The blog for Peter T. Chattaway, film critic, journalist, religion junkie, etc. Not all posts will be film-related, but film will always be just around the corner.
The first two Star Trek movies are very different from one another, in many ways. But despite these differences, they do have some interesting parallels.
For example, both films depict Kirk not as a captain -- at least not at first -- but as an admiral who takes command of the Enterprise when a crisis arises; and in both cases, the captain who relinquishes command of the ship is dead or "missing" by the end of the movie, due to an act of self-sacrifice.
But watching the two films back-to-back last night, I was struck by one other thing they have in common: namely, their use of glass doors to symbolize the loneliness of Kirk. You can see it, for example, in the shot below, from The Motion Picture.
This is the final shot of a sequence that began with Kirk and Captain Decker butting heads over who would be the best person to lead the Enterprise on its current mission. Once the head-butting is over, Kirk dismisses Decker, only to be lectured privately by Dr. McCoy, who had tagged along to witness the tête-à-tête between the two captains. And when McCoy finally leaves the room, Kirk stands motionless behind his desk as the glass doors close, symbolizing both the loneliness that comes with being in a position of authority as well as the estrangement that comes between Kirk and his colleagues when their hearts and minds are not properly aligned with one another.
And then there is the famous sequence at the end of The Wrath of Khan, in which Kirk speaks to the dying Spock:
This sequence is shot from a number of angles, but I like these two in particular. The first image once again places Kirk behind the glass, and it emphasizes the separation between Kirk and Spock as one of them tries to touch the other's hand. (There is a lot that could be said about this, given how important hands are to Vulcan interaction, but I'll skip all that for now.) But you can still see McCoy, Scotty and at least one other crew member in the background -- so I really like the second shot, and the way it emphasizes Kirk's utter isolation. Yes, Spock is there, but he is dead, and facing away from Kirk, and trapped behind the glass. If there is anyone else in Kirk's life that he could turn to -- a support network, if you like -- they are all kept well, well out of the frame.
1. Vancouver-based artist Stan Douglas is developing a film based on Raymond Chandler's Playback; it will take place in the 1950s and concern "an American woman who crosses into Canada to escape imprisonment for a murder she didn't commit, only to find herself in the same situation - prime suspect in a murder - in Vancouver." Douglas plans to shoot against a green screen and fill in the backgrounds -- including the downtown Granville Street strip -- with computer-generated locations based on archival photographs. -- Hollywood North Report, Globe and Mail
2. Paul Gross is starring in Gunless, a comedy Western in which he'll play "a notorious American gunslinger who turns up in a rural British Columbia town" that has "no working weapons" and is "populated by sundry eccentrics." The film is currently being shot in Osoyoos, B.C. -- Hollywood Reporter, Globe and Mail
A few nights ago, I took part in the second installment of the Kindlings Muse Canada West, a panel discussion that takes place on the last Monday of every month at Belle's restaurant in South Surrey; this month's discussion is now available as a podcast here.
My fellow panelists this time were Bryan Born, director of the Intercultural Studies Department at Columbia Bible College; fellow Kindlings alumnusKevin Miller; and host Bill Hogg. And our topic this time was the Canadian sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie. (Miller has since posted some follow-up thoughts at his blog.)
The next Kindlings event takes place June 29 at 7pm, so feel free to stop by if you're in the neighbourhood.
Paul Verhoeven is known for many things. Gory sci-fi movies like RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990) and Starship Troopers (1997). Trashy oversexed thrillers like Basic Instinct (1992) and Showgirls (1995). And trashy, gory, oversexed sci-fi thrillers like Hollow Man (2000).
But an interest in Christian fiction isn't one of them.
Oh, sure, he has long wanted to make a movie about the "historical Jesus", and he has often discussed how the imagery in his films makes critical or subversive use of religious themes. And who can forget that pious member of the Dutch Resistance in Black Book (2006) who is reluctant to use his gun ... until he hears someone take the Lord's name in vain?
But nothing in Verhoeven's oeuvre would necessarily lead you to think that he'd be interested in directing an adaptation of a Christian novel, under the supervision of a Christian producer.
Nevertheless, that seems to be what he's doing, now. The Hollywood Reporter says Verhoeven is going to develop and direct an adaptation of The Surrogate, a book by Christian novelist and screenwriter Kathryn Mackel; and the film will be produced by Ralph Winter, who previously worked with Mackel on the Christian films Left Behind: The Movie (2000) and Hangman's Curse (2003) but is better known for his work on the X-Men (2000-2009) and Star Trek (1984-1991) franchises.
The story itself, according to the Reporter, concerns "a couple desperate to have a child who find themselves in an unbearable position when they find out the surrogate they hired to carry their baby is insane."
Even without the Christian subtext, I can only imagine what someone like Verhoeven would do with a premise like that. But put the two together and, well, the resulting film should be pretty interesting.
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.
Similar titles. Similar posters. (As far as Apple's movie trailer page is concerned, at any rate.) Similar release dates. (Well, they both open in the fall, at any rate.) But two very different movies. Nine is a live-action musical about moviemaking directed by Rob Marshall, while 9 is an animated post-apocalyptic sci-fi flick directed by Shane Acker. Fortunately, these movies are scheduled to open two months apart, so there shouldn't be any opening-weekend confusion, at least; but keeping them straight when they go to the second-run theatres, to say nothing of video, could be interesting. Hat tip to Sara Stewart of the New York Post.
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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.
A couple of discrepancies: Hannah Montana: The Movie was #9 on the Canadian chart (it was #11 in North America as a whole), while Next Day Air was #9 on the North American chart (it wasn't even released in Canada).
I watched The Terminator (1984) from start to finish for the first time in years last night, and I was amused by the opening title card's declaration that this film would show us "the final battle" in the war between humans and machines. "The final battle"? Tell that to the sequel-makers.
But what really struck me were the deleted scenes, which I don't believe I had watched since I first got the DVD in 2001. And why did they strike me? Because they make it fairly clear that, on some level at least, Sarah Connor is responsible for the war.
That's right, Sarah Connor is responsible for the war.
How can this be, you say?
Well, in one deleted scene, Sarah looks up Cyberdyne in the phone book -- just like the Terminator looked up her in the phone book! -- and tells Kyle excitedly that they can destroy Cyberdyne and prevent the war from happening. After some arguing, and a bit of an emotional breakdown on Kyle's part, Kyle finally agrees to do this. (So you can see, in this, the seeds of Sarah's later vigilante actions in T2.)
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And then, in another deleted scene set a few hours after Sarah has successfully destroyed the Terminator, we see that the Terminator's crushed remains have been noticed by a couple guys, one of whom instructs the other guy to take the Terminator's microcomputer chassis over to the company's R&D department. We then cut to the outside of the building, as Sarah is loaded into an ambulance, and the camera pans up to reveal ... the Cyberdyne logo on the front of the building. (So you can see, in this, the seeds of T2's later revelation that Skynet will grow out of the pieces of the Terminator that survived the original film.)
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Is it a coincidence that Sarah, Kyle and the Terminator ended up in the Cyberdyne building? To a point, yes. The car chase that immediately preceded the chase-on-foot in the Cyberdyne factory was pretty crazy, and who could have predicted where the various wrecks and explosions would have ended up? But on the other hand, no, it wasn't all that coincidental. Why were they in the vicinity of the Cyberdyne building in the first place? Because, as we saw in the earlier deleted scene, Sarah and Kyle had agreed to try to sabotage Cyberdyne. They were already making their way over there.
So. Just as the Terminator came back in time to kill Sarah and prevent the birth of John Connor, thereby inadvertently drawing Kyle Reese back in time and guaranteeing the birth of John Connor, so too Sarah Connor tried to destroy Cyberdyne and prevent the birth of Skynet, thereby inadvertently drawing the Terminator towards the Cyberdyne factory and guaranteeing the rise of Skynet. And this point -- this similarity between the two characters' actions, and the consequences of their actions -- is underscored by visual motifs such as the phone-book scanning.
I can see why these scenes were deleted from the film. For one thing, they created an ambiguity around Sarah and her actions that could have complicated our feelings towards her. In a sense, they almost put her on the same level as the machines that sent the Terminator back in time: both she and the machines suffer from a kind of hubris, believing that they can change the past (in the machines' case) or the future (in Sarah's case), but in the end all they do is guarantee their own failure.
Of course, commercial cinema being what it is, The Terminator ended up having sequels anyway, "final battle" or no "final battle". And ironically, as the series has continued to unfold, Sarah's actions have turned out to have even more unforeseen consequences.
In Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Sarah tries once again to destroy Cyberdyne -- and this time, to cut a long story short, she succeeds! The nuclear war no longer happens on 1997 as everyone predicted ... but it does happen several years later, in 2004, as per the events of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003). (Or in 2011, as per one of the timelines in The Sarah Connor Chronicles.) Sarah did not completely prevent Judgment Day; instead, she merely delayed it. And so, as John Connor says in the trailers for Terminator Salvation, he now has to face the fact that "this is not the future my mother warned me about."
The guaranteed victory of the original movie -- the fact that the war was over and the "final battle" had already been won -- has been completely undone. John no longer has any assurance that he can win this war. And all because Sarah would not accept the prophecy that she had been given.
1.Kings, the TV series that puts a quasi-modernized spin on the biblical story of Saul and David, has definitely been cancelled, according to producer Bradford Winters. Only five of the show's dozen-or-so episodes have been aired so far, but the DVD containing all of them is already listed at Amazon.com, albeit without a release date. -- Image, Bible Films Blog
2. Jim Caviezel will star in William Tell: The Legend, which promises to be a "fact-based" film that shows how Tell "challenged the Hapsburg monarch Hermann Gessler" and thereby "ignited an uprising against the Austrian government which led to the formation of Switzerland." It is not clear whether this is the same movie that was announced six months ago, under the title Ironbow: The Legend of William Tell, or a different movie altogether. -- Hollywood Reporter
3. Speaking of possibly rival productions, two different films based on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were announced in the last couple weeks. One, simply titled Jekyll, will star Keanu Reeves. The other, called Jekyll and Hyde, will star Forest Whitaker and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson and will be directed by Abel Ferrara. But wait, there's more! Universal, the studio behind the Keanu Reeves movie, is also developing another version of the story with Guillermo Del Toro -- but he'll be so busy with The Hobbit and various other projects for the next few years, these other films will almost certainly be out of his way by the time he finally gets around to putting his own spin on this tale. -- Hollywood Reporter, Variety
4. The villain in Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, will be "an occult-dabbling Satanist" based on Aleister Crowley. Meanwhile, co-star Rachel McAdams has confirmed that the film will probably omit some of the character's signature elements, such as the deerstalker cap and the catchprase "Elementary, my dear Watson." -- USA Today, MTV Movies Blog
5. If you saw the documentary Lost in La Mancha (2002), then you know all about the forces that sabotaged Terry Gilliam's previous attempt to film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Last week, Gilliam announced that he's ready to give it another go, hopefully some time next year, and he's talking to Johnny Depp about playing the lead again; this time, however, Depp has become such an in-demand actor that he might not be able to squeeze the movie into his schedule. The film "will revolve around a filmmaker who is charmed into joining Don Quixote's eternal quest for his ladylove, becoming an unwitting Sancho Panza." -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter
6.Kung Fu Panda co-director John Stevenson is attached to direct The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, in which the titular mythical creature "survived Theseus' attack in the labyrinth and walks among us today. He's a short-order cook in a Midwestern diner not far from his trailer-park home who falls for a waitress named Kelly." Stevenson is also attached to direct Grayskull, the new live-action version of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, the script for which was recently assigned to a new writer. -- Hollywood Reporter (x2)
7. Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola is developing Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, in which the title characters grow up to become "specialized bounty hunters looking to put down the cackling black-hat set." Adam McKay, who is producing the film with Will Ferrell, said: "It's a hybrid sort of old-timey feeling, yet there's pump-action shotguns. Modern technology but in an old style. We heard it and we were just like, 'That's a freakin' franchise! You could make three of those!'" -- Hollywood Reporter
8.Marcus Nispel is in talks to direct The Last Voyage of Demeter, which is based on a chapter in Bram Stoker's Dracula "describing the arrival of the vampire count in England on a cargo ship that has crashed into the rocks at Whitby with no crew and the dead captain lashed to the steering wheel. Stoker tells the story via the captain's log of the voyage, which begins in Bulgaria and becomes increasingly disjointed as members of the crew disappear." -- Variety
9. The makers of the Underworld movies (2003-2009) are now developing a film based on the comic book I, Frankenstein, which "brings together classic monster characters, including Frankenstein's Monster, the Invisible Man, Dracula and the Hunchback of Notre Dame, in a contemporary film noir setting. The Monster, for example, has evolved, learned how to control his anger and now acts as a private investigator. Dracula, meanwhile, is a kingpin of crime, and the Invisible Man is a secret operative." -- Hollywood Reporter
10.Wake the Dead, a modernized version of the Frankenstein story, may have hit a speed bump or two, as many of the people who were designing the characters over at WETA have been busy with The Hobbit. -- MTV Splash Page
10. Amanda Peet has joined the cast of Gulliver's Travels as a "potential romantic interest" for the title character, who is being played by Jack Black. -- Hollywood Reporter
11. The cameras are rolling on Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, and an early photo of Russell Crowe in costume has some people quibbling that (a) his Robin Hood looks too much like his character in Gladiator (2000), which was also directed by Scott, and (b) such haircuts would have been unlikely in the Middle Ages, especially for those living on the lam in a forest somewhere. Meanwhile, it is rumoured that Tom Stoppard has been hired to rewrite the screenplay. -- USA Today, Jeffrey Wells (x2), Roger Friedman
12. Vanessa Hudgens will star in Beastly, "a retelling of 'Beauty and the Beast' set in modern-day New York" in which "an arrogant 17-year-old" is "hideously transformed in order to find true romance." -- Variety
13. MGM has picked up North American rights to Bunyan & Babe, a modernized version of the Paul Bunyan story in which "the folklore icons join with two children to save their town from an unscrupulous property developer." -- ComingSoon.net, Hollywood Reporter
14. Monica Bellucci has joined the cast of The Sorcerer's Apprentice as "Veronica, a sorceress and the long-lost love of Nicolas Cage's character, Balthazar Blake", while Toby Kebbell has joined the cast as "Drake Stone, a celebrity illusionist who joins forces with Alfred Molina's evil sorcerer, Horvath, to gain ultimate powers." Photos from the set have begun to pop up online, and the New York shoot was recently marred by two separate car accidents. -- Variety (x2), The Bad & Ugly, Hollywood Reporter
I was also interviewed for an episode of the podcast Nuclearity devoted to Dan Brown's books and the movies based thereon. There's a lot of interesting stuff there, particularly from Elizabeth Lev -- a strong critic of The Da Vinci Code who was nevertheless asked to be a consultant on the film version of Angels & Demons -- but for what it's worth, my own soundbites start at the 17:58, 31:25, 34:54, 37:05 and 37:48 marks, give or take.
So many people have noted the parallels between New Trek and Old Wars, it was only a matter of time before someone put the pertinent film clips together and went all split-screen with them. The video below could be even longer than it is, but it looks like the guy who compiled these clips was relying on the trailers for Star Trek and did not have the entire movie at his disposal.
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Simon Vaughan, one of the producers of the upcoming Ben-Hur mini-series, has created a blog devoted to the production; most of the entries there so far consist of pictures from the Morocco set. (Hat tip to Matt Page.)
Today Vaughan posted this picture of a crew member lighting the actors who play Judah Ben-Hur and Jesus. I don't recognize the actor playing Jesus, but I wonder if this version of the story will show his face, or if it will merely show the back of his head, like the films made in 1925 and 1959 did.
Note also that the actor who plays Jesus is holding a water bottle as the crew member does his thing. That's kind of funny, since it looks like the scene they are working on is the one in which Jesus gives Judah a drink of water -- but presumably he will do so out of a gourd or some similar vessel, and not a plastic bottle!
Although, come to think of it, this wouldn't be the first film to show Jesus offering someone a water bottle ...
MAY 14 UPDATE: Today Vaughan posted this picture of Esther listening to Jesus. And we see the back of his head. Hmmm.
The Hollywood Reporter says Rachel Weisz has been tapped to play Hollywood legend -- and noted scientist! -- Hedy Lamarr in Face Value, an indie film to be directed by Amy Redford, daughter of Robert. The Reporter also notes that Lamarr was "most famous" for co-starring in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949), the first of the post-war Bible epics. (Samson was played by Victor Mature.) Will the new film depict the making of DeMille's film in any way, shape or form? Will Weisz have to wear a Philistine costume? Obsessive Bible-movie buffs need to know.
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.
17 Again -- CDN $7,390,000 -- N.AM $53,994,515 -- 13.7% Hannah Montana: The Movie -- CDN $7,680,000 -- N.AM $73,861,795 -- 10.4% Earth -- CDN $2,690,000 -- N.AM $26,264,242 -- 10.2% State of Play -- CDN $3,300,000 -- N.AM $33,986,760 -- 9.7% Monsters Vs. Aliens -- CDN $17,190,000 -- N.AM $186,774,092 -- 9.2% X-Men Origins: Wolverine -- CDN $9,310,000 -- N.AM $129,032,435 -- 7.2% Star Trek -- CDN $5,440,000 -- N.AM $79,204,289 -- 6.9% Obsessed -- CDN $3,390,000 -- N.AM $56,207,576 -- 6.0% Ghosts of Girlfriends Past -- CDN $1,800,000 -- N.AM $30,054,386 -- 6.0% The Soloist -- CDN $1,380,000 -- N.AM $23,845,177 -- 5.8%
A couple of discrepancies: State of Play was #10 on the Canadian chart (it was #12 in North America as a whole), while Next Day Air was #6 on the North American chart (it wasn't even released in Canada).
1. The international trailer for Year One is now online, and it gives us our first glimpse of Abraham and Isaac (at the 1:19 mark):
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2. Movies often seem to come in twos: two volcano-based disaster movies, two asteroid- or comet-based disaster movies, two Truman Capote movies, etc. And now ... two John Milton movies? Scott Derrickson has been developing a big-screen version of Paradise Lost for the past few years already, but now comes word that Martin Poll will produce an "indie version" of the Milton poem based on an otherwise-unfilmed screenplay that was published in book form in 1973. Two "unknown young actors" named David Dunham and Patricia Li Bryan have been hired to play Adam and Eve "as part of a multiethnic cast." -- Hollywood Reporter
3. The TV mini-series version of Ben-Hur now has a cast: Joseph Morgan -- no stranger to sword-and-sandals flicks, having played Philotas in Oliver Stone's Alexander (2004) -- will play the title character, while Kristen Kruek will play his sister, Emily VanCamp will play his girlfriend Esther, Ray Winstone will play his adoptive father, and Stephen Campbell Moore will play his treacherous former best friend Messala. Hugh Bonneville is also on board to play Pontius Pilate. -- Hollywood Reporter, Ben Hur blog
4. Steve Coogan and Rosario Dawson will play the Greek god Hades and his "imprisoned" wife Persephone in Percy Jackson. This is not the first time that either actor has tackled a Greco-Roman role; Coogan plays the Roman emperor Octavius in the Night at the Museum movies (2006-2009), while Dawson played the title character's wife in Alexander. -- Hollywood Reporter
5. Danny Huston has been cast as the Greek god Poseidon in Clash of the Titans; for what it's worth, the same character is being played by Kevin McKidd in Percy Jackson. Meanwhile, producer Richard Zanuck has confirmed that the studio hopes to turn this movie into a franchise, but he notes that "everybody's hoping for that these days." The film has been in production for two weeks now, and photos of at least one of the outdoor sets have begun to pop up online. -- Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Business Wire, Lo que pasa en Tenerife, Las Horas Perdidas
6. Brett Ratner is no longer attached to direct the next version of Conan the Barbarian. Rumour has it the producers might be thinking of hiring Wachowski-sibling protégé James McTeigue to direct the film now. -- Empire, CHUD.com
7. Devil's Due will publish a comic-book mini-series based on the upcoming TV show Spartacus: Blood and Sand. The TV series is set to premiere in January. -- MTV Splash Page
There were ten Star Trekfilms before the reboot. Two of them made over $90 million, two of them made less than $60 million, and the rest all made between $70 million and $80 million, roughly speaking.
Based on how well the new film did yesterday, it sounds like the reboot could gross as much as $70 million in its first weekend alone. But of course, they've been making these films for 30 years now, and ticket prices have gone up, up, up.
Perhaps, instead of looking at the raw, unadjusted dollar figures, we can get a sense of how well these films have done -- or haven't done, as the case may be -- by comparing the grosses for each film to those of other films that were released in the same year.
Alas, Box Office Mojo does not have a chart for 1979, the year The Motion Picture came out. (It also does not have yearly charts for the worldwide figures prior to the 1990s.) But that particular film earned $82.3 million in North America, which was better than the next two films did, so presumably it ranked about as high in its year as those two films did in theirs.
1994, November 18 -- Generations -- $75.7 million (domestic) -- #15 (domestic) -- $118.1 million (worldwide) -- #20 (worldwide)
1996, November 22 -- First Contact -- $92 million (domestic) -- #17 (domestic) -- $146 million (worldwide) -- #22 (worldwide)
1998, December 11 -- Insurrection -- $70.2 million (domestic) -- #28 (domestic) -- $112.6 million (worldwide) -- #35 (worldwide)
2002, December 13 -- Nemesis -- $43.3 million (domestic) -- #54 (domestic) -- $67.3 million (worldwide) -- #66 (worldwide)
So while Nemesis often gets the blame for killing the franchise, the series had evidently been in gradual decline over the course of the preceding films anyway -- at least where its standing relative to other films of its time is concerned.
It's fascinating to think that the first four films all ranked in the Top 10 of their respective years, whereas none of the other films did. Presumably this is due, at least in part, to the fact that the first four films were the only films that did not have to compete with brand-new Star Trek episodes on TV. Given a choice between new movies and ten- or twenty-year-old re-runs, people chose the movies. But given a choice between new movies and a steady stream of new TV episodes...?
As it happens, the new film is the first Star Trek film since 1986's The Voyage Home that has not had to compete with an existing TV show. And that earlier film just happens to be the top-grossing movie in the franchise to date -- even after 23 years of movie-ticket price inflation. So if a lack of small-screen competition is key to a Star Trek movie's cultural impact, it's no wonder the new movie is doing so well.
One last thought: If you want to compare actual ticket sales, rather than how each film ranks on an annual chart, we can turn to the average ticket price chart at Box Office Mojo and deduce the following -- with the films listed in order from those that sold the most tickets to those that sold the least:
1979 -- The Motion Picture -- $82,258,456 @ $2.51 per ticket = 32,772,293 tickets
1986 -- The Voyage Home -- $109,713,132 @ $3.71 per ticket = 29,572,272 tickets
1982 -- The Wrath of Khan -- $78,912,963 @ $2.94 per ticket = 26,841,143 tickets
1984 -- The Search for Spock -- $76,471,046 @ $3.36 per ticket = 22,759,239 tickets
1996 -- First Contact -- $92,027,888 @ $4.42 per ticket = 20,820,789 tickets
Box Office Mojo says the current average ticket price is $7.18, so if the J.J. Abrams movie sold, say, 20,000,000 tickets -- a feat managed by five of the ten previous films -- then the new movie would gross over $143 million, or a little more than double what it is predicted to earn this weekend. And if the new film grossed at least $200 million, that would mean it had sold nearly 28 million tickets, a feat managed by only two of the previous films.
And if the new film were to sell as many tickets as The Motion Picture did -- thereby becoming the top ticket-seller of the entire franchise -- it would then have grossed a total of $235.3 million. And that would have been enough to make it the #4 movie of 2008, the #7 movie of 2007, the #4 movie of 2006, and so on.
Based on the insanely good word-of-mouth the new film is getting, I'd say that kind of box-office success seems do-able right now.
Roger Ebert recently posted a thoughtful rumination on death and mortality at his blog. One paragraph leapt out at me:
I don't expect to die anytime soon. But it could happen this moment, while I am writing. I was talking the other day with Jim Toback, a friend of 35 years, and the conversation turned to our deaths, as it always does. "Ask someone how they feel about death," he said, "and they'll tell you everyone's gonna die. Ask them, In the next 30 seconds? No, no, no, that's not gonna happen. How about this afternoon? No. What you're really asking them to admit is, Oh my God, I don't really exist and I might be gone at any given second."
Ebert's views on the afterlife -- or Toback's, or both -- differ from mine. But I think we agree, at least partly, on what is at stake.
My own grandmother passed away two months ago, and, thankfully, I was able to visit her just nine days before she died. The next time I saw her was nine days after she died, which made for an interesting symmetry -- and I was struck by the differences between the two visits. Here's how I described the experience to some friends in an e-mail afterwards:
And so, today, I saw my Oma for the first time since she passed. I don't know what I expected, but I was struck by how, well, dead she was. Her mouth was shut in a straight line. Her eyes were shut in straight lines. I found myself flashing back to the last time I saw her, two and a half weeks ago, and how she held my hand as tightly as she could and looked me in the eye and told me not to cry when she passed but to be happy for her. She was so animated, even then -- even in her frail, weak state. Her eyes were alive, and so focused on me, and her hand gripped mine and didn't let go for several minutes. But now, there was nothing animating her -- nothing at all. (But at times I almost thought I could see her breathing. Distortions in the lenses of my glasses? The movement of my eyes affecting how the light comes in?) I think I can admit, now, that when I last saw her in the nursing home, a tiny, cerebral part of my brain began thinking of her as a piece of broken-down machinery, began thinking that all of her thoughts were dependent on an underlying set of software and especially hardware that had begun to seriously malfunction. But tonight? All I could think was how alive she had been then, and how she must be alive, somewhere, now ... because if she isn't now, then she never was. And if she never was, then none of us have ever been alive either. And I simply can't convince myself that I'm not alive.
I haven't got time to get into this in any depth right now, but for several years, I have been telling people that my theological starting point essentially boils down to: "Either God exists, or I do not." And I'm not being glib when I say that; I take very seriously the idea that consciousness may be an illusion, and I respect those friends of mine who are inclined to believe that it is an illusion. I just can't help thinking that, even if everything we think of as conscious thought really is some kind of deception, then there must at least be something real there, in each of us, that is being deceived.
Anyway. I am still intrigued by the fact that it was possible for me to think in reductionist terms when my grandmother was alive, but it was oddly faith-affirming to process her absence once she was dead. Maybe it's because I'm something of a contrarian, but in any case, her funeral really was, for me, a celebration of her life -- as it was, and as I believe it still is.
I hope to say a lot more about this movie later, perhaps after a second screening, but for now, I just want to highlight one of the more unique reviews that I have seen so far, as well as a few other Trek-themed items.
First, the always-interesting Karina Longworth concludes her review at SpoutBlog by comparing the new film not to previous Star Trek shows, but to the previous TV work of director J.J. Abrams, specifically Felicity (1998-2002):
On the level of craft, it’s either a sign of his limitations or fitting considering the images of Star Trek with the greatest pop cultural endurance, but Abrams shoots most of the action on the Enterprise in TV mode, with a wideangle-lensed camera whipping from side to side on a single set, facial close-ups interrupted by blinding light flares. In thematic terms, Abrams’ most notable contribution is a demonstrated interest in the plight of college girls caught between cute brainiacs with a yen for common sense, and brooding blonde hunks with a knack for instigating sloppy hand-to-hand combat. In applying this to Kirk and Spock’s classic conflict between passion and logic, Abrams is to a large extent remaking his own Felicity (coincidentally, the same dynamic animates Reality Bites, which like Star Trek features Winona Ryder as an archetype over which a nerdy brunette guy attempts to exert control), and in a way, Star Trek allows Abrams a second chance to overcome that series’ inherent limitations. Eventually Keri Russell’s Felicity had to choose one male polarity over the other, and live a life deprived of the charms of the second place candidate. But being that the boys of Star Trek will ultimately choose each other — er, their common mission — over womankind, space can benefit from both, while the question as to what type is more desirable can remain infinitely unresolved.
Whether or not it all of this works as a movie-movie is an issue that critic-fans won’t be able to fairly assess, and critics who are not fans may feel unequipped to care. I’ll gladly give Star Trek a high grade for its eye candy and sugar-shot power of diversion, but I’m hesitant to give it too much credit for breaking the mold of the summer blockbuster. With its wise cracks, its cast of exaggerated characters, its indulgence in majestic moving paintings of intergalactic battle, and its insistence that it takes a wacky bunch of misfit stereotypes to keep space a safe place, Star Trek is structurally not much different from something like Armageddon. Michael Bay gets no respect, and it’s probably fair and right that he shouldn’t, but it’s hard to put a point on what JJ Abrams brings to that formula that’s uniquely his, other than that which seems an artifact from his previous work for TV. The Felicity similarities make the lead actor’s atractiveness all the more legitimate a point of critique. By — uh, spoiler alert? — placing Kirk and Spock in the running for the same woman’s affections, the conflict between passion and logic is transformed from a question of guiding life philosophy to a question of preferred type of boyfriend. If anything, by being true to his previous TV work, Abrams fundamentally alters part of the brand’s traditional core concerns.
Second, Matt Zoller Seitz has come up with a fascinating video essay on 'Vulcan: The Soul of Spock' for The L Magazine, and he concludes it with this great little insight:
Surely a character plagued by this many demons deserved to be labeled unhappy. Yet to apply that label to Spock would be most illogical. While one could never say he's at peace with himself, one could say that he's at peace with the fact that he's not at peace. Perhaps, even though he never says as so Spock knows, or feels, that his soul contains multitudes: warrior, scientist, lover, son, and most of all, Starfleet officer.
This last role is by far the most satisfying for Spock because, as they say on earth, in the military, you don't salute the man, but the uniform. This interpretation is validated by Nimoy's fleeting but brilliant bit of stagecraft in the finale of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in which Spock, on his last legs after repairing a radiation leak that threatened to destroy his beloved Enterprise, hauls himself up, then absentmindedly straightens the hem of his coat. It's his nonverbal way of honoring ideals and aspirations worth dying for. He's too human to be Vulcan, too Vulcan to be human. But in uniform, he's simply Spock.
Third, on a semi-unrelated note, the Georgia Straight interviews Vancouver-raised actor Bruce Greenwood, who plays Captain Christopher Pike in the new movie, and gets this amusing quote out of him:
Pike is not the first character Greenwood has played who has leadership credentials. The list includes a couple of CEOs, a fictional president, and even a real one, John F. Kennedy, whom he played in 13 Days, the story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He says, though, that he doesn’t actively look for those kinds of characters.
“I have done a few of those characters in movies that have gone beyond the radar,” Greenwood says. “Perhaps they come to me more often for those kinds of things than they do for other things, but it’s not something I seek out. I am generally just drawn to the strength of the story. If they invited me to play the desiccated heroin addict, I would be thrilled, but I guess there is a danger I would play it with some kind of authority.”
And finally, Jewish Journal has a list of the "Top 5 Jewish moments in ‘Trek’", with a bonus clip from Frasier thrown in for good measure.
1. Jim Carrey may star in The Beaver, an "offbeat comedy" that "centers on the relationship between a man and a beaver puppet he wears on his arm, which he talks to and treats as a companion." Those who have read Kyle Killen's script are comparing it to Being John Malkovich (1999) and Lars and the Real Girl (2007). -- Hollywood Reporter
2.Russell Brand is set to star in a remake of Drop Dead Fred (1991). The original film "starred Phoebe Cates as a wallflower who loses her job and husband during the course of a lunch hour. Forced to live back home, she's reunited with her childhood imaginary friend (Brit actor Rik Mayall), who promises to help but causes more havoc." -- Hollywood Reporter
3. Leah Meyerhoff is writing and directing Unicorns, an "indie drama" about "an awkward teenage girl who escapes to a fantasy world when her first romantic relationship turns increasingly abusive." For the moment, I am assuming, based on this synopsis, that the "fantasy world" in question exists only in the character's head and has no objective Narnia-like reality. -- Hollywood Reporter
Doug TenNapel -- animator, video game designer, graphic novelist, blogger -- continues to rack up the movie deals. The Hollywood Reporter says his newest graphic novel, Ghostopolis, has been picked up by Disney -- and Wolverine star Hugh Jackman is set to produce and star in the film version:
The story centers on a man who works for the government's Supernatural Immigration Task Force. His job is to send ghosts who have escaped into our world back to Ghostopolis. When a living boy accidentally is sent to the other side, the agent must team with a female ghost (and former flame) to bring him back.
This would be at least the fourth movie deal that TenNapel has made in the last few years -- Paramount has Monster Zoo, New Regency has Creature Tech and Universal has Tommysaurus Rex -- but this marks the first time that an actor has been attached to one of them, as far as I can recall.
Whether any of these films will get the green light remains an open question; I gather TenNapel's stories can be pretty bizarre, which might make them difficult to adapt for the big screen.
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 "biblical comedy" Year One comes out next month, and at least two websites posted new stories last week describing their visits to the set last year; one of them also posted several interviews with the director and members of the cast.
The main report at ComingSoon.net focuses on costumes, production design and the like -- though it also notes, without quite saying so, that the film seems to have shuffled the chronology and geography of the Book of Genesis somewhat. Describing what they saw in the city of Sodom, they write:
There was a giant golden bull's head prominently displayed in front of a wide-open courtyard where the villagers could gather for the main event, the ceremonial sacrifice of virgins to the Gods by the High Priest (played by Oliver Platt). Apparently, Sodom has been suffering somewhat of a drought and the High Priest has been getting a lot of stress from his King (his brother-in-law) to fix the problem, so he's been trying everything to get the Gods to bring water down from the sky. Even though the bull's head was impressive, it was hard not to be even more awed by the giant phallic structure that towered over the entire city, which was clearly in the process of being built, going by the scaffolding that surrounded it. In fact, this scaffolding was not there for the production team as much as for the half-dozen barely-dressed extras playing the slaves working on the construction of what was meant to represent the Tower of Babel. They'd be actively working in the background whenever they were shooting a scene in that general direction.
The individual interviews bring up some interesting subjects, too. For example, Jack Black discusses some of the linguistic issues that have affected his improvising:
CS: Have you ad-libbed lines that you realized you couldn't say because it doesn't exist yet? Black: Oh God, every day. Yesterday, what did I say? We're forbidden, while we're here in Sodom, to go into this room, it's called the "Holiest of Holies," where the Gods are in the room, supposedly, and if you go in there, you'll be totally vaporized, unless you're the High Priest. He's the only one allowed to go in there and talk to the gods. And I went in there, and the King and the Queen were there, and I was busted, and I said, "Oh, I was just looking, for the crapper." But you're not allowed to say "crapper," because the "crapper" doesn't exist. Of course the crapper is based on Sir Thomas Crapper, inventor of the first toilet. (laughter) So we changed it to, "I was looking for the grunt hole." Sometimes it is okay, when you set up the rule never say anything that – I mean English wasn't invented back then so every word you say is breaking the rule but try to keep it back in that time period. Once in awhile you zing in a new thing and it is extra funny so it is about picking the places you get modern. Grunt holes are not modern, grunt holes they've had since the beginning of time.
CS: I heard you use the word "compulsory" to the slave driver in the scene... Cera: Yeah, think it pre-dates that word? There have been a lot of discussions about words that pre-date like "totally" or accidentally saying "dodged a bullet there."
CS: And bullets aren't even invented. Cera: And Jack said like, "Sue me!" (Laughs.)
CS: Usually do discussions move forward with you saying it anyway? Cera: No, no, Carol comes over and says "You can't say that." Like, I said "textbook" one time. "Oh, it was a textbook suicide." And textbooks aren't invented yet. You can't say "textbook."
CS: Is that creating limitations on how you improvise? Cera: Kind of. You just don't think about those things. I think it's gotten less and less, but it really wouldn't have occurred to me unless someone had said, "It doesn't make sense for you not to say that."
Meanwhile, David Cross reveals that his character, Cain, will have a considerably bigger role in this film, beyond simply killing his brother Abel:
ComingSoon.net: You play Cain in the movie, but it seems like you have a bigger role than Cain in the bible. David Cross: Cain keeps popping up. His descendants are cursed right?
CS: The mark of Cain. Cross: Yes. I know this because I bought something called a "Parable Bible." It's easier to read (laughs). The words are the best approximation of what they meant. Prefacing that the Bible is all made up and it's fiction. It's a formalized fiction, but I've been reading it and Cain's descendants are cursed. Wait, I was wrong. The mark of Cain is that Cain felt really bad about what he did, he had a lot of recrimination, he was lonely and upset and God banishes him. Which I never saw as much of a punishment but he has a wife and he's given a family, mysteriously, and says he thinks people are going to know he killed his brother and not gonna like him and cause harm to him so God gives him the mark of Cain so everyone knows it's Cain and everyone knows that if you f*ck with Cain you're gonna die.
CS: This isn't in the movie though? Cross: Oh, no. This is just for your online edification.
CS: How did you put a comedic twist on playing Cain? Cross: Well, unfortunately we shot those scenes already before I got my Bible. [everyone laughs] I just had fun being duplicitous. And mean. And nasty. And murderous. And conniving. And I end up ratting Jack and Michael out. I get promoted because of it. And it's fun. I mean anytime you get to do that. I usually only get cast in two things. It's either nerdy guy or sarcastic, nasty guy, but this is kind of a new twist on sarcastic, nasty guy, so I like it.
Finally, director Harold Ramis discusses some of the ideas behind the movie:
CS: You mentioned "Life of Brian" before. We were talking earlier about other great Biblical comedies like "History of the World Part I" or "Wholly Moses!," which is a bit of a forgotten film. What's going to differentiate this movie from some of the other classics? What's your spin on it, basically? Ramis: Well (chuckles) our spin is that "Wholly Moses!" was awful! [laughter] And that's well forgotten, and "History of the World" I looked at again and it's very old school. It's very Catskills. It isn't really expressing any kind of philosophy. Whereas the Python films do contain some kind of social commentary, and there's a sense of playing with real literature with the Pythons, and that's sort of what I was going for here. I've been looking at the Old Testament for a very long time, starting as a Hebrew school student, and just thinking about it every year. I've had some really enlightening contact with a progressive rabbi that I know, and these ideas, suddenly after 9/11, seem much more important. The role that religion plays in the world, the power of Fundamentalism over people's lives. I thought, maybe I can take all of those ideas I had about the early world and use them in service of this idea. And to somehow find an interpretation of Genesis that would hook directly into where we are today. All our problems go all the way back right to the beginning.
CS: Do you think that the Old Testament is inherently funnier than the New Testament? Ramis: I don't know about funnier, but I was explaining to someone that the New Testament is a much better narrative, that's why it's more popular, because it's like a hero's journey. It's one character, the story takes place in one person's lifetime, it has a beginning, a middle and an end, and a redemption. You look at the Old Testament, and it's one dysfunctional family after another. Somehow, when we tell Bible stories to kids, they turn out to be little morality tales, but they're not! You read the Old Testament, and people, they're more than flawed; they do some terrible things to each other, and there are no happy endings; there are no resolutions. These stories just go on and on in the Old Testament. I noticed that, and I also noticed that they're all journeys in the Old Testament. Everyone's on a journey; they've either been expelled from somewhere or exiled or they're fleeing from something or they're out seeking something in the world. When I thought about doing the Old Testament, there was no single story that has a good enough arc to be a movie, unless you're doing "The Ten Commandments" again. So I thought I could take all these stories from the early part of Genesis and smash them into one story. I'm sure most of our young audience will not know the difference anyway. (laughter) So it was a way to try and forge a narrative out of a bunch of Genesis material.
Cinematical also has a set-visit report, but it is much shorter and doesn't get anywhere near as in-depth.
A few nights ago, I took part in the first-ever Kindlings Muse Canada West, a panel discussion that took place at a nice little restaurant in South Surrey; the discussion is now available as a podcast here.
It was a fun evening, all told, though I was a little surprised to see that our discussion focused almost entirely on the Oscars, which took place two months ago. (And the films that we zeroed in on were, for the most part, films that I had seen even earlier -- like, five or six months ago.) I knew there would be some Oscar talk, but hadn't realized there would be quite so much of it -- so I, for one, was feeling a little off my game, because I had to rely on quasi-distant memories a lot more than I am used to when speaking "on the record" like this.
Assuming the entire evening is included in the podcast -- I haven't listened to the whole thing yet, for the same reason some actors say they can't bear to watch themselves onscreen! -- there is also one moment where I forgot one of two points that I was going to make. I remembered it afterwards, though, so just for the record: I was going to refer to something G.K. Chesterton once wrote, about the unique power that films can have, compared to books -- and as it happens, I quoted the relevant bit from Chesterton's essay at this blog three years ago, so you can check it out there.
Lastly, if the name "Kindlings Muse" sounds familiar, it may be because this Western Canadian version is a spin-off, of sorts, from the Kindlings Muse hosted by Dick Staub in Seattle. It's a franchise now! The next Western Canadian event takes place at Belle's restaurant May 25, so feel free to stop on by if you're in the neighbourhood. I know I'm looking forward to it.
So let's think about this. Imagine you're Pastor Billings -- or perhaps one of the thousands of actual pastors here in the real world who were inspired and instructed to make actual versions of such a video after reading Left Behind. You want to prepare the future-Christian viewers of that video to face the trials that await them in the Great Tribulation, but you can't just give them detailed shelter-network instructions for fear the Antichrist or his minions might see this video as well.
That means you're going to need some kind of code. Your secret message to the future Tribulation Force Christians will need to be communicated in some way that is decipherable only to the most determined and devout future students of your PMD faith. This secret, coded message will be pretty extensive. You'll need to explain the necessity of the shelters and the gravity of the threats. You'll need to explain about the 18-month period of peace and urge them to take advantage of that window of opportunity for their clandestine project.
But wait, is 18 months really enough time for such a project -- particularly given the supply disruptions likely to follow in the aftermath of the Rapture? This huge, globally coordinated project would seem a more plausible undertaking for Christians now, before the Rapture.
Think of it, instead of merely leaving a collection of vague, I-told-you-so videos for the post-Rapture world to find, we could leave them a fully constructed, fully stocked global network of ready-for-use hidden shelters. That would, in a way, allow us to play a part in -- and to claim at least partial credit for -- the great global soul harvest of the Last Days. Constructing those tunnels now without the secret getting out might be difficult, but not impossible -- and it would be far easier for us than it would be for them.
That leaves only the last hurdle of figuring out some way to let these future Christians know of the legacy we have provided, but doing so in a way that we can be sure the Antichrist and his legions will not be able to decipher. We can't just leave the keys under the doormats of our churches with notes explaining where the secret trap doors are. Such instructions would need to be left -- embedded or encoded -- where only the truly devout could find them.
Here the PMDs' arcane skill set will prove useful. They're enthusiastic students of intertextual splicing, numerology and coded symbolism. Employing those skills, a shrewd author -- or authors -- might construct a book which, while outwardly appearing to tell one story, secretly contained a second, hidden and more detailed narrative.
Such a book, or set of books, might be difficult to construct so that it worked on both levels. It might mean that in order to communicate the coded message with as much precision and detail as possible, the authors would have to sacrifice style, plot, characterization, continuity, etc., in the secondary, surface-level story. So be it -- the encoded instructions would be the books' only true priority. And anyway it might actually be useful if the books seemed unreadable, sloppy and dull -- that would discourage casual readers from inspecting them too closely and inadvertently stumbling onto their coded message. Ideally, the subject matter would be something that would seem off-putting to the Antichrist and his followers, but attractive to the intended audience of new believers in the post-Rapture world. You could even make the surface-level story about people just like those intended readers, that way they'd be sure to pay at least some attention.
You see what I'm getting at. I offer this as an actual possibility for your consideration.
1. Just as comic books sometimes come out with multiple covers, to take advantage of the collectors who absolutely must buy each and every version, so too there are at least two different versions of X-Men Origins: Wolverine out there, each with a different "Easter egg" at the end that will "push the storyline forward." Fans who want to see both versions will have to pay to see the movie twice -- or they could wait for YouTube, I guess. Expect to see the studio's lawyers playing whack-a-mole with that and other online video sites over the weekend. -- Patrick Goldstein (x2), FirstShowing.net, David Poland
2. But what does this reference to "pushing the storyline forward" mean? Will Wolverine lay the groundwork for X-Men: First Class? We already know that Wolverine features new actor Tim Pocock as a younger version of Cyclops, the laser-eyed character who was played by James Marsden in the original trilogy -- and in a recent interview, producer Lauren Shuler Donner said young Cyclops would be featured in First Class, along with young Jean Grey and young Beast: "It is the first class of Xavier's school, way back when . . . hopefully First Class will become its own franchise and we can follow them as they grow up." -- Comics Continuum
3. Or will it lay the groundwork for a movie devoted to Deadpool? Ryan Reynolds, the actor who plays Deadpool in the current film, says he would be very interested in doing a spin-off movie based on that character, but he says he would want it to be much, much more faithful to the original comic-book character than the current movie is. -- MTV Movie News, MTV Splash Page
4. Or will it lay the groundwork for yet another Wolverine movie? Hugh Jackman admits that he has been "talking to writers" about doing such a film. -- MTV Splash Page (x2)
5. And let's not forget that Magneto prequel, which producer Lauren Shuler Donner says is also waiting in the wings, depending on how well the Wolverine prequel does at the box office. -- Sci Fi Wire
6. In other Marvel-related news, Sony Pictures chiefs Amy Pascal and Michael Lynton say they are open to the possibility of making Spider-Man 4 in 3-D. Meanwhile, director Sam Raimi says Spider-Man 3 (2007) wasn't as good as the first two films because he didn't have as much creative control on that film as he did on its predecessors. He says the script for the new film is due this summer, and he hopes to meet with Kirsten Dunst soon to convince her to play Mary Jane Watson again. The film is currently scheduled to hit theatres on May 6, 2011. -- Forbes, Screen Rant, Sci Fi Wire (x2), IGN.com, MTV Splash Page
7. Meanwhile, Sony is developing a movie devoted to the supervillain Venom. Zombieland co-writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese won't say whether their film takes the Spider-Man 3 version of the character into account, but they do say that they have already turned in the first draft of their script. -- Sci Fi Wire, ComingSoon.net, MTV Splash Page
9. The cameras have been rolling on Iron Man 2 for a few weeks now, and director Jon Favreau has been Twittering the production every step of the way. Story details are still sketchy, but Robert Downey Jr. has revealed that this movie will not be based on the 'Demon in a Bottle' storyline -- though that storyline may come up in one of the subsequent sequels -- and he says the story will basically be about "how a dysfunctional family saves life on Earth as we know it." The story may also involve a love triangle between Tony Stark, Pepper Potts and the new character Black Widow, who will be played by Scarlett Johansson. Other returning actors include Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and Clark Gregg as SHIELD agent Phil Coulson. New actors include: Don Cheadle as James Rhodes (replacing the original film's Terrence Howard); Mickey Rourke as the Russian villain Whiplash; Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer; comedian Garry Shandling as a U.S. senator; and Kate Mara in an as-yet-unspecified role. -- MTV Splash Page (x2, x3, x4), Collider.com, Nikki Finke (x2), Hollywood Reporter, Sci Fi Wire, Variety, IESB.net, Jeffrey Wells, USA Today
10. Meanwhile, Faran Tahir, who played the villain Raza in the original Iron Man, speculates that there might be a part for him in Iron Man 3, depending on what Favreau and his writers do with the villainous person or persons known as "the Mandarin". -- Sci Fi Wire, MTV Splash Page
11. Kenneth Branagh is still working on his Thor movie and is "thinking ahead" to how his tale of the Nordic god might connect to the more tech-based storylines of Iron Man and the other Avengers characters. Casting rumours have come and gone with regard to who might play Thor himself, but one of the more persistent rumours is that Branagh might want Josh Hartnett to play the villainous god Loki. -- MTV Splash Page (x2, x3), IESB.net
12. Speaking of The Avengers, Marvel Studios has delayed the release of that film to May 2012, to give the intervening films a little more breathing room. And if Marvel sticks to the current schedule, then its properties will probably end up owning the first weekend in May for six years straight: Spider-Man 3 in 2007, Iron Man in 2008, X-Men Origins: Wolverine in 2009, Iron Man 2 in 2010, Spider-Man 4 in 2011 and The Avengers in 2012. -- ComingSoon.net, Hollywood Reporter, Variety
13. And now for something completely different: Vin Diesel says he is interested in playing Doctor Doom or possibly even Namor the Sub-Mariner. -- MTV Splash Page
14. Marvel Entertainment is developing a "writers group" that will consist of roughly half-a-dozen writers whose job it will be to convert some of the company's lesser-known comic books into movie scripts. The group will reportedly focus on characters like "Black Panther, Cable, Doctor Strange, Iron Fist, Nighthawk and Vision." -- Variety, Nikki Finke
Born, raised, married, and still living in Vancouver, British Columbia. In addition to a 2005 Evangelical Press Association award-winning film column for BC Christian News, my articles have appeared in such publications as Books & Culture, Christianity Today, Bible Review, Faith Today, ChristianWeek, the Vancouver Courier, the Vancouver Sun, the Georgia Straight and Beliefnet.com. I am a member of the Vancouver Film Critics Circle and the Faith and Film Critics Circle.
