Jeffrey Wells raised a point yesterday that had sort of occurred to me while watching the new trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull the day before that. He notes that the international version of the trailer is missing the American flag — and I have to admit that, while watching the trailer two days ago, I found myself wondering if any of the previous Indiana Jones movies had been so implicitly patriotic. Raiders of the... Read more
Two months ago, John Hurt refused to divulge who he plays in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — many fans think he might be playing Abner Ravenwood, father of Indy’s erstwhile girlfriend Marion — but he did say this: Well, I’m all in the second half. I’m one of what I called the Famous Five. . . . It was Karen [Allen], me, Harrison [Ford], Shia [LaBeouf], and Ray Winstone, who is one of the Famous... Read more
The trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull went online today — and it looks like the rumours about this film mentioning not only aliens in general, but the Roswell UFO incident in particular, are absolutely true. http://l.yimg.com/cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/fop/embedflv/swf/fop.swfClick here if the video file above doesn’t play properly. Read more
My review of Jumper is now up at CT Movies. Read more
When you think about it, teleportation is a natural subject for the movies. You could even say that filmmakers do it all the time, already: in a typical film, when, say, a character walks out the door, it is often the case that the shot inside the house, of the person walking to his or her exit, was filmed on a soundstage, while the shot outside the house, of that same person stepping onto the sidewalk, might very well have... Read more
Looks like we will all be debating yet another aspect of church history in a year or two. The Hollywood Reporter says Alejandro Amenábar — the Spanish director of The Sea Inside (2004), The Others (2001) and Open Your Eyes (1997), the last of which was remade as Vanilla Sky (2001) — is about to direct a movie about a clash between atheism and fanaticism in the patristic age: Rachel Weisz, Ashraf Barhom and Oscar Isaac will star in Alejandro... Read more
Five years ago today, a woman I had known for only a few weeks went with me to see a movie called Punch. It was our second date. And because it took place the day before Valentine’s Day, and because we were technically just friends and not officially “dating” yet, I gave her a home-made card with a picture of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party from Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, and wished her a happy “un-Valentine’s Day”. Three years... Read more
Nine years ago, I wrote a short article for Bible Review on Peter Brosnan, a filmmaker who, together with archaeologist John Parker, has spent the past quarter-century looking for Egyptian ruins in the sand dunes of California. Of course, they’re not looking for real Egyptian ruins; instead, they’re looking for the fake Egyptian sets and props that were built by Cecil B. DeMille for the original silent version of The Ten Commandments (1923). So I could not help but be... Read more
My interview with Cindy Bond, president and COO of Promenade Pictures and one of the producers of the animated version of The Ten Commandments, went up at CT Movies yesterday. My editor, who interviewed her last year before the movie came out, added a couple notes in square brackets; and for space reasons, the piece as a whole skews more towards the business side of things than to the creative side of things. However, as a Bible-movie buff, I had... Read more
I’ve been too busy to blog today, but for those who are interested, a third glimpse of the titular artifact from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull surfaced today. I have appended it to my earlier blog post, which featured the first two glimpses. Read more
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