Just a few quick updates, if I may — belated though one or two of them might be. 1. Eagle Eye co-writer Travis Adam Wright has been hired to write the script for Warner Brothers’ adaptation of Here, There Be Dragons, a novel that casts real-life authors C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams as heroes in a fantasy adventure of their own. When I first mentioned this project nearly four years ago, it was going to be produced by... Read more

One of my favorite discoveries at last year’s VIFF was an animated short called Lightheaded. At the time, the five-minute film itself was not online, so all I could post was a 40-second trailer. But now, at long last, the film itself has been posted in its entirety up at YouTube. Thanks to Jerry Beck at Cartoon Brew for the tip. Read more

Here are the figures for the past weekend, arranged from those that owe the highest percentage of their take to the Canadian box office to those that owe the lowest. Avatar — CDN $93,100,000 — N.AM $743,688,973 — 12.5%The Bounty Hunter — CDN $6,410,000 — N.AM $55,916,622 — 11.5%Hot Tub Time Machine — CDN $3,990,000 — N.AM $36,969,649 — 10.8%Shutter Island — CDN $13,440,000 — N.AM $125,001,481 — 10.8%Alice in Wonderland — CDN $34,220,000 — N.AM $319,009,518 — 10.7%The Last... Read more

Variety reports that John Milius, co-creator of the HBO series Rome (a feature-film version of which is still in active development, by the way), has signed on to produce another ancient-history series called Pharaoh: Like “Rome,” “Pharaoh” homes in on one dramatic period: the New Kingdom that began in 1479 B.C. with the reign of Queen Hatshepsut, a rare female pharaoh, who ruled as regent until her nephew, Thutmosis III, took the throne. The mighty warrior pharaoh created the largest... Read more

In the first Toy Story (1995), the big threat faced by the toys was an abusive boy next door who blew toys up and scrambled their identities with malicious glee. In Toy Story 2 (1999), the big threat was… Well, there were two threats, actually. On the one hand, there was a collector who valued certain toys so much that he never really played with them; instead of allowing the toys to live and move and have their being in... Read more

Two months ago, I wondered if the new Robin Hood movie might turn its hero into one of the barons who forced King John to sign the Magna Carta in 1215. Today, I discovered that director Ridley Scott has directly touched on this point, and the answer is, well, maybe, but not quite yet. To quote the Sunday Times: For this Robin Hood, Crowe and Scott reach back across history to the earliest written sources, long before Ivanhoe and then... Read more

Here are the figures for the past weekend, arranged from those that owe the highest percentage of their take to the Canadian box office to those that owe the lowest. She’s Out of My League — CDN $3,680,000 — N.AM $28,712,974 — 12.8%Avatar — CDN $92,690,000 — N.AM $742,332,678 — 12.5%The Bounty Hunter — CDN $5,400,000 — N.AM $48,853,453 — 11.1%Shutter Island — CDN $13,110,000 — N.AM $123,440,937 — 10.6%Alice in Wonderland — CDN $32,810,000 — N.AM $309,733,753 — 10.6%Hot... Read more

There are many reasons to like the work of Steven D. Greydanus, film critic for the National Catholic Register, DecentFilms.com and various other outlets. For me, one of the most enjoyable is his ability to take two contemporaneous movies and set up a dialectic between them, noting the various things they have in common or, alternatively, the radically different approaches they sometimes take to the same basic premises. I first remember seeing him do this back in 2003, when he... Read more

I was beginning to wonder why I hadn’t seen any local coverage of the new mini-series version of Ben-Hur, the first part of which premieres this Sunday on CBC. But then a couple of interviews popped up in my news feed. The first, from the Globe and Mail, revolves around Joseph Morgan, who plays the title character — and in his intro, writer R.M. Vaughan describes the mini-series by saying that it offers lots of sex, manly, bare-chested combat, a... Read more

Remember that new version of Ben-Hur that was being produced as a four-hour mini-series? I last mentioned it here almost a year ago, but since then I hadn’t heard much about it. Now, however, Matt Page and a few of his readers have discovered that the CBC is showing the first part of the mini-series this Sunday at 8:00pm (or 8:30pm in Newfoundland). As far as Matt can tell, the mini-series hasn’t been shown or scheduled in any other country... Read more