Director David Frankel first gained attention as a filmmaker for his 1995 movie Miami Rhapsody starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Antonio Banderas, but it was the 1996 short film Dear Diary that won the filmmaker his Academy Award. And Frankel would also go on to earn an Emmy Award for directing the pilot episode of HBO’s Entourage. He eventually returned to making feature films in 2006 with the Academy Award nominated movie The Devil Wears Prada starring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway. The director followed that up in 2008 with the extremely popular Marley & Me starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston. Both films became cultural icons and earned $326 million and $242 million, respectively, at the box office.

Last fall, Frankel released the ensemble comedy The Big Year, which will be available on Blu-ray and DVD January 31^st. The film follows a group of bird enthusiasts set on a “Big Year,” a quest to outdo each other by finding the most species of birds in North America. However, their competition becomes an allegory for the challenges that they all face in their own lives. The film features and impressive cast of comedic and dramatic actors including Steve Martin (The Jerk), Jack Black (School of Rock), Owen Wilson (Wedding Crashers), Rashida Jones (The Muppets), Rosamund Pike (Barney’s Version), JoBeth Williams (Fever Pitch), Jim Parsons (TV’s The Big Bang Theory), Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother Where Art Thou?), Joel McHale (TV’s Community), Kevin Pollak (The Usual Suspects), Anthony Anderson (The Departed), Corbin Bernsen (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang), Brian Dennehy (Tommy Boy), and Academy Award winners Dianne Wiest (The Birdcage), and Anjelica Huston (The Royal Tenenbaums).

I recently had a chance to speak with director David Frankel about The Big Year, as well as a few of his upcoming projects. The director spoke candidly with me about his most resent film, birding, working with three comedic geniuses, the rest of the film’s outstanding cast, Jack Black’s surprising dramatic skills, Frankel’s upcoming film Great Hope Springs, and his proposed adaptation of the popular fantasy book series Septimus Heap.

Synopsis: Three men, all with varying levels of dissatisfaction in their daily lives, engage in an annual competition amongst bird-watching enthusiasts to spot the very rarest birds in North America.

Richard Levine’s Every Day is far from your every day experience at the cinema; the independent film doesn’t focus on a single life-changing moment or event, but explores the trials and tribulations that one family goes through every day.

Ned (Liev Schreiber) and Jeannie (Helen Hunt) are in a marriage that has stood the test of time, even if it has grown cold. When Jeannie brings her ailing father (Brian Dennehy) to live with them, she has to try to deal with the guilt of hating her dying father, which builds stress and frustration in the household. Equally difficult is Ned’s inability to truthfully accept their son Jonah’s sexuality. As Jonah (Ezra Miller) wants more freedom, Ned finds himself increasingly trapped in a job he hates.

Synopsis: Life seems perfect for John Brennan until his wife, Lara, is arrested for a gruesome murder she says she didn’t commit. Three years into her sentence, John is struggling to hold his family together, raising their son and teaching at college while he pursues every means available to prove her innocence. With the rejection of their final appeal, Lara becomes suicidal and John decides there is only one possible, bearable solution: to break his wife out of prison. Refusing to be deterred by impossible odds or his own inexperience, John devises an elaborate escape plot and plunges into a dangerous and unfamiliar world, ultimately risking everything for the woman he loves.