Interview: Jet Jurgensmeyer of “A Belle for Christmas”

Posted on November 4, 2014 at 7:00 am

A Belle for Christmas, available today on DVD, is a cute holiday story of a dog named Belle who comes to live with kids named Elliot and Phoebe and their widowed father (Dean Cain). Kristy Swenson plays Dani, the crafty baker trying to win the father’s heart so she can quit her job, send his children away to school, and enjoy being supported. But she is allergic to Belle. If she is going to move into the house, she has to find a way to get rid of the dog. I had a chance to talk to Jet Jurgensmeyer, the charming young actor who plays Elliot. He might just be the politest actor I’ve ever interviewed.

I asked him to describe Elliot as if if was a friend. “He loves his grandma, he loves hanging with his friend Malcolm, he has a crush on a girl on the other street and he is very outgoing and he loves his dad, you can kind of tell that. And if he needs to he can come with some kind of plans and pranks and stuff.” He said the adults were as good as the children at remembering their lines. “You know we had some fumbles in our lines ever so often. Everybody does but I don’t know I think a little bit of both. Maybe kids are better because they have got that fresh mind.” He loved the two dogs that played Belle. “She was the sweetest thing in the world, she was so cute and fluffy. Two dogs actually. I used both of them. I don’t think I’d ever seen a cream colored shepherd. And when I first saw both of them, I was like ‘Oh my gosh!’ They were like the snow, they were so cute and I guess from the first time when all the kids and the grownups met the dogs it was like, ‘Oh yes this is going to be awesome.'”

The dogs’ trainer helped make sure that Belle performed on cue. “The part in the movie in the beginning where the dog comes out of the lady’s arms and comes over towards me and I pick her up — they actually put some dog treats, I can’t remember if it was on my boots or right next to my boot. So the dog would come over and start nibbling on that and I would pick her up. She actually really did what she was told to do.”

In the film, Elliot and Phoebe can tell right away that Dani is not to be trusted. I asked Jet how they figured it out. “Kids can kind of like see that from like a mile away. We could tell she didn’t care about us – she just cares about our dad. So basically when that happens they are just like…’Okay, this is war.'”

He enjoyed hanging out with the other kids in the cast between film set-ups. “We hang, we tell jokes. In the trailer all the kids had we had bunk beds. Four kids so four bunk beds. So me and my friend Connor we got the top bunks then the girls were on the bottom ones but we every so often, we’d go on everybody else bed. Ee just laughed and had fun. Everybody on the set knew right away ‘This set is going to be really fun. That’s what this is.'”

When he’s not working or in school, Jet likes movies about basketball and soccer. He enjoys the baseball classic “The Sandlot,” too. He likes books about sports as well, and recently read a book about Satchel Paige. He really enjoys acting, but his favorite thing about making a movie is asking questions about pretty much everything. “Why are you putting this right here?” “What’s this lens going to do?” He also enjoyed “hanging with Dean and Kristy” and being reunited with Connor Berry and Avary J. Anderson, who play his friends in the film, and have appeared with him before. “Every time I would see Dean he would always do this trick. It’s that trick which where he is like ‘Oh is that something on your shirt?’ and then he would bang you on the nose and even till this day he will do it to me like three times when I see him. Every single time I will fall for it. I need to have a buzzer that says, ‘Don’t do it!’ but every time I’m like ‘urrrh!’ He’s hilarious.”

And Jet says the best advice he ever got about acting is “just don’t worry about it if you make mistakes. Just have fun with it and go with the flow and if you feel something, go with it and do it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB3Dfho3wYI

The Judge

Posted on October 9, 2014 at 6:00 pm

Robert Downey Jr. gives his best performance since “Chaplin” in “The Judge,” an absorbing story of family, redemption and home.

Downey co-produced and stars as Hank Palmer, a Chicago criminal defense attorney known for doing whatever it takes to get his clients a “not guilty” verdict. Hank relies on his two strengths and his belief in a third. He has a restless intelligence that operates like a perpetual random radar signal going off in every direction at once. As we will see in a sensational bar scene where he sizes up some guys heading towards him with fight in their eyes, Hank can size up a situation and formulate a dazzling verbal response in an instant. But that same intelligence also makes him impatient and dismissive.

Hank also has a coping mechanism for keeping him focused that has worked very effectively. It is basically not to think too much about anything but winning. Other lawyers in the movie will talk about their view of the law — that it is a mechanism for making sure individuals take responsibility for the consequences of their actions, that it is the one place where everyone is equal. Hank’s professional career has been dedicated pretty much to proving the opposite.

And Hank thinks of himself as a devoted father to his little girl, Lauren (Emma Tremblay of “The Giver”) because he loves her dearly, though, as his estranged wife points out, he cannot name her teachers, best friends, or favorite color.

These two skills and one inflated idea are what sustain Hank, and over the next seven months, he will have to give up all three to explore who he is, where he came from, and how these protective mechanisms are no longer keeping him safe but keeping him stuck. The greatest pleasure of this film is seeing Downey’s responses as a man who is very, very good at what he does learn that none of that is of any help to him.

We first see Hank taunting his opposing counsel in the courthouse men’s room. “I respect the law,” he says. “I’m just not encumbered by it.” He is representing a man he knows to be guilty of massive financial fraud. As the trial begins, he gets a message that his mother has died. Hank, who has assembled the life he thought would make him happy, a fancy home, a fancy car, a beautiful wife, will have to do something he has been avoiding for years. He will have to return to his small hometown, Carlinville, Indiana. While it is his father who is a judge by profession, either could be the title character. Hank has done a lot of judging of those around him and, like his father, he has found just about everyone not up to his standard.

The golden, elegiac tones provided by master cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and steeped in tradition, slightly formal soundtrack from Thomas Newman introduce us to the town. Hank pays his respects to his mother with his brothers, sweet-natured, developmentally disabled Dale (Jeremy Strong), who always carries his Super 8 movie camera, and Glen (Vincent D’Onofrio), a once-promising athlete who was injured and stayed in town to run a tire store. His father, the judge (Robert Duvall), is presiding. Hank watches from the balcony. Some things never change. His father still tells defendants that “Yeah” is not the way to speak in a courtroom.

But some things have changed. The judge cannot remember the name of his longtime bailiff. Hank suspects his father, sober for many years, may have started drinking again.

Hank is uncomfortable and feels unwelcome. His old room has been used for storage. He can barely find his bed. His father and brothers barely speak to him. Even an encounter with his high school girlfriend Samantha (Vera Farmiga, wonderfully earthy) cannot make him anything but out of place and eager to get away.

And then the judge is accused of murder. The night of the funeral, he was driving in the rain. A man riding a bicycle is dead, his blood on the judge’s fender. The dead man and the judge had a history. Hank wants to defend his father, mostly because he is still hungry for his father’s approval and this will give him a chance to show the judge what he does best. He may not be much to brag about outside the courtroom, but inside the court is where he lives. That is something Hank and his dad share.

Co-writer and director David Dobkin is best known for wild, raunchy comedies like “The Wedding Crashers.” Like Hank, and like the man who plays him, Dobkin here moves to the grown-up table with a rich, thoughtful, beautifully structured film, with moments of humor that are among the funniest you will see this year. The jury selection scene is a treat all its own.

It would be enough just to get a chance to see Downey show how much more he is capable of than even his brilliant work as Tony Stark or in small gems like “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” and “The Wonder Boys.” Here he gives a master class in acting, never less than fully present in showing us Hank’s layers of protection and the deep yearning for connection they cannot hide. The open-heartedness and vulnerability of this performance are deeply moving, a gift from Hank the character and from the man who plays him. But this is an enormously wise and moving story, beautifully told.

Parents should know that this film has strong and crude language, sad deaths of parents, infidelity and divorce, serious car accidents with injuries and death (nothing explicit), graphic depiction of various bodily functions and fluids, gastrointestinal distress foilowing cancer treatment, sexual references, drinking and discussions of alcohol abuse and drug use

Family discussion: How were Hank and his father alike? What made it hard for them to get along?

If you like this, try: “The Client” and more films from Robert Downey, Jr. (“Chaplin,” “The Avengers”) and Robert Duvall (“The Apostle,” “Tender Mercies”)

Related Tags:

Courtroom Drama Family Issues

Fifty Years of Fiddler on the Roof

Posted on September 20, 2014 at 8:00 am

The Yiddish-language stories of Sholem Alechim, collected as Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories (Library of Yiddish Classics), inspired one of the most successful, influential, and widely performed Broadway musicals of all time, “Fiddler on the Roof,” which opened fifty years ago this week. It set the then-record of 3000 performances and still is listed as the 16th longest-running Broadway musical in history. There has been hardly a day since this story about a Jewish community in czarist Russia opened that it has not been performed somewhere around the world. Its songs, including “Sunrise, Sunset” and “If I Were a Rich Man,” have become standards, performed and recorded by singers around the world.

The play establishes its setting with the opening number, “Tradition,” where the fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters sing about the roles established for them by their culture and religion. But the theme of the play will be the pressure of modernity as all of the assumptions and beliefs of the community will be challenged.

The central character is Tevye (played by Zero Mostel on Broadway and the Israeli actor Topol in the movie). He is a poor milkman with five daughters. Tradition would give Tevye the role of selecting husbands for his daughters based on what would be socially and economically advantageous. He approves of the widower butcher for his oldest daughter. But she challenges tradition by asking for his approval for her to marry the shy tailor she loves. Tevye must bend because he loves her and wants her to be happy. Seeing her in love makes him question for the first time whether his wife of 25 years, chosen for him, loves him. But his second daughter asks him to bend farther. She loves a hot-headed revolutionary, and she says they will marry whether Tevye approves or not. He is worried, but he gives them his blessing.

And then the third daughter asks him to bend further. She is in love with a non-Jew. Tevye says that is something he cannot accept. It shakes the foundations of his beliefs to even consider it. But not as much as they will be shaken by an anti-Semitic pogrom, with the Czar’s men all but destroying their village. The title of the play comes from the image of a musician precariously trying to maintain his balance and stay safely on a roof. The play ends with Tevye following millions of Europeans over the late 19th and early 20th century — immigrating to America, under the lamp held high for them by the Statue of Liberty.

Many years ago, my parents were visiting Tokyo and saw that a production of “Fiddler on the Roof” was on stage there. They bought tickets. Even though it was in Japanese, with Japanese actors, they recognized the story and music. And they enjoyed the enthusiastic response of the audience. When it was over, my father asked one of the Japanese audience members who spoke English why the play was so popular there. He smiled, “It’s very Japanese!” The details, including the style of the music, are very particular to one group. But the themes of balancing tradition with growing understanding about ourselves and the world, about struggles between parents and children, about what is best for the community and what is best for the individual, are universal.

This is Where I Leave You

Posted on September 18, 2014 at 5:59 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language, sexual content and some drug use
Profanity:	Very strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, smoking, drugs, references to pharmaceuticals
Violence/ Scariness:	Scuffles, sad death
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	September 19, 2014
Date Released to DVD:	December 15, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00K2CI008

A toddler carries his little potty out in front of the house so he can try out his new-found skill in public. Twice. Plus another time when the contents of the potty are first displayed for the family and then kind of accidentally tossed onto one of the relatives. This is pretty much the theme of “This is Where I Leave You,” one of those estranged relatives gathering under pressure movies that tries to put the “fun” in dysfunctional.” It’s pretty much great actors trying to make sense of characters who are continuously inappropriate, unpleasant, and miserable, with boundary issues that make Russia/Ukraine seem manageable. And they almost succeed.

Jonathan Tropper wrote the screenplay based on his novel about four siblings returning home for their father’s funeral. Their mother Hillary (Jane Fonda) is a family therapist and the author of a best-selling book on child development that (boundary issue alert) revealed many embarrassing details about the siblings and is now celebrating the 25th anniversary of its initial publication with a re-release. She is given to wildly inappropriate revelations about her sex life with their father (another boundary alert), and showing off her newly enhanced breasts.

She tells her four children that their father’s last wish was for them to observe the Jewish tradition of sitting “shiva,” a seven-day period of mourning where the family stays at home together and receives visits from those who wish to pay condolences. They understand that “it’s going to be hard and it’s going to be uncomfortable, and we’re going to get on each other’s nerves.” But, Hillary says, they have no choice. “You’re grounded.”

They try to protest, but reluctantly agree. Paul (Corey Stoll) is the only one who has stayed in their hometown, the responsible brother who took over the family business, and married Annie (Kathryn Hahn), who is struggling with fertility issues. Wendy (Tina Fey) is married to one of those guys who is always on his cell phone talking about some big financial deal. She has two children, the aforesaid toddler and a baby. Judd (Jason Bateman) is in freefall, having just learned that his wife has been having an affair with his skeezy boss (Dax Shepard), the host of a shock jock radio show called “Man Up.” And then there is Philip (Adam Driver), the irresponsible baby of the family, who arrives in a Porsche convertible, with a new girlfriend named Tracy (Connie Britton), who is much older and a therapist. You don’t need to be a therapist to figure out that there are some mommy issues there. Everyone but Phillip is aware that Tracy is way out of his league and he does not deserve her.

The three out of town siblings all encounter past loves. Wendy’s is Horry (Timothy Olyphant), who was brain-damaged in an accident and still lives with his mother Linda (Debra Monk), Hillary’s neighbor and close friend. Phillip sees Chelsea (Carly Brooke Pearlstein), who looks, as Tracy notes, like a Victoria’s Secret model. And Judd sees Penny (a terrific Rose Byrne), living back in their home town and teaching figure skating. Each presents temptations as the siblings struggle to make sense of their choices, and struggle even more to communicate. “Deflecting emotion with logistics. Nice.” “It’s what we do.” Some secrets will be revealed (though not always intentionally) while others are protected.

Tropper’s screenplay is better than the book because we are not limited to Judd’s depressed narration and because it corrects what I thought was a mistake in the final resolution of Judd’s relationship with his wife. And it is helped a great deal by performances that give the characters more believability and complexity than the book did. But director Shawn Levy (“The Internship,” “Night at the Museum”) has always been stronger with broad comedy than with narrative, romance, and sentiment, and this storyline plays into his tendency to meander. Are we supposed to laugh at the Altmans because they are so awful or sympathize with them because all families are crazy at times? The bad choices, lack of respect, and wild swings of character keep us distant from the characters, despite the best efforts of the terrific cast.

Parents should know that this film includes very strong and crude language, sexual references (some vulgar) and explicit situations, nudity, adultery, drinking, smoking, marijuana and pharmaceuticals

Family discussion: How are the Altman siblings alike? How are they different? How do you feel about “complicated?”

If you like this, try: “This Christmas” and “Flirting With Disaster”

Coming Soon: Evergreen Christmas

Posted on September 5, 2014 at 1:30 am

Naomi Judd and Robert Loggia star in “Evergreen Christmas,” on DVD and VOD November 4, 2014.

Leaving her seemingly glamorous Hollywood life on hold, Evie Lee is forced to return to her small hometown of Balsam Falls, Tennessee and her family’s once-thriving Christmas tree farm to attend her father’s unexpected funeral. As the eldest sibling, she finds herself executor of an estate that owes a massive inheritance tax, much to her younger brother’s dismay. Torn between pursuing her music career and saving her family’s legacy, she must decide what it really means to find her place in the world.