As per my 2012 Journal, videos and DVDs are in italics. Films I saw for the first time have an asterisk (*) next to them. Not counting extras and promo items. Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec Jan 1 — Intouchables [2011; aka The Intouchables] * Jan 2 — Jack Reacher [2012] * Jan 4 — The Purple Rose of Cairo Jan 5... Read more
A couple weeks ago, Asia News reported that a new film about the life of Jesus had just been produced in India. Called Christaayan, the film — actually a six-hour TV mini-series — was described as “the first Hindi production about Jesus” and the “first Bollywood-style movie about Jesus”. There’s just one slight problem with that description: Christaayan was beaten to the punch over 30 years ago by a film called Dayasagar, which is Hindi for Oceans of Mercy. That... Read more
The world survived the end of the Mayan calendar yesterday, so we can now turn our attention to other prophecies and predictions regarding the end of the age. One of the most prominent is the premillenial dispensationalism that lies behind the Left Behind franchise, and, right on cue, it was revealed today that the producers of those films — who are currently in the midst of re-booting the series — are talking to Chad Michael Murray about playing Cameron “Buck”... Read more
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is the first part of a prequel trilogy that takes place decades before another trilogy, namely The Lord of the Rings. This is the most obvious thing that Peter Jackson’s newest film has in common with Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace, but are there any others? (more…) Read more
Ever since Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy made nearly three billion dollars worldwide — and earned seventeen Oscars between the three films, to boot — it has been a given that someone, somewhere would make a prequel based on the book that introduced the world to Hobbits in the first place. But there were certain obvious questions hanging over the inevitable follow-up. (more…) Read more
The on-again, off-again film adaptation of Black Nativity seems to be on again, now. Two months ago, it was reported that the film, which is based on a 1961 musical and concerns a young black teen who spends Christmas with his grandparents, had been shelved because Samuel L. Jackson dropped out of the project. (more…) Read more
James Bond is no stranger to religious references and metaphors. The very first novel about his exploits, Casino Royale, devoted an entire chapter to ‘The Nature of Evil’, in which Bond argued that we need an “Evil Book” to complement the “Good Book”, i.e. the Bible. And as anyone who has seen the trailers for Skyfall knows, the most recent movie — released overseas ten days ago, and coming to North America this Friday — includes fleeting references to “resurrection”... Read more
Mollie Z Hemingway at Get Religion reminds me that today is not only Halloween, it is also the 495th anniversary of the day that Martin Luther kicked off the Protestant Reformation by nailing his 95 Theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany. In her post, she links to an article on three films about Martin Luther that were produced in 1953, 1973 and 2003 — and, as it happens, I wrote an article on those same three... Read more
Nearly seven and a half years ago, I blogged the news that some South African filmmakers were preparing a modern-day version of the life of Jesus, featuring a primarily black cast. Less than a year later, the film — called Jezile or, in English, Son of Man — began touring the festival circuit, and I posted links to some of the early reviews. And then, a few months later, I was able to offer my own (very brief) two bits... Read more
It’s been a few weeks since our last photographic update from the set of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, so here’s another round. The Daily Mail has half-a-dozen pictures of Russell Crowe walking around in costume — and the most striking thing about these pictures, to me at least, is the shaved head. In the photo that the studio released two months ago (the Mail is incorrect when it claims that these new pictures represent our “first look” at Crowe in character),... Read more
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