The Ice Storm is a 1997 drama film directed by Ang Lee, based on the 1994 novel of the same name by Rick Moody.

The film features an ensemble cast of Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, and Sigourney Weaver. Set during Thanksgiving 1973, The Ice Storm is about two dysfunctional New Canaan, Connecticut families who are trying to deal with tumultuous political and social changes of the early 1970s, and their escapism through alcohol, adultery, and sexual experimentation.

Upon the film's opening in the United States on October 31, 1997, its release was limited and grossed a mere US$8 million on a budget of US$18 million, making it a box office flop. A new special two-disc DVD set was also released as a part of the Criterion Collection on March 18, 2008.

The film begins at a dinner party at the Carvers' house as the adults discuss pop culture references that defined the 1970s: the Watergate scandal, swinging parties for married couples, and the pornographic film Deep Throat. The Hood family includes Ben (Kevin Kline), Elena (Joan Allen) and their children, 16-year-old Paul (Tobey Maguire) and 14-year-old Wendy (Christina Ricci). Their neighbors, the Carvers, include Jim (Jamey Sheridan), Janey (Sigourney Weaver) and their children: Mikey (Elijah Wood) and Sandy (Adam Hann-Byrd).

The Ice Storm is a 1994 American novel by Rick Moody. The novel was widely acclaimed by readers and critics alike, described as a funny, acerbic, and moving hymn to a dazed and confused era of American life.

In 1997, the novel was adapted into an acclaimed feature film directed by Ang Lee, featuring a cast including Joan Allen, Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood and Tobey Maguire. The film also marked the screen debut of Katie Holmes as Libbets Casey.

The novel takes place over Thanksgiving weekend 1973, during a dangerous ice storm and centers on two neighboring families, the Hoods and the Williamses, and the difficulties they have dealing with the tumultuous political and social climate of the day, in affluent suburban Connecticut, during the height of the sexual revolution. The novel is narrated from four different perspectives, each of them a member of the two families, who are promoting their own opinion and views of the several complications that arise throughout the novel, including their encounters and daily life. The Hood family is overridden with lies: Ben is currently in an affair with his married neighbor Janey, his wife Elena is alienated, her daughter ventures on her own sexual liaisons with both females and males of her age, including her neighbors Mikey and Sandy.

Elijah Jordan Wood ( /ɪˈlaɪdʒə ˈdʒɔrdən ˈwʊd/; born January 28, 1981) is an American actor. He made his film debut with a minor part in Back to the Future Part II (1989), then landed a succession of larger roles that made him a critically acclaimed child actor by age 9, being nominated for several Young Artist Awards. He is best known for his high-profile role as Frodo Baggins in Peter Jackson's critically acclaimed The Lord of the Rings trilogy and its upcoming prequels The Hobbit films. Since then, he has resisted typecasting by choosing varied roles in critically acclaimed films such as Bobby, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Sin City, Green Street and Everything Is Illuminated.

Wood starred in the film Day Zero (2007) and provided the voice of the main character in the award-winning animated musical films Happy Feet and Happy Feet Two. Wood also voiced the lead as 9 in the Tim Burton-produced action/science fiction film 9. He played an American tourist turned vampire in Paris, je t'aime. In 2005, he started his own record label, Simian Records. He currently appears as Ryan in FX's dark comedy Wilfred, which debuted on June 23, 2011.

Ang Lee (Chinese: 李安; Pinyin: Lǐ Ān; born October 23, 1954) is a Taiwanese-American film director. Lee has directed a diverse set of films such as Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), Sense and Sensibility (1995), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film), Hulk (2003), and Brokeback Mountain (2005), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director. He is the first person of Asian descent to win the Best Director Oscar.

Ang Lee was born in the town of Chaochou in Pingtung, a southern agricultural county in Taiwan. He grew up in a household that put heavy emphasis on education and the Chinese classics. Both of Lee's parents moved to Taiwan from China following the Chinese Nationalists' defeat in the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Lee's father, a native of Jiangxi Province in southern China, imbued his children with studying Chinese culture and art, especially calligraphy.

Lee studied in the National Tainan First Senior High School where his father was the principal. He was expected to pass the annual Joint College/University Entrance Examination, the only route to a university education in Taiwan. But after failing the Exam twice, to the disappointment of his father, he entered a three-year college, National Arts School (now reorganized and expanded as National Taiwan University of Arts) and graduated in 1975. His father had wanted him to become a professor, but he had become interested in drama and the arts at college. This early frustration set his career on the path of performance art. Seeing Ingmar Bergman's film The Virgin Spring (1960) was a formative experience for him.

Eugene Kal "Gene" Siskel (January 26, 1946 – February 20, 1999) was an American film critic and journalist for the Chicago Tribune. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted the popular review show Siskel & Ebert At the Movies from 1975 until his death.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Siskel was raised by his aunt and uncle after both his parents died when he was ten years old. He attended Culver Academies, graduated in Philosophy at Yale University in 1967, where he studied writing under Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Hersey, who helped him land a job at the Chicago Tribune in 1969. In 1975, Siskel teamed up with Roger Ebert, film reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times, to host a show on the local Chicago PBS station WTTW which eventually became Sneak Previews. Their "thumbs-up, thumbs-down" system soon became an easily recognizable trademark, popular enough to be parodied on comedy shows such as In Living Color, cartoon strips like Calvin and Hobbes (April, 1988) and in movies such as Hollywood Shuffle and Godzilla. Sneak Previews gained a country-wide audience in 1978 when it was carried on PBS.