Time to play a little catch-up; some of these items are getting old.
1. Cameras have started rolling on The Vintner’s Luck, the film that re-teams Whale Rider (2002) director Niki Caro with her leading lady, Keisha Castle-Hughes. As I mentioned here nine months ago, the new film is based on a book about a decades-long relationship between a winemaking peasant in 19th-century France and an unconventional angel named Xas. Jeremie Renier is playing the winemaker, and Castle-Hughes his wife; as she puts it, “It is my first adult role and I was initially quite nervous.” No word yet on who is playing the angel. — Dominion Post
2. Speaking of angels, Paul “albino monk” Bettany is set to play the archangel Michael in a film called Legion, which “follows what happens when God loses faith in humanity and sends his legion of angels to wipe out the human race for the second time. Mankind’s only hope lies in a group of misfits holed up in a diner in the desert who are aided by the archangel Michael (Bettany).” One curious detail about this film is the way the “legion” of angels is associated with God, whereas the best-known use of that word in the Bible refers to a man who was possessed by a “legion of demons“. Then again, there is yet another passage, in which Jesus says his Father has “more than twelve legions of angels” at his disposal. So who knows, if God is sending only one legion to wipe out humanity in this film, it may be that his heart isn’t really in it. — Variety
3. Peter Greenaway, a painter turned filmmaker who specializes in nudity, cannibalistic themes and the like, “is planning to use dramatic lighting, projections and recordings of actors’ voices to transform [Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper] into something close to a film. Instead of capturing just one moment, as Da Vinci did, Greenaway will turn the Last Supper into a narrative that stretches from Christ’s birth to his crucifixion with voice given to the thoughts of each disciple as they work out which of them will betray him. . . . He plans to project on to the refectory walls ‘raw and heavy’ images of Christ’s genitalia and naked crucifixion, taken from Da Vinci’s other works. . . . Because of the painting’s fragility, only 25 people will be able to watch at a time, but it will be relayed to thousands more.” Greenaway is nothing if not a provocateur, and I don’t necessarily trust him to make the wisest use of this material, but I have to say I welcome any opportunity to look into the ways in which Renaissance artists tackled the humanity and thus the sexuality of Christ; for an excellent primer on the subject, see Leo Steinberg’s The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, a few bits of which I excerpted here. — Guardian
4. Australian actor Sam Worthington has signed on to play Marcus, who may or may not be the main character in the next round of Terminator movies. And apparently he was recommended to the filmmakers by none other than James Cameron himself, who recently directed Worthington in his much-anticipated 3-D sci-fi movie Avatar. — Variety
5. Svend White is Muslim, and he has just seen the Left Behind (2000-2005) movies for the first time ever. Needless to say, he doesn’t like what he sees. — Religion Dispatches
6. Persepolis, the Oscar-nominated cartoon that is critical of the 1979 Iranian revolution, and which was condemned by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as “Islamophobic” and “anti-Iranian”, has now been shown in Tehran — with the permission of the cultural authorities. — Variety
7. Omar Sharif, who was threatened by some of his fellow Muslims not too long ago for playing the Christian apostle Peter, is now co-starring with his fellow Egyptian Adel Imam in a movie called Hassan and Morcoss, which “pokes fun at religious bigotry. . . . The story revolves around a Christian priest (Imam) and Muslim preacher (Sharif) who survive separate assassination attempts. Now on the run, the two men — who don’t know each other — take refuge in a safe house in a downtown Cairo neighborhood and assume different identities, with Imam’s character pretending to be a Muslim and Sharif a Christian.” — Variety
8. A recent feature on the Pixar studio includes this fascinating anecdote: “One downside is a problem most computer users suffer – hardware and software that’s out of date all too soon. ‘To resurrect the Toy Story characters for the third Toy Story [due in 2010] we had to find an old machine somebody still had,’ Walsh says. ‘It was being used as a coffee table. If they hadn’t saved it, we’d have lost the original Buzz and Woody animations.'” — Independent
9. Now that each of the Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) films has its own four-disc soundtrack album, every fan’s music collection oughtta be complete, right? Not so fast, says Howard Shore: “The ‘complete recordings’ are just that. The complete score to the extended cut of the film. Of course, that is everything that was in the film. There are still earlier pieces that were recorded before the final version. These rarities will be part of Doug Adams’ forthcoming book about the RINGS scores.” — iF Magazine
10. The fallout from the box-office failure of Evan Almighty continues, as Universal Studios and longtime collaborator Tom Shadyac part ways. For the past several years, Shadyac had been operating out of “a big building on the lot”, but his most recent directorial effort went way over-budget and reportedly led to some pretty heated clashes between Shadyac and the studio bigwigs. — Variety, Deadline Hollywood Daily
11. Mark Waters is still talking about re-making The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) with Mike Myers. Past actors attached to the project have included Jim Carrey and Owen Wilson. — MTV Movies Blog
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