Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • Page H01

INSIDE Valentine's Gifts, H3 Mami Jameson Puts Cupid In The Mood, H4 Do It Yourself, H5 Debbie Travis On Home Offices, H6 COURANT.COM A MISSED OPPORTUNITY Twenty years ago, antiques writer Terry Kovel didn't buy an unusual cigarette box priced at $100. This one, by the same maker, recently sold for $1,000. H4. CTHOME FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2009 SECTION ttljC ilailjbri (EflUrauL 'The house was definitely a character in the Kristi Zea, production designer, "Revolutionary Road" By ALIX BOYLE Special To The Courant At the Academy Awards, there is no category for best supporting role played by a house, but perhaps there should be. In "Revolutionary Road," choosing the right house was crucial, said production designer Kristi Zea, who has been nominated for an Oscar in art direction for the film.

Well-known in her field, Zea has done production design on other films, including "The Silence of the Lambs." "The story wouldn't have made as much sense without picking out the right house," said Zea, who chose two houses in Darien to be the set for the movie, which opened recently in Connecticut. Based on the 1961 book by Richard Yates, "Revolutionary Road" is the story of a couple, Frank and April Wheeler ON THE WEB For more coverage of "Revolutionary Road" in Connecticut visit courant.comrevroadct DREAMWORKS A SCENE from the movie "Revolutionary Road." Two homes in Darien were extensively changed by production crews for the movie. (played by Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio), who move to the suburbs in the mid-1950s to raise their children, but consider themselves free spirits, as opposed to the other bourgeois couples in the neighborhood. Almost immediately, April hatches a plan to move to Paris, where she will work to support the family so Frank will have time to find himself. When the trip becomes impossible, the marriage begins to unravel.

Life in suburbia, then as well as now, looks idyllic but can be fraught with isolation and loneliness. "The house was definitely a character in the film. The people who lived in those houses were forced into a certain style of existence," Zea said. "In the scene where Kate Winslet is taking out the garbage and she looks up and down the street and FAMILIES H5 HOUSES GO HOLLYWOOD NOT LUCK, 'JUST KISMET' TWO DARIEN HOMES STAR IN 'REVOLUTIONARY ROAD' MICHAEL MCANDREWS mmcandrewscourant.com THE DARIEN HOME of Peter and Becky Siciliano was used as a setting for the movie "Revolutionary Road' starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. GARDEN SPOT No Chance Delights With Prepackaged Shortcuts White Flower Farm has been a leader in offering gardens to go.

They're pros over there in Litchfield, and the offerings show it. One neat combination in the new spring catalog, for instance, is called "In Good Company It provides six plants for a moist shade garden: two of the Britt-Marie Crawford ligularia dentata and three each of the Ghost fern anthyrium and Kong Scarlet coleus. The first two are perennials GARDEN, H6 and a bag of buns. Then came Hamburger Helper, which gave us a pre-planned, one-package, mass-produced meal or least sustenance. These days we also have Garden Helper: A one-package approach to gardening where the nursery does all the work.

These plant-by-number kits are perfect for anyone who wants a garden but doesn't want to be a gardener. It's like buying a piece of furniture: a blue garden, shade garden, pastel garden, etc. Of course, as with all things horticultural, it's just as easy to fail with preplanned gardens as with the do-it-yourself kind but more expensive. PETER SLEIGHT psleightcourant.com Long ago there was a staple of the hurried kitchen called the Sloppy Joe. Dinner was a simple matter of sauteed ground beef, canned tomato sauce, a few spices YELLOW LILIES make a stunning contrast with pink-purple Preziosa hydrangea, all part of a White Flower Farm preplanned garden..