Yeah, it’s got nothing to do with movies, but this is too awesome. Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly. Read more

From Entertainment Weekly‘s fall movies preview and the blurb therein on The Golden Compass: ”It follows the novel as closely as it can,” promises Daniel Craig, who grew an un-Bondlike beard to play Lord Asriel, Lyra’s explorer uncle, ”but there’s still a lot missing. That’s always the case when you adapt a book into a movie. You have to focus more on the storytelling.” Conspicuously absent, for instance, is any reference to Catholicism; instead, the malevolent organization that snatches children... Read more

The New York Times had an item on the various versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers last week, before the newest one, The Invasion, had been screened for the press. Near the end of the article, Oliver Hirschbiegel, the original director of the newest film, “offered a few details” about the film. Among them: There is also more exposition. And in a modification that for some will verge on sacrilege, there are no pods. “It would be too campy,”... Read more

My review of The Invasion is now up at CT Movies, as is my review of The Last Legion. Read more

Several sites have embedded or linked to this video already, but it’s so good that I might as well post it here too: Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly. Read more

I have long known that Harrison Ford had a cameo in a scene that was deleted from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). And I have long wondered how this cameo was shot, given that roughly the first two-thirds of Steven Spielberg’s film do not show the faces of any adult characters except for Elliott’s mother. Well, thanks to YouTube, now I know. Incidentally, Damian Arlyn at Windmills of My Mind has been blogging a different Spielberg film every day this month,... Read more

Lou Lumenick at the New York Post reports that The Last Legion, the latest flick to draw a link between actual Roman history and Arthurian legend, “is not being screened in advance for critics“. But while that might be true in New York, it is not true here; I saw the film at a press screening in Vancouver last Friday, and my review will appear at CT Movies tomorrow. The Weinstein Co. is one of the film’s distributors, and I... Read more

My article on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is now up at CanadianChristianity.com. Read more

Just a few more news items while they occur to me … 1. Errol Morris, who is currently making a documentary about Abu Ghraib, has a long and fascinating post at his blog on the role that photographic images have played in the public discussion about that prison — including some discrepancies as to who, exactly, was wearing the black hood in perhaps the most famous (or, rather, infamous) photo to come out of that scandal. 2. Bill Maher talked... Read more