Variety reviews Abel Ferrara’s Mary, which won the Jury Grand Prix at the Venice film festival last week:

Maverick helmer Abel Ferrara’s Catholic angstfest “Mary” met with considerable disbelief after its first Venice screening, but the Ferrara faithful will recognize a partial return to form after several disappointments. Not quite a standout like “Bad Lieutenant,” but hardly a dud like “New Rose Hotel,” “Mary” reps a sincere grapple with faith and redemption in cynical times. Tricky construction, nesting a film within the film, hits plenty of duff notes. But passionate turns from Forest Whitaker and Juliette Binoche could be the touch of grace needed to get pic a distribution blessing after ancillary-only releases for the last few Ferrara pics.

Cocky American film director Tony Childress (Matthew Modine, amusingly channeling Ferrara’s persona) finishes helming a revisionist biblical drama shot in Italy called “This Is My Blood,” that stars him as Jesus and major Euro star Marie Palesi (Binoche) as Mary Magdalene. Portions show Mary not as a prostitute but rather a full fledged disciple locked in a power struggle with fellow-disciple Peter, and feature an intense perf by Binoche/Marie.

Having gone deep into the role, Marie has had some kind of spiritual epiphany. When it’s time to strike the set, she refuses to go home and sets out for Jerusalem.

A year later in Gotham, Ted Younger (Whitaker) hosts a slightly implausible weeklong, primetime nightly network TV special examining the historical truth about Jesus. Various experts (played by real-life scholars such as Jean-Yves Leloup, Amos Luzzatto and Elaine Pagels) and clergy discuss alternative gospels or issues in theology on the show.

Younger goes to see a press screening of “This Is My Blood” introduced by Childress. Younger asks Childress to appear on his show to discuss the film, which looks set to reap similar controversy to Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” Younger would also like to book Marie on the show, but Childress claims not to know where to find her. . . .

Sounds interesting, to say the least.

Time for another round-up of newsy items.

1. Yesterday, the Hollywood Reporter wrote:

It’s the dreaded weekend after Labor Day, when school is back in session and end-of-summer blues permeate the pop culture. If that didn’t already augur poorly for the box office, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina compounds the situation, creating the possibility that the weekend will be the weakest moviegoing frame of the year.

“The Exorcism of Emily Rose” is expected to scare up the most business in its first weekend, generating sales in the mid- to high-teen millions, with a possible go at $20 million if the well-crafted trailer can lure horror fans.

Possible go, eh? That now seems like a rather short-sighted underestimate given that, as BoxOfficeMojo.com is reporting, the film made $11.3 million on Friday alone, and thus — depending on the drop-off that is common to genre-type films of this sort — could even crack $30 million before the weekend is over.

To put this in perspective, only two films have ever made over $30 million — heck, over $25 million — on their opening weekends in September, namely 1998’s Rush Hour and 2002’s Sweet Home Alabama. And come to that, I can presently think of only ten horror films that opened with over $30 million, almost all of which were sequels or remakes (see here, here, and here). And the ones that weren’t had big-name directors or actors, which this film does not. In fact, this may be the biggest opening ever for any of the film’s four lead actors, except for Laura Linney‘s The Truman Show (1998; $31.5 million) and Tom Wilkinson‘s Rush Hour (1998; $33 million) and Batman Begins (2005; $48.7 million). And Linney and Wilkinson, talented as they are, were not exactly the stars of those three films. (FWIW, none of Campbell Scott’s or Jennifer Carpenter’s films come anywhere close.)

Expect there to be stories soon, asking if this film owes its success to the mobilization of Christian audiences, etc., etc.

SEP 11 UPDATE: I just thought of two more horror movies (both of them sequels) that had bigger opening weekends; see here.

2. In anticipation of the new expanded version of The Outsiders (1983) coming out on DVD next week, the Associated Press has stories on director Francis Ford Coppola and the film’s then up-and-coming cast (which includes everyone from present-day big stars like Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe and Diane Lane to 1980s has-beens like Ralph Macchio and C. Thomas Howell).

I have never seen this film, but I remember reading about it when I was in junior high, and I wonder if I should watch this longer version or the now out-of-print original version first. Now I know what all those people who have never seen either version of Apocalypse Now (1979), re-issued a few years ago as Apocalypse Now Redux (2001; my review), have to go through …

3. Reuters reports that Abel Ferrara’s Mary won the Jury Grand Prix at the Venice film festival:

Ferrara told reporters this week that his film was possible thanks to the interest in religion generated by Mel Gibson, who struck gold with the ultra-realist “The Passion of the Christ.”

4. The Associated Press reports that Robert Altman will direct a stage version of Arthur Miller’s Resurrection Blues:

Set in a troubled South American country, “Resurrection Blues” is the story of a messianic rebel leader who is captured and sentenced to death by crucifixion. An American production company decides to film the execution for television.

5. Theo Hobson writes in The Guardian that The Sound of Music (1965) is “a fairytale version of modern Christian history.”

The film performs what Europe has always been pining for: the integration of its conflicting religious impulses. It is the fantasy unity of Catholicism, Protestantism and Romanticism. It is Hegel with songs. And what songs!

6. The New York Times has an item on the 10th birthday of Books & Culture, a bi-monthly magazine that I have been contributing to, off-and-on, for almost eight years. Congratulations, guys!

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.

1. Kings, the TV series that puts a quasi-modernized spin on the biblical story of Saul and David, has definitely been cancelled, according to producer Bradford Winters. Only five of the show’s dozen-or-so episodes have been aired so far, but the DVD containing all of them is already listed at Amazon.com, albeit without a release date. — Image, Bible Films Blog

2. Jim Caviezel will star in William Tell: The Legend, which promises to be a “fact-based” film that shows how Tell “challenged the Hapsburg monarch Hermann Gessler” and thereby “ignited an uprising against the Austrian government which led to the formation of Switzerland.” It is not clear whether this is the same movie that was announced six months ago, under the title Ironbow: The Legend of William Tell, or a different movie altogether. — Hollywood Reporter

3. Speaking of possibly rival productions, two different films based on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were announced in the last couple weeks. One, simply titled Jekyll, will star Keanu Reeves. The other, called Jekyll and Hyde, will star Forest Whitaker and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and will be directed by Abel Ferrara. But wait, there’s more! Universal, the studio behind the Keanu Reeves movie, is also developing another version of the story with Guillermo Del Toro — but he’ll be so busy with The Hobbit and various other projects for the next few years, these other films will almost certainly be out of his way by the time he finally gets around to putting his own spin on this tale. — Hollywood Reporter, Variety

4. The villain in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, will be “an occult-dabbling Satanist” based on Aleister Crowley. Meanwhile, co-star Rachel McAdams has confirmed that the film will probably omit some of the character’s signature elements, such as the deerstalker cap and the catchprase “Elementary, my dear Watson.” — USA Today, MTV Movies Blog

5. If you saw the documentary Lost in La Mancha (2002), then you know all about the forces that sabotaged Terry Gilliam’s previous attempt to film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Last week, Gilliam announced that he’s ready to give it another go, hopefully some time next year, and he’s talking to Johnny Depp about playing the lead again; this time, however, Depp has become such an in-demand actor that he might not be able to squeeze the movie into his schedule. The film “will revolve around a filmmaker who is charmed into joining Don Quixote’s eternal quest for his ladylove, becoming an unwitting Sancho Panza.” — Variety, Hollywood Reporter

6. Kung Fu Panda co-director John Stevenson is attached to direct The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, in which the titular mythical creature “survived Theseus’ attack in the labyrinth and walks among us today. He’s a short-order cook in a Midwestern diner not far from his trailer-park home who falls for a waitress named Kelly.” Stevenson is also attached to direct Grayskull, the new live-action version of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, the script for which was recently assigned to a new writer. — Hollywood Reporter (x2)

7. Norwegian filmmaker Tommy Wirkola is developing Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, in which the title characters grow up to become “specialized bounty hunters looking to put down the cackling black-hat set.” Adam McKay, who is producing the film with Will Ferrell, said: “It’s a hybrid sort of old-timey feeling, yet there’s pump-action shotguns. Modern technology but in an old style. We heard it and we were just like, ‘That’s a freakin’ franchise! You could make three of those!'” — Hollywood Reporter

8. Marcus Nispel is in talks to direct The Last Voyage of Demeter, which is based on a chapter in Bram Stoker’s Dracula “describing the arrival of the vampire count in England on a cargo ship that has crashed into the rocks at Whitby with no crew and the dead captain lashed to the steering wheel. Stoker tells the story via the captain’s log of the voyage, which begins in Bulgaria and becomes increasingly disjointed as members of the crew disappear.” — Variety

9. The makers of the Underworld movies (2003-2009) are now developing a film based on the comic book I, Frankenstein, which “brings together classic monster characters, including Frankenstein’s Monster, the Invisible Man, Dracula and the Hunchback of Notre Dame, in a contemporary film noir setting. The Monster, for example, has evolved, learned how to control his anger and now acts as a private investigator. Dracula, meanwhile, is a kingpin of crime, and the Invisible Man is a secret operative.” — Hollywood Reporter

10. Wake the Dead, a modernized version of the Frankenstein story, may have hit a speed bump or two, as many of the people who were designing the characters over at WETA have been busy with The Hobbit. — MTV Splash Page

10. Amanda Peet has joined the cast of Gulliver’s Travels as a “potential romantic interest” for the title character, who is being played by Jack Black. — Hollywood Reporter

11. The cameras are rolling on Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, and an early photo of Russell Crowe in costume has some people quibbling that (a) his Robin Hood looks too much like his character in Gladiator (2000), which was also directed by Scott, and (b) such haircuts would have been unlikely in the Middle Ages, especially for those living on the lam in a forest somewhere. Meanwhile, it is rumoured that Tom Stoppard has been hired to rewrite the screenplay. — USA Today, Jeffrey Wells (x2), Roger Friedman

12. Vanessa Hudgens will star in Beastly, “a retelling of ‘Beauty and the Beast‘ set in modern-day New York” in which “an arrogant 17-year-old” is “hideously transformed in order to find true romance.” — Variety

13. MGM has picked up North American rights to Bunyan & Babe, a modernized version of the Paul Bunyan story in which “the folklore icons join with two children to save their town from an unscrupulous property developer.” — ComingSoon.net, Hollywood Reporter

14. Monica Bellucci has joined the cast of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice as “Veronica, a sorceress and the long-lost love of Nicolas Cage’s character, Balthazar Blake”, while Toby Kebbell has joined the cast as “Drake Stone, a celebrity illusionist who joins forces with Alfred Molina’s evil sorcerer, Horvath, to gain ultimate powers.” Photos from the set have begun to pop up online, and the New York shoot was recently marred by two separate car accidents. — Variety (x2), The Bad & Ugly, Hollywood Reporter

I jest, of course. I’ve got many other news bits stockpiled at the moment, but let’s get these ones out of the way, for now.

1. The Hollywood Reporter says Jesse Bradford, Steven Weber, Bob Odenkirk and Edward Herrmann have joined the cast of Son of Morning, the indie satire starring Joseph Cross as a dissatisfied ad copywriter who, because of some sort of environmental crisis, is somehow mistaken for the Messiah.

The Reporter notes that the title has been slightly modified from what it was before, and Matt Page notes that changing a single letter in the title could have huge implications for the tone of the overall film. As he puts it:

Originally this film was due to be called Son of Mourning which has connotations of “Man of Sorrows”, but now it seems that the title has changed to Son of Morning – a possible reference to Isaiah 14:12 which many interpret as being about Satan. I’m curious to see how [great a] shift in the filmmakers’ thinking this represents.

2. Matt Page also notes that Abel Ferrara’s Mary (2005), starring Juliette Binoche as an actress who loses herself in the role of Mary Magdalene, has just come out on DVD in Germany, and he compares and contrasts the packaging of the German disc with the packaging of the French disc. There is still no word on when the film will come to North America, though, as far as I can tell.

3. CT Movies links to a couple of stories in MovieMaker and the Jewish Daily Forward that look at how Bill Maher’s anti-religious docu-satire Religulous is being marketed.