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A “Cracking the Ice” features screenwriters Robert Benton
(“Kramer vs. Kramer”, “Places in the Heart”), Richard Russo
(“Nobody’s Fool,” “Empire Falls”) and novelist Scott Phillips
discussing the creation of the story covering it from a
unique angle—from the moment that Philips came up with the
idea for the novel through the adaptation process for Ramis’
film. Benton discovered the book recommended it to Russo.
The three writers interview each other. Interestingly both
Benton and Russo thought it was perfect for a film while
Phillips felt it was not good material for a film despite
the fact that he had spent months previously to writing
it working on screenplays. ***
”Beneath the Harvest” features director Ramis, producer
Ron Yerxa, actors Connie Nielsen, John Cusack, Billy Bob
Thornton discussing what the film is about and what attracted
them to the project. Ramis is the most interesting of the
group revealing what attracts him to comedies like this
(let’s just say it’s a dark philosophy). Cusack focuses
much more on what he liked about playing Charlie his character
in the film and what drew him to playing such an unfortunate
character. One of my favorite actors Oliver Platt mentions
what he feels is the core of the story and what makes it
work so well. Interestingly Ramis came to the project AFTER
the script was written and admits he went back to read the
novel after he read the screenplay. While he loved the screenplay
h wanted to see if there was anything the writers had missed
(probably the writer in him talking) and found that they
had captured it perfectly. It’s a solid “making of” featurette
although nothing spectacular. ***
“Analysis of a Scene” is pretty self explanatory discussing
the difficulty in creating one scene involving the lake.
The scene was central and crucial to the success of the
film. Ramis and the producers had their team create a mini-lake
that they digitally enhanced for the sequence. They all
knew though that they needed to have a physical location
to sell the scene beyond the digital enhancements. They
used melted paraffin to crate the look of the ice in the
scene making it easier (and safer to shoot the sequence).
We also have a very funny outtake where Thornton plays the
scene in his character of Carl from “Sling Blade”. ***
Ramis provides an amusing blow-by-blow commentary track
that’s quite amusing. Strangely you can access his commentary
tracks via both the special features menu and language but
can’t turn it off via both menus. The special features are
great for this set my only complaint is that you can’t turn
on and off the commentary track via your remote (something
I like to do if I’ve just watched a scene and want a scene
specific commentary) via your remote. Other than that whomever
Universal hired to do the special features did a exceptional
job overall. ---
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