听 Sarah Jessica Parker shed her kittenish image from Sex And The City to play an uptight fianc茅e who struggles to be accepted by her future in-laws in The Family Stone. It's "a surprisingly tender if sometimes too cloying" yarn written and directed by indie filmmaker Thomas Bezucha. The jarring shifts in tone turned off some critics but it did put a fair amount of bums on seats over Christmas.
Getting Stoned
Diane Keaton was the first actor on board the project as revealed in a standard Casting featurette. With her on board, everyone else flocked, including Sarah Jessica Parker who was also drawn by the challenge of playing someone who isn't immediately likeable. "It was radically different to anything I'd ever played," she says and credits Thomas Bezucha with creating refreshingly complex characters. Keaton wasn't entirely happy with the young director though, adding, "He forced us to rehearse - I hate rehearsals." A separate behind-the-scenes featurette hears more from cast and crew. Again it's a fair but run-of-the-mill compilation of interviews patched together with snippets of backstage footage.
There's not too much in the way of searing insights in the last featurette. The World Premiere sees the actors walk the red carpet and reflect on what it means to work with a director who is also a writer. Bezucha sums it up best when he says, "Well, it means you can't fire the writer."
Family Outcasts
Six deleted scenes amount to just five minutes. Rachel McAdams' bitchy character is given a little more back-story, but other than that Bezucha explains that these scenes are mostly "bridging" to establish mood or location. He also gives commentary for the main feature (along with key members of his production crew) and reveals that the film appears almost exactly as it was laid out on the page. However, he adds, "Luke's was the character that changed most from page to film," because "he brought his own persona to the role". There are also notes on the look of the film from production designer Jane Ann Stewart and about the struggle to get the project greenlit in the first place.
Sarah Jessica Parker and onscreen fianc茅 Dermot Mulroney provide an alternative track, but that mostly consists of Parker giggling. Meanwhile Mulroney resorts to a game of counting how many times the characters hug. For garnish there's a text-based recipe for Strata (as featured in the film) and a couple of Easter eggs. The first is a rather pointless close-up on a snow globe while the second finds the Stones singing a rendition of It Came Upon A Midnight Clear. Finally, there's yet more giggling from Parker in a five-minute gag reel. It's a rather haphazard selection of extras overall, but there are enough insights and colourful wit to provide a decent behind-the-scenes portrait of The Family Stone.
EXTRA FEATURES
