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08/02/2006
ReviewsSpotlight on 'Wordplay' and 'Winter Passing'Reader, are you a word fan? If so, ambulate with alacrity to "Wordplay,'' showing as part of the Traverse City Film Festival. Patrick Creadon's affectionate look at the singular American subculture of crossword puzzlers is warm and lively. Organized around an ingenious structural concept, "Wordplay'' centers on "puzzlemaster'' Will Shortz and his American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, held in Stamford, Conn., every March. But while the film is nominally about who will take top honors at the 28th annual competition, it is really about word lovers, their infectious passion and their unique fellowship. Creadon focuses on a few puzzle champs and their journey to Stamford, but along the way catches up with such famous puzzle fans as Jon Stewart, Bill Clinton, the Indigo Girls and New York Yankee Mike Mussina. And if "Wordplay'' may at times seem to be an advertisement for the daily puzzle of Another Newspaper, it makes up for its bias in the way it conveys the sheer joy of language at its most adventurous. Creadon and his editor, Douglas Blush, add verve to an otherwise talky exercise by cutting "Wordplay'' as if it were a puzzle itself, with Across and Down camera moves "Wordplay'' is rated PG, Contains some profanity and mild adult themes. — The Washington Post --- "Winter Passing," written and directed by playwright Adam Rapp, hinges on a fantastical premise for which you have to suspend disbelief: An editor at a major publshing house offers $100,000 to the 20-year-old daughter of famous novelists for her father's letters to her recently deceased mother. Dad is a recluse who hasn't produced a book in years, so that sounds like a lot of money. The daughter in question is Reese Holden, played by Zooey Deschanel. She is also a surly bartender with a drug and bad-boyfriend problem. Reese takes the editor's offer, then the bus to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where the once prolific Don Holden (Ed Harris) is now living, for reasons unclear, in the garage, and drinking full time. Reese arrives to find her childhood home has been taken over by surrogate siblings. A former student of Don named Shelly (Amelia Warner) and a former Christian rocker named Corbit (Will Ferrell) spend their days enacting scenes of family togetherness. Shelly cooks and cares for Don and Corbit fixes the car, teaches Don to play golf and keeps errant fans off the premises. "Winter Passing" deals in allusions and motifs. There are all sorts of threads running through it, but none of them tie together. You get the idea that this is a sort of found family assembled from the detritus of older, broken families, but whether you're supposed to stick this realization in the basement or hang it on the wall is hard to tell. "Winter Passing" is rated R. Contains language, some drug use and sexuality. — Los Angeles Times
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