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. Mr. Bean’s Holiday — CDN $5,370,000 — N.AM $25,089,420 — 21.4%Shoot ‘Em Up — CDN $717,820 — N.AM $5,716,554 — 12.6%Superbad — CDN $11,570,000 — N.AM $103,219,381 — 11.2%Stardust — CDN $3,770,000 — N.AM $34,594,712 — 10.9%The Nanny Diaries — CDN $2,210,000 — N.AM $20,877,849 — 10.6%The Bourne Ultimatum —... Read more

What do you get when you cross The Simpsons and Star Wars? Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly. Read more

The Guardian has picked up on the news that Rich Swingle is writing a sequel to Chariots of Fire (1981) — and the article claims that Swingle’s film will be called With Wings as Eagles, rather than Beyond the Chariots, which was the title of his one-man play. This is interesting, because Ken Wales has talked about making his own sequel to Chariots called With Wings as Eagles. Wales is never mentioned in this article, so either Swingle has teamed... Read more

Variety reports from the Toronto International Film Festival: Footage of “Religulous,” which amounted to an extended trailer, saw Maher poking fun at Christians, Jews and Muslims with equal dexterity. “God made homosexuals; man made Bibles,” quips Maher in one vignette musing on the major religions’ occasionally backward attitude toward sexuality. Other clips find Maher visiting the Vatican, Jerusalem and even a London underground underpass in search of the truth. Mostly, all he seems to find are punchlines. Pic is virtually... Read more

That’s the title they picked. So said Shia LaBeouf at the MTV Video Music Awards today, and the official Indiana Jones website confirms the announcement. Looks like the rumours were right. Read more

Brian D. Johnson of Maclean’s reports on the premiere of Michael Moore’s latest movie, Captain Mike Across America, in Toronto: It’s a “concert film” documenting Moore’s Slacker Uprising Tour through 62 American cities in swing states during the final days of the 2004 presidential campaign. He appeared with performers including Joan Baez, Roseanne Barr and REM. The tour, he says, was an attempt “to save the Democrats from themselves.” I decided to attend the premiere, rather than the advance press... Read more

Behold the new teaser poster for There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s Oil!, which stars Daniel Day-Lewis as an oil prospector and Paul Dano as a preacher: As Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere writes: You can’t say that a one-sheet using the suggestion of an old, dog-eared Bible to spread awareness of an allegedly violent period film about the oil business that’s based on an anti-capitalism book isn’t, at the very least, striking. It’s saying,... Read more

Restricted trailers are popping up all over the internet these days … but the strangest have to be the ads for Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf. Why are they strange? Because the makers of that film have already said that they are aiming for a PG-13 rating. So why would they raise the R-rated hopes of potential moviegoers? Rumour has it that there might be an R or NC-17 version for IMAX theatres, but as far as I can tell, those are... Read more

Variety‘s Alissa Simon is apparently more impressed with Exodus, working title The Margate Exodus, than The Guardian was: Penny Woolcock’s gripping “Exodus” is a provocative, searingly political updating of the Old Testament story, with the Pharaoh as a right-wing politician and Moses as a terrorist. Shot in widescreen, with an eye-popping vision of dystopia that rivals Alfonso Cuaron’s “Children of Men,” it shows a Promised Land where the oppressed are brutalized and become brutal, and terrible injustice leads to horrific... Read more

The newest issue of BC Christian News is now online, and with it, my film column, which looks at three different things. First, it looks at the box-office woes of Evan Almighty — especially in comparison to the cultural impact, such as it is, of Knocked Up and Superbad. Second, it looks at three films — namely The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun, In Memory of Myself and One Hundred Nails — that will be at the Vancouver International... Read more