Time to dump some of the stories I’ve been stockpiling.
1. The Associated Press reports that Becky Fischer, the children’s ministry leader depicted in the documentary Jesus Camp, has decided not to continue with her camps at Devil’s Lake in North Dakota, due to the vandalism there since the movie came out.
2. Variety has an item up on the upcoming “Richard Donner cut” of Superman II (1980). Love the headline (“Supe’s on for Donner”)!
3. In a similar vein, Jeffrey Wells reports that a director’s cut of Payback (1999), reportedly titled Payback: Straight Up and very different from the version that was sent back for massive re-shoots and shown in theatres, is due for a DVD release early next year.
4. Remember how Michael Bay’s The Island (2005) was thought by some to be a rip-off of Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979)? Variety reports that a judge, rather than dismiss the Clonus producer’s lawsuit, has now ordered that it go to trial.
5. The Los Angeles Times profiles black actors who happen to be Christian, paying special attention to Angela Bassett and Blair Underwood — the latter of whom played Jesus in a self-directed short film, The Second Coming (1992).
6. Paul V.M. Flescher looks at the role of religion in the booming Nigerian film industry, over at his Film and Religion blog.
7. The New York Times asked six days ago if documentaries like The Bridge (about people jumping to their deaths from the Golden Gate Bridge), Exit: The Right to Die (2005) and even Dying at Grace (2003) constitute a new form of “respectable snuff film”. Along the way, the Times story mentions the Faces of Death (1978) series in passing, describing it as “clip compendiums of sundry fatalities ranging from the blatantly falsified to the apparently genuine.” And then, two days ago, Variety and the Hollywood Reporter happened to mention that J.T. Petty will direct Faces of Death, “a feature remake of the series of gory videotapes that became cult faves in the 1970s and ’80s.”
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