It seems like a week can’t go by without a new Nicolas Cage movie, or an announcement regarding same. Today, Variety reports that Cage is reuniting with Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000) director Dominic Sena for Season of the Witch, a “supernatural thriller” that concerns “the journey of 14th century knights transporting a girl suspected of being the witch responsible for spreading the Black Plague.” The Hollywood Reporter adds the detail that these knights “bring the girl to an abbey... Read more

The news, it just keeps on coming. 1. Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are scrambling to find a studio that will finance their adaptation of Tintin, now that Universal has balked at the budget and the huge chunk of the revenues that Spielberg and Jackson would claim. The filmmakers have reportedly spoken to Paramount and Walden Media about picking up the tab, and they hope to be able to start shooting next month. — Nikki Finke, Los Angeles Times 2.... Read more

Time for a few more newsy quickies. 1. Yay, more adventurous archaeologists! Nicole Kidman is attached to The Eighth Wonder, an “action-adventure” that “centers on an archeological discovery that sets off a globe-spanning race.” Simon Kinberg, who came thisclose to working with Kidman on Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), will write the script. — Hollywood Reporter 2. I have never been to Disneyland, so I have no idea what goes on in the “Tomorrowland” section of that theme park, but... Read more

Roger Ebert, in his latest blog post, on why he is one of the more generous major film critics out there: I have quoted countless times a sentence by the critic Robert Warshow (1917-1955), who wrote: “A man goes to the movies. The critic must be honest enough to admit that he is that man.” If my admiration for a movie is inspired by populism, politics, personal experience, generic conventions or even lust, I must say so. I cannot walk... Read more

Another quick note on the blurring of politics and pop culture, if I may — starting with the Saturday Night Live sketch below: http://widgets.nbc.com/o/4727a250e66f9723/48cd3b64ddb82bd0/48cd0cf97d529c95/be940ef3 Back when Sarah Palin was first nominated for the vice-presidency, many people noted her uncanny resemblance to Tina Fey — so it was perhaps inevitable that Fey would return to her old SNL stomping grounds for a cameo as Palin. But no sooner had the skit been aired than Palin’s spokesperson Tracey Schmitt began telling reporters... Read more

No reviews yet at Rotten Tomatoes. No reviews yet at Metacritic. And the film opens in less than two days. Sounds like there have been no press screenings for My Best Friend’s Girl — which, given that it is a Lionsgate film and it stars Dane Cook, is not a surprise. 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. Death Race — CDN $4,430,000 — N.AM $33,193,000 — 13.3%Mamma Mia! — CDN $17,950,000 — N.AM $139,318,000 — 12.9%Bangkok Dangerous — CDN $1,490,000 — N.AM $12,531,000 — 11.9%Tropic Thunder — CDN $10,940,000 — N.AM $102,971,000 — 10.6%The House Bunny — CDN $4,370,000 — N.AM $42,154,000 — 10.4%The Dark Knight —... Read more

I don’t expect this to stay online for very long, but click here to watch an extended sequence from the upcoming remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still that played on the Fox network tonight. Embedding has been disabled, otherwise I’d post it here myself. Read more

From the Jerusalem Post: Now, at 46, [Uri] Paster is ready for his Hollywood closeup. His first project is the musical film Sold Out!, a contemporary take on the biblical story of Noah’s Ark, with a twist. Noah is presented as history’s first stage director, and he puts the animals through auditions before they are assigned places on the ark, or rejected. The cast of characters gives new meaning to the word multiethnic, reflecting the roles of Noah’s three sons... Read more

Following up my recent post on the favorite movies of John McCain and Barack Obama, I looked up the Facebook pages for the national leaders of all five Canadian political parties (there are more than five parties in the country as a whole, of course, but there were five with MPs in Parliament when the election was called last week), and here is what I found: Stephen Harper, Conservative Party:Raising Arizona (1987), Lost in Translation (2003), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989).... Read more