Cain and Abel in Year One.

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FEB 8 UPDATE: Here is another TV spot, with more new footage:


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Trailerbites: The Dennis Quaid edition!

1. ComingSoon.net has an "exclusive early look" at the Super Bowl spot for G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra:


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2. And then there is this, the domestic trailer for the apocalyptic murder mystery The Horsemen:

Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly. Hat tip to Rick at Coosa Creek Cinema.

Don't encourage the barbarians, idiots.

I saw a movie yesterday.

Before the movie began, there was an ad for Rogers Wireless that revolved around a girl who text-messages a guy sitting several rows in front of her in the same theatre, and then he text-messages her back, and then she text-messages the girlfriend that he's cheating on, etc., etc.

So it would appear that Rogers wants prospective customers to think that they can stay connected even while the movie is playing -- and, therefore, Rogers wants to encourage people to light up their cell phones and so on in what is supposed to be a darkened theatre.

That, alone, would be bad enough.

But just to add insult to injury, the film clip that plays immediately before the movie -- in which the theatre admonishes its patrons to be quiet and turn off their cell phones -- played backwards and upside-down this time, because someone had stuck it in the projector the wrong way.

Fortunately, the audience itself wasn't too bad this time -- partly, no doubt, because there were only about a dozen other people and they were all at least a dozen rows behind me.

No, I don't assume that every moviegoer is going to be rude. But I've had enough bad experiences -- especially in the suburbs -- to know that I should keep my distance whenever possible.

Newsbites: The religious themes edition!

1. Sony has acquired the film rights to Danielle Trussoni's Angelology, a novel described as a cross between The Da Vinci Code (2006) and National Treasure (2004-2007). It concerns a 23-year-old nun who "unwittingly reignites an ancient war between Angelologists, a group who studies angels, and a race of monster-like descendants of angels and humans called the Nephilim"; she then teams up with an angelologist "in a search for ancient artifacts that are the only things that can stop the Nephilim." It sounds like Trussoni doesn't subscribe to the theory that the Nephilim were basically the Hebrew equivalent of the ancient Greek demigods. -- Variety (x2), Hollywood Reporter

2. Martin Scorsese may be thinking of shooting his adaptation of Shusako Endo's Silence in New Zealand. -- New Zealand Herald

3. Crackle.com will host a special sneak preview of the biblical comedy Year One after an ad for the film plays during the Super Bowl this Sunday. -- ComingSoon.net

Newsbites: The comics and cartoons edition!

1. Tom Wheeler, author of The Arcanum, has been hired to write Puss in Boots, a spin-off from the Shrek franchise featuring the feline swordsman voiced by Antonio Banderas. -- Hollywood Reporter

2. Warner has released the cover art for Tales of the Black Freighter, a straight-to-DVD tie-in to their upcoming Watchmen movie; it comes to stores March 24, nearly three weeks after the movie opens in theatres. Meanwhile, director Zack Snyder has launched a new website for his film production company. -- ComingSoon.net, MTV Splash Page, Entertainment Weekly

3. Dan Mazeau has written a script for Jonny Quest and now may or may not be working on a script for The Flash. -- IESB.net

4. Kung Fu Panda was named best animated feature of the year at the Annie Awards; it picked up nine other trophies as well. Meanwhile, Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death was named best animated short subject. -- Hollywood Reporter

Scott Derrickson to direct Hyperion Cantos.

Here's a bit of box-office trivia: Scott Derrickson's remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still was the top-grossing live-action movie released by 20th Century Fox in 2008, worldwide.

So now, according to Variety, Derrickson is taking another plunge into the waters of science fiction, this time as director of Hyperion Cantos, a movie based on the first two books in Dan Simmons's Hugo-winning, Nebula-nominated Hyperion tetralogy.

The film is being produced by Warner Brothers and GK Films, and the script is being written by Trevor Sands.

I have never read the books, but now, of course, I am curious to do so.

Newsbites: The comics and remakes edition!

1. Jason Segel and Emily Blunt may join Jack Black in his "reimagined" version of Gulliver's Travels. -- Hollywood Reporter

2. The newest version of The Thing from Another World (1951) -- previously remade by John Carpenter as The Thing (1982) -- will still be written by Battlestar Galactica producer Ronald D. Moore, who has been attached to the project for at least the past two years. But now the film has a director: Matthijs Van Heijningen, whose experience to date lies mostly in commercials. The new film will apparently be a prequel about the Norwegian camp referred to in Carpenter's film, but it will also "borrow heavily" from the original John W. Campbell Jr. short story 'Who Goes There'. -- Variety

3. Adam Sandler may have "a brief but key role" in Seth Rogen's adaptation of The Green Hornet. -- Los Angeles Times

4. Zack Snyder's son Eli has a cameo in Watchmen as the boy who grows up to become the masked vigilante Rorschach; the adult version is played by Jackie Earle Haley. Previously, Eli played the young Leonidas in 300 (2006); the adult version of that character was played by Gerard Butler. -- MTV Splash Page

5. Columbia Pictures is looking for someone to write the sequel to Ghost Rider (2007). -- Bloody-Disgusting.com

6. John Stevenson, the co-director of Kung Fu Panda, has signed on to direct the newest live-action version of Masters of the Universe. The new film, written by Justin Marks, "skews more toward gritty fantasy and reimagines Adam as a soldier who sets off to find his destiny, happening upon magical world called Eternia. There, a being called Skeletor has raised a technological army and is bent on eradicating all traces of magic." The Mattel franchise was previously turned into a feature film in 1987, starring Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and current Oscar nominee Frank Langella as Skeletor. -- Hollywood Reporter

7. Sylvester Stallone is now talking about making a fifth Rambo film. First, he just needs to figure out what country to set it in. -- ComingSoon.net

Newsbites: The pre-modern history edition!

1. Are we about to see competing movies about the Battle of Hastings and the Norman conquest of England? Three months ago, it was reported that Killer Films and the GC Corp. were developing William the Conqueror, based on a script by Brian Edgar and Derek Wallbank. Now, it is reported that Shine Pictures has hired William Nicholson to write 1066, an epic about "the comradeship-turned-deadly rivalry" between William and his Anglo-Saxon nemesis King Harold, who died in the battle. Nicholson's earlier credits include Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), Gladiator (2000) and both versions of Shadowlands (1985, 1993), and his Norman-conquest movie will have "two massive battles" and "a naval exchange". -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter

2. Neil Marshall, director of The Descent (2005) and Doomsday (2008), is attached to direct Centurion, a film set in Britain in A.D. 117 that "tells the story of Quintus Dias, sole survivor of a Pictish raid on a Roman frontier fort, who marches north with General Virilus' legendary Ninth Legion, under orders to wipe the Picts from the face of the Earth and destroy their leader, Gorlacon." The film will star Michael Fassbender and Dominic West -- both of whom co-starred in 300 (2006) -- as well as current Bond girl Olga Kurylenko. -- Hollywood Reporter

Fox picks up Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Variety reports:

One month after Disney decided to pull the plug on co-financing the third movie in Walden Media's "Chronicles of Narnia" series, Walden has found a new partner in 20th Century Fox.

Fox, which was entitled to first crack at "The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader" after Disney dropped out because of the shared Fox Walden marketing and distribution label, has made a commitment to develop the project. The two sides are still working out budget and script issues, but the hope is to shoot the film at the end of summer for a holiday 2010 release through the Fox Walden label. . . .

Fox and Walden will split production and P&A costs for "Dawn Treader," which is projected to go into production at a $140 million budget. That's considerably less than the $215 million or so spent on last year's "Prince Caspian," which was considered something of a box office disappointment as compared with the first "Narnia" pic, 2005's "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" ($419 million vs. $745 million worldwide, respectively).

Still, "Caspian," which is considered the least commercially appealing of the seven C.S. Lewis "Narnia" novels, ranked No. 10 in global box office performance last year. "Dawn Treader" is considered to be a more family film-friendly book, and the goal is to get back to the magical aspects present in the first "Narnia" pic but mostly absent from "Prince Caspian."

Ultimately, Fox's commitment to the summer start date is contingent upon Walden's selection of a writer. Richard LaGravanese penned the most recent draft that both Walden and Fox were happy with, but there's a question about his availability because he has been adapting Sara Gruen's bestseller "Water for Elephants" for Fox 2000. . . .

I believe this is the first I have heard of LaGravenese's involvement in this movie. The last screenwriter I was aware of on this project was Steven Knight, who previously collaborated with director Michael Apted on Amazing Grace (2006).

UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times has posted a story of its own, which covers most of the same basic points.

UPPERDATE: And now the Hollywood Reporter chimes in, noting that the film "faces creative as well as budgetary challenges" because the story lacks "a clear antagonist."

Wolverine blows up my alma mater.

The University of British Columbia -- my alma mater -- has served as a location for many movies and TV shows over the years. (I believe I once saw Johnny Depp and one of his 21 Jump Street co-stars shooting a scene near the libraries then known as Main and Sedgwick, back in the late '80s.)

Now, the campus is getting one of its most extensive cinematic makeovers ever, as Buchanan Tower -- the main office building for the arts department, including all my former history profs -- has apparently been turned into some sort of military base, pyrotechnics and all, for the X-Men Origins: Wolverine reshoots.

Here are some of the photos and videos that students and others have been posting to their Flickr accounts:







Hat tip to ComingSoon.net, which also has links to a couple other Flickr accounts that have not yet created separate groups or slideshows for their Wolverine photos.

Small town still capitalizing on a paperclip.

You may have heard about Kyle MacDonald, the blogger who acquired a house for himself and his girlfriend by trading a single red paperclip for something slightly more valuable, and then trading that item for something even more valuable, and so on and so on and so on.

MacDonald reached the end of his quest two years ago when the town of Kipling, Saskatchewan offered him a house in exchange for a guaranteed role in Corbin Bernsen's next movie. MacDonald is now looking to trade the house again, but Bernsen -- who already made good on his promise by giving a role in his latest movie to one of the town's residents -- is coming back for more.

The Globe and Mail reports:

But the town has found itself a friend in Mr. Bernsen, who is set to arrive in Kipling Wednesday to shoot another film, Rust, the story of a priest who returns to his hometown for what Mr. Bernsen calls a “midlife crisis of faith.”

He wrote the script last summer, specifically to be shot in Kipling, two hours south of Regina. The cast and extras will be mostly Kipling residents, and nearly all the shooting will be done there over three weeks next month.

And the film's backers? Yep, look no farther than Main Street and the farms around Kipling, where residents have pitched in $250,000 to make Rust.

“The red paperclip was a good event, but we thought: ‘What could it lead to next?' And it seemed the next thing was a movie shoot in Kipling,” said Pat Beaujot, one of the directors of Kipling Film Productions, which is looking after the residents' quarter-million-dollar investment.

“You have to create your own excitement in a small town.”

Mr. Bernsen said the town has a unique quality that brought him back. He has already satisfied his end of the paperclip bargain, casting resident Nolan Hubbard in an earlier film, but liked the “raw untrained talent” of the would-be actors he saw while auditioning people in Kipling. . . .

That "earlier" film, incidentally, was something called Donna on Demand. It does not appear to be on video yet, which leads me to wonder if the residents of Kipling have thought about finding a distributor for Rust yet.

Newsbites: The remakes-in-the-works edition!

1. Joe Carnahan, director of Narc (2002) and Smokin' Aces (2006), is now on board to direct the big-screen remake of the 1980s TV show The A-Team. Instead of being Vietnam vets, the four main characters will now have served a tour of duty somewhere in the Middle East. Ridley and Tony Scott have also come on-board as producers. -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter

2. Seth Rogen is insisting that his adaptation of The Green Hornet is still very much in the works, despite recent rumours that it was about to have its plug pulled. -- Hitfix

3. Warner Brothers is in the very, very early stages of rebooting the Lara Croft: Tomb Raider franchise. -- Hollywood Reporter

4. Johnny Depp has signed on to play Tonto in Jerry Bruckheimer's new version of The Lone Ranger, but who will play the Lone Ranger himself? Bruckheimer is asking the fans -- assuming the Lone Ranger has fans -- to send him their ideas. -- MTV Movies Blog

Fireproof -- the menu screens.

Fireproof came out on DVD today -- in two versions, one a regular edition for the mainstream market, and the other a "special collector's edition" for the Christian market -- and just as there was something a little unusual about the way this movie was made (i.e., by a cast and crew made up almost entirely of church-based volunteers), so too there is something a little unusual about the way this film has been packaged for home video.

Here, for example, is a screen that pops up when you first load the "collector's edition" in your player:



I don't think I have ever seen a message like that at the beginning of a regular DVD before. What makes it even more interesting is that both versions of this disc include a "study guide" and a collection of film clips that are meant to be used by groups -- but I guess these materials are intended for home-based study groups, and thus they fall under the category of "home viewing" rather than the category of a public "event":




Finally, note how the opening menu screen on the "collector's edition" makes a distinction between the regular "special features" and the "exclusive bonus features" found only on this disc:



Oh, one last thought: I admire the way that this disc -- both the packaging and the menu screens -- avoids drawing all that much attention to the actors involved in this film. Even the one bona fide celebrity, Kirk Cameron, is kept in shadow. This keeps the focus on the overall movie and not on any of the personalities involved, and it underscores the point that this movie exists for ministry reasons, and not to stroke anyone's ego.

Newsbites: The religious connections edition!

1. Kingdom Come, the life-of-Jesus movie that was put on hold in New Zealand a few weeks ago, is reportedly back on track for a start date in late February. There is still no word on who any of the actors might be, but a publicist for the film says a distribution deal has been negotiated with one of the six major Hollywood studios. -- Dominion Post

2. Jennifer Beals has joined the cast of The Book of Eli, a post-apocalyptic thriller starring Denzel Washington as a man who must "protect a sacred book that might hold the key to saving humanity." Beals will play "a blind woman doing anything she can to protect her child." -- Hollywood Reporter

3. The Criterion Collection is releasing Luis Buñuel's Simon of the Desert (1965) on DVD in two weeks. Based very loosely on the story of Simeon Stylites, a 5th-century saint who spent 37 years on a pillar in the Syrian desert, it is one of at least two Buñuel films, along with The Milky Way (1969), that deal quite explicitly, albeit irreverently, with the history and theology of the church. -- Glenn Kenny

4. Joe Eszterhas, the Basic Instinct (1992) and Showgirls (1995) screenwriter who converted to Catholicism several years ago, says he "tried to get a project going" about St. Paul, but no one in Hollywood was interested in it. -- Wall Street Journal

5. One of the teams on The Amazing Race 14, which premieres February 15, will consist of Mel White and his son Mike. Mel was a ghost-writer for televangelists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson before he came out of the closet and became a gay activist in the 1990s; Mike is the writer of films like The School of Rock (2003) and Nacho Libre (2006), and the director of Year of the Dog (2007). -- ComingSoon.net

6. Sigourney Weaver is currently starring in a TV-movie called Prayers for Bobby, playing a real-life woman named Mary Griffith, "a devoutly Christian mother who disowns her gay son over his sexuality" but becomes a gay activist herself after her son commits suicide. -- Associated Press

7. The release date for Brüno, the follow-up to Sacha Baron Cohen's previous film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006), has been bumped to July 10. Rumour has it that one of the stunts Cohen plays this time involves "a black model called Jesus who wears a loincloth and a crown of thorns." -- Variety, The Sun

CT Movies picks 2008's "most redeeming films"

CT Movies has posted its list of "The 10 Most Redeeming Films of 2008." As one of their critics, I took part in the voting and submitted a paragraph on one pick of mine that did not make the final list. The "top ten" list proper will be posted next week.

JAN 30 UPDATE: Click here for a podcast in which CT Movies editor Mark Moring discusses this list with Stan Guthrie.

Newsbites: The reimagined stories edition!

1. Francis Lawrence seems to have a thing for modernized Bible stories. First he directed the pilot episode for Kings, the upcoming TV series based on the story of Saul and David, and now he is attached to direct Samson, "a futuristic retelling of the Samson and Delilah story." (He also directed 2005's Constantine and 2007's I Am Legend, both of which had religious elements of their own.) I don't know what the word "futuristic" is supposed to mean in this context, but this movie may be part of a larger trend; only three months ago, it was announced that Brad Pitt would star in a "futuristic" version of The Odyssey set in outer space. At any rate, the Samson script will be written by Scott Silver, whose previous credits include 8 Mile (2002) and The Mod Squad (1999). -- Variety

2. The new Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr. and directed by Guy Ritchie, will make its title character more of an action hero than he has ever been before; in the words of producer Joel Silver, he'll be "like James Bond in 1891." -- New York Times

3. The Bielski brothers are taking over Tintin! Defiance co-stars Daniel Craig and Jamie Bell have joined the cast of Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, which began shooting today; Craig will play the pirate Red Rackham, while Bell is taking Thomas Sangster's place as Tintin himself. Reports indicate that a few new characters have been created for the film who do not appear in the original comics, including "a rival reporter, a bellowing editor and an American Interpol inspector." Spielberg previously worked with Craig on Munich (2005), while Peter Jackson, who will direct the second Tintin movie, previously worked with Bell on King Kong (2005). -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter, ComingSoon.net

4. PETA spokeswoman Anjelica Huston is asking Stephem Sommers to use CGI apes on his Tarzan movie rather than the real deal. Because no matter how cheesy a Stephen Sommers movie gets, it can always be cheesier. -- Entertainment Weekly

5. War of the Gods director Tarsem Singh says his film, which revolves around the Greek mythic hero Theseus, will be "basically, Caravaggio meets Fight Club . . . It’s a really hardcore action film done in Renaissance painting style. . . . I’m kind of going with, you know, Renaissance time with electricity. So it’s a bit like Baz Luhrman doing Romeo + Juliet in Mexico; it’s just talking a particular Greek tale and half contemporising it and telling it." -- Empire

6. The poster art for Prince of Persia will make its debut as a piece of set design in Confessions of a Shopaholic -- which, like Persia, is produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. -- MTV Movies Blog

7. ABC has now officially greenlit its remake of the 1980s alien invasion mini-series V. -- Variety

Canadian box-office stats -- January 25

Here are the figures for the past weekend, arranged from those that owe the highest percentage of their take to the Canadian box office to those that owe the lowest.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button -- CDN $10,960,000 -- N.AM $111,044,000 -- 9.9%
Bride Wars -- CDN $4,530,000 -- N.AM $48,702,000 -- 9.3%
Inkheart -- CDN $699,981 -- N.AM $7,725,000 -- 9.1%
Revolutionary Road -- CDN $1,030,000 -- N.AM $11,867,000 -- 8.7%
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans -- CDN $1,680,000 -- N.AM $20,700,000 -- 8.1%
Paul Blart: Mall Cop -- CDN $5,160,000 -- N.AM $64,800,000 -- 8.0%
Slumdog Millionaire -- CDN $4,260,000 -- N.AM $55,916,000 -- 7.6%
Gran Torino -- CDN $5,990,000 -- N.AM $97,576,000 -- 6.1%
My Bloody Valentine 3D -- CDN $2,120,000 -- N.AM $37,725,000 -- 5.6%
Hotel for Dogs -- CDN $1,940,000 -- N.AM $36,955,000 -- 5.2%

A couple of discrepancies: Revolutionary Road was #10 on the Canadian chart (it was #12 in North America as a whole), while Notorious was #10 on the North American chart (it was #13 in Canada).

It's PG-13! No, wait, it's PG!

I got a press release a few days ago announcing that New in Town, a romantic comedy starring Renée Zellweger and Harry Connick Jr., was recently re-edited so that it would get a PG rating instead of its original PG-13 rating.

The press release said the companies behind the film, which opens next week, had "decided to delete strong language from the film, making NEW IN TOWN more accessible and acceptable to the entire family. The film . . . has received strong early word-of-mouth from family-friendly audiences."

What the press release didn't mention is that, according to the MPAA, the film still earned its PG rating "for language and some suggestive material."

At any rate, a day or two later, Angela Walker of Christians in Cinema stated that she was one of a "handful of reviewers from Christian outlets" who saw the film at a press junket two weeks earlier and objected to the language, thereby motivating the studio to make the changes.

Variety, in a brief story on the re-edits and the re-rating, also suggested that the changes may have been made because recent PG-rated films like Marley & Me and Bride Wars have "exceeded expectations" at the box office.

I don't know quite what to make of this, myself.

It's not uncommon for films to be re-edited for "family viewing" when they come out on video, even when they were rated PG to begin with. But I have always found this practice kind of strange, as though the studios were openly telling their customers, "Hey, this movie used to cross the line, but now it's merely pushing the boundaries of what you might find acceptable."



What's more, any child who sees these DVD covers lying around the house is going to get curious and wonder what the "real" version of these movies is like. And it won't be hard to find out. So in that sense, these discs may be rather counter-productive.

Of course, we often hear about movies that had to be re-edited so that they could be rated R instead of NC-17, or PG-13 instead of R. But those ratings were all designed to push the boundaries, in some sense, so it's no big deal when a studio publicly aims for that kind of rating -- especially since we all know the "unrated" version of the film is going to come out on DVD anyway. In those cases, the theatrical release serves as a sort of preview of the even edgier DVD to come.

But the PG rating is supposed to feel "safer" than that, right?

Would anyone in the "family-friendly audience" really want to discover this movie in the theatre, and possibly come to like it and share it with their children and so on, knowing that there is an already-completed PG-13 version -- or "unrated" version! -- that could be released on DVD down the road?

Or would they really find the movie appealing now, whereas they might have had no interest in it before, simply because it was "edited for family viewing" only a week or two before it came out?

Things you see at the grocery store.

Newsbites: The no-particular-theme edition!

1. Alexandre Aja still wants to make a film version of The Gospel According to Jimmy, a French novel about an American pool cleaner who discovers that he is a clone of Jesus made from DNA taken from the Shroud of Turin -- and Aja says he would love to cast "someone like Seth Rogen" in the lead role. -- Sci Fi Wire

2. Warner is releasing a number of soundtrack albums and a "motion comic" on DVD and Blu-Ray in anticipation of the film version of Watchmen. The ad for the "motion comic" proclaims: "The graphic novel comes to life page by page in 12 episodes." Huh? Are we such lazy readers that we need a DVD to turn the pages for us? And isn't the movie going to be bringing many images from the comic book "to life" as it is? -- MTV Splash Page

3. Hellboy creator Mike Mignola is joining the visual design team for Guillermo Del Toro's The Hobbit. Also on the team are Tolkien illustrators John Howe and Alan Lee, who were very involved with The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003). Other movies that Mignola has worked on include Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001). -- MTV Movie News

4. Kate Winslet has reportedly turned down an offer to play Maid Marian opposite Russell Crowe's Sheriff of Nottingham in Ridley Scott's revisionist Robin Hood movie, aka Nottingham. Other actresses being considered by the producers may include Cate Blanchett and Rachel Weisz. -- Roger Friedman

5. Michael Sheen, now best-known for his Tony Blair and David Frost movies, has played a werewolf in all three Underworld films. (He was dating Kate Beckinsale when they started work on the first one, but then she ended up marrying the director instead.) Meanwhile, Frank Langella played the titular vampire in the 1979 version of Dracula. So now, Joe Leydon wonders how long it will be before someone creates a new Frost/Nixon poster that brings out the monsters within these actors. -- Joe Leydon

Newsbites: The religion and movies edition!

1. Ted Haggard, the former pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, had to resign from those positions just over two years ago when it was revealed that he had been involved with a gay male prostitute for three years. He is now promoting a documentary designed to rehabilitate his public image, called The Trials of Ted Haggard; it premieres on HBO next Thursday. But now there is a new wrinkle to the story, as it has just been revealed that Haggard was also involved with a male church volunteer for "a long period of time". Brady Boyd, Haggard's successor at New Life, says he got the impression the former church volunteer was going public with his story now because of the documentary: "I think what caused this young man to be a bit aggravated was Ted being seen as a victim, when he himself had experienced a great deal of hurt." Haggard, who had already arranged to do some high-profile interviews next week, has so far refused to comment on this latest revelation. -- Associated Press

2. David Di Sabatino's documentary Fallen Angel: The Outlaw Larry Norman will have its premiere at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, California on March 1. -- Facebook

3. The newest IMAX movie takes the viewer on a pilgrimage to the holiest site in all of Islam: the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Journey to Mecca combines the true story of a 14th-century pilgrim named Ibn Battuta with footage of modern-day Muslims performing the Hajj, i.e. the pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim is supposed to make at least once if they are able to do so. This film marks the first time that an IMAX team has been admitted into the Grand Mosque -- a site that is generally off-limits to non-Muslims. -- Reuters

4. A new movie called Zen tells the story of Dōgen, the Buddhist monk who brought Zen meditation from China to Japan in the 13th century. -- Variety

5. The LDS Film Festival, which specializes in Mormon films, is now in its eighth year and is still experiencing some growth -- despite the fact that Mormon films have lost some of the momentum that they had earlier in this decade. Festival founder Christian Vuissa says the Mormon market may be just as cyclical as that of any mainstream movie genre. -- Associated Press

A Thousand Words, directed by Ted Chung

This is a great little film, and I agree completely with Jeffrey Wells when he says: "It's an elegant, concise and very affecting portrait of big-city loneliness and instant connections that go 'ping' and are gone seconds later. The emotions are halting, delicate, true. Beautiful piano score." I love beautiful piano scores.


Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly.

Inkheart -- the review's up!

My review of Inkheart is now up at CT Movies.

Looking around at the other reviews out there, I see that mine is one of the less negative ones. I suppose it's possible that I was in a generous mood partly because this was the first preview screening I had attended, and the first review I had written, since going back to full-time stay-at-home daddyhood nearly a month ago; a part of me is just glad to be reviewing anything these days. (Don't worry, I'm sure I'll get over it.) Then again, I can't deny I may have a soft spot for any movie that gives me an opportunity to talk, however tangentially, about Woody Allen's glory days.

Speaking of which, in addition to the Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) reference, the original version of this review also referred to 'The Kugelmass Episode', a short story, first published in 1977, about a bored professor who is magically transported into various books. I guess two Woody Allen references may have been too much for a review of a movie that has nothing to do with him -- but for what it's worth, I mentioned that short story partly because it has a similar premise to this film, yet it acknowledges a number of ramifications that the movie pretty much ignores.

For example, if characters are entering and exiting famous works of literature, wouldn't readers around the world notice that their books had changed? And what if the "silvertongues" -- the people who have the power to bring books to life -- happen to be reading aloud from something other than a novel, such as, oh, a history book, or a dictionary? Those are the sorts of questions I can get carried away with, when writing about a movie like this.

"What have you done with my Beast?"

Beauty and the Beast is, on one level, about finding the goodness within a person despite his or her outer appearance. At the end of the story, the Beast is transformed back into a handsome prince, and while I have never read the original stories, I imagine it would be relatively easy to accept the transition in literary form: because the reader has had to imagine the Beast all along, the reader has been able to imagine the soul within the Beast as surely as the reader has been imagining the Beast's physical appearance. And so, when the Beast changes on the outside, it shouldn't be too hard to hold on to that which has stayed the same on the inside. The mind's eye can focus on whatever it wants.

Movie versions of this story, on the other hand, have always had some difficulty with the transition at the end. Because film is a visual medium, the viewer tends to pay particular attention to the appearance of the Beast -- and, if we come to love him as a character, then we tend to love his appearance, as well. His outward, incarnate form becomes part of who and what he is, to us. (It probably doesn't help that the handsome prince who "replaces" the Beast can all too easily look kind of cheesy, or that individual viewers may have different standards of physical perfection by which to judge him.)

Case in point: When Jean Cocteau's version of Beauty and the Beast had its premiere in 1946, and the transformation occurred at the end, it is said that either Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo exclaimed, "Where is my beautiful Beast?" or, "What have you done with my Beast?" Apocryphal as that story might be, it certainly captures the reaction of many viewers to the climax of that film. But in that case, at least, the let-down was intentional: Cocteau reportedly wrote that he wanted "to make the Beast so human, so sympathetic, so superior to men, that his transformation into Prince Charming would come as a terrible blow to Beauty."

I doubt the Disney version, released in 1991, was intended to be as subversive or disorienting as all that. In fact, Glen Keane, the animator responsible for the Beast, talks on the movie's DVD about how his treatment of that scene was informed by his Christian faith and by that bit in the Bible that talks about people becoming "new creations". Be that as it may, however, many people have still found the transformation somewhat disappointing. The lovable monster has still, in one sense, become just another human being.

And why does this all come to mind now? Because today my kids were watching the Disney film while I was getting dinner ready, and at one point I heard my daughter say, with a hint of sadness or concern in her voice, "The Beast gone!" (She has seen the film before, but she can still react to each development as though she were seeing it for the first time.) I replied that he was still there, but now he was a man. There was an awkward pause as my daughter processed this, and then, with a deliberate excitement which suggested that she was not yet fully convinced but she felt obliged to play along anyway, she said, "Man!"

I don't have a particularly deep point to make, here. But I did find it interesting to hear my daughter, who is not yet 3 years old, issue a very similar lament to the one that has long been credited to Dietrich and Garbo.

Oscar winners slipping at the box office -- 2008

I devoted posts to this subject in 2005, 2006 and 2007 -- so I might as well whip one up for 2008, as well.

First, a recap:

2005 marked the first time since 1996 that the Best Picture winner did not gross at least $100 million, the first time since 1985 that not one of the Best Picture nominees grossed at least $100 million, and the first time in living memory that the Best Picture winner was not one of the Top 25 grossing films of its year. In fact, the winner that year -- Crash -- grossed a mere $54.6 million and ranked way, way down at #49.

2006 brought a return to Hollywood form with the Best Picture victory of The Departed, which grossed $132.4 million and ranked #15 for the year.

Then, in 2007, the Oscars went "arthouse" again, by giving the top prize to No Country for Old Men, which grossed $74.3 million and ranked #36 for the year. Ironically, the only nominee that year to gross over $100 million was also an "independent" film, namely Juno.

And now, it is time for the nominees of 2008. Here are their current grosses and box-office rankings, as of yesterday:

1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button -- $104,388,850 -- 22nd
2. Slumdog Millionaire -- $44,711,799 -- 62nd
3. Milk -- $20,655,400 -- 111th
4. Frost/Nixon -- $8,888,701 -- 145th
5. The Reader -- $8,061,851 -- 148th

For what it's worth, this marks the first time since 1983 that not one but two of the Best Picture nominees had made less than $10 million at the time of their nomination. And, between them, the five nominees for 2008 have an average gross of $37,341,320, which is virtually tied with 2005's average of $37,279,704; you have to go all the way back to 1986 to find a year that had a clearly lower average on the day the nominees were announced.

Of course, these totals can and will change, and the rankings of the various films will no doubt slide up a bit. In fact, all five nominees were in this past weekend's Top 25, and only one of those films (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) has had a wide release so far; two more (Frost/Nixon, Slumdog Millionaire) are expanding to over a thousand theatres tomorrow, and presumably the other two will get wider releases as well.

I'll copy the list that I compiled three years ago below, and I'll add this year's winner after it is announced February 22.

2008 -- 29 -- $98.0 million (so far) -- Slumdog Millionaire
2007 -- 36 -- $74.3 million -- No Country for Old Men
2006 -- 15 -- $132.4 million -- The Departed
2005 -- 49 -- $54.6 million -- Crash
2004 -- 24 -- $100.5 million -- Million Dollar Baby
2003 -- 1 -- $377.0 million -- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2002 -- 10 -- $170.7 million -- Chicago
2001 -- 11 -- $170.7 million -- A Beautiful Mind
2000 -- 4 -- $187.7 million -- Gladiator
1999 -- 13 -- $130.1 million -- American Beauty
1998 -- 18 -- $100.3 million -- Shakespeare in Love
1997 -- 1 -- $600.8 million -- Titanic
1996 -- 19 -- $78.7 million -- The English Patient
1995 -- 18 -- $75.6 million -- Braveheart
1994 -- 1 -- $329.7 million -- Forrest Gump
1993 -- 9 -- $96.1 million -- Schindler's List
1992 -- 11 -- $101.2 million -- Unforgiven
1991 -- 4 -- $130.7 million -- Silence of the Lambs
1990 -- 3 -- $184.2 million -- Dances with Wolves
1989 -- 8 -- $106.6 million -- Driving Miss Daisy
1988 -- 1 -- $172.8 million -- Rain Man
1987 -- 25 -- $44.0 million -- The Last Emperor
1986 -- 3 -- $138.5 million -- Platoon
1985 -- 5 -- $87.1 million -- Out of Africa
1984 -- 12 -- $52.0 million -- Amadeus
1983 -- 2 -- $108.4 million -- Terms of Endearment
1982 -- 12 -- $52.8 million -- Gandhi
1981 -- 7 -- $59.0 million -- Chariots of Fire
1980 -- 11 -- $54.8 million -- Ordinary People
1979 -- xx -- $106.3 million -- Kramer Vs. Kramer
1978 -- xx -- $49.0 million -- The Deer Hunter
1977 -- xx -- $38.3 million -- Annie Hall
1976 -- xx -- $117.2 million -- Rocky
1975 -- xx -- $109.0 million -- One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
1974 -- xx -- $47.5 million -- The Godfather Part II
1973 -- xx -- $156.0 million -- The Sting
1972 -- xx -- $133.7 million -- The Godfather
1971 -- xx -- $51.7 million -- The French Connection
1970 -- xx -- $61.7 million -- Patton

FEB 22 UPDATE: Updated to include the winner for 2008.

Oscar nominations -- two new milestones

The Academy has spoken, and while I haven't had a chance to check out any of the other commentaries out there yet, I did want to note one or two things.

Fanboys may be disappointed that neither The Dark Knight nor WALL•E were nominated for Best Picture. But eight nominations for a superhero movie, and six for an animated film, are certainly nothing to sneeze at. They might even represent new milestones.

Re: superhero movies. Superman (1978) had three nominations, in addition to a special achievement award, and all of its sequels and spin-offs were ignored, with the exception of a single nomination for Superman Returns (2006). The first three Batman (1989-1995) films had between one and three nominations each, and Batman Begins (2005) had just one, for cinematography. None of the X-Men (2000-2006) movies were ever nominated, and only the first two Spider-Man (2002-2004) films received any nominations: two for the first film, three for the second. I'd be surprised if any of the other, lesser-regarded comic-book franchises have done any better. So the eight nominations for The Dark Knight -- including the supporting-actor nod for Heath Ledger -- represent a real breakthrough, in that sense.

Re: animated films. Last year, Ratatouille (2007) was nominated for five awards, which as far as I can tell was sort of a record, but sort of not. Prior to that, Beauty and the Beast (1991) had six nominations -- but three of them were in the same category, so it was never eligible for more than four awards that year. WALL•E settles the matter by having six nominations in six different categories, and thus becoming probably the first animated film that has ever had the potential to win up to six Oscars.

I'm sure other thoughts will occur to me over the next few weeks. In the meantime, here are the films that have been nominated for Oscars, ranked from those with the most nominations to those with only one. The titles of those I have seen are in bold:

13 nominations

1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button -- Picture, director (David Fincher), adapted screenplay, actor (Brad Pitt), supporting actress (Taraji P. Henson), cinematography, film editing, art direction, costume design, makeup, original score, sound mixing, visual effects

10 nominations in 9 categories

1. Slumdog Millionaire -- Picture, director (Danny Boyle), adapted screenplay, cinematography, film editing, original score, original song (x2), sound editing, sound mixing

8 nominations

1. The Dark Knight -- Supporting actor (Heath Ledger), cinematography, film editing, art direction, makeup, sound editing, sound mixing, visual effects
2. Milk -- Picture, director (Gus Van Sant), original screenplay, actor (Sean Penn), supporting actor (Josh Brolin), film editing, costume design, original score

6 nominations

1. WALL•E -- Animated feature film, original screenplay, original score, original song, sound editing, sound mixing

5 nominations

1. Frost/Nixon -- Picture, director (Ron Howard), adapted screenplay, actor (Frank Langella), film editing
2. The Reader -- Picture, director (Stephen Daldry), adapted screenplay, actress (Kate Winslet), cinematography

5 nominations in 4 categories

1. Doubt -- Adapted screenplay, actress (Meryl Streep), supporting actor (Philip Seymour Hoffman), supporting actress (Amy Adams, Viola Davis)

3 nominations

1. Changeling -- Actress (Angelina Jolie), cinematography, art direction
2. Revolutionary Road -- Supporting actor (Michael Shannon), art direction, costume design

2 nominations

1. The Duchess -- Art direction, costume design
2. Iron Man -- Sound editing, visual effects
3. Frozen River -- Original screenplay, actress (Melissa Leo)
4. Wanted -- Sound editing, sound mixing
5. The Wrestler -- Actor (Mickey Rourke), supporting actress (Marisa Tomei)

1 nomination

1. Auf der Strecke (On the Line) -- Live action short film
2. Australia -- Costume design
3. The Baader Meinhof Complex -- Foreign language film
4. The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) -- Documentary feature
5. Bolt -- Animated feature film
6. The Class -- Foreign language film
7. The Conscience of Nhem En -- Documentary short subject
8. Defiance -- Original score
9. Departures -- Foreign language film
10. Encounters at the End of the World -- Documentary feature
11. The Final Inch -- Documentary short subject
12. The Garden -- Documentary feature
13. Happy-Go-Lucky -- Original screenplay
14. Hellboy II: The Golden Army -- Makeup
15. In Bruges -- Original screenplay
16. Kung Fu Panda -- Animated feature film
17. La Maison en Petits Cubes -- Animated short film
18. Lavatory - Lovestory -- Animated short film
19. Man on Wire -- Documentary feature
20. Manon on the Asphalt -- Live action short film
21. New Boy -- Live action short film
22. Oktapodi -- Animated short film
23. The Pig -- Live action short film
24. Presto -- Animated short film
25. Rachel Getting Married -- Actress (Anne Hathaway)
26. Revanche -- Foreign language film
27. Smile Pinki -- Documentary short subject
28. Spielzeugland (Toyland) -- Live action short film
29. This Way Up -- Animated short film
30. Tropic Thunder -- Supporting actor (Robert Downey Jr.)
31. Trouble the Water -- Documentary feature
32. Vicky Cristina Barcelona -- Supporting actress (Penelope Cruz)
33. The Visitor -- Actor (Richard Jenkins)
34. Waltz with Bashir -- Foreign language film
35. The Witness - From the Balcony of Room 306 -- Documentary short subject

Newsbites: The comics and fantasy edition!

1. Disney dumped the Chronicles of Narnia franchise not only because Prince Caspian underperformed at the box office, but also partly because of a long-simmering feud between the studio and Walden Media, the latter of which insisted on renegotiating their deal after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) became a huge hit. If Fox doesn't sign on to co-produce The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in the next week or so, then Sony or Warner might leap at the chance. -- Patrick Goldstein

2. The first issue of Star Trek: Countdown is out now, and it reveals some interesting things about the fate of Romulus following the destruction of its government in Star Trek: Nemesis (2002). -- TrekMovie.com

3. The CGI-characters-in-a-live-action-setting thing worked well enough for Scooby-Doo (2002-2004), Garfield (2004-2006) and especially Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007) -- in box-office terms, that is -- so now it's Tom and Jerry's turn to step before the cameras. -- Variety

4. John August is writing the screenplay for Preacher, based on the comic-book series by Garth Ennis. After that, he'll tackle Frankenweenie for Tim Burton, with whom he frequently collaborates. -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter, John August

5. Watchmen, like many comic books written by Alan Moore, has a rape scene, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays one of the "heroes" in the film version of that graphic novel, says the scene in question took three days to shoot. Meanwhile, a vintage news broadcast about Dr. Manhattan, circa 1970, has surfaced on the internet. -- MTV Splash Page, YouTube

6. J.K. Simmons, who plays newspaper editor J. Jonah Jameson in the Spider-Man movies, says the next installment in the franchise will begin filming in 2010 for a May 2011 release. -- MTV Splash Page

7. Dominic Monaghan, who played the hobbit Merry in The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003), says "there's a really strong chance that we might be back" in the upcoming prequels, even though Merry and various other characters do not appear in the book version of The Hobbit. -- MTV Movie News

8. Dakota Fanning, who turns 15 next month, could be in the running for a part in New Moon, the sequel to Twilight, as an Italian vampire. -- Mark Malkin

9. The release date for Roland Emmerich's disaster epic 2012 has been pushed back to November 13. -- Hollywood Reporter

The Curious Case of Benjamin Gump.

The basic point of the video below has been made by many people already, but it's still fun to see that point illustrated with clips from the movies themselves. I think the main thing missing is the fact that, if I recall correctly, both Forrest Gump and Benjamin Button are concerned that their offspring be more "normal" than them.


Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly.

Inklings sighting of the day, sort of.

One of the hottest films at Sundance this year is An Education, written by Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy, Fever Pitch) and directed by Lone Scherfig (Italian for Beginners, Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself). And Bilge Ebiri notes an interesting detail about the film at the end of this paragraph, in his review:

Set in the early 60s, the film is the story of 16-year old Jenny (Mulligan), a precocious and beautiful schoolgirl from a lower middle-class milieu who studies hard, plays the cello, and rifles through a dog eared copy of L’Etranger while dreaming of going to France, as Juliette Greco sings in the background. Jenny isn’t exactly a goody two-shoes, however. Most likely Oxford-bound, she has the smarts and the passion to know that she’s cut out for better things. One day, when David (Peter Sarsgaard), a handsome, older man with a taste for all the fine things she only dreams about, drives by and shows an interest in her, Jenny falls fast. David is a charmer, to be sure. He’s got money, he’s got friends who hang out at auctions and buy Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and he also has plenty of pointed lies to deploy: He convinces Jenny’s conservative parents to let him take her for a weekend jaunt to Oxford by promising he’ll introduce her to C.S. Lewis (or, as he calls him, “Clive”).

Well, for parents concerned about the sort of men their daughters are hooking up with -- especially those who would be impressed by a man's alleged friendship with Lewis -- that last detail should be a dead giveaway that David is up to no good. Real friends of Lewis's, of course, addressed him as "Jack".

Not that that was necessarily well known at the time, of course.

Actors playing statues.

I was watching the original version of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) again the other day, and was struck by the scene in which Bobby takes Klaatu to the Lincoln Memorial.



The shot above begins with Klaatu looking just past the camera, indeed almost at the camera, as he marvels at the words inscribed on the wall behind us; and then he turns around so that we see the back of his head as he looks at the statue of Lincoln; and then he turns his head halfway back to the camera, so that we see his face in profile just as we see Lincoln's face in profile; and then, finally, he turns his head away from us again, and he walks away from us, out of the shot.

I don't think it's stretching things too much to suggest that the filmmakers wanted us to notice a resemblance between Klaatu and Lincoln here. Note, for example, how Bobby's upward gaze seems to direct our own eyes to both faces simultaneously. Klaatu is, in many ways, a Christ-figure -- one of the classic alien messiahs -- and it just so happens that Abraham Lincoln has long functioned as a sort of Christ-figure within American mythology, as well. So it makes sense that the filmmakers might have suggested, visually, some sort of bond or link between the two.

Watching the scene above, I was also reminded of The Ten Commandments (1956), and how Cecil B. DeMille hired Charlton Heston to play the lead partly because Heston's nose resembled that of a famous statue of Moses sculpted by Michelangelo. And that's not just speculation on my part; DeMille himself made the resemblance one of his selling points in the film's original trailer:



For what it's worth, some scholars have also speculated that the final image of Moses in that film -- which appears right after his wife tells him he is "God's torch that lights the way to freedom," and right after he tells Joshua to "proclaim liberty throughout all the lands" (a significantly tweaked version of a line from Leviticus that appears on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia) -- is meant to evoke parallels to the Statue of Liberty. But in this case, of course, we don't have the actor standing next to the statue itself:





What other examples are there of this sort of thing, I wonder?

An old favorite finally comes to home video.

Hallelujah. The Family Way (1966), my official third-favorite film of all time, is finally coming out on DVD in North America next week. It has been available in its native Great Britain for some time, but as far as I can tell, it has never been released to home video in North America in any format prior to this -- not even on VHS. I don't expect the film to resonate for everyone the way it does for me, but here are a few selling points, if anyone's interested: Former child star Hayley Mills co-stars as a newlywed bride in her first truly grown-up role. Her father, Sir John Mills, delivers a fantastic performance as the groom's grumpy father. Paul McCartney wrote the soundtrack -- and it was, in fact, the first solo project by any of the Beatles. And the script was written by Bill Naughton, who also wrote the screenplay for the original version of Alfie (1966). That's quite the pedigree, no? Many thanks to my friend Karl for alerting me to this.

Canadian box-office stats -- January 18

Here are the figures for the past weekend, arranged from those that owe the highest percentage of their take to the Canadian box office to those that owe the lowest.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button -- CDN $9,900,000 -- N.AM $94,330,000 -- 10.5%
Bride Wars -- CDN $3,380,000 -- N.AM $37,577,000 -- 9.0%
Marley & Me -- CDN $9,490,000 -- N.AM $132,734,000 -- 7.1%
Paul Blart: Mall Cop -- CDN $2,360,000 -- N.AM $33,800,000 -- 7.0%
The Unborn -- CDN $2,020,000 -- N.AM $33,088,000 -- 6.1%
Gran Torino -- CDN $4,250,000 -- N.AM $73,232,000 -- 5.8%
Defiance -- CDN $545,132 -- N.AM $9,547,000 -- 5.7%
Hotel for Dogs -- CDN $868,774 -- N.AM $17,707,000 -- 4.9%
My Bloody Valentine 3D -- CDN $932,025 -- N.AM $21,900,000 -- 4.3%
Notorious -- CDN $617,180 -- N.AM $21,500,000 -- 2.9%

A couple of discrepancies: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was #6 on the Canadian chart (it was #11 in North America as a whole), while Slumdog Millionaire was #10 on the North American chart (it was #12 in Canada).