Suffering from the Hollywood blockbuster blues? Have I got some indies for you! All three are newly available this week on DVD.

Kim Voynar called Vadim Perelman's The Life Before Her Eyes "a lovely, nuanced film packed with imagery, and bracketed by an intriguing storyline." The story revolves around the survivor of a school shooting; Uma Thurman plays her as an adult and Evan Rachel Wood as a teenager. Kim wrote in part: "I'd expect the director's commentary on the DVD to be intriguing." The DVD does indeed feature an audio commentary by the director, joined by production designer Maia Javan. Also included are deleted scenes, an alternate ending, and several other mini-features. A Blu-ray edition is also available.

Kim also reviewed Tommy O'Haver's An American Crime when it debuted at Sundance last year. Based on the true tragedy of teenage Sylvia Likens (Ellen Page) who was "brutally beaten, burned, starved and tortured to death" in 1965 Indiana, Kim said the film was difficult to watch. "The real question ... is not just how the Sylvia Likens case could have happened, but why situations like this happen at all -- and still do." Catherine Keener and James Franco also star. The DVD doesn't appear to have any supplemental material.

On the lighter side, Bharat Nalluri's Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day "is a nearly perfect piece of entertainment for grownups," according to James Rocchi. Frances McDormand plays a down-on-her-luck British governess and Amy Adams essays her employer, an American singer / actress in late 1930s London. The DVD includes a "making of," deleted scenes, and "Miss Pettigrew's Long Trip to Hollywood."

Well, here's some news I've been hoping to write up for a long while now ... director Vadim Perelman has officially dropped the adaptation of Atlas Shrugged, which is presumably still set to star Angelina Jolie as Dagny Taggart. Perelman signed on to the project last September, and as recently as April ComingSoon.net reported that the project was still a go. It may or may not still be moving forward, but I have it from the most reliable source possible -- Perelman himself -- that it will not be going forward with him at the helm.

CHUD wrote up this piece about Angelina Jolie supposedly telling MTV that Perelman was never signed to direct at all -- something Perelman finds interesting, since he had a signed contract that attached him, and Lionsgate (not Perelman, as CHUD asserts, though Perelman has done interviews about his attachment to the project) had put out many press releases announcing him as the director. Perelman was attached, and I can say with as much certainty as one can possibly have about a situation like this that the decision to step down was on Perelman's side.

I've been mulling over the whole issue of the Atlas Shrugged film adaptation, which, at the moment at least, seems to be churning ahead to start filming later this year, and I wanted to talk about something several commenters have mentioned: whether it would be better to film Atlas as a miniseries, as opposed to a two-hour-or-longer movie. Of course, attempts have been made to bring Ayn Rand's most famous book to the screen before, and they've never made it past the script stage.

Why? Well, first of all, there are a lot of politics around this book. The Ayn Rand Institute and Leonard Peikoff have been notoriously protective of it for years, and trying to make a film that's going to please both the hardcore Objectivists (those who follow Rand's philosophy) and the average moviegoer who just wants to be entertained is, in my opinion, just an exercise in futility. Then I read this interview over on The Atlasphere with John Aglialoro, producer and CEO of Cybex, International, who paid $1 million for the film rights to Atlas.

Despite the talk and the buzz, I never thought it would actually happen. If any novel merits the term "unfilmable," certainly Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is it. I mean, the climax is a 60-page radio broadcast! And the entire thing is what can charitably be called a screed, preaching Rand's extremely unliberal "objectivist" political philosophy. So when I heard that Vadim Perelman (The House of Sand and Fog and the upcoming The Life Before Her Eyes) was developing the project, with Angelina Jolie attached to star as Dagny Taggart, my reaction was quite simply: Pfffffft.

But it looks like I pfffffted too soon. Comingsoon.net talked to Perelman this week, and he told them that he's finishing up the script, and that Lionsgate wants to start shooting in December. So, uh: it looks like this might actually happen.

I would commit atrocities to get my hands on a copy of Perelman's screenplay. I can only imagine what it does to condense the thousand-page-plus book into even a very long movie. What worries me most is that the novel doesn't really exist without Rand's politics, if that makes any sense: they're so integral to the story that cutting them out would make everything else pretty much pointless. And I'm not sure Hollywood -- even the relatively adventurous Lionsgate -- has the stomach for a politically faithful adaptation.

Above is the trailer for Vadim Perelman's upcoming film, The Life Before Her Eyes. For many, this movie should be a welcome respite from Uma Thurman's recent work (My Super Ex-Girlfriend), and a blast back to the more challenging and tasty fare that made her famous -- films like Dangerous Liaisons and Henry & June. Based on Laura Kasischke's novel, the film follows Thurman as the survivor of a high school shooting (something only vaguely hinted at in the trailer), whose life unravels 15 years later. Evan Rachel Wood (Across the Universe) plays her as a young woman, while Eva Amurri (Saved!) plays her best friend. I must say, it's so good to see Thurman in something meatier, and if this film is half as good as the trailer, this should be a must-see pick when the feature hits theaters this April.

Meanwhile, you can head through the jump to check out an official still from the film.*

*Edited to change picture

When Ryan spoke with Angelina Jolie last June, she had told us that her big-screen treatment of Ayn Rand's classic political novel Atlas Shrugged wasn't exactly ready for production. Last October, Lionsgate secured a writer for the film, but Jolie told us that "... we have not had all the pieces come together. There's not been a director that's right to come on, or all of those elements. So until it does, you know, I certainly don't want to be a part of something that's just put together to hit 'this date'". So here we are two months later, and Variety is now reporting that Vadim Perelman has been hired to direct the literary property, and also to perform a re-write on the script. Perelman will be updating the original draft written by Braveheart scribe Randall Wallace. If you're familiar with the 'heft' of Ayn Rand's novels, then you have an idea of how difficult it will be to trim down a 1,100-plus page novel into a two hour film.

Rumors of the project had been kicking around since last year, when in the height of all that "Brangelina" nonsense, there was talk that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie would be working together on the film (rumors that have long since been discredited). But now that a director is in place, it seems the project is closer to becoming a reality. Vadim Perelman will be in Toronto later this week for TIFF to present his latest, In Bloom, with Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood. Since Angelina Jolie is expected to be accompanying Brad Pitt to the festival, maybe they can make it a working vacation. Jolie is still shooting the comic-book adaptation Wanted and is already scheduled to start work this fall on Clint Eastwood's The Changeling. According to Variety, Lionsgate is planning a start date for Atlas Shrugged in early 2008 -- so much for taking a year off, huh Ang?

When it was published in 1993, Lois Lowry's The Giver was greeted with both praise and controversy. The novel (aimed at kids of middle school age) is set in a future world "with no poverty, no crime, no sickness and no unemployment, and where every family is happy" and "all memory of human history has been erased." Lowry's main character is a 12-year-old boy who is chosen to become a "Receiver of Memory," the person who is aware of the community's history. Through the process of preparing for his role, the boy "discovers the disturbing truth about his utopian world and struggles against the weight of its hypocrisy." Though the book won the prestigious Newbery Award in 1994, its subject matter and the way it "deals with suicide and euthanasia" also made it the 14th "most challenged" book (just behind Catcher in the Rye) in school libraries during the 1990s. Sigh.

According to Variety, a movie version of the story is finally on the way, under the guidance of kid-friendly Walden Media and 20th Century Fox. Though an early draft of the screenplay was written by Todd Alcott, Walden have asked Vadim Perelman (who wrote and directed House of Sand and Fog) to do a rewrite; Perelman will then direct the film from his own script. It's going to be utterly fascinated to see how faithful the resulting film is to the book - will Walden risk offended the same audiences who flocked to their The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe earlier this year?