Kinnear walks on 'Thin Ice' in neo-noir homage

<b>Reel Life review: 'Thin Ice'</b>

Greg Kinnear's tragic eyes alternating gushes of hope and desperation become the real stars of this poor man's homage to the Coen brothers' neo-noir classic "Fargo" and another film I won't mention because it might spoil too much of the story.

Kinnear's Wisconsin insurance salesman Mickey Prohaska lives in a winter purgatory, alienated from his wife (Lea Thompson) and stuck in financial limbo by a stalled state economy.

His glazed eyeballs ignite after he encounters an aging farmer (Alan Arkin) with an old fiddle he doesn't know might be worth $25,000. Or $30,000. Or more.

But every time Mickey moves to quietly switch the farmer's fiddle with a store-bought violin, he encounters bad luck, poor timing and terrible judgment as the complications pile up with increasingly deadly repercussions.

Jill Sprecher nimbly directs "Thin Ice" (from a script cowritten with her younger sister Karen Sprecher) as a classic tale of a guy with too few fingers trying to plug too many holes opening in the dike of fate.

Sprecher loses control of "Thin Ice," but later rather than sooner, and her twisty tale of cold weather and colder hearts succeeds in hitting the final credits before the absurdity factor comes into play.

Meanwhile, we are thoroughly engaged by Billy Crudup's delightfully nasty security alarm expert (with explosive anger issues), and David Harbour as Mickey's banal, white-bread protégé so Midwesternly nice you could kill him with a meat cleaver. Yes, you could.

"Thin Ice" opens at area theaters. Rated R for language, sexual situations and violence. 114 minutes. ★ ★ ½

<b>Bone up on Oscar now</b>

Don't you dare go to that Academy Awards party on Sunday without first reading these 10 fun facts with which to amaze your friends:

1. It took "The Artist" dog trainer Omar Von Muller two months to teach Uggie the Jack Russell terrier to "die" on cue after star Jean Dujardin puts an imaginary gun to his head and shoots.

2. Chef Lee Ann Flemming of Greenwood, Mississippi, baked 65 versions of Minny's chocolate pie for the movie "The Help."

3. Oscar's other favorite Jack Russell terrier is Cosmo, the veteran supporting star in "Beginners." Ewan McGregor loved working with Cosmo so much, he asked if he could keep the dog. Trainer Mathilde de Cagny said, "Not even in your dreams, Ewan."

4. Woody Allen's nominations for his comedy "Midnight in Paris" finally broke Billy Wilder's record for the most number of duel nominations in the direction and writing categories.

5. For the first time since the creation of the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2001, Pixar doesn't have a movie nominated. (That's because the only 2011 Pixar feature was the underpowered "Cars 2," a sequel to the studio's dullest movie to date: "Cars.")

6. To get the creepy noises for "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," designer Ren Klyce's team collected sounds made by a frozen tree blown by the wind, and used unnerving, metallic noises to generate the sensations of isolation and cold.

7. Last year there were three animation Oscar nominees and now there are five. What gives?

To get three nominees, at least eight animated features must be judged to be eligible for the Oscars in a given year. For five nominees, at least 16 animated features must be eligible. If there are less than eight films eligible, no nominees will be named.

8. In the silent film "The Artist," the director says the scene where ingénue Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo) slips her arm into George Valentin's jacket and creates an imagined embrace would not work in a regular sound movie.

"Because the story is told by images," Michel Hazanavicius said, "I think people are willing to accept a lot of strange ways to tell the story."

9. To get the five Best Visual Effects nominees, members of the Academy's Visual Effects on Jan. 1 viewed 10-minute excerpts from a shortlist of 10 features and voted on them:

"Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol," "Captain America: The First Avenger," "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," "The Tree of Life" and "X-Men: First Class" failed to make the cut. (Maybe it was all those colons in the titles.)

10. In "War Horse," all of the horse's sounds were supplied in postproduction. No recordings of the actual horses playing Joey were used. (Read more about Oscar-nominated "War Horse" sound designer Gary Rydstrom in Sunday's Daily Herald.)

<b>Gays, lesbians on film</b>

Join me and film historian Raymond Benson as Dann & Raymond's Movie Club presents "Out of the Closet: Hollwood's View of Gays and Lesbians," 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 1, Schaumburg Township District Library, 130 S. Roselle Road, Schaumburg. We trace how movies have depicted gays and lesbians since the silent age. Free admission! For mature audiences only. (847) 985-4000 or schaumburglibrary.org.

<b>Crystal Cave closing</b>

Since the creation of the Chicago Film Critics Awards show in 1990, the dazzling crystal trophies for its winners have been created by the Crystal Cave in Winnetka and its founder Josef Puehringer. Now, after 43 years, the Crystal Cave store is closing, the result of harsh economy. It will officially close March 17 after a 70 percent-off sale starting March 1.

"I couldn't be emotional about it," Puehringer said. "I had to do what was best for the business."

The relatively good news: Puehringer will continue to produce the Chicago Film Critics awards from a new location in Glenview where he will concentrate strictly on corporate accounts instead of a retail store.

Originally the Crystal Cave carried the functional, unsexy name of Glass Engraving and Glass Repair.

"I had a little old lady one day come and tell me in a high-pitched voice, 'Josef, to make it in the retail business, you have to have a catchier name.' A week later, I renamed the store The Crystal Cave. The woman came back and said, 'Josef, you did it! I'm so proud of you!'"

And?

"She was Charlton Heston's mother."

<b>Oscars in Naperville?</b>

Hollywood Palms Cinema will be the hub of Academy Award excitement when it hosts a fundraiser for Variety's Children's Charity of Illinois 6 p.m. Sunday at 352 S. Route 59 in Naperville. Admission (suggested donation) is $25 to see the Oscars show live on the silver screen. Swag bags and trivia contests included.

Chicago Film Critics Assn. member Sarah Adamson from Hollywood 360 will host the event. Go to atriptothemovies.com.

<b>'The Skin I Live In'</b>

The After Hours Film Society presents Pedro Almodovar's "The Skin I Live In" at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Tivoli Theater, 5021 Highland Ave., Downers Grove. It's about a mad scientist (Antonio Banderas) who invents synthetic skin. (Didn't Lionel Barrymore already create that in an old horror movie?) General admission costs $9. Rated R. 117 minutes. Go to afterhoursfilmsociety.com.

<i>Daily Herald film critic Dann Gire's column runs Fridays in Time out!</i>