I have wanted to see Abel Gance’s La fin du monde (1931) — one of the first talking pictures made in France — ever since I first read about it while researching an article on apocalyptic movies for Christian History magazine back in 1998. The film concerns a comet that is heading for Earth, and it reportedly has a fair bit of religious imagery, too. But it has never been available on video, to my knowledge — at least not... Read more

Check out this take on the films of Woody Allen from Iranian TV: Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly. (Hat tip to Faisal A. Qureshi at The ScreenGrab.) Read more

Time for a few more quick news items. 1. Variety reports that Len Wiseman, director of Live Free or Die Hard, will helm the remake of Escape from New York (1981). 2. Bloody-Disgusting.com says Jurassic Park IV — currently scheduled for a 2008 release, seven years after the previous film — will be “about the government who has trained dinosaurs to carry weapons and use them for battle purposes.” Seriously. But wait — shouldn’t the dinosaurs themselves be the weapon?... Read more

Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly has a fun article up on the late Ingmar Bergman and what Gleiberman calls “the Four Stages of Watching Bergman” (“Youthful Befuddlement”, “Collegiate Awe”, “The Mary Wilkie Phase” and “Really Seeing Bergman”). He also takes special aim at that Jonathan Rosenbaum article: But something else, too, conspired to make Bergman passé, and that was the rise of a new mystique in art film — a cult of austerity that persists to this day. In a... 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. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix — CDN $29,430,000 — N.AM $272,005,000 — 10.8%The Simpsons Movie — CDN $15,940,000 — N.AM $152,237,000 — 10.5%Hairspray — CDN $9,030,000 — N.AM $92,110,000 — 9.8%The Bourne Ultimatum — CDN $11,910,000 — N.AM $132,345,000 — 9.0%Transformers — CDN $27,240,000 — N.AM $302,919,000... Read more

Oh my. I just watched the pilot episode for The Sarah Connor Chronicles — or at least, a version of it dated April 23 — and I am now more interested in this series than I expected to be. For one thing, it occurs to me now that this series could give Sarah Connor and her son John a chance to bond properly as mother and son, which is something the movies never really allowed them to do: John didn’t... Read more

Slashfilm.com reports that Lucasfilm has filled in the forms at the MPAA and registered six possible titles for Indiana Jones IV: Indiana Jones and the City of Gods Indiana Jones and the Destroyer of Worlds Indiana Jones and the Fourth Corner of the Earth Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Indiana Jones and the Lost City of Gold Indiana Jones and the Quest for the Covenant You have to wonder how many of these titles were included... Read more

From a Los Angeles Times story on New Line Cinema’s woes: Eager to move ahead with “The Hobbit,” New Line has quietly been trying to mend fences with “Rings” filmmaker Peter Jackson, who has sued the company over his share of profits from the first “Rings” films. When asked if it was true that company insiders had been in talks with Jackson’s reps, Shaye replied, “Yes, that’s a fair statement. Notwithstanding our personal quarrels, I really respect and admire Peter... Read more

The ScreenGrab has posted a top ten list of “The Most Notable Product Placements in Movie History”. Most of the examples come from the past quarter-century, though the oldest specimen is the Pan Am logo on the spacecraft in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968; my comments). The list begins with the following statement: It’s hard to think that there was a time when movies and TV didn’t regularly feature major subplots touting the life-affirming, alien-attracting, desert-island-loneliness-averting, catastrophic-explosion-shielding properties of popular... Read more

It’s always a tad irritating when a supposedly “national” newspaper puts off reviewing a film until it opens in Toronto. The latest example: Today’s National Post devotes the entire first page of the arts section to a graphic which, in turn, points the reader to an inside page featuring a 1.5-star review of Raoul Ruiz’s Klimt, which stars John Malkovich as the famous Austrian painter. Barry Hertz begins by noting that there are two different versions of the film, and... Read more