Prom Night is a horror movie. To be more precise, it is a horror movie remake. It is produced by Screen Gems. And, with only a few hours to go before the film’s release, there are still virtually no reviews listed at Rotten Tomatoes, and none whatsoever at Metacritic. That says it all, I think. Read more

Was the late Charlton Heston one of the inspirations for Indiana Jones? Dave Kehr, via Cinematical, says yes, indeed, he was: One of Heston’s most influential roles remains one of his least known: that of Harry Steele, a dashing though cynical adventurer, who wears a fedora and a leather jacket, as he searches for Incan treasure in a manner that distinctly suggets a certain later day hero created by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. The film is Jerry Hopper’s 1954’s... Read more

The news, it keeps sprouting, like weeds. 1. Vancouverites, mark your calendars. Silent Light, the Carlos Reygadas film about a love triangle among Mexican Mennonites, is coming to the VanCity Theatre June 5-12. 2. Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris tells the Hollywood Reporter he wants to make a comedy next — a scripted comedy. Morris has been making documentaries for decades, ever since Gates of Heaven (1978), but this would be only his second dramatic film, following The Dark Wind (1991).... Read more

First, The Ten Commandments was a silent film produced in 1923. Then, it was a blockbuster starring Charlton Heston produced in 1956. And then, it became a TV mini-series produced in 2006. Now Ben-Hur looks set to repeat the pattern. First, it was a silent film produced in 1925. Then, it was a blockbuster starring Charlton Heston in 1959. And now, according to Variety, it is about to become a TV mini-series — produced by David Wyler, whose father William... Read more

Seems so, according to MSNBC.com’s gossip column ‘The Scoop‘: Sean Penn and the Jolie-Pitts all living under the same roof? For a brief time, such thing was a possibility. Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and kids set up camp in Texas for nearly a month as Pitt filmed “Tree of Life.” Penn, who also stars in the film, arrived on set last week, and if the cost of Pitt’s accommodations hadn’t been an issue, Pitt and Penn might have both ended... Read more

Here are a few quickies to get the week started. 1. Mandi Bierly at Entertainment Weekly recently watched When Harry Met Sally… (1989) and, as she puts it, “had the surreal experience of realizing that I am now the same age as Sally.” I had that exact same experience seven years ago. 2. STV.tv reports that Cowboys for Christ, the follow-up to the original Wicker Man (1973) that was going to start shooting this month, was cancelled at the last... 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 $841,310 — N.AM $4,463,000 — 18.9%21 — CDN $4,860,000 — N.AM $46,533,000 — 10.4%10,000 B.C. — CDN $9,220,000 — N.AM $89,323,000 — 10.3%The Bank Job — CDN $2,740,000 — N.AM $26,732,000 — 10.2%Superhero Movie — CDN $1,640,000 — N.AM $16,887,000 — 9.7%The Ruins —... Read more

ComingSoon.net has posted a report from the set of The Year One — the Judd Apatow-produced, Harold Ramis-directed “biblical comedy” formerly known as just plain Year One — and while they don’t reveal all that much, a few new details do leak out: Essentially, it’s a biblical epic road comedy starring Jack Black and Michael Cera as Zed and Oh, two primitive hill people who travel across the globe encountering various characters from the book of Genesis, all handled in... Read more

I’m a bit late in posting this, but oh well, here goes: I finally finished reading Reflex, the sequel to the original book version of Jumper, on the flight to Atlanta last week — and it so, so, so rocks. In many ways, it’s a completely different book from the original: it is told in the third person rather than the first; it gets into all sorts of crazy, paranoid conspiracy-theory stuff that goes way beyond anything hinted at by... Read more

Charlton Heston has passed away at the age of 84. I’ve always liked Heston, even when I haven’t liked his acting. He starred in three of the biggest Bible epics of the Bible-epic era, namely The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965); and then he starred in three of the biggest doom-and-gloom sci-fi movies of the doom-and-gloom era, namely Planet of the Apes (1968), The Omega Man (1971) and Soylent Green (1973). I wonder... Read more