Star Trek sequel -- please, no Khan!

Anthony Pascale at TrekMovie.com notes that we are now exactly two years away from June 29, 2012 -- the intended release date for the next Star Trek movie. This is kind of remarkable, when you think about it, because the last Star Trek movie came out over a year ago, and gaps of three years or more are almost unheard of in this franchise; indeed, the only longer gaps on record are the four years between Insurrection (1998) and Nemesis (2002) and the six and a half years between Nemesis and last year's reboot.

Anyway. Along the way, Pascale once again floats the possibility that the sequel might bring back Khan Noonien Singh, the villain who was played oh-so-memorably by Ricardo Montalban in an episode of the original TV series and then again, 15 years later, in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). And this, I think, would be a bad idea, for several reasons.

First: The new movies are taking place on an alternate timeline that branches off from shortly before the birth of James T. Kirk. And when Khan was first introduced in the original series, he was drifting in space in suspended animation and had been doing so for over two centuries. So that means Khan, in this new timeline, would have to be drifting in space in suspended animation right now, and Kirk-Pine would have to find Khan in pretty much the exact same condition that Kirk-Shatner found him in. Among other things, this means that Khan will not be the vengeful Captain Ahab that he was in Wrath of Khan; he simply doesn't have any of that history yet, i.e. the history of being resuscitated by Kirk, seducing one of Kirk's crewmembers, trying to take over the Enterprise, being left on Ceti Alpha V by Kirk, witnessing the death of his wife and many other followers when Ceti Alpha VI explodes, and nursing his hatred of Kirk for years afterwards. The Khan of the original series may have been a noteworthy villain on some level, but he was not yet what most people think of nowadays when they think of "Khaaaaaaan!" -- so anyone who goes to the next movie expecting a remake of Wrath of Khan will be sorely disappointed. Or at least, they should be -- and if they aren't, it will almost certainly be because the filmmakers have ignored the continuity issues that they themselves wrote into the reboot, and thus, some other group will end up being disappointed.

Second: Spock-Nimoy actually died because of Khan. (And then he was brought back to life by the Genesis Wave.) Spock-Nimoy has now come back in time and knows where all these future threats lie (and not just Khan, but V'Ger, the Whale Probe, the Borg, etc.). So if Spock-Nimoy doesn't warn Starfleet or Spock-Quinto about all these various threats, then that, in a nutshell, would be lame. Very, very lame. At any rate, there is no reason why anybody should be "surprised" when they come across Khan on this new timeline, the way they were when they came across him on the original timeline. There would be no need to get acquainted with the man, to figure out whether he really is the Khan of history, to take time sussing out whether he really is a villain like the history books seem to indicate and, if so, what he is capable of; instead, thanks to Spock-Nimoy's encounters with Khan, the people of this timeline should know in advance exactly who he is and just how careful they ought to be around him.

Third: The whole point of Khan, originally, was that he came from the 20th century. I repeat: He came from the 20th century. Not the 21st century, which is where we are now, but the 20th century. Back in the 1960s, when the character was invented, it was established that Khan had been a genetically-engineered super-human who ruled a vast swath of the Earth's population for several years in the 1990s ... and then, when he and his followers were deposed, they fled our planet in one of those large "sleeper" ships that we use to get from planet to planet within our solar system. ...Oh, wait, what's that? We didn't use sleeper ships in the 1990s, and we didn't use them in the 2000s either, and now that we're in the 2010s we still don't have any plans to use them in the immediate future? Oops. Now, of course, no one expected the Star Trek franchise to last this long, and to keep on churning out new stories nearly 50 years after the series first began. And back in the 1960s, the 1990s must have sounded pretty futuristic (but without being too futuristic; like I say, the whole point of Khan, originally, was that he came from the 20th century, i.e. our century). So I don't hold any of this against the original episode. But details like these have created anomalies that the other Star Trek shows have had to steer around (e.g., when the cast of Star Trek: Voyager was sent back in time to North America in 1996, they never mentioned that Khan is supposed to be ruling a huge section of Asia at that time). Do the makers of the new movie actually want to open this can of worms, either by acknowledging the continuity problems or by ignoring the existing continuity altogether?

Fourth: Does the new movie series want to be its own thing, or is it forever going to be aping the original series? Granted, this is a problem that has plagued other branches of this franchise; when Star Trek: The Next Generation made the jump to the big screen, its first two movies were tied to the original series and used time-travel to make this connection (Generations featured Kirk, Scotty and Chekov, as played by the original actors; while First Contact featured Zefram Cochrane, as played by a brand-new actor), but its next two movies were not connected to the original series, and they are generally regarded as two of the weakest and least successful Star Trek movies ever made. So keeping the new movies tethered to the original series makes a certain sense, on that level; it keeps things within a certain "safety zone". But then, if all Abrams and company are doing is a sort of karaoke version of the original series, can we really say the series is boldly going anywhere any more?

Fifth, and on a related note: The J.J. Abrams movie has already borrowed several elements from Wrath of Khan, from the Centaurian slugs (which look and function a lot like Ceti eels) to the vengeful-widower villain to the Kobayashi Maru subplot to the closing Leonard Nimoy voice-over. The next movie should probably find a new well to drink from.

Anyway. There are probably other reasons I could mention, but these are the first that come to mind. Can you think of any others? Or, conversely, can you think of any reasons why adding Khan to the mix would be a good thing?

Twilight -- bad for wives, good for dads?

Another year, another Twilight movie -- and with that movie, another round of articles on the franchise and its merits (or the lack thereof). Consider the following two items, which I came across almost simultaneously yesterday -- and which seem to pull in opposite directions, regarding the effect this franchise is having on family life:

When 'Twilight' fandom becomes addiction
Chrystal Johnson didn't think there was anything unhealthy about her all-consuming fixation with "The Twilight Saga" — until she discovered it was sucking the life out of her marriage.
Los Angeles Times, June 27

Twi-Dads: Hooked on Twilight, but don’t tell their friends
They may be the film franchise’s most unlikely fan base, but they say the rewards are worth it for the father-daughter bonding
Globe and Mail, June 28

Just for the record, as for me and my house, my daughter is still learning how to read and won't be going anywhere near these books for years, while my wife has zero interest in the franchise whatsoever.

I, on the other hand, must admit that I am looking forward to seeing The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, which opens at midnight tonight, if only because the following trailer had me weeping with laughter when it first came out a couple months ago:

Canadian box-office stats -- June 27

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.

Sex and the City 2 -- CDN $11,180,000 -- N.AM $93,072,615 -- 12.0%
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time -- CDN $9,330,000 -- N.AM $86,221,879 -- 10.8%
Get Him to the Greek -- CDN $5,780,000 -- N.AM $54,616,495 -- 10.6%
Shrek Forever After -- CDN $22,780,000 -- N.AM $229,539,089 -- 9.9%
Iron Man 2 -- CDN $27,580,000 -- N.AM $306,943,647 -- 9.0%
The A-Team -- CDN $5,630,000 -- N.AM $63,047,432 -- 8.9%
Knight and Day -- CDN $2,220,000 -- N.AM $27,428,513 -- 8.1%
The Karate Kid -- CDN $10,070,000 -- N.AM $135,788,721 -- 7.4%
Grown Ups -- CDN $2,960,000 -- N.AM $40,506,562 -- 7.3%
Toy Story 3 -- CDN $13,970,000 -- N.AM $226,889,351 -- 6.2%

A couple of discrepancies: Sex and the City 2 and Iron Man 2 were #9 and #10 on the Canadian chart, respectively (they were #12 and #11 in North America as a whole), while Killers and Jonah Hex were #9 and #10 on the North American chart, respectively (they were #11 and #12 in Canada).

Jane Russell -- a brief interview

Jason Apuzzo at the newly-revived Libertas website noted that it was Jane Russell's 89th birthday a couple days ago -- and this, in turn, reminded me that I had never gotten around to posting the interview that I did with her about a year and a half ago. So here it is. (And just for the record, while I don't share Russell's particular mixture of faith and politics, I did grow up watching a few of her films, and my sisters and I still sing some of the songs that Russell sang in those films, so hearing that voice sing a few lines over the phone to me was one of the highlights of my journalistic career to date.)

- - -

By Peter T. Chattaway

She was one of the most celebrated sex symbols of the 1940s -- and she was also a born-again Christian who hosted Bible studies in her home.

Jane Russell was only 19 years old when she signed a seven-year contract with legendary movie mogul Howard Hughes -- and she spent most of those seven years waiting for her first film to be released. The Outlaw was produced in 1941 and had a limited release in 1943, but it didn't play to a wide audience until 1946 -- largely because of a controversy over the way the film drew attention to Russell's figure.

Russell's second film, Young Widow, also came out in 1946, and after that, she stayed fairly busy on the big screen until the late 1950s, co-starring with the likes of Bob Hope (The Paleface), Roy Rogers (Son of Paleface) and Marilyn Monroe (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) in movies that capitalized not only on her appearance, but on her tough-gal persona.

Russell hasn't acted in a movie since 1970, but she still grants interviews for documentaries and TV shows. Her latest appearance is in Hollywood on Fire, a documentary about Christians working in the movie industry; for the most part, the film focuses on current filmmakers, but Russell helps to keep the film rooted in Hollywood's past, as well.

She spoke to me by phone from her home in the Santa Maria Valley in California.

What sort of religious background did you have, if any?

Jane Russell: I gave my heart to the Lord when I was five. And my mother, who had been an actress -- a stage actress -- became one of the best Bible teachers I ever heard, and I had four brothers, and we heard a Bible story every day. Things happened later in my life where I thought I knew what I was going to do, but instead of that, these things happened -- I call them the Lord's accidents. They're not accidents to him at all, he's got it all planned, but it turns you around and you're doing something you didn't think you were going to.

Would you say it was part of God's plan for you to be in the movie industry, then?

Russell: Yes, I guess so, because he sure got me in there.

Over the years, churches and Christians have very often been skeptical about Hollywood or concerned about it or opposed to it, even. How was it, as a Christian getting into Hollywood back then?

Russell: Well it wasn't difficult in those days to be a Christian. In fact, most of the studio heads and everything were Republicans, not Democrats, and today, Hollywood is nothing like it was, when I was in there. It's just turned around. I used to go, with the chaplain of California, to Republican things, and people would say, "You're from Hollywood, what are you doing here?" And I said, "Listen, when I was in Hollywood, everything was absolutely different." And I have a funny saying that what I am is a mean-spirited narrow-minded right-wing conservative Christian bigot -- and I'm not bigoted about race at all, I am bigoted about those idiots that are trying to take the Ten Commandments off the wall [in courtrooms], the Bible out of school, and prayer even out of football games. So they just laugh and say, "Oh, well, you're one of us."

I was thinking partly about one of your first films, The Outlaw, which was held up for a few years. Wasn't there some controversy over that?

Russell: Oh yeah, there was a big fuss. There was a big fuss.

That seems like the sort of thing that churches might have had a problem with. As a Christian in the middle of that, how did you see that?

Russell: Well, I knew there was absolutely nothing wrong with the picture. The guys had gotten me on location, and I was just trying to help keep things going and do whatever it is that they needed, so a whole bunch of them were on location, and it was a little bit of a hillside coming down, and they had two pails put down, and they said, "Now Janie, you come down and pick up the pails." Well, I had the normal costume thing on, so I leaned down and picked up the pails; I had no idea what they were doing, and I sure found out.

And I went to the director, Howard Hawks, in tears, and he said, "Now listen, you're a big girl now, and you've got to take care of yourself. And when anybody asks you to do something that makes you nervous, you say 'No,' loud and clear." Well that was the best thing anybody ever said to me. And after that, the photographers would get up on a balcony or something, and they would ask, "Now Janie, walk under here," and I would stand there with my hands on my hips and say "No," and they would pack up their gear and go. It was an amazing time. But all it was about was some cleavage! Today they're doing cleavage in the back.

Did anybody at home or anybody at church ask you about that? Did they ever say, "Jane, why are you doing this kind of movie if you're a believer?"

Russell: Well, fortunately, we never belonged to a denomination. It was always Bible, Bible, Bible. And the fact that my mother had been an actress was very helpful. She knew that acting was not of the devil, which some of the churches thought. You weren't supposed to go to movies, in some churches, and we never belonged to one, and my mom knew better. So fortunately, I was not invited out of a church.

How many of your fellow actors or filmmakers were Christians like you?

Russell: In those days we had what we called the Hollywood Christian Group. It was from the Presbyterian church in Hollywood, there was a woman that was absolutely so smart. She said "I want the president of USC and the president of UCLA in my Bible class," and she got them both, and then the kids from both of those universities were coming together, even if it was just the boys checking out the girls and vice versa. But she ended up with about five ministers that came out of that group. One of them ended up going into Washington, and it was just amazing. So that's the kind of thing she planned.

And she gathered Connie Haines the singer, and myself, and Rhonda Fleming and Della Russell, and she said, "If you girls would invite stars who have come from other states into your home and have a minister come and give them a talk, they would all come." So we started doing that, and we'd have it at my house or at Connie's house, different houses, and it was always actors and it got bigger and bigger and finally it got so big that you couldn't use a home any more, so they started having it in theatres or Sunday classes or something. Roy Rogers and Dale, they both were coming after it got bigger and bigger. They were mostly actors in it, you see, and they didn't feel strange going to a new church, and they would all come, every time. That's why it got so big. It was very popular.

When you worked with Roy Rogers on Son of Paleface, did you ever talk about your faith on the set? Was it a subject that ever came up?

Russell: Well, there was nothing about anybody being against being a Christian in those days. It was not at all like it is today. We could talk about anything we wanted to, sure. And Dale ended up having a class of her own.

Was the Bible study already happening when you made that movie, or did that come later?

Russell: It was in the early '40s that we started the class, and then, after we were all working -- Beryl Davis was a singer, and her church was Episcopalian, and they were having a fundraiser, so she had invited us, Connie Haines and myself, to come to the fundraiser and make an appearance. And we were standing backstage, and I said, "Well Connie's going to sing, what are we going to do, sit there with egg on our face?" And Connie said, "I've been thinking, we might be able to teach these two" -- one was Catholic and one was Episcopal, and Connie had come from a Baptist church, and I didn't belong to a particular church but I knew all the hand-clapping spirituals that the other two didn't know -- so she said, "Maybe we can teach them a chorus of 'Do lord, o do Lord, o do remember me.'"

So we did, we taught them a chorus of that, and Connie went out and sang, and then she invited us out, and we all did 'Do Lord,' and then we came backstage and we said, "I guess that was okay, it was pretty good, it was fun." There's a knock on the door, it's a man from Coral Records, and he wants to know if we would record that for Coral Records. Now that's what I call the Lord's accident. He had been in the audience, they had never done anything spiritual on Coral Records or on any of the other record companies -- there were religious record companies and they did it but not the regular ones that were doing just normal singing -- so we said, "Well sure." We were shocked, and we ended up doing it, and it sold so many copies that they couldn't believe it. And then they wanted to know if we'd do an album, and we did.

And we ended up travelling to Las Vegas, and we were in Mr. Blackwell gowns, sequins, and it was absolutely amazing. We're going to Vegas, we're going to Chicago, we're going to New York, they just had us going all over the place, and we ended up with another album from Capitol. And it was all kind of hand-clapping spiritual songs. "Joshua fit the battle of Jericho, Jericho, Jericho..." All those songs that a lot of people, the Episcopals and the Catholics, never did. So they liked it, and we just ended up doing it, and it was a lot of fun, because instead of just traveling by yourself, you've got your buddies.

I have also heard that you're something of a pro-life advocate. Can you talk about that at all?

Russell: Yes. I [had an abortion] before I was married, and I almost died, and there was a real judgment on there, and I thought, "Well, if I can't have any children, I'm going to adopt them." So I got involved in adoption, and it was like the Lord just led me around by the nose to the right people, and we finally got an organization called WAIF [World Adoption International Fund] going, because a waif is a child without a home, and I got totally involved with that, and it was just wonderful. And Mom would say things like, "There's a path the Lord wants you to go on, and if you fall off, he will rub your nose in it, and then you'll know what's wrong with that situation, and he'll try to help fix it." And she said that's the way all the charities have gotten started: it's always somebody has had their nose rubbed in that problem, and that's what it was, and we just started working on adoption. We got lives changed, we got children coming in from other countries, and it was amazing.

If a Christian were looking at getting into the film industry today, what sort of advice would you give them?

Russell: Good luck, honey!

And if they still wanted to get involved?

Russell: Well go ahead and do it, for heaven's sakes. But you don't have to break the Lord's rules in it.

Canadian box-office stats -- June 20

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.

Sex and the City 2 -- CDN $10,640,000 -- N.AM $90,170,101 -- 11.8%
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time -- CDN $8,500,000 -- N.AM $80,800,574 -- 10.5%
Get Him to the Greek -- CDN $4,810,000 -- N.AM $47,844,275 -- 10.1%
Shrek Forever After -- CDN $21,900,000 -- N.AM $223,076,925 -- 9.8%
Iron Man 2 -- CDN $27,320,000 -- N.AM $304,210,329 -- 9.0%
The A-Team -- CDN $4,200,000 -- N.AM $50,427,588 -- 8.3%
Killers -- CDN $2,910,000 -- N.AM $39,302,411 -- 7.4%
Jonah Hex -- CDN $373,400 -- N.AM $5,379,365 -- 6.9%
The Karate Kid -- CDN $7,330,000 -- N.AM $107,130,239 -- 6.8%
Toy Story 3 -- CDN $5,640,000 -- N.AM $110,307,189 -- 5.1%

A couple of discrepancies: Sex and the City 2 was #7 on the Canadian chart (it was #11 in North America as a whole), while Marmaduke was #10 on the North American chart (it was #12 in Canada).

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader -- the first trailer!

I haven't read the book version of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in a few years now, so I don't know quite how to pick this trailer apart just yet -- but I'm sure the true Narnia fans out there will be chiming in pretty soon. In the meantime, behold:

Oh that end-times religion ...

I've had Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth on the brain these last few weeks, so I figured now was as good a time as any to note that the film version of Lindsey's book, narrated by Orson Welles, is currently available for viewing on YouTube.



My essay on the film, which I wrote for a course on documentary films in 1996, is still available here -- though a number of the links have died since I last updated the page nine years ago. (Among other things, you can no longer download the Daniel Amos album Shotgun Angel from mp3.com.)

It's funny, and kind of cool, that this film exists on YouTube now. It was originally produced in the late 1970s, and it's full of dire predictions for the 1980s, none of which came true. My parents taped it off TV at some point back then, and I watched it more often than I care to remember. (Part of the appeal was that the film concludes with a lengthy, and arguably gratuitous, montage of nuclear explosions; when you're a preteen or teenaged boy, you kind of go for that sort of thing.) The film remained pretty obscure, though, so when I pitched an essay on it to my film instructor at UBC, he agreed but only on the condition that I would be able to lend him a copy of the film itself. So imagine my surprise when I saw that the film was available on DVD just a few years later; apparently there was still a market for this film in the late 1990s, even though its predictions for the 1980s had all turned out to be wrong. And now, here it is on YouTube, and in much better quality than the VHS copy I lent to my instructor.

Quick footnote to my UBC story: Shortly after I finished the essay, my class watched a film called Sherman's March (1986), in which director Ross McElwee tours the southern states (the so-called "Bible Belt") and profiles some of the women in his life -- and one of them, at one point, begins talking about the Rapture and the Second Coming. At this point, my instructor and I gave each other a look, and I had the delightful feeling that I had helped to put this small moment into a much bigger context for him.

Anyway. Why, you ask, have I had The Late Great Planet Earth on the brain lately? Four reasons, all of them unrelated:

First, Dan Gardner at the Ottawa Citizen wrote a column on May 30 comparing the doom-and-gloom "experts" of the current era to the doom-and-gloom "experts" of the 1970s -- and although he doesn't get into the religious side of that phenomenon, the fact is, people like Lindsey capitalized on the paranoia and pessimism of their times and are no doubt trying to do so again, now.

Second, I took part in another Kindlings Muse podcast two weeks ago, this time on the topic 'Is There Life after Fundamentalism?', and I found it impossible to discuss this subject -- which was originally going to be called 'Growing Up Fundamentalist' in honour of Stefan Ulstein's book of that name -- without discussing the role that Lindsey and his fellow dispensationalists played in shaping the evangelical culture of my own youth.

Third, Dana Key of the Christian rock band DeGarmo & Key died of a ruptured blood clot on June 6. DeGarmo & Key occupy a significant footnote in pop-music history as the first Christian band to get a music video on MTV, back in 1985 -- and, as it happens, the video in question was for an end-times flavoured song called 'Six Six Six'. Ironically, however, the song was pulled from rotation because its depiction of the death of the Antichrist was deemed too violent -- and so the first Christian music video to get significant secular airplay ran afoul of the same anti-sex-and-violence fervour that was propelling the Parents Music Resource Centre and similar conservative groups at that time. In the end, a slightly censored version of the music video was admitted back into MTV rotation; you can watch the before and after versions at YouTube.

Finally, Fred "Slacktivist" Clark interrupted his weekly page-by-page evisceration of the Left Behind books last week to take a deeper look at the similarities and differences between Lindsey's take on the end times and the novels that Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins began writing in the mid-1990s -- right around the time I wrote my essay on Lindsey's film, as it happens.

Oh, and for the Trekkies out there: Yes, I do believe that the cliff from which the false prophet falls in the clip above -- shortly after the 3:15 mark -- is the famous "Gorn Rock" that has appeared in several of the Star Trek episodes and movies.

The White Witch returns to the big screen, again.

Aslan may have killed her in the first Narnia movie, but that hasn't stopped the White Witch from showing up in all of the sequels. First some dissident Narnians tried to bring her back from the dead in Prince Caspian. Then, a few weeks ago, her face showed up on the newest display ad for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. And now, reports The Torch Online, the possibility that she might have a role, however small, in all of the remaining sequels is "under consideration." (Within the original novels, she appeared in only one of the six sequels, namely The Magician's Nephew, and that one hasn't been turned into a film yet.)

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader doesn't come to theatres until December, and the first trailer won't premiere online until tomorrow night, so if you're wondering just what the White Witch is doing in this latest installment of the franchise, there isn't a lot of information to go by just yet. But for what it's worth, executive producer Perry Moore tells The Torch Online, cryptically: "She appears right where you think she would when you read the book — in a surprising way you could never guess that is at the same time true to the core of the book." So we'd "think" it but we'd never "guess" it? How does that work? Meanwhile, Paul Martin at Narnia Fans says the White Witch will return "for a dream sequence and nothing more," and that her appearance in the current sequel will likely be "shorter" than it was in the previous sequel.

Canadian box-office stats -- June 13

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.

Robin Hood -- CDN $12,300,000 -- N.AM $99,463,670 -- 12.4%
Sex and the City 2 -- CDN $9,760,000 -- N.AM $84,658,826 -- 11.5%
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time -- CDN $7,440,000 -- N.AM $72,228,302 -- 10.3%
Shrek Forever After -- CDN $20,600,000 -- N.AM $210,022,557 -- 9.8%
Get Him to the Greek -- CDN $3,540,000 -- N.AM $36,400,720 -- 9.7%
Iron Man 2 -- CDN $26,890,000 -- N.AM $299,282,390 -- 9.0%
The A-Team -- CDN $1,970,000 -- N.AM $25,669,455 -- 7.7%
Killers -- CDN $2,180,000 -- N.AM $30,261,624 -- 7.2%
Marmaduke -- CDN $1,510,000 -- N.AM $22,285,540 -- 6.8%
The Karate Kid -- CDN $3,580,000 -- N.AM $55,665,805 -- 6.4%

A couple of discrepancies: Robin Hood was #10 on the Canadian chart (it was #11 in North America as a whole), while Splice was #10 on the North American chart (it was #11 in Canada).

Toy Story 3 -- "welcome yet nonessential"?

Remember what I said a few months ago about the three phases of Pixar's history, and how this newest sequel-filled phase seems to represent a retreat of sorts from the artistic ambitions of the second phase?

The reviews of Toy Story 3 have started to trickle out, ten days before the movie's release, and some of them are echoing these concerns. Take, for example, Peter Debruge at Variety magazine:

Andy outgrows his anthropomorphic amigos Buzz and Woody in "Toy Story 3," the franchise's third (and final?) installment -- and as it turns out, 15 years after launching the computer-animated toon revolution, Pixar has outgrown them, too. Whereas "Toy Story 2" treated auds to a character-based sequel that handily justified its existence, this tertiary adventure delivers welcome yet nonessential fun, landing well after its creators have grown up and succeeded toying with more sophisticated stories. . . .

Pixar has essentially set an impossible standard for itself, having previously delivered the rare sequel that improves on the original, then followed that up with a run of exceptional work. This latest script, written by "Little Miss Sunshine's" Michael Arndt from a story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton and Unkrich, feels more gag-driven than the studio's previous efforts -- essentially borrowing a page from DreamWorks Animation, chasing snappy humor over heart-on-their-sleeve sentimentality, within a few months of DreamWorks going the Pixar route with the sincere storytelling of "How to Train Your Dragon." . . .

That last comment is especially interesting, given that How to Train Your Dragon was co-directed by a former Disney animator who basically left the company after running into creative differences with Pixar chief John Lasseter (over the film that ended up becoming Bolt).

UPDATE: Steven D. Greydanus also links to Debruge's review, and puts Toy Story 3 within the broader context of what seems likely to be a rather lacklustre summer, as far as family films go ("It might be second-string Pixar, but given Pixar’s overall track record of excellence even second-string Pixar is likely to equal, and probably to surpass, the very best the competition has to offer").

Canadian box-office stats -- June 6

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.

Robin Hood -- CDN $11,590,000 -- N.AM $94,496,010 -- 12.3%
Sex and the City 2 -- CDN $8,010,000 -- N.AM $73,128,387 -- 10.9%
Shrek Forever After -- CDN $17,990,000 -- N.AM $183,229,453 -- 9.8%
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time -- CDN $5,850,000 -- N.AM $59,621,721 -- 9.8%
Splice -- CDN $715,780 -- N.AM $7,385,277 -- 9.7%
Iron Man 2 -- CDN $26,160,000 -- N.AM $291,429,870 -- 8.9%
Get Him to the Greek -- CDN $1,560,000 -- N.AM $17,570,955 -- 8.9%
Letters to Juliet -- CDN $3,660,000 -- N.AM $43,337,836 -- 8.4%
Marmaduke -- CDN $876,575 -- N.AM $11,599,661 -- 7.6%
Killers -- CDN $1,050,000 -- N.AM $15,837,266 -- 6.6%

Sex and the Agora.

Steven D. Greydanus has done such a thorough job deconstructing Agora -- which opened in the U.S. last week and opens in Canada next week -- that I have little to add. (Maybe later, though.)

One of the many good points he makes is that the film goes out of its way to make its heroine, Hypatia, a modern woman, or a woman that modern audiences can easily identify with, to the point that it obscures or ignores what the historical Hypatia actually stood for. For example:

Agora offers no insight into Hypatia’s neoplatonic asceticism. It prominently depicts, but does not understand, the famous episode in in which she rebuffs a would-be suitor by presenting him with her menstrual rags as graphic evidence of the manifest error of his attraction. No attempt is made to illuminate this distasteful episode for viewers, to explore the distance between Hypatia’s neoplatonic sensibilities and our own “sex-positive” milieu.

Instead, Hypatia’s disinterest in marriage is presented solely in terms readily accessible to modern feminism: Marriage in ancient Alexandria would mean subservience to a husband, the end of her independence and her career. The idea that the biological realities of human reproduction were considered unworthy of a soul seeking the highest good isn’t even on the radar.

With all that in mind, consider this excerpt from an interview with Rachel Weisz, the actress who plays Hypatia in the movie, that appeared in the New York Times two weeks ago:

Ms. Weisz, who in 2006 won an Academy Award as best supporting actress for her role in “The Constant Gardener,” describes herself as “extremely passionate about what I do” and initially found Hypatia’s cool rationality hard to fathom. Early on, she said, she “half-jokingly” suggested a masturbation scene for Hypatia to Mr. Amenábar, who demurred.

“My fear was that she would be a brain on legs, and that is not interesting to watch,” Ms. Weisz explained. “My hope was that she would be passionate and emotional and full of feeling, even though it was not being channeled into the sexual, personal, human realm. She is in love with science, with learning. It turned her on; that was the only way I could think of it.”

Make of that what you will.

Canadian box-office stats -- May 23 & 30

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 Child Prodigy -- CDN $138,546 -- N.AM $138,546 -- 100%
Robin Hood -- CDN $10,150,000 -- N.AM $83,125,570 -- 12.2%
MacGruber -- CDN $758,584 -- N.AM $7,216,320 -- 10.5%
Shrek Forever After -- CDN $13,220,000 -- N.AM $133,061,414 -- 9.9%
Date Night -- CDN $9,140,000 -- N.AM $93,515,463 -- 9.8%
Sex and the City 2 -- CDN $4,350,000 -- N.AM $45,209,967 -- 9.6%
How to Train Your Dragon -- CDN $20,280,000 -- N.AM $212,755,053 -- 9.5%
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time -- CDN $2,740,000 -- N.AM $30,095,259 -- 9.1%
Iron Man 2 -- CDN $24,700,000 -- N.AM $275,035,900 -- 8.9%
Letters to Juliet -- CDN $3,200,000 -- N.AM $36,537,190 -- 8.8%

A couple of discrepancies: The Child Prodigy was #9 on the Canadian chart (it wasn't on the North American chart at all, though if it were, it would be #30), while Just Wright was #7 on the North American chart (it was nowhere in the Canadian Top 20).

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

Kites -- CDN $188,487 -- N.AM $959,329 -- 19.6%
She's Out of My League -- CDN $4,410,000 -- N.AM $31,628,317 -- 13.9%
Robin Hood -- CDN $7,570,000 -- N.AM $66,165,690 -- 11.4%
Date Night -- CDN $8,840,000 -- N.AM $90,748,818 -- 9.7%
How to Train Your Dragon -- CDN $19,970,000 -- N.AM $210,990,918 -- 9.5%
Iron Man 2 -- CDN $21,810,000 -- N.AM $251,026,061 -- 8.7%
MacGruber -- CDN $336,204 -- N.AM $4,043,495 -- 8.3%
Shrek Forever After -- CDN $5,860,000 -- N.AM $70,838,207 -- 8.3%
Letters to Juliet -- CDN $2,260,000 -- N.AM $27,332,507 -- 8.3%
A Nightmare on Elm Street -- CDN $4,350,000 -- N.AM $59,967,500 -- 7.3%

A couple of discrepancies: She's Out of My League was #9 on the Canadian chart (it wasn't on the North American chart at all, though if it were, it would be #30), while Just Wright was #5 on the North American chart (it was #12 in Canada).