Just a few news items to start your week, here …
1. It’s official: the Associated Press reports that, after 18 weeks of declining revenues, 2005 now holds the record for the worst box-office slump since analysts began keeping detailed track of such things; the previous record, of 17 weeks, was set in 1985, the year of Back to the Future. Presumably the fact that six of the top ten films are sequels or remakes has nothing to do with this.
2. Speaking of remakes, Reuters has yet another article on Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. The focus this time is on the September 11 parallels, and how the movie avoids dwelling on the high-ranking military types who dominated the disaster movies of the 1990s, and dwells instead on everyday people and their families. Here’s one bit I found interesting:
Spielberg said the movie also represents his own coming of age, contrasting the choices of the lead character in “Close Encounters,” played by Richard Dreyfus, who left his family to join the aliens, with Cruise’s mission.
The Oscar-winning director of “Saving Private Ryan” (1999) and “Schindler’s List” (1994) noted that “Close Encounters” was made in 1977, before he had children of his own.
“Today I would never have a guy leave his family to go on the mother ship. I would have him do everything to protect his family. In a sense ‘War of The Worlds’ reflects my own maturity in my own life, growing up and now having seven children.”
Incidentally, I finally began re-reading H.G. Wells’s original 1898 novel this weekend, partly to refresh my memory of how it treated religion in comparison to the pious 1953 movie version, and about halfway through, I discovered that I had left a bookmark in my copy of the novel the last time I read it, and on it I had jotted down the page numbers with all the most significant religious references. So if I don’t get around to finishing the novel before tonight’s screening, that’ll come in handy!
3. Meanwhile, the Hollywood Reporter says German film critics are annoyed that Paramount expects them to hold their reviews of War of the Worlds until opening day. My heart bleeds. That’s been standard practice for Paramount in my neck of the woods for years. Although last night an e-pal did send me a link to the Baltimore Sun‘s coverage of the film’s press conference, which comes pretty close to expressing the sort of opinions that I am told pre-release articles are not supposed to express.
4. New Scientist reports that another sci-fi movie may be coming true, sort of:
A voice-operated computer assistant is set to be used in space for the first time on Monday — its operators hope it proves more reliable than “HAL”, the treacherous speaking computer in the movie 2001.
Called Clarissa, the program will initially talk astronauts on the International Space Station through tests of onboard water supplies. But its developers hope it will eventually be used for all computer-related work on the station.
5. The Ottawa Citizen reports that a National Geographic Channel survey indicates that over 5 million Canadians — one sixth of our population — have read The Da Vinci Code, and of those, roughly 1.7 million believe its bogus historical claims to be true. Sigh.
6. The Hollywood Reporter and IndieWIRE report that Twist of Faith, Kirby Dick’s film about an Ohio firefighter “confronting his past in which a Catholic priest sexually abused him,” will play theatrically next month after it is broadcast on HBO. FWIW, the only Dick films I have seen so far are his documentaries Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist (1997) — that’s the one about the performance artist with cystic fibrosis who hammers a nail through his penis — and Derrida (2002; my comments). Could be interesting to see how he handles drama.
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