Newsbites: Karla! Da Vinci! Ratings!

Just a couple news updates.

1. The Globe and Mail and the Hollywood Reporter report that the Montreal World Film Festival has decided not to show Karla after all. “Half a dozen sponsors were going to pull their money,” says one source. I wonder — did any of these sponsors make their decisions with, or without, having seen the film?

2. The New York Times reports on the secrecy and controversy surrounding Ron Howard’s adaptation of The Da Vinci Code. Carl E. Olson, Barbara Nicolosi and Amy Welborn — all of whom were interviewed for the story — have responded at their blogs.

In the story, Nicolosi is quoted as saying, among other things: “The phrase I heard used several times was ‘Passion dollars’; they want to try to get ‘The Passion’ dollars if they can . . . They’re wrong . . . It’s sacrilegious, irreligious. They’re thinking they can ride the ‘Passion’ wave with this. And I said, ‘Are you kidding me?'”

I can see her point, but at the same time, I wonder how much of the box-office success of The Passion of the Christ — which came out around the time The Da Vinci Code became a phenomenal best-seller — was attributable to the fact that consumers are really interested in religious controversy for its own sake, and not necessarily out of a concern for religious orthodoxy.

Meanwhile, the Lincolnshire Echo reports that the producers have had difficulty finding extras for the shoot.

3. The Hollywood Reporter says Miramax will try to get the R rating for its upcoming war movie The Great Raid changed to a PG-13. Says outgoing Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein: “There have been a number of war films with comparable levels of violence that were given a ‘PG-13’ rating, including such films as ‘Hotel Rwanda,’ ‘Master and Commander’ and ‘Pearl Harbor’…”

I am also reminded of the Lord of the Rings films, which featured numerous amputations and decapitations; there were even rumours that the “extended editions” of those films would be rated R because they upped the gore quotient. In fact, a similar extended, four-disc edition of Pearl Harbor is available on DVD — and that particular version is rated R. So this is murky stuff.

FWIW, The Great Raid is rated 14-A in B.C. and Ontario, which is kind of like the PG-13, except we enforce the age restriction.