We all know that Steven Spielberg and the Star Wars franchise go back a long ways. A tiny R2-D2 model was even affixed to the alien mother ship in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), which came to theatres only six or seven months after the original Star Wars itself. (See below for more details.) And after the kids in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) played with Greedo action figures and dressed up as Yoda for Halloween, George Lucas returned... Read more

Another week, another batch of news items. 1. The Screengrab links to a couple of items on Terrence Malick’s typically secretive film-in-progress Tree of Life. First, there is a casting call for “expectant moms” and “Infants one day to ten days old, as well as one-month olds, one-year-olds, and two year olds with brown hair and pale complexions.” Second, movie blogger Michael Corcoran happens to live three blocks from where the film is currently shooting, and he writes: Smithville is... Read more

At last, some interesting perspectives on the controversy over Bill C-10, the proposed law that would deny tax credits to Canadian films after they have been produced, if the government deems them to be offensive or contrary to the so-called public interest. Alex Strachan, TV critic for the Canwest News Service, writes: The group of high-profile filmmakers, writers, directors and producers gathering in Ottawa Thursday to protest the bill claim it’s an issue of freedom of speech. The bill’s supporters,... 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. Run Fat Boy Run — CDN $1,170,000 — N.AM $5,447,000 — 21.5%21 — CDN $6,700,000 — N.AM $62,268,000 — 10.8%Superhero Movie — CDN $2,090,000 — N.AM $21,202,000 — 9.9%The Ruins — CDN $1,210,000 — N.AM $13,413,000 — 9.0%Smart People — CDN $374,209 — N.AM $4,200,000 — 8.9%Street Kings — CDN... Read more

Making irreverent quips about Jesus is not exactly a conventional way to promote a romantic comedy, but that’s what Forgetting Sarah Marshall co-stars Jason Segel and Kristen Bell did recently when answering a question that arrived via e-mail: http://cdn.channel.aol.com/aolexd_widgets/aolwidget_9.swfClick here if the video file above doesn’t play properly. Daring, especially for a promotional campaign. Do they risk losing any potential audience members over this? Who knows. You might not ordinarily expect religiously sensitive people to go to a raunchy, R-rated... Read more

My review of Street Kings is now up at CT Movies. Read more

Variety reports that Universal has acquired the rights to Sascha Rothchild’s recent LA Weekly cover story ‘How to Get Divorced by 30‘ and will use it as the basis for a romantic comedy: The author, using the disintegration of her first marriage along with those of five other friends, posits it’s best to begin with a “starter marriage” before finding your ultimate mate. She lays out 15 steps to guide readers to ending the first marriage. The U comedy will... Read more

I think the section of Bill C-10 which allows the government to yank a movie’s tax credits for moral or educational reasons after it has been produced is a bad idea, for many of the reasons people have spelled out before. But I’m almost tempted to say I don’t have a dog in this fight right now. Today and yesterday, various reporters — including the Globe and Mail‘s Gayle MacDonald, Jennifer MacMillan and Gloria Galloway, Variety‘s Brendan Kelly and the... Read more

Errol Morris has now published part two of his blog post on the role of re-enactments in documentaries such as his — and the broader questions they raise in other kinds of film, and in real life as well. As always, his ruminations are quite interesting, but one section in particular leaps out at me: The relationship between images in the mind and motion picture and still photography has been of interest since the beginnings of photography – even before... Read more

I have always been profoundly aware of how tenuous our continued existence on this planet is, and how abruptly it could be called off, ever since I came across a photo in a children’s magazine — possibly National Geographic World — of a girl standing next to a dent in the ground where a teeny, tiny meteorite had just missed her. So I have a special interest in stories like this one, which appeared in the Daily Mail today: A... Read more