Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull producer Frank Marshall has spilled a few more details about the film — this time to USA Today — and once again, he’s basically just confirming what the rumour mill has been saying for months now. He even teases us with a possible reference to those alien rumours: The artifact of the title is inspired by real quartz sculptures of disputed origins that are carved in a way that defies the... Read more

Click here for a post at Jim Hill Media that is full of screen captures from various Pixar short films and feature films, showing how the stars of one film often tend to pop up in other films, sometimes even before their primary film has come out. And click here for a much briefer post on a reference to an upcoming Disney cartoon in their current hit Enchanted; along the way, Jim Hill says it looks like the upcoming straight-to-video... Read more

Variety reports: Producer Thomas Schuehly (“Alexander”) has acquired the remake rights to Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” and is partnering with Mario Kassar on an updated version of the 1927 silent sci-fi classic. Remake rights!? Does this mean the movie isn’t in the public domain yet, even after 80 years? Yowzers. The story continues: “With the overwhelming role technology plays in our daily lives, the growing gap between rich and poor, including the gradual elimination of the middle class, the story of... Read more

The Golden Compass may have had an underwhelming first weekend in North America, but overseas it’s doing rather well. Variety reports: New Line’s big-budget fantasy epic “The Golden Compass” had trouble finding its bearings at the domestic box office, grossing an estimated $26.1 million from 3,528 theaters. That’s a soft debut considering the film’s pricey production budget of at least $180 million. . . . New Line said while the film’s performance fell below expectations–New Line had estimated that the... Read more

I can’t sum up the basic points any better than Lou Lumenick of the New York Post already has: Early Friday estimates for “The Golden Compass” are running between $8.6 and $8.8 million, suggesting the megabucks fantasy may have a hard time matching the $27.5 million opening weekend of “Beowulf,” much less than $65.6 million debut for “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” New Line has copped to a budget of $180 million for “Golden Compass,” which likely means... Read more

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull producer Frank Marshall has talked to MTV News and revealed … nothing that those following the rumours hadn’t pretty much already figured out. But still, it’s nice to get some official confirmation on a few points, finally. Cate Blanchett is playing an enemy, Jim Broadbent is playing a friend, and Ray Winstone is playing … a little of both, apparently: “Ray Winstone, he came from ‘Beowulf‘ to this,” Marshall continued, describing... Read more

FilmStew.com has a brief report on Finger of God, a documentary premiering at a church in Michigan this weekend. It begins: If you read this in a press kit for a Hollywood film, you probably wouldn’t believe it. But it is because of an aunt and uncle who, during a church sermon, suddenly discovered gold teeth in their mouths not placed there by a dentist that Darren Wilson was put on a path towards non-fiction filmmaking. The “miraculous gold fillings”... Read more

My review of Atonement is now up at CT Movies. Read more

Here’s one rather trivial detail I didn’t have time or space for in my review of The Golden Compass, which if I’m not mistaken was already pushing the word-count limit as it is. There is a scene where Lord Asriel, played by Daniel Craig, stops on a ridge way up in the Arctic looking down at the city where the talking polar bears live, and he says to his daemon: “Svalbard. Kingdom of ice bears. We shall have to watch... Read more

My review of The Golden Compass is now up at CT Movies. Read more