Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried

Director Lasse Hallstrom specializes in steering sad and serious stories clear of potential sloppy sentimentality, and he manages to navigate the tricky emotional terrain quite skillfully in “Dear John,” considering that it’s based on a novel by the boss bestselling author of the romance genre, Nicholas Sparks (“The Notebook,” “A Walk to Remember,” ad nauseam).
It helps also to have a top-notch screenwriter (Jamie Linden, “We Are Marshall”) penning the adaptation and a talented cast to keep things on a steady dramatic course.
Hunky Channing Tatum (“G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra”) acquits himself quite well as John Tyree, a reserved and socially unskilled Special Forces soldier with a modest middleclass background, and Amanda Seyfried brings just the right level of sweetness and charm to Savannah Curtis, a bright, beautiful, outgoing college student from a wealthy South Carolina family.
These two are an unlikely couple, but things click quite quickly when they meet while he’s on leave visiting his father and she’s home for spring break. As Savannah draws John out of his shell, a whirlwind two-week courtship ensues, and by the time he has to return to his deployment, and she to school, they are deeply and passionately in love. They promise, beyond e-mails and cell phone calls, to write letters to each other faithfully until his tour of duty ends.
But when the 9/11 attacks shake the world, John feels duty-bound to re-enlist. The couple reunite only sporadically as John’s deployment continues to lengthen, and months begin to turn into years, with both people becoming increasingly torn between desire and responsibility, struggling to maintain their commitment.
To the film’s great benefit, the chemistry is strong between Tatum and Seyfried, and while many young actors could easily slip into sappy melodrama with material such as this, the steady hand of Hallstrom (“The Cider House Rules,” “Chocolat”) keeps their performances controlled without muting emotion.
Henry Thomas is also endearing as Tim, a friend of the family who’s very protective of Savannah. He’s also a single father raising an autistic son (played by an amazing autistic boy, Braeden Reed), which causes a bond to form between Tim and John, who was raised by an autistic father himself.
And herein lies the secondary storyline — and the performance — that sets “Dear John” apart from other films of its genre. In the middle of this romantic drama we find Richard Jenkins (“The Visitor”) in a typically Oscar-caliber turn as John’s severely withdrawn dad, whose whole shut-in world is his coin collection, until Savannah begins to crack his shell as well, and reconnect him with his son.
With precious little dialogue, Jenkins’ portrait of a lost man is a stunning heartbreaker, stealing every scene that it inhabits, and easily worth the price of admission alone.
In sum, “Dear John” is a love letter to everyone.
–Gene Triplett

MOVIE REVIEW
“Dear John”

PG-13 1:48 3 stars

Starring: Channing Tatum, Amanda Seyfried, Henry Thomas, Scott Porter and Richard Jenkins.

(Some sensuality and violence)

Audio Slide Show

Hear Channing Tatum talk about his role in “Dear John.”
Newsok.com

BY GENE TRIPLETT

The head of the state Film and Music Office said the last-minute sale of a controversial made-in-Oklahoma motion picture during the final weekend of the Sundance Film Festival bodes well for the future of the Sooner state’s movie industry, and another major feature is scheduled to start shooting here in April.

Scenes of graphic violence in “The Killer Inside Me” reportedly shocked many audience members during its premiere screening last week at the Park City, Utah, event, and some critics and industry observers were predicting the film’s producers would have a hard time landing a major distributor for it.But IFC Films stepped in on Saturday and paid about $1.5 million for the North American distribution rights to the film, which stars Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson and Casey Affleck, and was shot in May and June on locations in Guthrie, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Enid and Cordell.The crime thriller, directed by Michael Winterbottom (“A Mighty Heart”), is based on a 1952 novel by Anadarko-born pulp fiction writer Jim Thompson, about a West Texas deputy sheriff (played by Affleck), whose dull exterior masks the mind of a sadistic serial killer.IFC is known for acquiring controversial films, having purchased the rights to Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist” at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.”Well, it is good news,” state Film and Music Office Director Jill Simpson said Monday of the film’s distribution deal.”I’m excited that it’s going to play in theaters either late summer or early fall. And I know that they’re headed to the Berlin Film Festival next. They’ve already sold some of the foreign territories, so I’m sure they’re going to continue to close deals.”Yes, it’s great to have Oklahoma locations out there and to be able to promote our (tax credit incentive) program with a film that’s actually playing in theaters, so it’s a great opportunity for us,” Simpson said.Law attracts industryA state law that took effect July 1 increased the program from a rebate of up to 15 percent on production expenditures in Oklahoma to 35 percent. The incentive program is capped at $5 million a year.Simpson said the next major film to be shot in Oklahoma will be directed by Nick Cassavetes, from a script he co-wrote with his actress wife, Oklahoma City native Heather Wahlquist. Wahlquist also is set to star in the film, tentatively titled “Yellow,” according to the Internet Movie Database.Simpson said the Cassavetes’ film begins shooting in April, but locations still are being scouted. She described the film as a “character study of a woman who’s a schoolteacher, dealing with issues in her life.”"So it’s A-list talent behind the camera,” Simpson said. “We continue to get inquiries and applications from really top-notch independent film productions, which is perfect for our program. When we have a pot of $5 million a year, we’re really geared toward the independents.”

This week, the oddest DVD to appear on release lists is:

“She-Wolf of London: The Complete Series”

Given youth culture’s current obsession with all things vampire, this short-lived TV series from 1991 seems to have appeared well ahead of its time.

It features the tale of beautiful American grad student Randi Wallace (Kate Hodge) who travels to England to study with hunky mythology professor Ian Matheson (Neil Dickson). There, on the misty and mysterious English moors, Randi is ravished by a werewolf and finds herself transformed into a hairy, bloodthirsty beast with every full moon.

Her adventures, ranging from London to L.A. in search of a cure, have Randi battling supernatural forces and fighting her romantic feelings for the good professor Ian.

“She-Wolf of London” is not to be confused with Universal’s 1946 horror cheapie of the same title which starred June Lockhart (a good decade before she played the mother of Timmy, owner of “Lassie” in that long-running TV series).

“She-Wolf of London: The Complete Series” comes in a four-disk set featuring 20 hour-long TV episodes. It will be released Tuesday by Universal Home Video. Suggested retail price is $39.98.

- Dennis King

The release of the caustic thriller “Edge of Darkness” reminds us not only of what a potent screen actor Mel Gibson still can be but also of what a powerful jolt to the political zeitgeist the story delivered when it originally aired on British television in 1985.

The neatly Americanized film version, with Gibson returning to the screen after an eight year absence as taciturn Boston cop Thomas Craven looking for the truth behind his activist daughter’s apparent drive-by murder, is directed by Martin Campbell (“Casino Royale”), who not coincidentally was also behind the camera for the six-part BBC TV miniseries.

That series starred the late everyman character actor Bob Peck as Craven and the brilliantly idiosyncratic Joe Don Baker as Jedburgh, a shadowy, golf-obsessed political fixer (played also brilliantly in the new film by the silky, sinister Ray Winstone).

Released during the archly conservative (some would argue reactionary) regime of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, at a time when England was awash with anxious conspiracy theories concerning nuclear warfare, renegade plutonium and government secrecy, “Edge of Darkness” clearly touched a sensitive nerve among its rapt British audience. It also was during this general period that edgy films such as “Defence of the Realm” and “The Whistle Blower” and TV series such as “A Very British Coup” and “Traffik” would tickle Britons’ paranoid fancies.

The original script by Troy Kennedy Martin cunningly tapped into that paranoia and juiced it up with some controversial scientific gobbledygook (notably the nuclear theories of radical environmentalist James Lovelock) and more than a little mythical and mystical subtext. Oddly, on that score, Martin’s original ending for the story reportedly involved Craven turning into a tree. But apparently more down-to-earth heads prevailed and a somewhat more conventional, though nonetheless chillingly symbolic, conclusion was employed.

Still, Campbell and screenwriters – American William Monahan and Australian Andrew Bovell – don’t shy away from a sentimental touch of mystical mumbo-jumbo at the end of their film version. But, for the most part, the movie necessarily pares away many of the twists, turns and political complexities of the original and offers a far more simplified, Hollywoodized take on the story.

So it’s unlikely that the new “Edge of Darkness” will have anywhere near the urgent cultural impact that the BBC version had in its time. The film is a serviceable political thriller, notable mainly for reintroducing Gibson to an audience made skeptical by his ultra-conservative religious and political views and his tawdry personal antics off screen.

“Edge of Darkness,” the BBC series, on the other hand, was widely hailed by critics of its time as “groundbreaking” television that “captured the spirit of its age.” One critic in the Daily Telegraph newspaper deemed it “a masterpiece” and observed it as “one of those rare television creations so rich in form and content that the spectator wishes there was some way of prolonging it indefinitely.”

“Edge of Darkness: The Complete BBC Series” is available on DVD.

BY DENNIS KING

With the closing of Miramax Films’ offices in New York and Los Angeles last week, a move that essentially scuttles the most innovative, aggressive (and at times aggravating) off-Hollywood film distributor ever, it’s tempting to launch into a weepy eulogy on prospects for indie films.

Sad as it is to see the once robust company – launched in 1979 by wheeler-dealer brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein and famously named after their parents Miriam and Max – limp off into the sunset, it’s not likely kill off the production of independent movies. But it might make the field a lot less colorful and competitive.

Even after the Weinsteins sold their company to Walt Disney in 1993 and then split off with their own leaner self-titled firm a few years ago, the name Miramax remained synonymous in the minds of film buffs with risky, original, literate, high quality pictures produced outside the big-budget confines of the Hollywood studios.

Even when Miramax later strayed into over into bloated prestige pictures and lost itself in ancillary ventures and highly successful but slightly unseemly campaigning for Oscar glory, that rascally independent spirit that first defined the feisty company was still  there.

From a film critic’s perspective, Miramax was both a joy and a headache. Its youthful operatives’ enthusiasm for even the most obscure, low-budget offering could be infectious, at times inspiring. They insisted on screening their movies, even in heartland cities that most Hollywood marketers smugly label as “fly-over country.” So Oklahoma’s two big film markets saw more than their share of offbeat Miramax films over the years.

But just as often, those same buzzing, black-clad Miramax worker-bees could be pushy, demanding and maddeningly disorganized. Opening dates shifted on a whim. Movies were hectically screened, then never opened in our markets. Junkets were a comic circus of assistants scurrying around with cell phones pressed to ears, and interviews were often juggled, re-juggled, then cut short.

Still, no studio generated buzz, tantalized with daring new movies, provoked with outrageous marketing ploys and displayed a passion for cinema like Miramax. Walt Disney explains that the brand is necessarily being downsized. Currently, there are six Miramax films in the pipeline that may be released between now and 2011, including “Last Night” starring Keira Knightley, John Madden’s “The Debt” and “The Baster” starring Jennifer Aniston.

IMDb.com lists Miramax as distributor of 569 films and producer of 225.

Entertainment Weekly’s website in its farewell tribute cited 15 Miramax movies as among the studio’s most significant achievements. The list includes:

“sex, lies, and videotape” (1989)

“My Left Foot” (1989)

“The Crying Game” (1992)

“The Piano” (1993)

“Pulp Fiction” (1994)

“Il Postino” (1995)

“The English Patient” (1996)

“Good Will Hunting” (1997)

“Life is Beautiful” (1998)

“Shakespeare in Love” (1998)

“Chicago” (2002)

“City of God” (2003)

“The Aviator” (2004)

“The Queen” (2006)

“No Country for Old Men” (2007)

For our part, we’d add “Clerks,” “Bullets Over Broadway,” “Kids,” “Kill Bill Vols. 1 and 2,” “Finding Neverland,” “Rabbit-Proof Fence,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “Smoke Signals,” “Swingers,” “Beautiful Girls,” “Sling Blade,” “Smoke,” “Small Wonders,” “Heavenly Creatures,” “The Snapper,” “Strictly Ballroom,” “Reservoir Dogs,” “Delicatessen,” “The Grifters,” “Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle,” and … the list could go on and on.

So long Miramax.