“Weather Girl” WILL AIR again on Lifetime 

 UPDATE: “Weather Girl” is scheduled to play more than just once on Lifetime network, the next airdate is Saturday, October 3rd – stars Michigan native Ryan Devlin, who went to High School in Grand Rapids area.  I’ll let you know when we get more dates and times.  (Thanks to Ryan’s mom for an update on additional showings !)

“Weather Girl” made its Midwest Premiere June 12/14, 2009 at Waterfront Film Festival and was in limited release in West Michigan starting September 4th for one-week only.

The Plot: A Seattle weather girl freaks out on-air over her cheating boyfriend, the morning show anchor, and moves in with her little brother.

The brother of main character Sylvia is Walt, played by Michigan native Ryan Devlin.  Devlin was (according to IMDB) born in Lansing, graduated from Forest Hills Central High School in 1998, and graduated from Michigan State University. 

My spoiler-free review of “Weather Girl”

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A highly touted animated action movie, Tyler Perry’s latest, Kate Beckinsale’s artic thriller, and the latest slasher horror movie….

New at Theaters (Wednesday): “9″
New at Theaters (Friday): “Sorority Row”, “Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself”, “Whiteout”

Limited Release in Grand Rapids market: 
“The Answer Man” (The Harbor Theater in Muskegon one week only 9/4 – 9/10),
“Weather Girl” (Celebration! North, for one week only 9/4 – 9/10),
“Adam” (Celebration! RiverTown),
“Departures” (The Harbor Theater in Muskegon 9/4 – 9/10),
“Paper Heart” (The Harbor Theater in Muskegon 9/11 – 9/17),
“Humpday” (at UICA opens 9/11),
Rob Zombie’s “El Superbeasto” (Saturday 9/12 only at Celebration! Carousel, Benton Harbor, Lansing, RiverTown, Crossroads)

Moving to Woodland Mall this week ($4.00 shows): “Adam”, “Bandslam”, “The Ugly Truth”

Best Bet(s): I haven’t seen any of these offerings yet.  “9″ has received pretty good reviews, “Whiteout”and “I Can Do Bad All By Myself” have had decent reviews, and then there’s the Horror flick “Sorority Row”.
Check out my interview with Taraji P. Henson of “I Can Do Bad All By Myself”, she talks about being the top billing of the movie and her role in “Benjamin Button”.

 CLICK HERE TO FIND A MOVIE SHOWTIME

New on DVD (Tuesday): “Crank 2: High Voltage”, “Dance Flick”, “Local Color”

Best Bet(s): “Local Color” has won awards at several film festivals, “Crank 2: High Voltage” is a high octane action movie that did better at the box office than it did with critics. 
I warned you when it was in theaters, and I’ll warn you again: “Dance Flick” is a waste of your time and money!!!

Next Week at Theaters: “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”, “The Informant!”,  ”Jennifer’s Body”, “Love Happens”

Next Week on DVD: “Camille”, “Easy Virtue”, “Next Day Air”, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”, “Star Wars The Clone Wars: Clone Commandos”

MY REVIEWS OF OTHER MOVIES CURRENTLY PLAYING IN THEATERS OR AVAILABLE TO RENT/BUY:  (more…)

(“Weather Girl” to play one-night only on Lifetime network, Wednesday 9/23 at 9:00pm – stars Michigan native Ryan Devlin, who went to High School in Grand Rapids area)

(“Weather Girl” made its Midwest Premiere June 12/14, 2009 at Waterfront Film Festival and was in limited release in West Michigan starting September 4th for one-week only)

“Weather Girl” is cute and funny, but not great, if you really want to see it you should… but you could wait to rent it and be happier with your decision at home.

Waterfront Film Festival doesn’t have awards, but even if it did, I don’t think “Weather Girl” was good enough to beat out a solid crop of movies.  “Weather Girl” did win at two other film festivals: it won Best Film at Vail Film Festival and Best Feature in Oklahoma City.

“Weather Girl” is more of a 16 and older kind of movie, its not raunchy, but it does have some colorful language and sexual references.

( My spoiler-free review )

Going into it, this movie had several things going for it: the story is set in Seattle (the TV market where I attended college) and its about TV news… the profession I started in before graduating from college.  But there’s something a little bit off… not quite making this movie great… its nice, but not all the characters have depth, and there’s some things about the story that were problematic.

The story of Sylvia (Tricia O’Kelley), a weather forecaster on a Seattle morning show, is cute, funny, and feisty… O’Kelley is the strength of this movie, if she didn’t pull it off, the entire movie would have crumbled.  Unfortunately, as good as she was in this role, this movie still failed to wow the audience.

“Weather Girl” features some well developed characters: brother Walt and his friend Byron… and some shallow characters: Dale, Sherry, and Sylvia’s friends. 

Patrick J. Adams, Michigan native Ryan Devlin, and Tricia O'Kelley in "Weather Girl" courtesy Secret Identity Productions

 The brother of main character Sylvia is Walt, played by Michigan native Ryan Devlin.  Devlin was (according to IMDB) born in Lansing, graduated from Forest Hills Central High School in 1998, and graduated from Michigan State University.

Patrick J. Adams is good as Walt’s friend… and the now-popular comedic actress Jane Lynch (“Role Models”, “The Rocker”, “The 40 Year Old Virgin”, etc.) is good as expected.

But then the performances start to tank… despite names like Mark Harmon, Jon Cryer, and Blair Underwood… luckily the other characters take up a lot less screen time.

Harmon plays Sylvia’s ex-boyfriend Dale, the self-centered prototypical anchorman of the group.  Dale’s co-anchor Sherry (Kaitlin Olson) is also Hollywood’s version of what TV news people must be like… right? 
Wrong… well, maybe right for this story but it was bothersome how dumb (considering Seattle’s market size) and how shallow the characters were and how average the acting behind the other characters was… I never felt like they were real characters… or working at a real TV station… or really living in the real world for that matter. 

THE BOTTOM LINE:

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A great Labor Day weekend ahead at West Michigan theaters to close out summer… and some good choices for rentals too.  FYI: “Carriers” does not open in Grand Rapids market this week… its in just 100 theaters nationwide.

New at Theaters (Friday): “All About Steve”, “Gamer”, “Extract”

Limited Release in Grand Rapids market: 
“The Answer Man” (at The Harbor Theater in Muskegon one week only 9/4 – 9/10),
“Weather Girl” (Celebration! North, for one week only 9/4 – 9/10),
“Adam” (Celebration! RiverTown),
“Departures” (at The Harbor Theater in Muskegon 9/4 – 9/10),
“Food, Inc.” (Celebration! Crossroads)

Moving to Woodland Mall this week ($4.00 shows): “The Hurt Locker”, “Ice Age: Dawn of Dinosaurs” (more…)

Covering my first Film Festival

UPDATED with links to my interviews with actress/activist Daryl Hannah (“Fierce Light”)… actor Jason Ritter (“Peter and Vandy”)… and director Peter Callahan (“Against the Current”).

ORIGINALLY POSTED June 16th:

So… its been a couple days since the 2009 Waterfront Film Festival wrapped up… and I’m still pumped.

Sure I battled connectivity all weekend (bad cell phone reception and internet connections) drove more than 380 miles back and forth from Grand Rapids to Saugatuck (sometimes back and forth in the same day)… and never had more than 6 hours sleep a night during a 4-day period, BUT….  BUT…. I am not complaining… just some explanation on the delay of this blog and others related to the WFF.

 While covering my first film festival I got to see 10 movies, most making making their Midwest or Michigan Premieres:

On Friday, I saw 3 movie screenings (“The Baker”, “Dare”, “Official Rejection”), attended 3 more movies on Saturday (“Women in Trouble”, “An American Opera”, “The Twenty”), and then I broke a personal record for movies watched at theater/venue in a day on Sunday, seeing 4 really good films (“The Answer Man”, “Weather Girl”, “Against The Current”, “Peter and Vandy”).   My favorites were “The Baker”, “The Answer Man”, “Peter and Vandy”   and the documentary “An American Opera”… but there were also soo many good looking films that I couldn’t make it to because of time conflicts or being sold out (“Jesus People”).

 I also interviewed actress/activist Daryl Hannah, Michigan documentary director TomMcPhee (“An American Opera”), director Peter Callahan (“Against the Current”), director Jay DiPietro (“Peter and Vandy”) and actor Jason Ritter (“Peter and Vandy”)… enjoyed Q&A with director Sebastian Gutierrez (“Women in Trouble”) and director/actor Chopper Bernet (“The Twenty”).

2009 broke the attendance record with ticket sales of more than 16,000 (up from 2008’s 14,000), day and weekend pass sales were also up, and more people attended the seminars than in years past.

It was great hanging out with die hard movie fans and I am thankful for all the assistance from the great volunteers at Waterfront Film Festival!!!

My reviews are in the works… and we’ll be posting more interviews from the weekend in the next few days.

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