I haven’t seen The Great Debaters yet, but I am intrigued by this note that Jeffrey Wells posted at Hollywood Elsewhere: I’ve noticed an interesting difference between a late work-print version of Denzel Washington‘s The Great Debaters that I saw a few weeks ago and the release- print version that I saw last night at Harvard University. It’s a big change regarding the fate of Nate Parker‘s Henry Lowe character — the most charismatic and gifted Wiley College debater, although... Read more

The Golden Compass isn’t quite out of my system — or, rather, the systems for which I provide commentary — yet. First, I wrote about the film for my final regular column for ChristianWeek; it appears in the issue dated January 1, but it is up at their website now. I wrote this article after the film came out a few weeks ago, so it is the first of my published comments to take the film’s poor box-office performance into... Read more

Two fascinating cartoons, one produced just as World War II was getting started, and the other at the height of the Cold War. Both of them take place in a post-apocalyptic future, and both concern animals who discuss among themselves the reasons for humankind’s extinction — and the combination of cute cartoony critters with darkly realistic battle scenes is quite interesting. First up, Peace on Earth (1939), directed by Hugh Harman for MGM. (It was nominated for an Oscar, and... Read more

Last month, I linked to an essay which argued that Henry F. Potter was actually not the villain of It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), but its “unsung hero”. Now Patrick Deneen at the What I Saw in America blog argues that the ostensibly heroic George Bailey may be better than Potter, but he still represents a kind of evil in his own right: Yet, if there is a dark side of America, the film quite ably captures that aspect as... Read more

This MADtv sketch from December 1996 isn’t as funny as it could be, but I have always said that The Terminator (1984) is like a sci-fi version of the Nativity story that foregrounds the apocalyptic elements, the slaughter of the innocents, and so on — so I can’t exactly ignore this video, either. Besides, I like the fact that Jesus gives at least a slightly better answer than John Connor ever did when the Terminator asks why it is wrong... Read more

The following scene from Lawrence of Arabia (1962) — depicting a conversation between General Allenby (Jack Hawkins), Mister Dryden (Claude Rains) and Colonel Brighton (Anthony Quayle) — came to mind while watching Charlie Wilson’s War last week: DRYDEN: Are you really going to give them artillery, sir? BRIGHTON: I was wondering that, sir. Might be deuced difficult to get it back again. DRYDEN: Give them artillery and you’ve made them independent. ALLENBY: Then I can’t give them artillery, can I?... Read more

David Bordwell posted an interesting item recently on the various aspect ratios used by Jean-Luc Godard, and the difficulties that arise when projectionists and DVD producers try to crop them or mask them to fit standard screens. I am glad I am not a Godard buff, and so I do not have to grind my teeth every time a poorly framed DVD of one of his films comes out — but I feel a similar frustration whenever I see a... Read more

My review of The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep is now up at CT Movies. Read more

Four months ago, I noted that there was a curious religious — or at least seasonal — element to the green-band trailer for Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem. As the trailer reached its climax, the Christmas carol ‘Silent Night’ played ethereally and ironically over images of various violent deeds, and a series of title cards told us “there will be no peace on Earth” this holiday season. Now, Lou Lumenick of the New York Post notes that the studio behind the... Read more