We all remember actor Paul Giamatti. His latest movie Cold Souls has just been released in the U.S.. Here’s the premise per IMDB:
Paul Giamatti stars as himself, agonizing over his interpretation of “Uncle Vanya.” Paralyzed by anxiety, he stumbles upon a solution via a New Yorker article about a high-tech company promising to alleviate suffering by extracting souls. Giamatti enlists their service — only to discover that his soul is the shape and size of a chickpea. His intention is to reinstate it once he survives the performance but complications ensue when a mysterious, soul-trafficking “mule” borrows Giamatti’s stored soul for an ambitious, but unfortunately talentless, Russian soap-opera actress.
Here is Warren Etheredge of The Warren Report” interviewing the film’s writer-director Sophie Barthes and cinematographer Andrij Parekh:
As part of the marketing drive, they created this website, which purports to be the home page of the company “The Soul Storage.” With taglines “Is your soul weighing you down? Store it!” and “The Soul Storage Company: Unburdening Made Easy.”
Despite those marketing efforts and what sounds like an interesting premise, the movie has not set the box office on fire, only grossing $327K thus far in a little over 2 weeks at 50 theaters.
Here’s an upbeat movie review from Salon.com critic Stephanie Zacharek.
And the movie’s website.
And the trailer:
Anybody seen the movie? Reactions? And do you believe people have souls?
Just watched the trailer. How BIZZARE is that?! Will skip this movie. Looks like yet another Hollywood movie which treats something very precious in an irrevent way that add to the public's misconception of something beautiful and holy.
Genesis 2:7 "Then the Lord God formed man of the dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being (or soul)."
My American Heritage Dictionary provides the following definition of "soul."
soul: the animating and vital principle in man, credited with the faculites of thought, action and emotion and often conceived as an immaterial entity. The spiritual nature of man, reguarded as immortal, sepearable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.
- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA
I was lucky enough to catch this on a recent jaunt to Chicago.
Knee-slapping hilarity with just a slight dash of extremely effective pathos. By midpoint, I was a tad hoarse from laughing. Haven't had that happen in a film for some time.
One could accuse this of being a distant nephew to Being John Malkovich but Cold Souls is actually SOOOO much more (not to slight the Kaufman/Jonze film, of course).
Vonnegut has NEVER really been given justice on film. COLD SOULS feels like a Vonnegutian tale done RIGHT.
We mourn and lament the lack of creativity in film quite often on these pages… er, at least, I do.
If this little film with BIG IDEAS happens to swing through your town, please do it and yourself a favor and buy a ticket.
reading the script now