I have no idea how seriously I want to take this — it is about a Rambo movie, after all — but for what it’s worth, the Associated Press recently spoke to Sylvester Stallone about recent events in Myanmar and Stallone’s experiences shooting John Rambo there: Sylvester Stallone said he and his “Rambo” sequel movie crew recently witnessed the human toll of unspeakable atrocities while filming along the Myanmar border. “I witnessed the aftermath – survivors with legs cut off... Read more

Many thanks to Gary Susman at Entertainment Weekly‘s Popwatch blog for correctly stating that Hotel Chevalier, the Wes Anderson short film that was recently made available to American iTunes customers, is a “prologue” to The Darjeeling Limited. I have seen many, many people refer to it as a “prequel”, but it is not. A “prequel” is a sequel that takes place before the story being sequelized. And a “sequel” is a story that is told after another story. So, for... Read more

Those who thought the title character in WALL-E bears a striking resemblance to Johnny Five from the Short Circuit movies (1986-1988) will no doubt have that impression deepened by the French teaser, in which WALL-E seems to crush an insect. “Error — grasshopper disassembled. Re-assemble!” Remember that bit? So … Pixar basically remade ¡Three Amigos! (1986) as A Bug’s Life (1998), and Doc Hollywood (1991) as Cars (2006) … and those were two of their lesser films. But since Johnny... 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. Sydney White — CDN $1,270,000 — N.AM $8,449,395 — 15.0%Eastern Promises — CDN $1,670,000 — N.AM $11,281,492 — 14.8%Across the Universe — CDN $789,169 — N.AM $5,476,433 — 14.4%Mr. Woodcock — CDN $2,160,000 — N.AM $19,578,594 — 11.0%Resident Evil: Extinction — CDN $3,400,000 — N.AM $36,826,411 — 9.2%Good Luck Chuck... Read more

Variety is acting weird tonight and won’t let me access their site without a user name and password, but ComingSoon.net offers the following summary of a story that Variety posted tonight: Indie financer Unified Pictures (Bob Funk) is launching development of $35 million CG-animated feature Noah’s Ark — to be told from the point of view of the animals in the ark. Variety says Unified has signed Philip LaZebnik (The Prince of Egypt, Mulan, Pocahontas) to script. The company’s relying... Read more

One of the more interesting films playing at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival — certainly from a faith perspective — is Miryang AKA Secret Sunshine, which won the Best Actress award in Cannes for Jeon Do-yeon and was recently picked to be South Korea’s official submission for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. In my all-too-brief capsule review, I wrote: It concerns a widow who moves with her son to her husband’s hometown. When tragedy strikes, she turns... Read more

The newest issue of BC Christian News is now online, and with it, my film column, which looks at the Vancouver International Film Festival and highlights four films in particular — namely The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun, Secret Sunshine, Join Us and For the Bible Tells Me So. It also has news updates on The Day the Earth Stood Still, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Evan Almighty. Read more

This is just too demented to pass up. Now all they have to do is find a way to merge this footage with clips of Hayden Christensen playing the Bob Dylan surrogate in Factory Girl (2006). (Hat tip to Joe Leydon at MovingPictureBlog.) January 13, 2015 update: I have replaced the now-defunct MySpace video with a YouTube version of the same, and I have upgraded the still from Factory Girl, in honour of this image of Billy Joel that’s been... Read more

Time for a few new quickies. 1. Glenn Erickson has a fascinating item up at DVD Savant on the restoration of Kiss Me Deadly (1955) — which I saw in film class in the mid-’90s, before it was restored — and the possibility that a blatant act of censorship may have been interpreted as a sign of artistic genius, with far-reaching consequences for cinema. 2. The New York Times reports that some scientists feel they were tricked into appearing in... Read more

Nearly two months ago, I noted here that Fox-Walden’s adaptation of Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising had been rechristened The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising. Now, Jeffrey Overstreet at the Looking Closer Journal reports the title has been purged of its darkness and reduced to its shortest word-count ever, and the film is now known simply as The Seeker. Indeed, the film’s official website would seem to confirm this — though the trailer embedded there still uses the longer... Read more