MVD Entertainment Group Preps Marquee Collection DVD And Blu-ray Editions Of Writer/Director Mark Fergus' First Snow For Delivery On June 16

MVD Entertainment Group has carved out June 16 for its next golden addition to its Marquee Collection library of DVD and Blu-ray product offerings.

Ready?   The film in question is writer/director Mark Fergus’ 2006 neo-noir meets The Twilight Zone thriller, First Snow, starring Guy Pearce.

This will be the Blu-ray debut for First Snow … MVD is also making a available a DVD edition if that is more to your liking.

Jimmy Starks (Guy Pearce – L.A. Confidential, Memento, The Hurt Locker, etc.) is a fast-talking salesman.   Flooring is the current gig … other stuff in the past; he can sell ice to Eskimos if necessary.   If it is a commodity, he can move it.  

That doesn’t make either good or bad, just Jimmy.   Being a salesman like Jimmy is — something that defines him — means that everything to him is a negotiation, that’s an important thing to remember as events unfold.

Jimmy lives with his girlfriend, Deirdre (Piper Perabo — The Prestige, The Cave, Coyote Ugly), in Albuquerque, which gives you something of a clue as to his current sales “territory” … the hinterlands.   In any case, we pick up the story with Jimmy out driving, covering his “territory” and as a luck would have it, his car breaks down and he’s stuck in a small town in need of repairs to his car before he can move on.

It’s going to be awhile, so he amuses himself by wandering into a place with a “Fortunes Told” sign and there he meets a guy named Vacaro (played by none other than J.K. Simmons), not Vacaro the Magnificent, not Vacaro the Wise, just Vacaro, sort of a rundown cowboy in a dusty town.  

The palm reading, initially goes as expected, but filmmaker Mark Fergus, uses the one-one-one to set things in motion (take the time and watch this sequence again … very well done).    Vacaro hits a nerve, Jimmy gets testy, Vacaro ends the reading and tosses him out … even give him his money back.

It is all downhill for Jimmy after that, Vacaro has planeted a seed that something inevitable (read: wicked) this way comes and no amount of “negotiating” (selling) can change a single thing.   Fate meets Jimmy in a dusty New Mexico town and there is nothing he can do about it.

First Snow from the Oscar-nominated Mark Ferfus (for his Children of Men script … he also the producer and writer for The Expanse cable series) is a nifty blend of film noir and the kind of quirky stories that The Twilight Zone delivered — indeed, there are points where you expect Rod Sterling to suddenly interject, “Here’s Jimmy Starks, a salesman, who has just crossed over into … the Twilight Zone.”

Bonus features include a video session with J.K. Simmons.