1. Forget the Russell Crowe rumours — following an announcement at Comic-Con this past weekend, it looks like Liam Neeson will be the voice of Aslan after all.
2. Reuters reports that AMC Theatres is refusing to show a documentary called The Aristocrats. I can understand why. I saw it a few weeks ago and “dirty jokes” doesn’t begin to describe what comes out of the stand-up comics’ mouths.
3. The New York Times reports on the rise in religious imagery:
In the summer blockbuster movie “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” from 20th Century Fox, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play godless suburbanites and professional assassins. But when they steal their neighbor’s car for an extended chase scene, a crucifix hangs conspicuously from the rearview mirror, and in the next scene the actors wear borrowed jackets that read “Jesus Rocks,” as they go on the lam.
“We decided to make the next-door neighbor, whose crucifix it is, be hip, young, cool Christians,” explained the movie’s director, Doug Liman. “It’s literally in there for no other reason than I thought, This is cool.”
And on it goes from there. E.g.:
In some cases, such customizing has meant sanding the edges off dialogue that might offend churchgoers. For example, the actor Peter Sarsgaard, speaking at a tribute to his work during the Seattle Film Festival recently, said he was instructed to strike the word “Jesus” from his dialogue during shooting this year of the forthcoming Disney thriller “Flightplan.”
“They said: ‘You can’t say that. You can’t take the Lord’s name in vain,'” Mr. Sarsgaard said he was told by the film’s producers. He said he offered to say the line more reverently, but “they wouldn’t buy it. I had to say ‘shoot,’ and that isn’t as good.”
Or, then again:
Universal, for example, showed “Ray” at various churches to promote it by word of mouth but learned that while churchgoers loved the film, they objected to profanity using the word “God.”
The director Taylor Hackford, who had already expunged from the script stronger four-letter obscenities to satisfy his Christian financier, Philip F. Anschutz, made the choice not to edit the film further. But it cost the studio the active support of some church advocates.
Mr. Hackford, who says he is not religious, said that Mr. Anschutz’s restrictions forced him to be more creative in making “Ray.” “It’s impossible for Hollywood not to reflect the nature of the country, and Bush has made his religion clear,” he said. “People in Hollywood aren’t stupid. It flies in the face of what I believe, but you’re still working in the movie industry, not the movie art form.”
But then there’s this:
And just to complicate matters, a new study by a leading Hollywood marketing firm, MarketCast, suggested that not only do Christians watch mainstream entertainment, but the most conservative among them are also drawn to violent fare.
The study of 1,000 moviegoers asked respondents to define their level of religiosity and their leanings, whether conservative, traditional or liberal, based on a list of social issues. About 70 percent of respondents said they were “somewhat” or “very” religious.
The researchers found that “when it comes to popular movies and popular shows, tastes don’t differ at all” between religious and nonreligious, said Joseph Helfgot, president of MarketCast. “What you find is that people with conservative religious doctrine are the most likely to see movies rated R for violence. If you compared it to liberals, it’s a third more.”
Well, I can’t speak for anybody else, but this Kill Bill fan freely admits that he is part of the “problem”, there.
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