There don’t seem to be any pictures of Ziro the Hutt online yet, so I am settling for the picture of Jabba above. In any case, there are a few elements in Star Wars: The Clone Wars that have to be seen to be believed, but none, perhaps, more than this, as reported by the MTV Movies Blog: Ok, let’s be straight for a second: Jabba’s uncle, Zero the Hutt, a new character introduced specifically for the upcoming animated series,... Read more

Variety reports: Mark Ruffalo will make his feature directing debut on “Sympathy for Delicious.” Ruffalo will star with James Franco and Chris Thornton. Production begins this fall in Los Angeles, and the pic is fully financed by new company Corner Store Entertainment. Thornton, who wrote the script, plays “Delicious” Dean O’Dwyer, a paralyzed DJ struggling to survive in his wheelchair on the streets of L.A. He turns to faith-healing and mysteriously acquires the ability to cure the sick — although... Read more

I had never heard of this before. It seems a Christian musician by the name of Chris Rice wrote a song way back in 1989, mocking the tendency of some Christians to co-opt popular culture in the silliest of ways. The subject of his song: cartoon characters who find their own unique ways to say “hallelujah”. Much to Rice’s surprise, the song became a hit, and some people took it very seriously, one way or the other, and after allowing... Read more

The Billy Graham biopic Billy: The Early Years is currently scheduled to come out in October, and when I first mentioned it here back in March, I noted that the only other films to have featured actors playing Billy Graham seem to be parodies of the Nixon administration produced in the early 1970s. But today, while reading this article on Oliver Stone’s George W. Bush biopic in the Sunday Times, it dawned on me that there might be another actor... 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. Singh is Kinng — CDN $223,801 — N.AM $223,801 — 100%The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 — CDN $2,320,000 — N.AM $19,620,128 — 11.8%Mamma Mia! — CDN $11,590,000 — N.AM $104,144,505 — 11.1%Journey to the Center of the Earth — CDN $8,870,000 — N.AM $81,775,323 — 10.8%Step Brothers —... Read more

In 2006, and again in 2007, I kept track of all the G- and PG-rated films that cracked the weekly top ten lists, to see how many of them were aimed primarily at families or children, and how many of them were basically for grown-ups. Now, with the end of summer nearing, I figure it’s time to get started on this year’s list. The G- and PG-rated films that have cracked the weekly top ten lists so far break down... Read more

Just catching up on a handful of items, here — a few of which are, admittedly, a week or two old, by now. But hey. 1. Get ready to be Left Behind again! News Blaze reports that Tim LaHaye and Cloud Ten Pictures have resolved their legal differences, such that LaHaye has the right to remake the existing films if he wants to, but if he does not do so within a certain length of time, then Cloud Ten can... Read more

First, in September, GITCorp is releasing Star Trek: The Complete Comic Book Collection, a DVD containing PDF files of every single comic book in the Star Trek franchise released by Gold Key, Marvel, DC, Malibu, Wildstorm and others between 1967 and 2002. I plan to hold on to a few of my Star Trek comics — such as the beautiful hardcover edition of Debt of Honor — for as long as I can, but the thought of replacing the rest... Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum has some fascinating thoughts on the nature of “director’s cuts”. Here is a sample paragraph: An important point arising from this example is that any director’s cut has to be pinpointed in time for this label to have any meaning. To postulate that only one director’s cut can exist for a given film implies the privileging of a particular point of closure in the filmmaker’s creative decisions—-a privileging that becomes quite arbitrary in some cases. Since there are... Read more

Patrick Goldstein has posted a 53-second clip from Religulous at his blog, along with a brief interview with the film’s star, Bill Maher. In the clip, Maher needles an actor dressed like Jesus on the question of why the Bible would describe God as someone who feels a “petty emotion” like “jealousy”. It’s an interesting question, and no doubt there are all sorts of amusing, perplexing, enlightening and confounding answers that one could give. But I wonder if an actor... Read more