The Day the Earth Stood Still -- the article's up!

My article on the old and new versions of The Day the Earth Stood Still is now up at Books & Culture.

Pinocchio screen-capture comparison

Glenn Kenny posted some images from the upcoming "70th Anniversary Edition" of Pinocchio (1940; my comments) today, so I thought I would capture the equivalent frames (or as close to them as I could get) from the existing "Limited Issue" DVD, which came out ten years ago, to see how the images compare.

The images on the left are from the 1999 version, and the images on the right are from the 2009 version, as per Kenny's blog post (the first image is a photograph that he took of his TV screen while playing the Blu-Ray, and the other two are screen captures taken directly from the bonus DVD that comes with the Blu-Ray).







It looks to me like the 2009 version has slightly more information on the bottom and on one or both of the sides, but slightly less information at the top, than the 1999 version has. So, this isn't quite the improvement in all directions that the Sleeping Beauty (1959) Blu-Ray was, but it is an improvement nonetheless.

The colours, meanwhile, look a heck of a lot better; I mean, the 2009 version of the third picture in particular shows a heck of a lot more background detail than the 1999 version does.

The "70th Anniversary Edition" comes out March 10.

Shake Hands with the Devil comes to U.S.

Regent Releasing has acquired the U.S. distribution rights to Shake Hands with the Devil (2007), the Rwandan-genocide movie based on the memoirs of former Canadian general (and UN peacekeeping commander) Roméo Dallaire; they plan to release the film in the summer. I reviewed the film during its Canadian release here.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader gets a rewrite

The first draft -- or one of the first drafts, at any rate -- was written by Steven Knight (Amazing Grace, Eastern Promises). The next draft was written by Richard LaGravanese (The Fisher King, Freedom Writers).

Now, reports Variety, the next draft of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader will be written by Michael Petroni, whose credits include The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys and Anne Rice's Queen of the Damned.

Petroni reportedly got the gig because the folks at Fox were impressed with his rewrites of Kevin Lima's Afterlife and the Julia Roberts vehicle Daniel Isn't Talking.

Walden Media hopes to start shooting the film in the summer and release it to theatres sometime around Christmas 2010 -- five years after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe came out, and right around the same time Warner Brothers plans to release the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Kings makers discuss their series

Kings, the TV series that quasi-modernizes the biblical story of Saul and David, premieres March 15. ComingSoon.net attended a screening of the pilot episode a few weeks ago and has a handy summary of some of the key characters and narrative details.

The screening was followed by the Q&A below, in which, among other things, series creator Michael Green and a few of the actors discuss the show's real-life political inspiration, the reality of God and the role of religion within the storyline, the sexuality of the Jonathan figure, and whether the network ever censored story elements that happened to come straight from the Bible:

Newsbites: The reboots and remakes edition!

1. Battlestar Galactica has already been rebooted for TV. But now that the series is winding down -- well, except for that upcoming prequel series Caprica -- the studio is thinking of rebooting the franchise again, but this time for the big screen. And this time, they'll be taking their cues from the original 1970s series, rather than the popular current version; original series creator Glen A. Larson is currently in talks to write the script. -- IGN.com, Hollywood Reporter

2. The ironically-named production company Original Films is planning to make a "contemporary version" of Total Recall (1990) for Columbia Pictures. -- Hollywood Reporter

3. Leonardo DiCaprio is one of a handful of people currently talking to Warner Brothers about rebooting The NeverEnding Story (1984-1994). -- Hollywood Reporter (x2)

4. Borat co-writer Peter Baynham will write a new version of the Dudley Moore comedy Arthur (1981) as a starring vehicle for Russell Brand (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Bedtime Stories). -- Variety

Newsbites: The comics and superheroes edition!

Is anyone else feeling superhero fatigue yet?

1. Marvel fans can rest easy! Samuel L. Jackson will be back as Nick Fury after all -- not once, not twice, not thrice, but in nine different movies, including Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, The Avengers and possibly an entire movie devoted to Fury's organization S.H.I.E.L.D. -- Hollywood Reporter

2. Iron Man director Jon Favreau has apparently indicated that Emily Blunt will not be in the sequel after all. Meanwhile, the filmmakers have sent out an "ethnically diverse" casting call, and a sneak peek at the first page of the script has fans speculating that the next movie will follow the 'Demon in a Bottle' storyline from the comics. -- MTV Splash Page (x2, x3)

3. The Spider-Man musical being developed by Julie Taymor and U2's Bono and The Edge now has a title and an official opening date: it is called Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and it will open February 18, 2010. -- Hollywood Reporter

4. Watchmen had its world premiere in London Monday night, and the reviews are mixed, ranging from "this really will be a blast" to "spirit-crushingly disappointing". Producer Lawrence Gordon "might have the most complicated feelings" about the film's box-office performance, given that he is entitled to a fair chunk of the revenues but he could also be sued by Warner Brothers for his part in enabling the recent 20th Century Fox lawsuit. Meanwhile, director Zack Snyder has talked to MTV News about nine key differences between the book and film versions of this story. -- Hollywood Reporter (x2), MTV News

5. Warner Brothers has announced a bunch of brand-new release dates for its upcoming films, including the comic-book adaptations Jonah Hex (August 6, 2010) and Green Lantern (December 17, 2010). -- ComingSoon.net

6. Warner Brothers is developing a movie based on the DC Comics supervillains series Suicide Squad. -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter

7. Michel Gondry, best known for offbeat films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Be Kind Rewind (2008), is in negotiations to direct the new version of The Green Hornet starring Seth Rogen and Stephen Chow. One of the directors who didn't get the job -- and briefly made his feelings known via Facebook -- is James Wan, who is better known for rather grim films like Saw (2004) and Death Sentence (2007). -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter, The Wrap, MTV News, MTV Splash Page (x2)

8. Freddie Highmore is in talks to star in Superhero, a fantasy drama based on Anthony McCarten's novel Death of a Superhero. Combining live-action sequences with animation, the film will concern "a teenage comicbook artist suffering from leukemia who escapes the harsh realities of life via his illustrated adventures, in which the indestructible Miracle Man battles his arch-nemesis, a mad scientist known as the Glove." -- Variety

Newsbites: The people living in forests edition!

1. It turns out the rumours were correct: Cate Blanchett really will play Maid Marian in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood movie. The film, which stars Russell Crowe and was called Nottingham before it went through some extensive rewrites, "has evolved into a 'Gladiator' version of the Robin Hood legend. . . . Crowe plays Robin of Loxley in an origin story of Robin Hood that hews close to historical facts of the period. Abandoned as a child, he finds community with the common people of Nottingham. Robin's abandonment and trust issues hamper his ability to fall in love. He meets his match in Marian, a strong, independent woman." -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter

2. Eric Brevig -- whose last film, Journey to the Center of the Earth, was Walden Media's biggest hit outside of the Narnia franchise -- is going to direct the live-action version of Yogi Bear. -- Hollywood Reporter

3. Canadian actor Bronson Pelletier has reportedly been cast in the werewolf-heavy Twilight sequel New Moon. Meanwhile, series star Kristen Stewart is facing a backlash over suggestions that she regards Twilight as not a "great movie", but "just one that makes a lot of money." -- MTV Movies Blog (x2)

Agora -- the teaser is now online

The international teaser for Alejandro Amenábar's Agora -- starring Rachel Weisz as the 4th-century philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, The Nativity Story's Oscar Isaac as the imperial prefect Orestes, and Sami Samir as the Christian bishop Cyril of Alexandria -- is now online.


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

The teaser has no dialogue, only images, but at a glance, it almost looks like this film could be a feature-length version of that violent-Christian-mobs flashback in The Da Vinci Code. Hopefully the film itself will be a little more nuanced than that (regrettably, the historical Hypatia was indeed killed by a Christian mob during Lent), but even if it isn't, it could still serve as a launching pad for deeper, better conversations about early church history.

Hat tip to ComingSoon.net.

Canadian box-office stats -- February 22

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.

Confessions of a Shopaholic -- CDN $3,240,000 -- N.AM $27,378,049 -- 11.8%
The International -- CDN $1,970,000 -- N.AM $17,031,200 -- 11.6%
The Pink Panther 2 -- CDN $3,240,000 -- N.AM $29,475,898 -- 11.0%
He's Just Not That into You -- CDN $7,220,000 -- N.AM $70,100,901 -- 10.3%
Slumdog Millionaire -- CDN $9,920,000 -- N.AM $98,354,395 -- 10.1%
Fired Up -- CDN $503,236 -- N.AM $5,483,778 -- 9.2%
Paul Blart: Mall Cop -- CDN $10,950,000 -- N.AM $121,200,930 -- 9.0%
Taken -- CDN $6,960,000 -- N.AM $95,034,161 -- 7.3%
Coraline -- CDN $3,500,000 -- N.AM $53,766,843 -- 6.5%
Friday the 13th -- CDN $3,350,000 -- N.AM $55,119,663 -- 6.1%

A couple of discrepancies: The Pink Panther 2 was #10 on the Canadian chart (it was #11 in North America as a whole), while Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail was #1 on the North American chart (it was #18 in Canada).

I probably should have mentioned this earlier ...

... but CT Movies live-blogged the Oscars tonight, and I was one of the bloggers. You can check it out here.

Kingdom Come -- gone for good now?

First it was on, then it was off, and then it was on again -- but now it looks like Kingdom Come, the life-of-Jesus movie that was going to be filmed in New Zealand this year, may be off for good.

The Timaru Herald says no official announcements have been made yet, but "moteliers in Twizel have had bookings cancelled and an email received by them this week said the movie was no longer going ahead."

The production company is believed to have spent several million dollars on the film already, constructing replicas of Capernaum and other first-century settings in Wellington and other New Zealand locations; but the work was put on hold before Christmas so that the filmmakers could focus on securing the movie's financing and distribution.

The producers have since insisted that they plan to get things rolling again, but some crew members are doubtful about that, and a number of them have already moved on to other jobs.

FEB 27 UPDATE: The Dominion Post reports that the filmmakers are still insisting that their movie will go ahead; they expect to secure bridge financing within two weeks, and they plan to resume pre-production in March for a start date in April.

However, the Nelson Mail reports that some of the extras, who have been letting their hair and beards grow long for the movie, have given up hope and begun to visit their barbers.

Darryl Ware, who has worked as an extra in other movies, said he had never seen filmmakers be so bad at communicating with their cast and crew: "It's like waiting for the second coming."

Newsbites: The comics and superheroes edition!

1. It may not have been nominated for Best Picture, but re-releasing The Dark Knight last month has paid off in one small way, at least: the film has finally raked in the last few pennies it needed to gross a billion dollars worldwide. Only three other films -- Titanic (1997), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) -- have passed this milestone. Interestingly, The Dark Knight is the only film in the all-time Top 20 worldwide that has made more money in North America than it has overseas. -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter

2. Mickey Rourke recently suggested that he might not be co-starring in Iron Man 2 after all, though the studio apparently still wants him for the film. This follows earlier reports that Emily Blunt might not be able to co-star in the film due to scheduling conflicts with another movie, and that "an economic crisis in the Marvel Comics world" might prevent Samuel L. Jackson from reprising his role as Nick Fury. Of course, Terrence Howard has already been replaced by Don Cheadle in the part of Jim Rhodes. Let's hope Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow stick around, at least. -- New York Magazine, Entertainment Weekly

3. Remember that recent rumour about the Wachowski brothers being asked to reboot the Superman series? It's been debunked. And the same website that debunked it is now reporting that a password-protected page at the Legendary Pictures website indicates the next Superman movie will be a sequel to Superman Returns (2006) called Superman Unleashed. -- SlashFilm (x2)

4. There will be not one, not two, but three versions of Watchmen: the 156-minute version coming to theatres in two weeks, a 190-minute "director's cut" on DVD, and an even longer 205-minute "ultimate edition" on DVD that will include footage from the story-within-the-story Tales of the Black Freighter. Meanwhile, early reviews are trickling in, and they are not mixed so much as they are sharply divided. -- Collider.com

5. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who plays the Comedian in Watchmen, is in talks to star in another comic-book movie, The Losers. The story concerns "a special forces team betrayed by their handler and left for dead" who regroup "to conduct covert operations against the CIA and its interests." -- Hollywood Reporter

6. By some strange fluke, a superhero movie called Push came out two weeks ago, right around the same time an urban drama called Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire won the grand jury prize and two other awards at the Sundance film festival. To avoid confusion, Lionsgate, the studio that acquired the distribution rights to the Sundance film, has renamed it Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. -- Variety

Newsbites: The supernatural stories edition!

1. Several new items on the Twilight front: First, director Catherine Hardwicke said last week that she turned down the opportunity to direct the sequels because she would have had to shoot them on a low budget and an extremely tight schedule. Second, the sequel currently in development, once known simply as New Moon, has had its title expanded to The Twilight Saga's New Moon. Third, the studio has already announced a release date for the next sequel, The Twilight Saga's Eclipse; it will come out June 30, 2010, which is only seven months after the release date for New Moon, which, in turn, is only one year after the release date for the original Twilight. Finally, Chris Weitz, who is directing New Moon, will not be the director of Eclipse. -- Associated Press, MTV Movies Blog, Nikki Finke, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Entertainment Weekly

2. The new version of Friday the 13th was such a big hit last week, it was inevitable that someone would try to reboot the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise too. And the man who has been hired to direct the film is Samuel Bayer, whose experience resides largely in the world of commercials and music videos; he helmed the video for Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', among other things. -- Hollywood Reporter

3. Paul Breuls is directing a romantic comedy called Meant to Be, about a guardian angel who falls in love with the woman he is protecting and tries to take her on a trip to Puerto Rico. -- Hollywood Reporter

Random thought of the day.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe opened in December 2005 and made a lot of money. Its sequel, Prince Caspian, opened two and a half years later, in May 2008, and made just a little more than half as much money.

Many people blamed the difference between the two films' box-office grosses on the fact that one film was released during the family-friendly holiday season while the other film was released in a highly competitive summer market, within weeks of Iron Man, Speed Racer, Indiana Jones and the like.

Meanwhile, Night at the Museum opened in December 2006 and made a lot of money. Its sequel, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, will open two and a half years later, in May 2009, in a highly competitive summer market, within weeks of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Star Trek, Angels & Demons, Terminator Salvation and Pixar's Up. (Yes, all of those films are opening just in May. And there will be more in June, July, etc.)

If Battle of the Smithsonian is a hit, will that invalidate the theory that some people made in Prince Caspian's defense?

Will the original Sarah Connor "be back"?

Six months ago, it was rumoured that there might be a part in Terminator: Salvation for Linda Hamilton, the actress who played Sarah Connor in the first two Terminator movies. That turned out to be false, at the time, but now Hamilton herself has told the MTV Movies Blog that she is in "active negotiations" to do some voice-over work for the new film, which opens in three months.

If she does take the part, that would be interesting, as her character died between the second and third films. Also, while Sarah Connor provided the voice-over in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), her son John has been doing the voice-over work ever since, at least on the big screen, both in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) and in the trailers for the new film.

So, will John be doing any voice-overs within the new film itself? Will both the deceased Sarah and the very alive John be sharing the narrating duties? And if they do share the voice-over chores, will their voices work together or will there be some sort of tension between them and their possibly differing perspectives on the story? (Recall how, in both the teaser and the trailer, John has said, "This is not the future my mother warned me about...")

Meanwhile, in related news, things are apparently not looking very good for The Sarah Connor Chronicles, ratings-wise. Variety says the show "opened meekly" when it moved to Friday nights last week as a lead-in to Joss Whedon's Dollhouse.

The Big Fisherman -- a "lost" biblical epic

Jerry Beck posted an item at Cartoon Brew yesterday expressing his curiosity about a neglected period in the history of the Disney studio, and in doing so, he reminded me of a Bible epic that I have long been interested in but am pretty much resigned to never seeing.

The period in question is the late 1950s: Walt Disney, whose films had been distributed by RKO throughout the 1930s and 1940s, finally decided to distribute his films himself through a brand-new company he created called Buena Vista. But he didn't have enough material of his own, yet, to keep the people at Buena Vista busy year-round, so he agreed to distribute a handful of movies that were (co-)produced by outside companies.

One of these movies was The Big Fisherman (1959), which was based on a book by Lloyd C. Douglas, whose similarly biblical novel The Robe had been turned into a very successful movie over at 20th Century Fox just a few years earlier. The Robe (1953) had featured Michael "Klaatu" Rennie in a small role as the apostle Peter, but The Big Fisherman put Peter centre stage, and the actor playing him was Howard Keel, who had specialized in musicals like Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Kiss Me Kate (1953) and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) but was apparently open to doing non-musical roles too.

The film was produced at the height of the Bible-epic genre, and it came out the same year as Ben-Hur, which went on to set the record for the most Oscar wins by any movie ever -- a record that has been equalled in recent years but never surpassed. The Big Fisherman itself, however, was a complete flop, and it is not clear to me whether the studio even bothered to distribute it beyond a handful of cities.

The film has remained in obscurity ever since, and that's a shame, since a brief look at the movie's IMDb page suggests that it may have tackled an aspect of biblical and secular history that has often been overlooked by films in this genre.

The listed characters there include not only Herod Antipas and his wife Herodias, but also Herod Philip (a character who is sometimes mentioned, but almost never seen, in movies of this sort) and King Aretas of the Nabateans (a character who is normally never even mentioned in these movies).

This is significant because both Antipas and Herodias were married to other people before they married each other, and their relationship had some fairly major repercussions. Herodias had been married to Philip, who was Antipas's brother, while Antipas had been married to the daughter of Aretas. The New Testament tells us that John the Baptist (who is also in this movie) vigorously opposed Herodias's abandonment of one brother for the other, and that John was imprisoned and eventually executed for opposing this infidelity. The secular historian Josephus, meanwhile, tells us that Aretas became an enemy of Antipas's after Antipas rejected Aretas's daughter, and that, when Aretas defeated Antipas in battle some time later, many Jews took this as a sign that God was punishing Antipas for killing John the Baptist.

I have no idea how deeply the film gets into any of these issues, nor do I have any idea whether the film ever rises above Hollywood soap operatics in dealing with these issues. But just the possibility of seeing biblical and secular history linked like this in a dramatic movie is kind of exciting, to me, and even if it is done badly, I would very much like to see it for myself.

A couple extra trivia points:

Aretas is never mentioned by name in the gospels, but he is mentioned in the New Testament: in one of his letters to the Corinthians, Paul says he fled Damascus because one of Aretas's governors was planning to arrest him. (This detail is omitted in the Acts version of Paul's escape from Damascus.)

Also, the part of Herod Antipas is played in this movie by Herbert Lom. Best known now for playing Chief Inspector Dreyfus in seven Pink Panther movies between 1964 and 1993, Lom would later play Barnabas opposite Anthony Hopkins' Paul in the 1981 TV-movie Peter and Paul.

Can Tyler Perry sell his movies overseas?

Tyler Perry, whose newest film Madea Goes to Jail opens tomorrow, hopes to take his brand global in the near future, and he hopes to disprove the widespread belief that African-American movies just don't do all that well overseas. So says the Hollywood Reporter in a lengthy, three-page article, at any rate.

Best wishes to Perry, but if Canada is anything to go by, finding an audience outside the United States may be something of an uphill struggle; after releasing his first few films more or less nationwide, the distributor here hasn't even bothered to release the last few movies outside of a few cities in Ontario and the Maritimes, i.e. places with a relatively strong black population.

According to CinemaClock.com, the trend will continue with Madea Goes to Jail, which is playing in only two Canadian cities -- or five, if you count Toronto suburbs Brampton, Burlington and Mississauga as separate cities -- compared to "1369 cities across the U.S.A."

Compounding matters is the fact that Perry's movies often have a pronounced faith element, and films that treat Christian themes explicitly tend to do proportionately less well overseas than they do in the United States.

The revisionist Robin Hood movie, revised

There has been a lot of confusion lately over the nature of Sir Ridley Scott's Nottingham and the role that Russell Crowe is supposed to be playing within that film.

When the film was first announced almost two years ago, Crowe was going to play the Sheriff of Nottingham as "a noble and brave lawman", and the actor teased reporters with the possibility that the film might turn Robin Hood into something of a villain; at one point, Crowe claimed that the legend of Robin Hood had begun as the legend of Robin the Beheader, and he said the film would "look at how the mythology morphed over time".

Then, late last year, Scott seemed to indicate that Crowe would be playing Robin Hood as well as the Sheriff of Nottingham, and producer Brian Grazer's efforts to clarify how that would work just made the film sound even more puzzling.

But yesterday, that all changed, apparently, as Scott told the MTV Movies Blog that Crowe will be playing Robin Hood, and only Robin Hood, while the Sheriff of Nottingham will be a "less important" character. What's more, Scott said the film, which starts shooting in two months, will probably no longer be known as Nottingham, but as plain old Robin Hood.

Robin himself, said Scott, will be portrayed as a bowman in the army of King Richard the Lionheart, and the film will show "the evolution of a character called Robin Hood, who will come out of a point in the Crusades which is the end."

And who will the movie's villains be? The French, says Scott, noting that King Richard's ancestors had conquered England from across the Channel only about 125 years before the story takes place. "The villain is much bigger in that sense," said Scott. "Much more important, and much more dangerous."

When the film was first announced two years ago, it was said that Crowe's Sheriff would be working for "a corrupt king." So if the film now revolves around Robin Hood, and if Robin Hood now fights in Richard's army, and if Richard's fellow Frenchmen are now the movie's villains, then who knows, it could be that Crowe will still be playing a man who works for "a corrupt king." After who knows how many rewrites, that part of the story just might have stayed intact.

It will be interesting to see how this film compares to Scott's previous Crusades movie, Kingdom of Heaven (2005), which starred Orlando Bloom as a reluctant, guilt-ridden knight who gets embroiled in Middle Eastern politics, loses his faith and ends up agnostic. Will Robin Hood follow a similar path, growing disenchanted with Richard and his kinsmen and vowing to spend the rest of his life robbing from the rich and giving to the poor as a result of this disillusionment?

Kingdom of Heaven, incidentally, ended with a brief glimpse of King Richard heading east on his Crusade after Orlando Bloom's character has finished fighting his own battles and returned to France. Wouldn't it be fun if Scott got the same actor to come back and play King Richard one more time.

Canadian box-office stats -- February 15

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.

Confessions of a Shopaholic -- CDN $1,970,000 -- N.AM $15,066,360 -- 13.1%
The International -- CDN $1,210,000 -- N.AM $9,331,739 -- 13.0%
The Pink Panther 2 -- CDN $2,680,000 -- N.AM $21,834,470 -- 12.3%
He's Just Not That into You -- CDN $5,730,000 -- N.AM $54,986,933 -- 10.4%
Slumdog Millionaire -- CDN $8,550,000 -- N.AM $86,680,723 -- 9.9%
Push -- CDN $1,840,000 -- N.AM $19,257,450 -- 9.6%
Paul Blart: Mall Cop -- CDN $10,230,000 -- N.AM $109,797,819 -- 9.3%
Taken -- CDN $5,840,000 -- N.AM $77,660,012 -- 7.5%
Coraline -- CDN $2,570,000 -- N.AM $35,019,078 -- 7.3%
Friday the 13th -- CDN $2,430,000 -- N.AM $40,570,365 -- 6.0%

Jane Austen movies get a little stranger.

I guess you can only tell the same story over and over again so many times before you start looking for ways to make it "new" again.

In recent years, Pride and Prejudice has been adapted as a BBC mini-series with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth and as a big-screen movie with Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen, and it has also been honoured and spoofed and recontextualized in everything from Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) to Bride and Prejudice (2004).

Now get ready for the time-travel and space-monster versions.

Lost in Austen is a mini-series that aired on the ITV network in Britain last year, before coming to the United States in January; it stars Jemima Rooper as a modern woman who trades places with P&P heroine Elizabeth Bennet after the two of them discover a portal between Rooper's apartment and the world of P&P.

Variety reports that Columbia Pictures is now planning to turn this mini-series into a feature film, with Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Revolutionary Road) serving as a producer.

Meanwhile, Variety also reports that Elton John, of all people, is producing Pride and Predator, "which veers from the traditional period costume drama when an alien crash lands and begins to butcher the mannered protags, who suddenly have more than marriage and inheritance to worry about."

Personally, I'm all in favour of period-piece alien-invasion movies; there's no reason extra-terrestrials always have to meet us in the present day or in some far-off imaginary future. Even so...

Newsbites: The biblical themes edition!

1. The Museum of Biblical Art in New York is hosting an exhibition on 'Reel Religion: A Century of the Bible and Film.' One of the highlights of the exhibition, which runs until May 17, is a collection of "80 rare vintage movie posters reaching back to the dawn of film in 1898." And it turns out that one of these posters has a particularly special place in movie history: the one-sheets that have adorned movie theatres all over the world for the past century-plus take their dimensions from a poster that was created to promote The Passion Play of Oberammergau (1898) -- a film that, despite its title, was shot in the United States and not in Germany. -- CT Movies Blog, Bible Films Blog, Guardian, Time Out New York

2. Former porn star Crissy Moran is now starring in Oversold, a 32-minute church-sponsored film that re-imagines the biblical story of Hosea and Gomer as a modern love story between a pastor and a stripper. -- CT Movies

3. Today is the day that Paul Newman's very first movie, the widely mocked Bible flick The Silver Chalice (1954), comes out on DVD. -- New York Times

4. Matt Page has discovered a "trailer" for The Passover Plot (1976), a revisionist take on the crucifixion of Jesus that is almost impossible to find on video now, but is noteworthy for featuring a few actors who had already appeared in a number of, shall we say, more conventional Bible epics. The part of Jesus, meanwhile, was played by Zalman King, who is now better-known as the writer, director and/or producer of such erotic fare as Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986), the Wild Orchid movies (1989-1992) and the ongoing Red Shoe Diaries series (1992-). -- Bible Films Blog

Friday the 13th and other low-budget hits

Marcus Nispel's reboot of the Friday the 13th franchise grossed over $40 million this weekend, and in doing so, it set a few records.

For one thing, it scored the best opening weekend of any film so far this year. Its box-office haul ranks, in fact, as the best three-day weekend of any film since Twilight opened to $69.6 million in mid-November.

(Side note: The Christmas release Marley & Me opened on a Thursday, and it made $50.7 million by the end of its first Sunday; but its haul for the three-day period was $36.4 million. Friday the 13th was released on a four-day weekend too, since today is Presidents Day in the United States, but its estimated haul for the four days is only $45.2 million.)

The new film also scored the highest opening weekend of any horror movie ever, beating the $39.1 million earned by The Grudge (2004) in its first weekend; that film went on to gross $110.4 million overall. (Opening weekends aren't everything, though; other horror movies have done better in the long run.)

Friday the 13th has also already managed to outgross every single one of its predecessors, with the exception of the cross-over film Freddy Vs. Jason, which earned $82.6 million in 2003.

Where will Friday the 13th go from here? Difficult to say.

There have been 135 other films that opened to over $40 million, and all but three of them grossed over $100 million when all was said and done. So it is certainly possible that Friday the 13th could pass the original Scream (1996, $103 million) as the top-grossing slasher film of all time.

On the other hand, the three exceptions to that rule -- Scary Movie 4 (2006, $90.7 million), Cloverfield (2008, $80 million) and High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008, $90.6 million) -- are all sequels or genre flicks, both of which have a notorious tendency to open huge and drop off quickly. And Friday the 13th itself experienced a big drop between opening day and the rest of its first weekend, so it may not have much staying power either.

None of the above figures take inflation into account, of course, nor do they take into account the fluctuating exchange rate between the American and Canadian dollars. (The American studios consider Canada part of their "domestic" market, and for simplicity's sake, the weekly top-ten reports count each Canadian dollar as equivalent to an American dollar.)

The original Friday the 13th made $39.8 million in 1980, and back then, that was good enough to be the 18th-highest-grossing movie of the year. Nowadays, however, grossing $100 million barely guarantees you a spot in the top 30. And it is very possible that the new film won't even do that.

At any rate, the success of the new film, such as it is, is worth noting at a time when many people have been claiming that PG-rated movies are a much safer bet than R-rated movies.

As it happens, Friday the 13th is not the only R-rated success story in theatres at the moment. In fact, the film that has raked in the most money so far this year also happens to be R-rated. I refer, of course, to Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, which opened in a handful of theatres in December before going wide in early January; since New Year's Day, it has grossed an estimated $124 million.

What these two movies share with PG-rated hits like Paul Blart: Mall Cop ($112.7 million since opening in mid-January) -- and what movie studios are likely to notice -- is not that any of these films had one rating or another, but that most, if not all, of them had low production budgets: Gran Torino cost $33 million to make, Paul Blart: Mall Cop cost $26 million and Friday the 13th cost $19 million, according to Box Office Mojo.

These films are thus low-risk investments and have the potential to break even while they are still playing in theatres, unlike most films which don't turn a profit until they are released on home video, etc. And it is this economic reality, rather than the rating of any given film, that is likely to influence how future films are made.

Technical difficulties, and a new blog.

Last Friday marked the official beginning of a new phase in my blogging. And, as luck would have it, that was also the day on which my son accidentally poured a drink all over my laptop and short-circuited its keyboard.

So, the announcement I was planning to make on Friday has had to wait, until now. But after spending my weekend looking for a new computer, re-installing a lot of my software, catching up on e-mails and adjusting to the demands of Windows Vista and the Canadian French keyboard with which my new laptop is saddled, I think I am ready to make that announcement now.

So, here goes: CT Movies has started a blog, and editor Mark Moring has asked me to be one of the main bloggers there. A lot of what I post there will be copied from this blog right here, so there will be a fair bit of overlap, but each blog will continue to have a fair bit of exclusive content, too.

So, by all means, keep both blogs in your news feed!

And no, in case you're wondering, I don't always buy a new computer every time something goes wrong with the one I'm using. But I had been thinking of replacing the old laptop for a while now, not least because various bits and pieces had been breaking down over the past couple years (including, just last week, the DVD drive -- which, for obvious reasons, is especially problematic for someone like me). The accident with the drink just forced me to act a little sooner than I had anticipated.

Newsbites: The science-fiction edition!

1. Will Chris Nolan make another Batman movie? Maybe, maybe not, but for now, Warner Brothers is staying on his good side by producing his next film, a sci-fi flick called Inception; the film is described as "a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind." So will it be sort of like Nolan's second film, Memento (2000), but with more special effects and chase scenes? -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter

2. Terminator: Salvation director McG may or may not be using Benjamin Button-style effects to put a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in his robot movie. McG says he is also talking to Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke about contributing to the movie's soundtrack -- but a Radiohead publicist says Yorke's involvement in the film is nothing more than a rumour at this point. -- MTV Movies Blog (x2), Entertainment Weekly

3. In a similar vein, Curtis Hanson is in talks to direct Gemini Man, which concerns an aging assassin who wants to retire, but whose bosses won't let him; instead, they send a younger clone of the assassin to bump off his older self. "The concept allows for some techno-wizardry whereby an older actor with a long career would be cast, and his younger likeness would be digitally grafted onto a stuntman's body." -- Hollywood Reporter

4. The Day the Earth Stood Still is coming to DVD and Blu-Ray April 7 -- and while it will have an audio commentary by screenwriter David Scarpa, it will not have one by director Scott Derrickson. That's a shame, as Derrickson's commentary on the DVD for his previous film, The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), is one of the more intelligent and articulate commentary tracks out there. -- ComingSoon.net, IGN.com

5. The physicists at CERN would like to assure us that Angels & Demons, the sequel to The Da Vinci Code (2006), is a work of fiction. They would like to assure us of this because the film concerns a secret society that tries to destroy the Vatican with antimatter stolen from CERN's laboratory. "The basic problem is the concept of antimatter," says CERN spokesman James Gillies. "You cannot make that much." The physicists at CERN are also keen to note that antimatter may have its positive uses, like treating cancer. -- Reuters

6. Disney has hired Justin Marks (He-Man, Voltron, Street Fighter) to rewrite the script for their Jules Verne prequel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo. Marks has been brought on as a "world builder" to expand upon the deep-sea universe created in the screenplay's previous draft, which was written by Bill Marsilii (Deja Vu). -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter

7. The Day of the Triffids is upon us again. The BBC will air a brand new British-Canadian adaptation of John Wyndham's novel later this year, starring Dougray Scott, Joely Richardson, Brian Cox, Eddie Izzard, Jason Priestley and Vanessa Redgrave. The book, a post-apocalyptic thriller about flesh-eating plants, was previously adapted for the big screen in 1962 and for TV in 1981. -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter

8. Gwyneth Paltrow, aka Pepper Potts, has not yet seen a script for Iron Man 2. -- MTV Splash Page

9. A trailer for the documentary The People Vs. George Lucas is out now; the film includes interviews with former collaborators of Lucas's such as Star Wars producer Gary Kurtz, Darth Vader actor David Prowse and Skywalking author Dale Pollock, among others. -- Nikki Finke, Joe Leydon

10. German and Finnish filmmakers are teaming up to make Iron Sky, a "dark sci-fi romp about moon-based Nazis who invade Earth" in the year 2018. -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter

11. How's this for scraping the bottom of the ideas barrel? Universal has hired Bruce Almighty co-writer Steve Oedekerk to write a movie based on ... the Hasbro toy Stretch Armstrong. Universal and Hasbro are also developing movies based on Monopoly, Candyland and the Ouija board. -- Variety

Newsbites: The heroes and comics edition!

1. The first three X-Men movies (2000-2006) are coming to Blu-Ray April 21, in a set that is packed, packed, packed with extras. Meanwhile, there are conflicting reports over the length of the next movie, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and whether it will still feature a cameo by Storm when it opens May 1. And, in other news, Josh Schwartz insists that, while he may be writing X-Men: First Class, he is not going to direct that film. -- MTV Splash Page (x2), Hitfix

2. Many Pixar fans want to see a sequel to The Incredibles (2004), but they will just have to wait until after director Brad Bird has had a chance to make his San Francisco disaster movie 1906. -- Jim Hill

3. James McTeigue, a protégé of the Wachowski brothers, reportedly gave an interview in Germany recently in which he said the Wachowskis had been approached about making the next Superman movie. -- Ain't It Cool News

4. John Malkovich will play the title character's nemesis in Jonah Hex. Malkovich's character, Turnbull, is "a wealthy Southern plantation owner" who blames Hex for the death of his son during the Civil War; Hex himself will be played by Josh Brolin. -- Variety

5. Mandate Pictures is developing a big-screen adaptation of The Ghouly Boys, a "spooky and comical graphic-novel series about a quartet of young monster outcasts and their efforts to fit in." -- Hollywood Reporter

The newest Harry Potter movie poster.

I know it isn't part of the movie's actual title, but have any of the other Harry Potter movies been advertised this way, with a semi-numerical acronym? Or, come to that, with any sort of number?



Given that the seventh book is being split into two films, how do they plan to advertise those movies?

As "HP7" and "HP8"? That might annoy fans who know that there are only seven stories in the series, not eight.

As "HP 7.0" and "HP 7.5"? That sounds a little too tech-based for a story set in a world that is so ignorant of muggle technology that some people don't even know what a rubber duck is for.

Newsbites: The all-female edition!

1. Cate Blanchett is reportedly set to play Maid Marian in Ridley Scott's Nottingham. Blanchett's fellow Aussie Russell Crowe will play Robin Hood and/or the titular Sheriff. -- Daily Telegraph, Variety

2. Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which earned Penelope Cruz an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress (she plays neither Vicky nor Cristina, but a third woman named Maria Elena), has nudged past Match Point (2005) to become Woody Allen's top-grossing film since Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), at least before inflation is taken into account. -- Box Office Mojo

3. David Nutter has signed on to direct the pilot for Eastwick, a proposed TV series based on John Updike's The Witches of Eastwick. The novel has been dramatized a few times before, most famously as a 1987 film starring Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon and Jack Nicholson as the Devil; it was also made into a TV-movie in 2002 and an unsold TV pilot in 1992. The new pilot may have better luck getting picked up; Nutter has directed 14 pilots before, and all of them led to ongoing series. -- Variety

4. French director Rene Feret will direct Nannerl (Mozart's Sister), a movie about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's elder sister, later this year. The film takes place between 1763 and 1766 and will depict Mara Anna Mozart -- or Nannerl, as she was nicknamed -- as "a gifted composer and violinist" who is "forced to abandon music by her father." She also forms a "tentative friendship with the young prince who became Louis XVI." -- Variety

5. Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black is thinking of writing a script about recent Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. The Visitor writer-director Tom McCarthy has also expressed interest in the subject, and says his script would focus on the teenaged boy who got Palin's 17-year-old daughter pregnant: "This young man gets his girlfriend pregnant and ends up on the Republican platform at the National Convention. There's a dark comedy there somewhere. He was like a deer in the headlights." -- WENN

The Terminator goes to church.

Radar Online recently posted some photos from the set of Terminator: Salvation -- including the one below, which shows a nuked-out church:

[ PHOTO DELETED ]

I can't recall: have we ever seen a church or any other explicitly religious prop or set in the Terminator movies? (The faith elements have been rather pronounced in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, of course. But that's a TV show.)

Canadian box-office stats -- February 8

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 Pink Panther 2 -- CDN $1,120,000 -- N.AM $12,000,000 -- 9.3%
Slumdog Millionaire -- CDN $7,060,000 -- N.AM $77,426,000 -- 9.1%
Paul Blart: Mall Cop -- CDN $8,660,000 -- N.AM $97,002,000 -- 8.9%
He's Just Not That into You -- CDN $2,330,000 -- N.AM $27,465,000 -- 8.5%
Push -- CDN $769,531 -- N.AM $10,204,000 -- 7.5%
Taken -- CDN $3,730,000 -- N.AM $53,364,000 -- 7.0%
Gran Torino -- CDN $7,800,000 -- N.AM $120,280,000 -- 6.5%
Hotel for Dogs -- CDN $3,430,000 -- N.AM $55,234,000 -- 6.2%
The Uninvited -- CDN $1,130,000 -- N.AM $18,379,000 -- 6.1%
Coraline -- CDN $861,123 -- N.AM $16,335,000 -- 5.3%

Newsbites: The superheroes etc. edition!

1. Martin Campbell is in talks to direct Green Lantern; he previously directed the James Bond films GoldenEye (1995) and Casino Royale (2006), as well as both of the Antonio Banderas Zorro movies (1998-2005). -- Variety

2. The top guys at Marvel are very pleased with Kenneth Branagh, following a meeting they had with him about his plans for directing Thor. -- MTV Splash Page (x2), CHUD.com

3. Robert Downey Jr. says Mickey Rourke will not be playing Crimson Dynamo in Iron Man 2 -- but he won't say who Rourke will be playing. Meanwhile, Terrence Howard may have contradicted his earlier account of how he came to be replaced by Don Cheadle in the part of Jim Rhodes; in October, he told National Public Radio he was as surprised as anyone else when the studio picked Cheadle over him, but now, in Ebony magazine, he suggests Will Smith may have advised him to leave the franchise. -- MTV Splash Page, WENN

4. Robert Downey Jr. and Tina Fey may lead the voice cast for Master Mind, a DreamWorks cartoon about "a brilliant superhero villain who loses his life's purpose when he accidentally kills his good-guy nemesis." Ben Stiller is one of the film's producers. -- Hollywood Reporter

5. Some scenes in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen were shot in the ancient city of Petra, in Jordan; others were shot "in the valley area of Wadi Rum as well as the famously fertile city of Salt." Petra is where the climactic scenes in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) were shot, and Wadi Rum was one of the main locations for Lawrence of Arabia (1962). -- Variety

6. Michael Gambon has joined the cast of the post-apocalyptic tale The Book of Eli as "one half of a strangle (sic) couple that holds onto old traditions". -- Hollywood Reporter

7. Thora Birch, Taylor Momsen and Jacob Zachar are in talks to star in a big-screen version of Cavegirl (2002-2003), a BBC series "about teenage problems in a stone age world." -- Hollywood Reporter

8. Anne Hathaway may have a part in Stephen Chow's as-yet-unwritten superhero parody. -- china.org.cn

The Resurrected -- an Arabic Jesus movie

Three years ago, I mentioned that a Coptic Orthodox Christian screenwriter and a Muslim movie producer in Egypt were hoping to make the first Arabic movie about the life of Jesus. The project stirred up a fair bit of controversy, though, due to the fact that Sunni Islam forbids any depiction of the prophets, and I have heard nothing about that film's development since.

Now, however, another group of filmmakers are on the verge of making an Arabic film about Jesus -- and this time, they are based in Lebanon. Variety reports:

The first Arab feature film about Jesus Christ is about to see the light of day.

Lebanese exhibition and production shingles Eagle Pictures and the Marwa Group are making “The Resurrected,” a $2 million biopic of the life of Jesus.

Production is set to begin in the summer with a Middle Eastern theatrical release set for Easter 2010.

Lebanese helmer Samir Habchi (“Beirut Open City”) is in negotiations to direct the project, while thesp Youssef Al-Khal is set to play the Messiah.

Project will depict Jesus’ life in flashbacks and be seen from the perspective of Mary Magdelene, who will be played by Nadine Al-Rassi.

Pic will focus on the redemptive nature of Jesus’ message. The producers will be taking elements from all four Gospels.

“This is a real attempt to go back to the mutual respect which existed between Christians, Muslims and Jews in this region for centuries,” said Eagle topper Jamal Al-Sharif. “We’ve seen films about Jesus from the West but there has never been an Arabic production about him despite the fact that he came from here.”

An Iranian telepic “Jesus, Spirit of God,” was made last year but this is the first time an Arabic project has been put together.

Mel Gibson’s “The Passion” was a huge hit in the Arab world when it was released, particularly in Lebanon where there is a large Christian population. Authorities in the United Arab Emirates even changed the law forbidding the depiction of prophets to allow for the film’s theatrical release there.

Producers will be lensing on location in many of the sites where Jesus is believed to have visited, including Qana and Tyre in South Lebanon. They are also hoping to lense in the towns of cities of Nazareth and Bethlehem, although that will be dependent on the political situation there.

Eagle and Marwa execs have put together a $50 million fund drawn from private Arab investors to help turn Lebanon into a production powerhouse. While the country has a long history of TV and film producing expertise, it has long been hampered by political instability.

The two companies have already started production on romantic comedy “Larita and Aziz,” featuring local stars George Khabbaz and Rita Barsoum. Eagle and Marwa also have three Ramadan TV skeins set to go into production in time for delivery this year.

Al-Sharif is hoping “The Resurrected” can help bring Lebanon’s divided factions together. He has received the official blessing for the production from Lebanon’s Maronite Christian Patriarch, while the country’s prexy and speaker of parliament have both pledged to attend its Beirut preem next year.

It sounds like the company behind the film is not tied to any particular religion -- note the reference to their Ramadan programming -- but the references to the gospels, the approval of the local Christian patriarch, and indeed the movie's title itself all suggest that the film will reflect a basically Christian point of view. (Muslims do not believe that Jesus died, so they presumably would not believe in his resurrection -- though they do believe that he ascended, albeit without dying, kind of like Elijah.)

Still, it could be interesting to see if any Muslim ideas about the life of Jesus make their way into the script, kind of like how the depiction of Mary in the American TV-movie Mary and Joseph: A Story of Faith (1979) borrowed elements from the story of Hagar in Genesis, just as the Koran's depiction of Mary does. (I don't know for a fact that the TV-movie got this idea from the Koran -- they may have come up with it on their own -- but that's the sort of borrowing from other texts that I'd be looking for.)

It should also be interesting to see how this film handles Jesus' visit to Tyre, since the main thing the gospels tell us about his visit there is that he resisted helping a Canaanite woman, and indeed he suggested that she and her kind were "dogs", until she made a humble and somewhat clever reply to his remark.

Some theologians say Jesus always meant to help this woman but was testing her resolve, while others say this story shows how even Jesus was capable of changing his mind and "learning" from other people. Either way, for a film that wants to hark back to an earlier era of "mutual respect" between religions and cultures in that region, this episode could take on new meaning.

At any rate, this all sounds very interesting, and I definitely look forward to seeing the film, if it ever comes this way.