to go there, hoping to reconcile.
After a raid on Wizard's abandoned theater home by the police, triggered by Jeffries, Evan takes refuge in an inner-city church. He again impresses with his natural musical talent and is brought to the Juilliard School, where he is enrolled in classes as "August Rush." He excels at his studies, and a work he composes is chosen to be performed by the New York Philharmonic at a concert in Central Park. Unfortunately, Wizard barges into the dress rehearsal, and "August", under threat of being revealed as Evan, reluctantly follows him back to his life of performing music on the streets.
Meanwhile, Lyla has discovered Evan's identity through Jeffries, and has decided to stay in New York while searching for her son. While there, she decides to resume her career as a cellist, and is invited to play in the same Central Park concert. Louis, being wrongly told by Lyla's former neighbor in Chicago that Lyla has since married, also returns to New York to resume playing with his former band. He has a chance meeting with Evan, who has returned to his corner at Washington Square Park, and they play an improvised piece together, although neither knows their blood relationship to the other. Louis encourages "August" not to give up in his music, and not to miss his concert.
The night of the concert, Evan finally chooses to run from Wizard, helped by Arthur, in favor of performing at his concert. After his own concert with his band at a local nightclub, Louis sees Evan's pseudonym along with Lyla's name on a sign billing the concert, and races on foot to Central Park. Meanwhile, Jeffries connects Evan to his alias after discovering a misplaced CPS flyer for August Rush, posted after his disappearance from Juilliard, and also heads to the concert. Evan conducts his rhapsody, attracting both Lyla and Louis to the front of the crowd, where they meet and reconcile, Lyla also realizing that "August" is her son Evan. At its conclusion, when Evan turns around to see Lyla and Louis standing hand in hand, he knows that he is reunited with his mother and father at last.

Cast

Music

The final number with Lyla and Louis begins with Lyla playing the Adagio-Moderato from Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor.
Except for "Dueling Guitars", all of August's guitar pieces were played by American guitarist-composer Kaki King, who also was a "body double" for Evan in certain closeups of the guitar playing.[citation needed]
Composer Mark Mancina spent over 18 months composing the film's musical score. "The heart of the story is how we respond and connect through music. It's about this young boy who believes that he's going to find his parents through his music. That's what drives him."[4] The final theme of the movie was composed first. The score was recorded at the Todd-AO Scoring Stage and the Eastwood Scoring Stage at Warner Brothers.[5]

Reception

Commercial

August Rush opened on November 21, 2007 and landed #7 that weekend with $9,421,369.[6] Based on an estimated $25 million budget, the film made $31,664,162 in domestic territories and $66,121,062 worldwide.[7]

Critical

In a review by USA Today, Claudia Puig commented that "August Rush will not be for everyone, but it works if you surrender to its lilting and unabashedly sentimental tale of evocative music and visual poetry."[8] The Hollywood Reporter reviewed the film positively, writing "the story is about musicians and how music connects people, so the movie's score and songs, created by composers Mark Mancina and Hans Zimmer, give poetic whimsy to an implausible tale."[9]
On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 36% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 110 reviews. "Consensus: Though featuring a talented cast, August Rush cannot overcome the flimsy direction and schmaltzy plot."[10] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 38 out of 100, based on 27 reviews.[11]
Pam Grady of the San Francisco Chronicle called the film "an inane musical melodrama." Grady said "the entire story is ridiculous" and "Coincidences pile on, behavior and motivations defy logic, and the characters are so thinly drawn that most of the cast is at a loss." She adds "the ending of the movie certainly did not impress me at all. They worked so hard on the rest of it but it came to a sudden end that left the movie unfinished."[12] Edward Douglas of comingsoon.net said it "doesn't take long for the movie to reveal itself as an extremely contrived and predictable movie that tries too hard to tug on the heartstrings."[13][unreliable source?]Roger Ebert gave the movie three stars, calling it "a movie drenched in sentimentality, but it's supposed to be."[14]

Awards

The soundtrack has songs from new and established acts. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song (Raise It Up).

Young Artist Award

2008 Won Category/Recipient(s)
  • Best Family Feature Film (Comedy or Drama)
  • Best Performance in a Feature Film - Supporting Young Actor - Fantasy or Drama (Leon G. Thomas III)

Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA

2008 Won Saturn Award Best Performance by a Younger Actor - Freddie Highmore
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A Walk to Remember

A Walk to Remember

A Walk to Remember
Directed by Adam Shankman
Produced by Denise Di Novi
Hunt Lowry
Written by Nicholas Sparks (novel)
Karen Janszen (screenplay)
Starring Shane West
Mandy Moore
Music by Mervyn Warren
Cinematography Julio Macat
Editing by Emma E. Hickox
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
Release date(s) January 25, 2002 (2002-01-25)
Running time 102 mins
Country USA
Language English
Budget $11,800,000
Gross revenue $47,494,916
A Walk to Remember is a 2002 romance film based on the 1999 romance novel with the same name by Nicholas Sparks. The movie stars Shane West and pop singer/actress Mandy Moore. The movie was directed by Adam Shankman and produced by Denise DiNovi and Hunt Lowry for Warner Bros. The novel, written by Sparks, is set in the 1950s while the film is set in 1998.

Plot

This article's plot summary may be too long or overly detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (January 2010)
When a prank on a fellow high school student goes wrong, popular but rebellious Landon Rollins Carter (Shane West) is threatened with expulsion. His punishment is mandatory participation in various after-school activities, such as tutoring disadvantaged children and performing in the drama club's spring musical. At these functions, he is forced to interact with quiet, bookish Jamie Elizabeth Sullivan (Mandy Moore), the only daughter of their church's pastor, and a girl he has known for many years but to whom he has rarely if ever spoken. Their differing social statures leave them worlds apart, despite their close physical proximity.
Landon has difficulty learning his lines for the spring play, so he asks Jamie to assist him. She decides to help him but under one condition: Landon must promise not to fall in love with her. He chuckles at the strange request, obviously doubting that he could ever fall in love with her.
Landon and Jamie begin practicing together at her house after school. As they spend more time together, a friendship begins to develop. Landon discovers that Jamie’s wish list of everything she aspires to accomplish in life includes befriending someone she doesn't like, getting a tattoo, being in two different places at once, and making a telescope so she can see a special comet that is coming, but she doesn't tell him her number one wish. One day, Jamie approaches Landon when he is hanging out with some of his friends. When Jamie asks if they are still on for practice that afternoon he smirks and replies, "In your dreams." His friends laugh and Landon's smirk falters as Jamie feels betrayed and embarrassed. That afternoon, Landon arrives at Jamie's house, hoping that she will still agree to help him. But she refuses to let him in, and asks him in a sarcastically sweet voice if he wants to be "secret friends." She slams the door in his face when he agrees. Landon eventually learns the script by himself.
During the play, Jamie astounds Landon and the entire audience with her beauty and singing voice. Landon, clearly surprised and overcome with unexpected emotion, kisses her at the end of her key song, "Only Hope." After the play, Landon is approached by his father, who walked out on him and his mother when he was very young. When he turns to go, his dad calls after him not to walk away. "You taught me how," he says simply, and leaves.
In the following days, Landon tries to get close to Jamie, but she repeatedly rejects him. The breaking point comes when a few of Landon's so-called friends play a malicious joke on Jamie. (The prank consisted of a photoedit of Jamie's face onto an almost pornographic image and its distribution.) She is about to cry in the middle of the cafeteria when Landon comes to her aid. He punches out one of his now ex-friends and literally turns his back on the group, takes Jamie out of the cafeteria, and, when they're outside the school, apologizes about the group, calling them "animals".
In his car at her house, he asks her out to dinner, but she replies that she is not allowed to date. He goes to her father in the church and asks him for permission. When her father says no, Landon apologizes for the way he has treated Jamie in the past and asks for her father to have faith in him. The man begrudgingly agrees, and Landon takes her out to dinner. Despite his reluctance at first, she convinces him to dance with her. Even though Jamie still doesn't want to reveal her number one wish, Landon reveals his number one wish to be leaving his hometown, to which Jamie points out that it's not about leaving, but more about figuring out what to do when he gets there.
Landon then sets out to help her accomplish a few things on her wish list. He takes her to the state line and positions her over it, with one foot on each side of the line. When Jamie asks him what he's doing he tells her, "You're in two places at once." He also gives her a temporary tattoo of a butterfly. While walking along a boardwalk, Jamie asks Landon how he could have such amazing moments and not believe. She explains her faith to him eloquently. "I might kiss you," he says. And he does. He then tells her that he loves her, but she doesn't reply right away. When he prompts her, all she can say is "I told you not to fall in love with me..."
As their relationship grows, Jamie's father confronts her. He tells her that her behavior is "sinful." She argues that she is in love with him, and her father looks her straight in the eye. "Then be fair to him, Jamie. Before things get worse."
The couple meets up at the cemetery where Jamie goes to stargaze and they spend the night waiting for Pluto to rise. Landon tells Jamie that he had a star named for her. She tells him for the first time that she loves him, and he finally realizes something that he has been trying to find out for a while: Jamie's number one wish is to marry in the church where her parents were married.
One evening, Jamie finally tells Landon that she has terminal leukemia and has stopped responding to treatments. He is initially upset, but she says that the reason why she didn't tell him was because she was moving on with her life and using the time she had left. She says that she was doing fine until they fell in love. Jamie starts to break down as she says, "I do not need a reason to be angry with God" and runs away.
Landon goes to his father and asks him to help Jamie. His father hesitates, as leukemia is not his specialty, and says he needs to examine her and know her medical history before he could do anything. Landon leaves, angry and bitter. On the way home, he tears up as the situation sinks in.
Eric, who was Landon's best friend but had also participated in the prank on Jamie, comes and tells him how sorry he is and that he hadn't understood. Landon leaves dozens of flowers on Jamie's doorstep and asks her father to tell her that he's "not going anywhere". The pair makes up soon after.
Jamie's cancer gets worse until she collapses one day. Her father rushes her to the hospital where he meets Landon. Landon doesn't leave Jamie's side until her father practically has to pry him away. The next day, Landon comes to the hospital and sees Jamie being wheeled out of the ward. He asks what's going on and she replies by asking him to thank his father for the help. Apparently Landon's father arranged to pay for private homecare for Jamie. Landon is stunned and, later that night, goes back to his father's house. He whispers "thank you" and his father hugs him. With all the exhaustion and fear over Jamie's situation and years of hurt about his parents' divorce on his shoulders, Landon breaks down in tears in his dad's arms.
Landon continues to fulfill various wishes on Jamie's list, including building her telescope. Her father, who now approves of him, helps out, as does Dean. After Jamie sees the comet through the telescope, Landon proposes and Jamie accepts. They marry in the church where her parents were married. With the wedding, Landon has completed everything on Jamie’s wishlist, and then she died months after their wedding.
Four years later, Landon visits Jamie's father and tells him he has finished college and has been accepted into medical school. He then gives Jamie's father a book that Jamie had given to him. He tells her father that he is sorry he could not grant Jamie's ambition to witness a miracle before she died. Her father replies that Jamie did see a miracle. "It was you," he says with a fatherly smile.
In the end, Landon remarks that Jamie not only saved his life—she taught him everything about life, hope and the long journey ahead. He ends his monologue by saying that Jamie and his love is like the wind. "I can't see it, but I can feel it." The film ends with' Landon standing on a dock, staring into the sunset and smiling, as "Cry" (by Mandy Moore) plays into a fade.

Background and production

The inspiration for A Walk to Remember was Nicholas Sparks' sister, Danielle Sparks Lewis, who died of cancer in 2000. In a speech he gave after her death in Berlin, the author admits that "In many ways, Jamie Sullivan was my younger sister". The plot was inspired by her life; Danielle met a man who wanted to marry her, "even when he knew she was sick, even when he knew that she might not make it".[1] Both the book and movie are dedicated to Danielle Sparks Lewis.
This movie was filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina at the same time as Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002) and the TV show Dawson's Creek were being filmed there. Many of the sets were from the TV show Dawson's Creek (1998) - particularly the school, hospital and Landon's home.[2] The total shooting time was only 39 days, despite Mandy Moore being able to only work 10 hours a day because she was a minor.[2] Daryl Hannah wore a brown wig, over pink hair from another movie, that closest matched Shane West's hair in the movie when playing her character. Hannah also had collagen problems which made her lips swollen. By the end of the movie, however, the symptoms were less obvious.[3]

Cast

Box office

The film opened at #3 at the U.S. Box office raking in $12,177,488 USD in its opening weekend, behind Snow Dogs and Black Hawk Down.

Reception

The film was generally met with negative reviews by critics. Entertainment Weekly retitled the movie "A Walk to Forget"[4] and the average rating of 101 professional reviews as compiled by Rotten Tomatoes is 4.1 out of 10.[5] However, A Walk to Remember found a warm reception in the Christian community due to the film's moral values; as one reviewer approvingly noted, "The main character is portrayed as a Christian without being psychopathic or holier-than-thou".[6] Roger Ebert praised Mandy Moore and Shane West for their "quietly convincing" acting performances.[7] Even though not a critical success, it was a modest box-office hit, earning $41,281,092 in the United States alone,[8] and a sleeper hit in Asia. The total revenue generated worldwide was $47,494,916.

Awards

Year Ceremony Category Result
2002 MTV Movie Awards Breakthrough Female Performance won by Mandy Moore
2002 Teen Choice Awards Film — Choice Breakout Performance, Actress won by Mandy Moore
2002 Teen Choice Awards Film — Choice Chemistry (Moore/West) won
2002 Teen Choice Awards Film — Choice Actress, Drama/Action Adventure nominated for Mandy Moore (lost to Natalie Portman)
Moore beat out fellow pop star Britney Spears, who starred in Crossroads, to win two Teen Choice Awards. Moore was also nominated for "Film — Choice Actress, Drama/Action Adventure" but lost to Natalie Portman for her role in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones.
At the MTV Movie Awards, Moore won the "Breakthrough Female Performance" for her role.

Soundtrack

The movie's soundtrack features five songs by Mandy Moore and others by acts Switchfoot, Rachael Lampa and many more.
The lead song "Cry" was originally released on Moore's second studio album Mandy Moore. The soundtrack also includes two versions of Switchfoot's song "Only Hope" including the version Moore sang in the film.
Mandy Moore's manager Jon Leshay, the musical supervisor for A Walk To Remember, "instantly wanted" Switchfoot's music to be a vital part of the movie after hearing them. He later became Switchfoot's manager.[9] When they were approached to do the film, the band was unfamiliar with Moore or her music (despite her status as a pop star with several hits on the charts). Before their involvement with A Walk to Remember, Switchfoot was only recognized in their native San Diego and in Contemporary Christian music circles, but have since gained mainstream recognition, with a double platinum album, The Beautiful Letdown which included hits such as Meant to Live and Dare You to Move.
IN - Complete (Dancing in the moonlight is left out) Listing of Music in the Movie[10]
  1. Cannonball — written by Kim Deal, performed by The Breeders
  2. So What Does It All Mean? - written by Shane West, performed by West, Gould and Fitzgerald
  3. Empty Spaces — written by Carl William Bell, performed by Fuel
  4. Lighthouse — written by Jeral Vince Gray and Percy E. Gray Jr., performed by Mandy Moore
  5. Friday on My Mind — written by Harry Vanda and George Young, performed by Noogie
  6. Anything You Want — written by Jeffrey Cardoni and Patrick Houlihan, performed by Skycopter 9
  7. Numb In Both Lips — written by Austin Reynolds, Jim Sumner and Dave Jay, performed by Soul Hooligan
  8. Tapwater — written by Rob Basile, Brett Kane, Levon Sultanian, Jason Radford and Christian Hernandez, performed by Onesidezero
  9. If You Believe — written by Guy Roche and Shelly Peiken, performed by Rachael Lampa
  10. No Mercy — written by David Foster, Brian J. Grillo, Michael Hateley and Derek O'Brien, performed by Extra Fancy
  11. No One — written by Terry P. Baisamo, Stephen D. Hayes, Jeremy D. Marshall, Samuel Alan McCandless and Ronald Ward, Jr., performed by Cold
  12. Enough — written and performed by Matthew Hager
  13. Mother We Just Can't Get Enough — written by Gregg Alexander, performed by the New Radicals
  14. Only Hope — written by Jonathan Mark Foreman, performed by Mandy Moore
  15. Get Ur Freak On — written by Missy Elliott and Tim Mosley, performed by Missy Elliott
  16. Flood — written by Daniel Paul Haseltine, Charles Daniel Lowell, Stephen Daniel Mason and Matthew Thomas Odmark, performed by Jars of Clay
  17. Dancin' In the Moonlight — written by Sherman Kelly, performed by Toploader
  18. Someday We'll Know — written by Gregg Alexander, Danielle A. Brisebois and Debra Holland, performed by Mandy Moore and Jonathan Foreman
  19. Learning to Breathe — written by Jonathan Mark Foreman, performed by Switchfoot
  20. All Mixed Up — written by Nicholas Lofton Hexum and Douglas Vincent Martinez, performed by 311
  21. Dare You To Move — written by Jonathan Mark Foreman, performed by Switchfoot
  22. You — written by Jonathan Mark Foreman, performed by Switchfoot
  23. It's Gonna Be Love — written by Anthony Michael Bruno and Thomas V. Byrnes, performed by Mandy Moore
  24. Only Hope — written by Jonathan Mark Foreman, performed by Switchfoot
  25. Cry — written by J. Renald, performed by Mandy Moore

Comparisons to novel

While there are many similarities to the novel by Nicholas Sparks, many changes were made. On his personal website, Sparks explains the decisions behind the differences. For example, he and the producer decided to update the setting from the 1950s to the 1990s, worrying that a movie set in the 50s would fail to draw teens. "To interest them," he writes, "we had to make the story more contemporary." To make the update believable, Landon's pranks and behavior are worse than they are in the novel; as Sparks notes, "the things that teen boys did in the 1950s to be considered a little 'rough' are different than what teen boys in the 1990s do to be considered 'rough.'"
Sparks and the producer also changed the play in which Landon and Jamie appear. In the novel, Hegbert wrote a Christmas play that illustrated how he once struggled as a father. However, due to time constraints, the sub-plot showing how he overcame his struggles could not be included in the movie. Sparks was concerned that "people who hadn't read the book would question whether Hegbert was a good father", adding that "because he is a good father and we didn't want that question to linger, we changed the play."
A significant difference is that at the end of the novel, unlike the movie, it is ambiguous whether Jamie died even though during the 1950s cancer meant death. Sparks says that he had written the book knowing she would die, yet had "grown to love Jamie Sullivan", and so opted for "the solution that best described the exact feeling I had with regard to my sister at that point: namely, that I hoped she would live."
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