Ato Pictures Convinced that ‘Thin Ice’ Won’t Give Way

Expect this upcoming Fall season to be a pivotal first for the two-year old ATO Pictures. With Pawel Pawlikowski’s The Woman in the Fifth and Dominik Moll’s The Monk both expected to make their North American first looks at Telluride/TIFF, the disturb co. will have a Sundance preemed black comedy hitting theatres around the same time.

Gist: Formerly going by the title of “The Convincer”, Thin Ice reunites Greg Kinnear with Little Miss Sunshine co-star Alan Arkin and this becomes a second outing for Arkin with director Jill Sprecher — who worked with the veteran actor a decade back on her sophomore film that followed her debut, 1997’s Clockwatchers. This pits a financially troubled insurance agent (Kinnear) against a frigid Wisconsin backdrop, and worse yet, the moral dilemma brought about by a valuable violin.

Worth Noting: Between feature films, the Sprecher sisters produced television’s Big Love and then shared the writing duties on this film.

Do We Care?: We waited a full decade for Jill Sprecher to follow up her Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (a film of vignettes that we were particularly fond of) with something fresh – this however didn’t curb our appetite — we didn’t care much for a big reveal type plot-line and the irritating character embodied by Billy Crudup.