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. The Golden Compass — CDN $8,050,000 — N.AM $58,869,000 — 13.7%P.S. I Love You — CDN $2,140,000 — N.AM $23,398,000 — 9.1%Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street — CDN $2,110,000 — N.AM $26,719,000 — 7.9%The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep — CDN $1,210,000 — N.AM $16,821,000 —... Read more

This may be old news to some people, but I just read this story by the Associated Press which notes that Saoirse Ronan, who is so compelling as the young Briony Tallis in Atonement, is playing the lead role in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lovely Bones. I am suddenly quite a bit more interested in this film than I was before. In semi-related news, Variety magazine recently ran an article on the curious similarities between Atonement and The Kite... Read more

Last year, I kept track of all the G- and PG-rated films that cracked the weekly top ten lists, to see how many of them were aimed primarily at families or children, and how many of them were basically for grown-ups. Six months ago, I posted a follow-up list of the G- and PG-rated films that had been released so far this year. Now, with the year basically over, it’s time to update the list. The G- and PG-rated films... Read more

Speaking of Britney Spears, Us Weekly reported a couple weeks back that she has been offered the part of the Virgin Mary in Sweet Baby Jesus, “a satirical retelling of the nativity story” that is being produced by Frenchman Philippe Rebboah: The character Mary is a pregnant 19-year-old unsure of her baby’s paternity who goes into labor on Christmas Eve in Bethlehem, Maryland, as rumors swirl that the birth is Jesus Christ’s second coming. Meanwhile, in completely unrelated news, Variety... Read more

And why couldn’t I have avoided it a little while longer. Ah well, I might as well share my pain. From the people who brought you Epic Movie — the extremely stupid-looking Narnia-spoofing flick that came out earlier this year, which I still have not seen — comes this trailer for Meet the Spartans, a spoof of 300, the tabloid exploits of Britney Spears, and who knows what else: Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly. Read more

It opened three weeks ago at #1. Then it slipped to #3, and then to #9. And now, in its fourth weekend, The Golden Compass has fallen off the weekly top-ten chart altogether, landing at #12 with a “domestic” cume of $58.9 million — and thus it continues to trail behind last year’s considerably cheaper fantasy flick Eragon. And don’t even bother trying to compare this film’s grosses to those of the recent fantasy blockbusters whose ranks this film so... Read more

UGO.com is reporting that Tyler Perry, the critically reviled but wildly successful African-American playwright-turned-filmmaker, has a part in the new Star Trek movie. If true, this would be Perry’s first performance in a project written by someone else. Click the link for some mild spoilers. (At least, they seem mild, to me.) JAN 2 UPDATE: The Hollywood Reporter has now confirmed the rumour, and TrekMovie.com adds this bit of information: TrekMovie.com has learned that Paramount was hoping to keep the... Read more

Variety and the New York Times report that David Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants, has struck a deal with the Writers Guild, so that he and his protege Craig Ferguson can go back on the air next week with their full complement of comedy writers. Meanwhile, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and all the others will have to make do without scripts or cue cards of any substance. It’s funny. My wife and I don’t get cable, and we almost never... Read more

Jerry Beck at Cartoon Brew raises an interesting question: Now that the Library of Congress’s National Film Preservation Board has added Disney’s Three Little Pigs (1933) to the National Film Registry, which version will they preserve for all time? The original, politically incorrect version? Or the slightly censored version that was released in the 1950s, which is the version that most of us have grown up with? Both versions, perhaps? Read more