Just a few quick items before I head off to bed.
1. Apocalypto was deemed fit for children in Italy the other day, but Variety reports that a court has now overturned that ruling:
ROME — A national outcry in Italy over the release of “Apocalypto” with an unrestricted rating prompted a Rome court to rule Monday that Italo kids under 14 will not be admitted to see the Mayan blood-and-guts saga. . . .
Meanwhile, amid the brouhaha, “Apocalypto” opened strong in Italy over the weekend, grossing $3.1 million on 316 screens and securing the No. 2 spot via local distrib Eagle Pictures.
Incidentally, the RSS feed headline for this story was “‘Apocalypto’ now PG-13 in Italy”, but that analogy doesn’t fit at all, because there is no practical difference between the G, PG and PG-13 ratings in the United States; they are all purely advisory.
Meanwhile, Reuters adds:
The court’s ban is temporary pending a January 17 hearing, a lawyer for Codacons, the consumer group which brought the case in favor of setting an age-limit, said on Monday.
“Even before hearing our arguments, they’ve slapped the ban to safeguard minors,” Codacons lawyer Marco Ramadori told Reuters.
After Italy’s court ban, only Russia is screening the film without an age restriction. The film is R-rated in the United States and has an age-18 certification in Britain and Germany.
In other news, Variety also notes that Mel Gibson’s movie broke a box-office record in the United Kingdom last weekend, when it passed Jet Li’s Hero (2002) to score the biggest opening weekend of any foreign-language film. Impressive, but will the film stay on the charts any longer in Europe than it did in North America?
2. Remember that list of cartoons I posted here a couple months ago, all of which were eligible for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature? The Hollywood Reporter says one of the films on that list — Arthur and the Invisibles, which gets its North American wide release this coming Friday — is no longer eligible, because it turns out that less than 75% of the film is animated:
As a result, the list of films in contention has shrunk from 16 to 15. Under the Academy’s rules, if there is a minimum of 16 eligible films, then the Academy may nominate as many as five films. (The last time that occurred was in 2002.) But when the number dips below 16, the Academy may only nominate a maximum of three films.
Meanwhile, Variety reports that director Luc Besson has already announced plans to make not one, but two, sequels:
PARIS — Luc Besson’s E65 million ($85 million) CG/live-action “Arthur and the Invisibles” has passed the 5 million admission mark in France, and two sequels are officially in the pipeline.
Besson had previously said “Arthur” would be his last film as a director. But when buzz began to mount ahead of the pic’s last month, he said if it was a hit he would turn his book franchise into a movie trilogy.
Pic about a little boy who enters the world of tiny creatures called Minimoys hit 5.4 million admissions over the weekend, after ticket sales in its third week rose 52%.
Besson took out a four-page ad in a French trade magazine announcing “Arthur and the Vengeance of Malthazar” for 2009 and “Arthur and the War of Two Worlds” for 2010.
3. Thanks to Tom Charity for alerting me to this piece on Paul Verhoeven in the New York Times. It’s mostly about his newest film, Black Book, but the second page turns to Verhoeven’s oft-mentioned plans to make a Jesus movie:
It is a firm belief of Mr. Verhoeven’s that nothing is sacred, and his next project will probably serve as ample demonstration. He is finishing a book on Jesus, to be published later this year. A self-described “non-Christian,” he has been involved since the mid-’80s with the Jesus Seminar, an association of Bible scholars devoted to investigating the historical authenticity of the words and deeds of Jesus.
Summarizing the contents of his monograph, Mr. Verhoeven said: “Thesis No. 1 is that Jesus was a man. That’s already a big thing, as opposed to what Christianity says, that he was the son of God.” The book will be based on a close reading of ancient texts, he said, “eliminating everything that’s not possible, in my opinion.” He added: “It’s impossible that Jesus would have multiplied all this bread, isn’t it? And the resurrection. All these things that are not possible are not possible.”
Mr. Verhoeven’s fascination with religion should come as no surprise to his fans, who will be familiar with the blithe blasphemy of “The Fourth Man” and may have detected the Jesus allegory embedded in “RoboCop.” It was the lack of a Christian upbringing that paved the way for his obsession. “I was not basically brain damaged by growing up in a Christian family,” he said.
Asked why he started reading the Gospels in his mid-teens, he responded with typical bluntness: “Probably because I was also interested in the occult, in black magic, in U.F.O.’s. And ultimately I ended up in the New Testament.”
Mr. Verhoeven said he hopes his Jesus book is the first step toward his dream project, a Jesus movie, one that he said would be like no other: “My hubris tells me it would be more normal and more real.” Dismissing “The Passion of the Christ” (“It’s just about torture”) and “The Last Temptation of Christ” (“Basically fictional”), he said the only such film he admired was Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Gospel According to St. Matthew”: “He gives it a Marxist spin, which made the Jesus more belligerent, much stronger, more like he really was, I think.”
He hastened to add that despite this confrontational stance, his Bible studies were motivated by an intellectual ardor. “I’m a big fan of Jesus,” he said. “I think Jesus was an extremely interesting, innovative, talented person, a theological genius, and as a poet, his parables are absolutely magnificent. He’s like Mozart.”
Make of all that what you will. The only point I really feel like responding to right now is that bit about Christianity saying Jesus was somehow not a man. In fact, Christianity says that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. Most films to date may not have explored his dual nature all that well, but it’s still there.
4. The Weinstein brothers have already set up a faith-based distribution label; now, Variety reports that they want a piece of VeggieTales, too, among other kids’ entertainment properties.
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