Dirty Harry at Libertas articulates one of the bigger problems with Jumper in such a simple and concise way that I cannot help but wish it had occurred to me to put it this way in my own review: In normal superhero films once the hero realizes the danger his place in the world puts on his loved ones, he separates himself from them. Much of our protagonist’s conflict in the better Superman and Spiderman films revolve around their giving... Read more

Witless Protection comes out in the U.S. tomorrow, and there are still no reviews at Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes. This isn’t too surprising, since the film is being released by Lionsgate, a studio that often avoids showing movies to critics in advance, and it stars Larry the Cable Guy, whose previous live-action films Delta Farce (2007) and Health Inspector (2006) also had critics-avoidance issues. The film will open in Canada three weeks from now, and the local publicist says it... Read more

UltimateDisney.com reports that the next round of ‘Walt Disney Treasures‘ sets will come out November 11, and will include The Chronological Donald Volume Four: 1951 – 1961. And with that, I will have all but a very, very few of the animated shorts produced by the studio during Uncle Walt’s lifetime. (Naturally, I hope they don’t screw up the framing again, but I won’t get my hopes up too high.) One of the other two-disc sets will revolve around Destino... Read more

Cory Edwards has posted an item at his blog listing some of the main cast members in Hoodwinked 2: Hood Vs. Evil. Characters and actors returning from the first film: Cory Edwards, Twitchy Glenn Close, Granny Patrick Warburton, The Wolf David Ogden Stiers, Nicky Flippers Andy Dick, Boingo Benjy Gaither, Japeth the Goat Old characters, new voices: Hayden Panettiere, Red (formerly Anne Hathaway) Martin Short, The Woodsman (formerly Jim Belushi) New characters, new actors: Joan Cusack, “a new villainous witch”... Read more

It has been 42 years since Julie Christie won an Oscar for her part in John Schlesinger’s Darling (1965), and many people think she could win another golden statue this Sunday for her part in Sarah Polley’s Away from Her (2006) — and if she does win the award this year, it will apparently mark the longest gap between Oscar wins in Academy history. (Or so says Shinan Govani.) That’s an interesting bit of trivia in its own right, but... Read more

My interview with Dolph Lundgren, one of the co-stars of The Final Inquiry, is now up at CT Movies. For what it’s worth, the only version of this film that I have seen so far is a screener of the original European version, which went by the title The Inquiry and still had timecodes and everything. The American version came out on DVD today, and I was supposed to get a copy of it, but it hasn’t arrived yet —... Read more

Despite my interest in Jesus-themed movies, I regret to say that I know very little about The Master and Margarita beyond the fact that there have been several films and TV shows based on a novel of that name which straddles the modern and biblical worlds; the IMDb and Wikipedia list at least seven adaptations produced between 1972 and 2005, in countries such as Russia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Italy, the United Kingdom and Poland. (One of the Polish versions, incidentally, was... Read more

The Aquarian Gospel has a female lead. Reuters reports: Bollywood actress Mallika Sherawat will play an ascetic who befriends Jesus of Nazareth in a U.S. film that revolves around a legend that he visited India. Filmmaker Drew Heriot‘s “The Aquarian Gospel” is about Jesus’s life between the ages of 13 and 30, a period not documented in the Gospels when legend has it he traveled through India, Tibet and Persia. Heriot said Sherawat had been the first choice to play... 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. Rambo — CDN $4,550,000 — N.AM $40,110,000 — 11.3%27 Dresses — CDN $7,190,000 — N.AM $69,937,000 — 10.3%Juno — CDN $11,510,000 — N.AM $124,090,000 — 9.3%Step Up 2: The Streets — CDN $2,390,000 — N.AM $26,267,000 — 9.1%Definitely, Maybe — CDN $1,120,000 — N.AM $12,872,000 — 8.7%The Bucket List —... Read more