Just a handful of news items.
1. And now for the meta-Jesus movies (or should that be Jesus meta-movies?)! IndieWIRE says Abel Ferrara’s Mary, which premieres in Venice and Toronto next month, will also open the San Sebastian Film Festival‘s Zabaltegi section: “The film is a tale of the filming of a movie about the life of Jesus and how it draws the actress (Juliette Binoche) playing the part of Mary Magdalene into a spiritual crisis of profound consequences involving the director of the film, (Matthew Modine) and a New York journalist (Forest Whitaker).” Hmmm, I wonder how it will compare to Pasolini’s La ricotta (1963) or Arcand’s Jesus of Montreal (1989), which admittedly was about a play and not a film, but still…
2. Having finished War of the Worlds, Steven Spielberg is now going to re-make another 1950s disaster movie. FilmStew.com and E! Online report that he has taken over the producing chores on a remake of When Worlds Collide (1951) — a film which, incidentally, inspired one of my favorite Daniel Amos songs, albeit in title only. But wait — didn’t Spielberg pretty much already do this with Deep Impact (1998), which he executive-produced?
3. The Washington Post, Video Business and Studio Briefing all have items up now on the demise of the VHS format. The latest development? Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith will be released on DVD only. Ah, brings back memories of how the “director’s cut” of Lawrence of Arabia (1962/1989) was one of the very first major studio films not to be released on Beta.
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