How much do you want to bet that “Dr.” Ted Baehr did not get the penis joke at the end of this clip from Ratatouille? Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly. Read more

My article on ‘Faith and Film’ is now up at The Salvationist. SEP 20 UPDATE: It has now been re-printed by the MB Herald. Read more

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. Nitro — CDN $1,440,000 — N.AM $1,440,000 — 100%Sicko — CDN $1,150,000 — N.AM $11,452,560 — 10.0%Knocked Up — CDN $12,130,000 — N.AM $132,089,425 — 9.2%Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End — CDN $25,880,000 — N.AM $301,725,691 — 8.6%Live Free or Die Hard — CDN $6,660,000 — N.AM $84,424,123... Read more

My review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is now up at CT Movies. FWIW, I saw the film on Friday afternoon, went to bed very early that night because I was sick, left with my family for Nimpo Lake on Saturday morning, and then wrote the review on Sunday in a cabin besieged by mosquitoes — all while hoping the neighbours really did have the internet connection that I had been told they would have. Not... Read more

Because I’m on a week-long trip through the B.C. interior with the wife and kids, trying out our brand new mini-van. And let the record show that the first movie we popped into our mini-van’s DVD player, to keep the kids distracted last Saturday, was Godspell (1973). I think parts of it were a bit scary for them, though. They liked Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood better. Read more

Reuters reports: The upcoming Simpsons movie takes a typically irreverent dig at religion and environmentalists, and features a nude scene involving ‘toon teen Bart that had the audience at a preview show applauding. A 10-minute clip from “The Simpsons Movie,” the first time Homer, Marge, their family and friends have made it to the big screen, was shown in London late on Wednesday ahead of its release worldwide later in July. The clip offered several clues as to the plot,... Read more

To promote The Simpsons Movie, 20th Century Fox and 7-Eleven have changed 12 of the latter company’s convenience stores into Kwik-E-Marts. One of those stores just happens to be in Canada. And the Canadian store just happens to be in nearby Coquitlam. And a friend of mine just happened to work a few shifts in that store during the winter of ’88-’89 — after the Simpsons debuted on The Tracey Ullman Show in ’87, but before they launched their own... Read more

My review of License to Wed is now up at CT Movies. Read more

One of these days, I will get my old videotapes out of storage and post some of my old student films online — not because they’re anything to write home about, but just because it would be handy to have them out there. In the meantime, I recently got back in touch with an old friend of mine who starred in The Great Borscht Kidnapping, a video that I shot back in November 1989 for my introduction-to-film class at UBC.... Read more