Thanks to my colleague David F. Dawes for pointing this out to me. Apparently the first feature-length Italian film was an adaptation of Dante’s Inferno released way back in 1911 — and now it is available on DVD, with a soundtrack by Tangerine Dream. Check the trailer here — the effects are very impressive! Read more

Don’t know if it comes through, but I’m going for a Star Wars style “the saga is now complete” tone with that title there. Anyway, in all my years of trawling the internet, I have come across only one person whose enthusiasm for film adaptations of the Bible rivals my own, and that is Matt Page. So thanks to Matt for tipping me off to the fact that a teaser for the Visual Bible’s Gospel of Mark is now available... Read more

I do not subscribe to ScreenDaily.com, but I do subscribe to their newsletter, so while I cannot access or quote the content of this article, I can quote the summary from the newsletter: VON TRIER, SCHERFIG TEAM FOR ERIK NIETZSCHELone Scherfig is set to direct semi-autobiographical script written by Lars von Trier. Scherfig was, I believe, the first woman to direct a Dogme95 film — said film being Italian for Beginners (alas, my review does not appear to be online)... Read more

Just a few links to reviews here. I didn’t care much for The Assassination of Richard Nixon when I saw it four months ago — it’s an interesting film in some ways, but some of its political elements seemed like a stretch to me — and it’s been interesting, as the film has slowly rolled into and out of theatres here and there, to see other writers put into words why it didn’t work for me. In the New Republic,... Read more

There was much chatter a few months ago about how the Academy had “snubbed” The Passion of the Christ by failing to nominate it in more than three categories (even though two, cinematography and music, are mighty significant from a filmmaking point of view and arguably matter more than the celebrity contests that are the acting awards). Interestingly, pretty much no pundit noted the fact that the Academy also nominated Sister Rose’s Passion, Oren Jacoby’s documentary short about a nun... Read more

I have lived in downtown Vancouver for a bit more than five and a half years, now, and I continue to be amazed at the fact that I can live so closely to all the important theatres. Now, thanks to Google, it is possible to trace my routes via satellite imaging! So, just in case anybody’s interested … … this is the exact path I walk whenever I go to the Fifth Avenue Cinema (except I don’t walk around the... Read more

I caught a preview screening of Dear Frankie tonight, and I just might have liked it more the second time around than I did when I saw it at last year’s festival. I’m working on a full review at the moment, but for now, I just want to amend one of my earlier comments. I said before that the film’s climax is “a bit of a cheat,” but now that I have seen the film again, knowing what all the... Read more

Just noticed an article by Don King at the Matthews House Project which speculates that C.S. Lewis may have patterned the seven books in the Narnia series after the seven deadly sins. Personally, I like Michael Ward’s theory that the books were patterned after the seven planets recognized by medieval astrologers, and the characteristics of the deities associated with them: the sun, the moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. FWIW, I list them in this order because that is... Read more

Jeff Overstreet has just linked to this article by Ken Morefield on the possibility that the Left Behind series of books might constitute a form of “evangelical pornography”. As Morefield writes, “I would argue that the success of these books is largely because they serve a Kaplanesque pornographic function — they allow readers to simultaneously gratify and hide a desire.” He adds, “I would argue, however, prior to the ascent of Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition in the 1980s and 1990s,... Read more