Leighton Meester moves from the city to the suburbs in ‘The Oranges,’ a new ensemble comedy from veteran TV director Julian Farino, but the drama stays the same. In the film, Meester plays Nina Ostroff, who returns home after a five-year absence and upsets the delicate balance of their quiet New Jersey suburb. Despite Nina’s parents trying to set her up with their neighbors’ and best friends’ eligible son (Adam Brody), Nina instead falls for his father David (Hugh Laurie) — and the feelings are mutual.

Movies about May-December romances aren’t exactly rare, but they’re rarely this funny, and Moviefone sat down with Meester at the Toronto Film Festival to find out her opinion on the film’s unconventional love story and how the cast came together as one big happy family.

How was the premiere?
It was fun, it was very fun!

Was that the first time you’d seen the movie?
No, I have seen it before, but not in a room filled with people. It was very different. It was a very interesting experience, everybody was laughing. It was cool.

Considering most people are probably initially skeptical of the movie’s love story, is it validating to get such a positive response?
Yeah! I mean, it’s a delicate subject and I think it’s very funny, but it’s funny in the way that life is funny. So I think that’s probably why it works. It’s got a lot of tension and awkwardness but then it sort of cools off. But it’s definitely nice to hear people laughing when they’re supposed to laugh. [Laughs]

I think Alia Shawkat’s character reacting so strongly against David and Nina’s relationship helps the audience buy into what’s happening. It almost makes them seem sympathetic.

I think that anybody who watches it will probably have that reaction at first. They at first want to rebel against it, they want to say, ‘No, this is crazy and selfish.’ And then eventually you do root for their love and want it to work, because it’s genuine and it’s real. And I think that it does ask that question of what is morality, what is love, what is being selfish? Is it being selfish to find love and take the opportunity to experience it, or is it selfish for people to not want them to have it because it’s “wrong,” according to other people?

How’d you get attached to the project?
I read the script and I, of course, fell in love with it. Every time I [told people], ‘I did ‘The Oranges,” I got, ‘Oh, I loved that script!’ But then I met with Julian [Farino], who I’d actually known for quite a long time. And he initially told me a few years ago that I was maybe a bit too young for [the part]. Then, of course, two years later when they were actually making it, it was fine. It worked.

I had a very funny audition with Julian. I had it in my dressing room at work. He came to visit me on set, I was working. And they kept on coming and knocking on my door. The director of photography was there, filming me. And he would pan from me, then over to the door, where somebody was knocking, somebody from the set, and then pan back over and we would finish the scene. I’m kind of curious to see it.

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NY based ATO PICTURES proudly announced today that it has acquired all North American rights to THE ORANGES, one of the most buzzed about Toronto titles directed by Julian Farino making his feature film debut.

Hugh Laurie, Catherine Keener, Oliver Platt, Allison Janney, Alia Shawkat, Adam Brody and Leighton Meester star.

David and Paige Ostroff (Laurie and Keener) and Terry and Cathy Walling (Platt and Janney) are best friends and neighbors living on Orange Drive in suburban New Jersey. Their comfortable existence goes awry when prodigal daughter Nina Ostroff (Meester), newly broken up with her fiancé Ethan (Sam Rosen), returns home for Thanksgiving after a five-year absence. Rather than developing an interest in Toby Walling (Brody), the successful son of her neighbors which would please both families, it’s her parents’ best friend David who captures Nina’s attention. When the connection between Nina and David becomes undeniable, everyone’s lives are thrown into upheaval, particularly Vanessa Walling’s (Shawkat), Nina’s childhood best friend. It’s not long before the ramifications of the affair begin to work on all of the family members in unexpected and hilarious ways, leading everyone to reassess what it means to be happy and how sometimes what looks like a disaster, turns out to be the one thing we need the most.

ATO has slated an aggressive platform release commencing in 2012.
Produced by Olympus Pictures’ Leslie Urdang and Dean Vanech and Likely Story’s Anthony Bregman, THE ORANGES was written by Ian Helfer and Jay Reiss.
According to ATO’s co-founders Johnathan Dorfman and Temple Fennell: “We love this film! Julian has done a terrific job directing a dream cast in what we think is going to be one of the biggest crowd pleasers of 2012.”

Urdang and Bregman go on to say, “ATO pursued THE ORANGES with immense passion, creative thinking and a willingness to commit significant resources towards the release—in other words, they came to us with exactly what we were looking for when we brought the film to Toronto. We are very much looking forward to working with this strong and independent company.”

Sarah Lash, ATO’s Head of Acquisitions negotiated the deal with CAA who brokered it on behalf of Olympus, Likely Story and Jay Reiss.

ATO Pictures currently has the Sundance hit TERRI starring John C. Reilly in release. Additional titles on the company’s slate include: THE WOMAN IN THE FIFTH (October 21st) starring Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott Thomas which premiered at TIFF last week, THIN ICE (2012) starring Greg Kinnear, Billy Crudup and Alan Arkin which the company acquired out of Sundance and THE MONK (2012), Dominik Moll’s gothic thriller starring Vincent Cassel.

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I just updated the gallery with a portrait session Leighton did yesterday for the premiere of The Oranges and the Toronto International Film Festival. Enjoy!

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Studio Photoshoots > Photoshoots > Photoshoots from 2011 > Set 007

Leighton attended the premiere of her new movie The Oranges at the Toronto International Film Festival yesterday and I just updated the gallery with photos of her appearance. More photos will be added as they show up. Enjoy!

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Public Apperances > Events from 2011 > 09-10-11 – “The Oranges” TIFF Premiere

The official site for Leighton’s new movie The Oranges has been launched! Check it out below! The site doesn’t have much content on it so far, but I’m sure it will get more as it gets closer to the official release.

A gifted ensemble of actors, including Hugh Laurie, Leighton Meester and Catherine Keener, manage to hit a sweet spot despite mediocre material, writes THR film critic David Rooney.

Watching the wryly funny Alia Shawkat roll her eyes and vent with deadpan disdain as two families go into a tailspin because her dad is sleeping with his best friend’s daughter, it’s tempting to wonder what twisted comedy magic the actor’s old TV alma mater, Arrested Development, would have spun out of that plotline. Director Julian Farino and the screenwriters of The Oranges, in which the scenario does unfold, are not in that league.

Apprenticed in British television, Farino has been part of the HBO pool since 2004, directing episodes of Entourage, Big Love, Rome and How to Make It in America. His U.S. feature debut, from a patchy script by Jay Reiss and Ian Helfer, is visually undistinguished and relies too heavily on the music slathered over almost every scene to shape its herky-jerky tone. But Farino is good with actors, and in his corner he does have a gifted ensemble, who often manage to hit a sweet spot even in this mediocre material.

Shawkat’s character, Vanessa, stalled in neutral since graduating from design school, is the voiceover commentator of this twin family meltdown. But sadly, she’s not the center of the story. That would be her one-time best friend and neighbor, Nina (Leighton Meester), who returns home after a five-year absence to lick her wounds following a bust-up with her cheating fiancé (Sam Rosen). Bringing chaos in her wake, Nina is capricious, selfish and unsympathetic, oblivious to the pain she’s causing everyone close to her. Yet, in the screenwriters’ psychologically unsound plan, we’re expected to invest in her.

The two sets of parents are the Ostroffs, David (Hugh Laurie) and Paige (Catherine Keener), and the Wallings, Terry (Oliver Platt) and Cathy (Allison Janney), and when the comedy delivers it’s largely due to the timing of these four pros. Neighbors in West Orange, New Jersey, they are so deeply enmeshed in one another’s lives they virtually belong to the same family.

Their friendship provides a cushion from the ripples of marital discord beneath all the backyard barbecues and shared Sunday dinners. David has been spending more nights in his man cave in the pool shed than with Paige for some time. And Cathy only tolerates Terry and his gadget mania by pretending he’s invisible and inaudible.

While both families quietly (or not so quietly in manipulative Cathy’s case) hope Nina will fall into a relationship with Vanessa’s career-minded brother Toby (Adam Brody), instead she chooses his dad as her fallback guy. Fun as it is to watch the resourceful Laurie torpedoed by a mix of lust, guilt and panic, this mutual attraction is grounded nowhere beyond the necessity to wreak comic havoc. Once that’s in motion, the writers let it sit there and fester, not quite sure what to do with it.

Fortunately, Platt has a limitless arsenal of amusing ways to express helpless shellshock, and Janney has a similarly ample range with appalled and exasperated, yielding a good share of genuine laughs. But none of the characters aside from Vanessa – doubly betrayed by Nina, who dumped her in high school to hang with the pretty, popular girls — is written with any consistency. The most ill-served is Paige, a control freak who starts drilling the neighborhood caroling group in August, and a part for which inherently cool Keener is a poor fit.

The director and writers manage capably enough while the action sticks in light, sitcommy mode, but when it turns serious the movie runs out of juice. Its cathartic moments feel fabricated, notably Paige out of nowhere exorcizing her rage on the Wallings’ elaborate front-yard holiday lights. (The action takes place roughly Thanksgiving through Christmas, though it clearly was shot in warmer months.)

Helfer and Reiss push predictable buttons with their message that out of the messiest situations, fresh self-knowledge and serenity can sometimes be hatched. There’s enough generic feelgood stuff in the proudly nonjudgmental film’s themes of love and forgiveness to make undiscerning audiences believe they’re being fed something nutritious. And the holiday-season setting makes theatrical positioning a no-brainer. But a deluxe cast like this one deserves better.

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I just updated the gallery with some posters, stills, wallpapers, and trailer screen captures that weren’t already in the gallery. More gallery updates to come! Enjoy!

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Movie Productions > Country Strong > Posters
Movie Productions > Country Strong > Stills
Movie Productions > Country Strong > Wallpapers
Movie Productions > The Roommate > Posters
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Movie Productions > The Roommate > Wallpapers
Movie Productions > Monte Carlo > Stills
Movie Productions > Monte Carlo > Trailer Screen Captures
Movie Productions > The Oranges > Stills

The Oranges: On Set