Today was Peter O’Toole‘s 76th birthday, so in honour of the occasion I finally got around to watching a copy of How to Steal a Million (1966) that I took out of the library ages ago but hadn’t gotten around to seeing yet. And as I watched, I noticed an interesting parallel between this and one of O’Toole’s earlier films. In How to Steal a Million, Audrey Hepburn accidentally shoots O’Toole in the arm after he sneaks into her home,... Read more

In the original The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951; my comments), produced at the exact mid-point between the creation of the atomic bomb in 1945 and the launching of the first artificial satellite in 1957, an alien comes to Earth to warn human beings that they need to give up their warlike ways if they are going to journey into space. There are other civilizations out there, see, and they won’t allow the humans to do them any harm.... Read more

T.S. Eliot, in his essay ‘Religion and Literature’, written in 1935: It is our business, as readers of literature, to know what we like. It is our business, as Christians, as well as readers of literature, to know what we ought to like. It is our business as honest men not to assume that whatever we like is what we ought to like; and it is our business as honest Christians not to assume that we do like what we... Read more

My review of Swing Vote is now up at CT Movies. Read more

A few days late, this post, but better late than never, as they say. One of the many shows that had a panel at last week’s Comic-Con was Kings, the NBC series that modernizes the biblical story of David and his complicated relationship with King Saul. I had always thought that the series would be taking place in “our” world, to the extent that most works of fiction set in the present usually do — I had vaguely assumed that... Read more

What’s old is news — or newsbites — again. 1. Variety reports that Jimmy Miller, a producer best known for Will Ferrell comedies, is going to produce “several period dramas” with Robbie and Jonathan Stamp, who are described by the newspaper as “accomplished historians, authors and documentary filmmakers.” The latter Stamp even has experience as a producer on the HBO series Rome (2005-2007). The first collaboration between Miller and the Stamps will be an adaptation of Anabasis, “a memoir written... Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum has just posted a review of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956) that he wrote for the Chicago Reader when the film was re-issued way back in 1990. Very interesting stuff. I would quibble with a few of his statements of fact and at least one of his more minor interpretations — I do think, in fact, that the film inclines us to believe that Joshua and Lilia get together in the end — but the broader... Read more

iF Magazine reported last week that Doug Liman, director of The Bourne Identity (2002) and producer of its two sequels, has confirmed that a fourth movie is in development — and he says it may be made with or without Matt Damon: However, could Liman see the series going on without Damon, a la the Bond franchise? “Yeah,” he says. “Jason Bourne is a movie star. I think Matt Damon is not as big a movie star as Jason Bourne... Read more

Nikki Finke is reporting that Jack White and Alicia Keys have recorded a duet as the theme song for the upcoming James Bond film Quantum of Solace — the first duet in the franchise’s history, at least where the opening credits are concerned. The song is called ‘Another Way to Die’, so a question that has preoccupied the minds of soundtrack buffs everywhere remains unanswered: Have the composers figured out a way to work the movie’s rather unusual title into... Read more

USA Today has released the first official picture of Hero Fiennes-Tiffin in character as the young Tom Riddle, the boy who will grow up to be the evil Dark Lord Voldemort, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. To mark the occasion, here are a handful of screen captures depicting the various actors and special effects that have played Voldemort at various points in his life: Tom Riddle, age 11 — Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, age 10 Tom Riddle, age 16 —... Read more