Drew Barrymore and Kate Beckinsale portray sisters living hundreds of miles apart and whose father (Robert De Niro) suddenly makes a surprise visit, in Miramax Films’ touching dramatic comedy “Everybody’s Fine.”  The film will be shown exclusively at Ayala Malls Cinemas (Glorietta 4, Greenbelt 3 and Trinoma) starting April 7.

Barrymore plays Rosie, the dancer seemingly living the high life in Las Vegas .  “It’s a film about connecting and communicating and I found the whole concept intriguing,” Barrymore describes the film.  “As you grow up, there is this shock at how distant people can become, how much they grow apart, and how hard it is to carve out time for family and friends.  I liked that the film wanted to talk about that because I think it’s so important.”

She also had great affection for the song-and-dance Rosie tries to pull of for her father’s sake.  “Rosie is putting on an act for her father because she knows he’s really prideful that his little girl has realized all her dreams, so even though she’s struggling, she is not going to show him that,” Barrymore explains.  “She’s trying to do the right thing, but, like her sister and brothers, she’s stuck in a cycle that needs to be broken.”

Barrymore says the character really came to life when she began working with her fellow cast mates.  “I hate those fake Hollywood families where people do one read-through and suddenly they’re a family,” she says.  “This was different because we spent time a lot of time together so that the tactile feeling of affection would come across between us.”

She continues:  “I especially loved being sisters with Kate Beckinsale.  She’s a very cool girl and a wonderful actress and that was an easy dynamic to jump into.  And I’ve already done a number of films with Sam Rockwell, and it’s always a great pleasure having the chance to work with him again.  With Robert De Niro, I felt I couldn’t just call him ‘Bob,’ so I started calling him ‘Daddy D.’  I wanted to get to know him well enough that those emotions would happen naturally on screen.”

Kate Beckinsale, had a similar experience in preparing to play Amy, the advertising executive who is hiding some key facts about her married life from her father.  “I think we all felt very connected and cobbled together, like a real family,” she says.  “Everyone was full of emotions about the story.  We might not have had the same experiences as our characters but the themes of secrets in families, of trying to protect your parents and the relationships between siblings was something everybody could relate to.  It was especially personal to Bob and that sort of filtered down to each of us.”

Beckinsale notes that when the father shows up at Amy’s architecturally spectacular modern house, he finds that the magazine cover surroundings don’t match what’s going on inside.  “He shows up by surprise in this odd crisis moment and Amy just starts lying and it begins to spiral until she can’t stop,” she says.  “I think for Amy it’s especially hard to let go of being the one person in the family who’s very successful in the practical parts of life.  Her brothers and sisters are all artists, but she’s always been the responsible, pragmatic one and the working mother. She wants her father to see that.”

It was easy, Beckinsale adds, to get into the father-daughter dynamic because of what De Niro provoked in her.  “We all felt that he had this quality that reminded us of our own fathers,” she explains.  “It’s not the way he looks or what he does, but he has this mix of strength and vulnerability that reminded everyone – even people momentarily visiting the set – of their dads.”

“Everybody’s Fine” is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International.

Nature never intended you to survive in Antarctica.  For U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale), things are about to get even more dangerous, in Warner Bros.’ new suspense-thriller “Whiteout.”  The only law enforcement in this unforgiving territory, she has just been sent to investigate a body on the ice.  Antarctica’s first homicide.  A shocking discovery in itself, it will plunge her into an even more bizarre mystery and the revelation of secrets long-buried under the endless ice…secrets that someone believes are still worth killing for.

As Stetko races to find the killer before he finds her, winter is already closing in.  In the deadly Antarctic whiteout, she won’t see him till he’s a breath away.

“Audiences won’t immediately know what circumstances brought U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko to seek a post in Antarctica, or what she hoped to find there, but they will feel from the film’s opening beats that she is anxious to get out,” says Joel Silver, who produced “Whiteout” under the banner of his Dark Castle Entertainment, and calls it “the coldest thriller ever made.”

Director Dominic Sena, marking his second collaboration with Silver following their 2001 action thriller “Swordfish,” concurs. “Whatever she came looking for at the bottom of the world, she didn’t find it.  Meanwhile, the place has gotten to her—the cold, the claustrophobia, the isolation.  She’s at the breaking point and counting down to that last flight out before winter closes in with its six months of darkness.”

Stetko’s departure plans are put on hold when a body turns up in the ice field.  Frozen to the ground by blood and ice, his arms and legs strangely contorted, the body is that of an American geologist named Weiss, a member of a small research team studying meteorite fragments.  Closer examination reveals numerous broken bones and a fresh gash in his leg that has been crudely stitched up, but the cause of death is a deep chest wound delivered by an instrument very common to this rough terrain: an ice ax.

As much as Weiss’s death is a mystery, its location is even more baffling. Miles from nowhere.  No tracks, no maps, no gear.  What was he doing way out here?  A murder victim is the last thing Stetko expected to find after two years of arduous but uneventful duty, and certainly the last thing she wants to deal with now.  Nevertheless, passing him off to the nearest U.S. authorities at McMurdo Station 900 miles away is not an option.

Unfortunately for Stetko whose bags are already packed, this doesn’t look like the kind of case that can be wrapped up easily.  Instead, it becomes immediately more complex as Stetko turns her attention to the two remaining members of Weiss’s team, men who could be either prime suspects or the next victims of a killer whose motivation she has yet to discover.

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Whiteout” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

Antarctica.  The coldest and most isolated place on earth.  Temperatures drop to 120 below.  Winds whip across the ice at over 100 miles an hour.  Home to one of the deadliest forces in the world—the whiteout.

Warner Bros. Pictures presents the action thriller “Whiteout,” starring Kate Beckinsale  (“Underworld”), Gabriel Macht (“The Spirit”), Columbus Short (“Stomp the Yard”) and Tom Skerritt (“Contact”).   The film is directed by Dominic Sena (“Swordfish”) from a screenplay by Jon Hoeber & Erich Hoeber and Chad Hayes & Carey W. Hayes, based on the graphic novel by Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber.

Antarctica is a place U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko (Beckinsale) won’t miss.  As the lone law enforcement agent at the Amundsen-Scott Research Station, her tenure here has been not only harsh but uneventful.  In three days, when the station powers down and the sun sets for the long winter, she’ll be getting out; leaving Antarctica for good and turning in her badge for a new life.

But when a body is discovered in the no-man’s land on the open ice, Stetko is plunged into a shocking mystery.  Bizarrely battered and miles from camp, the dead man is Antarctica’s first homicide victim and Stetko’s first real challenge in a long time.

Her investigation soon involves U.N. Special Agent Robert Pryce (Macht), sent to monitor her progress in this ungoverned territory.  As the case takes a deadly twist and a 60-year-old secret is unearthed, Stetko herself becomes a target.  Pryce could prove to be a powerful ally—but only if solving the murder is what he’s really after.

With only days before the last plane out, Stetko must race to unravel the mystery or risk being stranded on the ice as darkness—and the killer—closes in.

“Whiteout” is produced by Joel Silver, Susan Downey and David Gambino.  Executive producers are Steve Richards, Don Carmody and Greg Rucka.  Co-producers are Richard Mirisch and Adam Kuhn.  The creative team includes director of photography Chris Soos, supervising editor Stuart Baird, film editor Martin Hunter and production designer Graham “Grace” Walker.  The costume designers are Wendy Partridge and Nicoletta Massone.  Music is by John Frizzell.

Opening soon across the Philippines, “Whiteout” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.