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.
1. Universal Pictures, having scored a major international hit with the Abba-themed musical Mamma Mia! last year, is now developing a remake of Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). One director the studio has spoken to -- though they're not in active negotiations with anyone just yet -- is Marc Webb, whose credits include numerous music videos as well as the current indie hit (500) Days of Summer. -- Hollywood Reporter
2.The Lion of Judah is the first computer-animated feature to be made in South Africa, and it happens to concern a bunch of barnyard animals who witness the events surrounding the first Easter. The eclectic cast includes Ernest Borgnine, Sandi Patty and Bruce Marchiano, who played Jesus in the Visual Bible adaptations of Matthew (1993) and Acts (1994) and will apparently do so again for this film. The Lion of Judah doesn't seem to have either a distributor or a firm release date lined up just yet, but in the meantime, you can watch a trailer for the film at its official website. -- Variety, Cartoon Brew
3.Year One is coming to DVD and Blu-Ray in October -- and the bonus features will include an "alternate ending" currently titled "Sodom Destruction". Will there be pillars of salt? -- IGN
4.Magdalena, the comics-based action flick about a modern-day superhero descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene, now has a writer and a director. The writer is Holly Brix, whose credits include The Butterly Effect 3: Revelations; and the director is Ryûhei Kitamura, whose last film was Clive Barker's Midnight Meat Train (2008). Hmmm. Jenna Dewan and Luke Goss are still attached to star. -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter
Last week, I mentioned that there were one and maybe two new movies about Charles Darwin coming up in the near future, to coincide with the 200th anniversary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. Now comes word that yet another movie in that vein is in the works.
National Geographic Television, which is best known for producing documentaries, announced a few days ago that they have just finished principal photography on their first-ever dramatic production, a two-hour movie called Darwin's Darkest Hour that will air on the PBS series Nova October 6. Like Creation, the upcoming Jon Amiel film based on a book by one of Darwin's descendants, Darwin's Darkest Hour will focus on Darwin's relationships with his dying daughter and his devoutly Christian wife as he struggles to write his famous book.
Incidentally, Charles Darwin himself will be played in this film by Henry Ian Cusick, who is probably best known these days as one of the co-stars on Lost but previously got good notices for his performance as Jesus in The Visual Bible's adaptation of The Gospel of John. Darwin's wife Emma will be played by Frances O'Connor, who has starred in such films as Mansfield Park and A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
1.The Chronicles of Narnia:The Voyage of the Dawn Treader began principal photography today ... and it sounds like the filmmakers may once again be adding more unnecessary peril and more gratuitous World War II footage to C.S. Lewis's story. The film's press release suggests that King Caspian and the others are embarking on their "entirely uncharted journey to Aslan's Country" in order to "save Narnia, and all the astonishing creatures in it, from an unfathomable fate." And last month, a casting agency was looking for actors to play English soldiers and nurses bidding farewell to each other. Somehow these bits don't jibe with my memory of the book.
2. Paramount is developing a new film version of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, the Robert C. O'Brien novel that was previously turned by Don Bluth into an animated film called The Secret of NIMH (1982). Neil Burger, director of The Illusionist (2006), is working on the script, and former Walden Media executive Cary Granat is on board to produce. It has been suggested that the new film may be getting the go-ahead because of the popularity of recent rodent movies such as Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007) and G-Force, the latter of which was #1 in the United States this past weekend (though only #3 in Canada). -- Hollywood Reporter
3.Harry Potter director David Yates says the two halves of Deathly Hallows will be very different from one another. The first film "is very verité and documentary and edgy and on the road," and it will feature "a lot of hand-held camera work," while the second film will "bring that fantasy world back in full Cinemascope" and be "a big opera basically, a great big epic with huge battles and very oddly moving, because it concludes the whole saga really. So they're two very different films." Oh, and Bill Nighy -- one of my favorite actors -- will be playing Rufus Scrimgeour, the new Minister of Magic. -- ComingSoon.net, Vanity Fair, BBC News
4. Framelight Productions is developing a film series based on Ian Beck's The Secret History of Tom Truehart and its sequels. The fantasy novels concern "a young boy and his older brothers in the Land of Stories." -- Hollywood Reporter
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.
De père en flic -- CDN $3,740,000 -- N.AM $3,740,000 -- 100% Brüno -- CDN $6,670,000 -- N.AM $56,629,390 -- 11.8% The Ugly Truth -- CDN $2,890,000 -- N.AM $27,605,576 -- 10.5% The Proposal -- CDN $13,500,000 -- N.AM $140,042,989 -- 9.6% Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs -- CDN $16,320,000 -- N.AM $171,499,101 -- 9.5% Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince -- CDN $20,640,000 -- N.AM $221,295,818 -- 9.3% The Hangover -- CDN $22,730,000 -- N.AM $247,073,766 -- 9.2% Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen -- CDN $31,910,000 -- N.AM $379,214,172 -- 8.4% G-Force -- CDN $2,240,000 -- N.AM $31,706,934 -- 7.1% Orphan -- CDN $699,213 -- N.AM $12,871,483 -- 5.4%
A couple of discrepancies: De père en flic was #7 on the Canadian chart (it wasn't on the North American chart at all, though if it were, it would be #17), while Public Enemies was #9 on the North American chart (it was #11 in Canada).
Many of the more impressive scenes involve computer-generated backgrounds and other kinds of special effects, such as a sequence involving a loose bridge of levitating rocks that stretches across a deep, deep chasm. But there is wonder and awe to be had in some of the natural scenery, too. As Trevor, Sean and Hannah hike up an Icelandic volcano near the beginning of the film, we can see the other mountains and the landscape stretch for miles around them, and it's almost enough to make you wonder what an epic, scenic film like, say, Lawrence of Arabia could have looked like if it had been produced in 3D.
I am happy to report that Jeffrey Wells now shares my curiosity.
CT Movies asked me to write a Bible-based movie discussion guide on Harry Potterand the Half-Blood Prince. It is now available for purchase, as a downloadable PDF file, here.
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.
De père en flic -- CDN $2,600,000 -- N.AM $2,600,000 -- 100% Brüno -- CDN $5,610,000 -- N.AM $49,533,475 -- 11.3% My Sister's Keeper -- CDN $4,500,000 -- N.AM $41,507,695 -- 10.8% The Proposal -- CDN $12,280,000 -- N.AM $128,083,273 -- 9.6% Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs -- CDN $13,980,000 -- N.AM $151,865,987 -- 9.2% The Hangover -- CDN $21,590,000 -- N.AM $235,744,423 -- 9.2% Up -- CDN $23,860,000 -- N.AM $279,583,282 -- 8.5% Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen -- CDN $30,340,000 -- N.AM $363,808,123 -- 8.3% Public Enemies -- CDN $6,600,000 -- N.AM $79,639,205 -- 8.3% Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince -- CDN $12,710,000 -- N.AM $158,022,354 -- 8.0%
A couple of discrepancies: De père en flic was #7 on the Canadian chart (it wasn't on the North American chart at all, though if it were, it would be #15), while I Love You Beth Cooper was #10 on the North American chart (it was #11 in Canada).
Archangels with machine guns at the end of the world
It's getting to the point where you could almost base a small theology course on Paul Bettany movies.
The actor has already played an albino assassin monk in The Da Vinci Code, a priest on the lam who joins a medieval morality-play troupe in The Reckoning, and a famous scientist who wrestles with his doubts in the upcoming biopic Creation, and he will soon star in the comic-book adaptation Priest as a man of the cloth who turns against the church to track down some vampires who have kidnapped his niece.
Right now, however, the religion-themed movie of his that's getting all the attention is Legion, in which Bettany will play the machine-gun-toting archangel Michael; director Scott Stewart appeared with co-stars Bettany, Tyrese Gibson and others at the San Diego Comic-Con to promote the film yesterday, and they unveiled a new poster for the film and a few clips, besides.
The premise of this film is more than a little cheesy, not to mention theologically suspect. As Variety put it last year:
Scripted by Stewart and Peter Schink, the thriller casts Bettany as the archangel Michael, the only one standing between mankind and an apocalypse, after God loses faith in humanity. Man's lone hope rests with a group of strangers who must deliver a baby they realize is Christ in his second coming.
And whereas the word "Legion" typically brings to mind the many demons who possessed a single man in Jesus' day (Mark 5:9; Luke 8:30), an even earlier story from Variety indicates that this movie is called Legion because "God loses faith in humanity and sends his legion of angels to wipe out the human race for the second time."
And so, FilmoFilia indicates that one of the villains against whom Michael does battle will apparently be the archangel Gabriel, played here by Kevin Durand. (Durand would not be the first actor to play Gabriel as a bad guy; Christopher Walken did it in The Prophecy and its sequels, as did Tilda Swinton in Constantine.)
Personally, I can sort-of handle a movie that imagines what might happen if Gabriel or one of the other "good" angels turns bad. I'm not very keen on the idea, for the same reason I wouldn't be very keen on the idea of movies that depict my friends or family members as bad guys; if we really believe that Gabriel exists and plays a role in our lives, then we can't just treat him as another mythical figure to re-invent as we will. But a part of me appreciates how the shock of seeing Gabriel as a villain can remind us of what it must have been like when Lucifer turned against God.
No, there is something else that bugs me about this movie's premise. Two things, actually.
First, the idea that God would lose faith in humanity and try to wipe us out again. In the other films where Gabriel has turned into a bad guy, he has done so in rebellion against God. But here, it seems that he is working on God's behalf, in which case God himself would seem to be a bad guy, too; at any rate, the heroic Michael, by fighting Gabriel and all the other angels, would ultimately be fighting against God himself.
What makes this movie's premise even more puzzling is the idea that Christ is already here, inside a woman's womb. Why would the God of this film try to wipe out humanity so soon after sending his Son back to Earth?
And that brings me to my second beef with this movie's premise, namely the idea that the Second Coming will be just like the first, with Jesus being born as a baby, etc. Seriously, it never ceases to amaze me how many secular apocalyptic films pursue this line of thought, from Omen III:The Final Conflict to Bless the Child. It completely misses the point of what the Second Coming is all about. It's not going to be a mere reincarnation.
What makes this movie even more of a curiosity is that it features at least two actors who have been rather open about their own Christian faith. Dennis Quaid spoke to us a few years ago about his spiritual journey (he discussed it at the time with Beliefnet, too); and Doug Jones has talked about how he almost turned down the part of Abe Sapien in Hellboy until he read the script and realized how it "nurtured and challenged" his faith. I'd be curious to know what appealed to them about this script.
(Well, okay, Jones, at least, did discuss this point at Comic-Con yesterday, as per the video clip to the right; he says the film explores the possibility that mankind might be "in a place today that would bring about another flood, as in the days of Noah." Make of that what you will.)
Finally, Charles S. Dutton is playing a character named Percy Walker. That has to be some kind of strange in-joke.
High-Def Digest reports that Warner Brothers plans to release The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen on Blu-Ray later this year. There is no official word yet on whether the disc will include the original 1973 version of the film, but given the announced title -- which was given to the film when it was re-issued in 2000 with extra scenes and special effects -- it doesn't seem likely.
If the original version of the film is left off the disc, then that would be a pity, since the revised version, despite a few improvements, is basically inferior to the original version, thanks to some cheesy bits that I discussed here three years ago. What's more, the original version of the film is long overdue for a remastering as it is; the only edition of it on DVD, at least in North America, is a single-layer disc produced for the film's 25th anniversary in 1998. (The revised version was released on a dual-layer disc in 2000.)
But an even bigger potential problem lurks in the shadows here. What if the Blu-Ray contains not the second version of the film that was released in 2000, but some brand-new third version? What if it really is a version that we've never seen? There would certainly be a precedent for this: director William Friedkin caused a huge controversy earlier this year when he produced a rather ugly-looking version of The French Connection (1971) for Blu-Ray, and there's no reason to assume he wouldn't do the same thing to this film. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
It has been 200 years since Charles Darwin was born, and 150 years since he published his revolutionary book On the Origin of Species. So, naturally, filmmakers are marking the occasion by making rival biopics.
The higher-profile of these, by far, seems to be Creation, starring real-life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly as Charles Darwin and his wife Emma; the Toronto International Film Festival announced last week that its opening gala presentation this year will be the world premiere of this film, which was directed by Jon Amiel and based on a book by Randal Keynes.
(Trivia note: Keynes himself is the great-great-grandson of the Darwins, and he is also the father of Skandar, who plays Edmund in the Narnia movies. So one of the "sons of Adam" who sits on one of the thrones at Cair Paravel is also a "son of Darwin"!)
The TIFF press release describes the Creation story arc this way:
Part ghost story, part psychological thriller, part heart-wrenching love story Creation is the story of Charles Darwin. His great, still controversial, book The Origin of Species depicts nature as a battleground. In Creation the battleground is a man's heart. Torn between his love for his deeply religious wife and his own growing belief in a world where God has no place, Darwin finds himself caught in a struggle between faith and reason, love and truth.
The Darwin we meet in Creation is a young, vibrant father, husband and friend whose mental and physical health gradually buckles under the weight of guilt and grief for a lost child. Ultimately it is the ghost of Annie, his adored 10-year-old daughter, who leads him out of darkness and helps him reconnect with his wife and family. Only then is he able to write the book that changed the world.
Some viewers may recall that Bettany played another early-19th-century naturalist in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World -- only there, his character seemed okay with the idea that God and evolution could co-exist. It will be interesting to see if these two ideas are presented as complete opposites in Creation, or if any common ground will be allowed between them. (If the film is co-presented by Mel Gibson's Icon Films, how atheist could it be?)
Meanwhile, another film about the scientist and his wife is reportedly in the works. Mrs. Darwin will reportedly star Joseph Fiennes and Rosamund Pike, though it is not clear how far along this production is yet, or even whether the cameras have begun to roll on it.
Kevin Miller must like controversy. Last year, the screenwriter and occasional actor co-wrote the documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which provoked a lot of debate about creationism, evolution, Intelligent Design, and the social ramifications thereof. And now, this year, he has a new documentary coming out that just might offend some of the conservatives who rallied to his previous film's defense.
It's called "With God on Our Side," and it examines a phenomenon known as Christian Zionism. This theology teaches that the Jews are God's chosen people and that they have a divine right to the land of Israel. Aspects of this belief system lead some Christians in the West to give uncritical support to Israeli government policies, even those that privilege Jews at the expense of Palestinians. This leads to great suffering for Muslim and Christian Palestinians alike and threatens Israel's security as a whole.
Our film suggests that there is a biblical alternative for Christians who want to love and support the people of Israel, a theology that doesn't favor one people group over another but instead promotes peace and reconciliation for Jews and Palestinians.
The filmmakers hope to release the movie sometime later this year, and it should be interesting to see what kind of debates this movie provokes.
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.
De père en flic -- CDN $1,130,000 -- N.AM $1,130,000 -- 100% My Sister's Keeper -- CDN $3,810,000 -- N.AM $35,915,782 -- 10.6% The Proposal -- CDN $10,820,000 -- N.AM $113,861,076 -- 9.5% Brüno -- CDN $2,890,000 -- N.AM $30,619,130 -- 9.4% The Hangover -- CDN $20,180,000 -- N.AM $222,444,906 -- 9.1% Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs -- CDN $10,560,000 -- N.AM $119,680,193 -- 8.8% Up -- CDN $23,180,000 -- N.AM $273,834,761 -- 8.5% Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen -- CDN $27,910,000 -- N.AM $339,221,800 -- 8.2% Public Enemies -- CDN $5,340,000 -- N.AM $66,221,110 -- 8.1% I Love You, Beth Cooper -- CDN $313,451 -- N.AM $4,919,433 -- 6.4%
A couple of discrepancies: De père en flic was #6 on the Canadian chart (it wasn't on the North American chart at all, though if it were, it would be #14), while The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 was #10 on the North American chart (it was #12 in Canada).
You didn't have to be a Christian to know about Stryper back in the 1980s. Unlike most other Christian rock bands of that era, Stryper, which supposedly got its name from Isaiah 53:5 ("by his stripes we are healed"), toured with secular bands and released its albums on a secular label. But for all their mainstream exposure, I don't believe they ever got played or mentioned in any of the movies made back then.
The filmmakers of today certainly haven't forgotten about them, though. If you look very closely at a couple of recent films, you can see that bits of Stryper iconography have begun to pop up, here and there, on the big screen.
Last year, in Wendy and Lucy, we saw a card or sticker bearing the Stryper logo in the office of a grocery-store manager who sends a woman's life spinning in an unfortunate direction after she is caught shoplifting by an employee who happens to be wearing a cross around his neck. The images are very subtle, but they do suggest that the woman is being judged, in some sense, by religious people who, for whatever reason, have refused to show her mercy.
And now we have the trailer for Whip It!, the directorial debut of Drew Barrymore and the first film to star Ellen Page since her breakout role in Juno. Note the T-shirt that Page's character wears in what seem to be at least three different scenes, in the final minute of the trailer below:
So, what does the T-shirt signify? Well, the movie is based on a book by Shauna Cross called Derby Girl, and here is what it says on pages 100-101:
In an effort to shake off the pink-suit residue and reclaim my personal identity, I wear my favorite thrift-store T-shirt to school the next day: a baseball tee featuring Stryper, circa 1984.
Who's Stryper, you ask? Only the most perfectly awful '80s, Christian, heavy-metal rock band ever. Not that I knew this when I found my beloved T-shirt. I simply swooned over the image of five (sic) guys trying to look tough with their big, permed hair, gobs of makeup, and skinny yellow-and-black-striped spandex pants. In short, a fashion disaster of such major proportions that I had to spend the four dollars on the shirt. It makes me so happy to wear it.
Seriously. One day when you're completely bored, depressed, or both, Google Stryper and have yourself a laugh-fest. Guaranteed.
There's more, but you can check it out for yourself by reading the book -- or by using Amazon.com's "Look Inside!" feature. Suffice it to say, though, that the T-shirt's fate seems to involve a spoiler or two.
Turning to other bands besides Stryper...
Christian music went mainstream in a big way in the '90s, thanks to cross-over hits by Jars of Clay (whose song 'Flood' played over the closing credits of Hard Rain), Sixpence None the Richer (whose song 'Kiss Me' was featured prominently in She's All That) and others. But with the possible exception of Stryper, Christian musicians in the '80s were a bit more obscure.
So... can you think of any other Christian '80s bands that have been referenced in non-Christian films? Either in the '80s themselves or in more recent films, such as the two mentioned here?
Two weeks ago, I took part in the third 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.
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.
My Sister's Keeper -- CDN $2,690,000 -- N.AM $26,518,582 -- 10.1% Year One -- CDN $3,820,000 -- N.AM $38,304,392 -- 9.9% Star Trek -- CDN $24,080,000 -- N.AM $249,838,139 -- 9.6% The Proposal -- CDN $8,990,000 -- N.AM $94,335,111 -- 9.5% The Hangover -- CDN $18,440,000 -- N.AM $205,038,233 -- 9.0% The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 -- CDN $5,140,000 -- N.AM $58,508,070 -- 8.8% Up -- CDN $22,130,000 -- N.AM $264,816,694 -- 8.4% Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs -- CDN $5,560,000 -- N.AM $66,732,868 -- 8.3% Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen -- CDN $23,490,000 -- N.AM $293,355,885 -- 8.0% Public Enemies -- CDN $3,120,000 -- N.AM $40,141,080 -- 7.8%
A couple of discrepancies: Star Trek was #10 on the Canadian chart (it was #11 in North America as a whole), while Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian was #10 on the North American chart (it was #12 in Canada).
The newest issue of BC Christian News is now online, and with it, my film column, which includes brief notes on Year One, the upcoming mini-series version of Ben-Hur, The Surrogate and the upcoming course on 'The Ethics of Filmmaking' at Regent College, which will be taught by Ralph Winter and John Stackhouse.
Karl Malden, who passed away this week at the age of 97, is well-known for many roles, from his Oscar-winning performance opposite Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) to the cop he played opposite Michael Douglas on the TV show The Streets of San Francisco (1972-1977). But the first movies of his that I remember seeing as I was growing up were, appropriately enough, movies in which he co-starred with children.
One of those movies was Captains Courageous (1977), an adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling story about a spoiled teenaged boy who falls overboard and learns a thing or two about maturity and growing up when he is picked up by a "crusty old sea captain" (as the IMDb puts it) played by Malden. I haven't seen this film in decades, but to this day, I'm pretty sure I can remember how Malden's character -- named Disko Troop, of all things, which makes him sound like a refugee from the Village People -- reluctantly takes the boy under his wing and barks the words, "Right hand, starboard! Left hand, port!" When I started taking canoeing lessons at summer camp a few years later, I credited this film with giving me a head start on the terminology.
The other movie was Pollyanna (1960), the first of several films that Hayley Mills starred in for the Walt Disney studio. Here, Malden played the Rev. Paul Ford, a fire-and-brimstone preacher who changes his ways when the title character, an irrepressibly sunny girl played by the 13-year-old Mills, compels him to look up all the "happy texts" in the Bible. So in some ways, this character was the opposite of Malden's role in Captains Courageous: in the Kipling story, the child learned from Malden, but in the Disney movie, Malden learned from the child.
As I got older and learned more about film, I discovered some of Malden's more iconic roles -- all of which have received renewed attention since Malden's death on Wednesday -- and one or two of the shows he worked on are of particular interest for the Christian moviegoer.
Most notably, Malden played a Catholic priest who takes a stand against corruption and injustice in On the Waterfront (1954), a film that reunited him with his Streetcar Named Desire co-star Brando and director Elia Kazan. (This is the film that gave Brando his famous "I coulda been a contender" spiel.) Cathy Lynn Grossman of USA Today notes that Malden's character was closely patterned after a real-life priest named Rev. John Corridan, and she asks if a film grounded in the kind of "clear, moral passion" that Malden's character embodied could possibly be made today without being "pigeon-holed in a 'faith film' category". At any rate, it's certainly debatable whether a film of this sort would even be made by a major studio these days, let alone win eight Academy Awards including Best Picture, as On the Waterfront did. (Malden was nominated again in the Supporting Actor category -- along with his On the Waterfront co-stars Lee J. Cobb and Rod Steiger -- but this time, none of them won.)
Decades later, Malden played another Catholic priest, in an episode of The West Wing (2000). This would prove to be Malden's last on-camera performance, and Sr. Rose Pacatte reports that Malden brought with him some liturgical items that he had used when playing the priest in Kazan's film 46 years earlier -- prompting everyone on the West Wing set to "touch these items with reverence because of their link to this great film."
Malden also played a police inspector in I Confess (1953), perhaps the most Catholic film of Alfred Hitchcock's entire career; it concerns a priest who hears a murderer's confession and is then accused of the murder himself, but he cannot clear his name because it would mean violating the secrecy of the confessional.
Malden himself was not Catholic, but Orthodox. His family was actively involved in a Serbian Orthodox church in Gary, Indiana, and Malden kept ties to that community long after he moved to Hollywood. To what extent his attachment was cultural and to what extent it was religious, who can say, but in 2003, he gave a long and fascinating interview to a Serb-American magazine in which he discussed the various churchmen he had known throughout his life, and how he used to attend liturgy with members of Yul Brynner's family, etc. He also talked about how he and his wife of 70 years, who is Jewish, "never really discussed religion", and how his mother was originally Catholic, became Orthodox when she got married, and then became Catholic again when she spent her last days in an old folks' home.
Whatever his own religious inclinations, Malden was by all accounts a gracious and decent man, standing by friends like Kazan when they were all but ostracized within the industry, and enjoying one of the longest marriages of any Hollywood actor ever. He will be missed.
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.
