Yes, even historical costume dramas have sequels — so behold the trailer for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, which premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly. The film is a sequel to Elizabeth (1998; my review), which was one of two Oscar-nominated Elizabethan period pieces co-starring Joseph Fiennes and Geoffrey Rush that year — the other being the ultimate Best Picture winner Shakespeare in Love (1998). More fun trivia:... Read more

Narnia fans — especially those who quibbled with the recent film’s emphasis on pseudo-Spielbergian and pseudo-Jacksonian battle scenes and other gratuitous action setpieces at the expense of character, tone, and thematic significance — might want to note the last paragraph in this story from Variety the other day: Also given a big push was “The Chronicles of Narnia” sequel. Helmer Andrew Adamson delivered a taped message saying that, unlike the original, “Prince Caspian” will feature “battles all the way through.”... Read more

This article in yesterday’s New York Observer about the upcoming Yale University shoot mostly talks to giddy extras about their costumes and so forth, but it does offer these plot details: Filming of the four-quel, tentatively titled Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods and directed by Steven Spielberg, begins June 28. “It’s the opening scene of the movie,” Ms. Dunn burbled excitedly. “[Harrison Ford] is teaching a class and he hears some noise outside, which turns out to... Read more

Some friends of mine live near a park in New Westminster, where the mini-series Tin Man is currently being filmed. So they sent me these pictures — and of course, I was immediately envious, because, as I have said here before, I adore Zooey Deschanel. Deschanel is playing DG, the Dorothy surrogate, and that’s Raoul Trujillo as Raw, the Cowardly Lion surrogate, next to her. My friends also posed for another picture with Alan Cumming, who plays Glitch, the strikingly... Read more

If you’re the kind of person who enjoys parsing the meaning and significance of words and catchphrases, and if you’re the kind of person who likes to ponder the relationship across time and space between the individual and community, and if you’re the kind of person who enjoys getting academic about matters profane, then you may find Eric Lichtenfeld’s tribute to the Die Hard franchise‘s most famous one-liner just as stirring and moving as I did: Most one-liners articulate the... Read more

Horror flicks are often let loose on the public without being shown to critics first, so it comes as no surprise that Captivity will open July 13 with no press screenings. It will, however, be screened “at an expected showing for women’s groups in New York, at which [producer Courtney Solomon] wants to engage in a town-hall-style debate with detractors,” according to the New York Times. The most shocking item in this story, for me, is the revelation that this... Read more

The silent era is a continuing source of fascination and frustration for Bible-movie buffs. Fascination, because religious themes were very common then, and filmmakers were often quite bold — for better and for worse — in how they developed these themes. And frustration, because so few of these films exist any more. I am reminded of this once again because The Villages Daily Sun in Florida posted a story the other day on Dr. Edgar J. Banks, an archaeologist and... Read more

Last year — following a controversy that partly concerned the question of what the PG rating means with regard to a film’s suitability for families — I kept track of all the G- and PG-rated films that cracked the weekly top ten lists, to see how many of them were aimed primarily at families or children, and how many of them were basically for grown-ups. Now that we are almost half-way through this year, I figure it’s time for an... Read more

And all, apparently, because I used the words abortion six times, zombie twice, and death once. (Only once?) Victor Morton at the Rightwing Film Geek blog (rated NC-17!) has some good comments on this test, the ratings system in general, and the attitudes that people adopt towards these ratings. 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. Knocked Up — CDN $9,700,000 — N.AM $108,982,000 — 8.9%A Mighty Heart — CDN $352,659 — N.AM $4,006,000 — 8.8%Ocean’s Thirteen — CDN $7,990,000 — N.AM $91,013,000 — 8.8%Shrek the Third — CDN $26,410,000 — N.AM $307,908,000 — 8.6%Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End — CDN $23,830,000 — N.AM... Read more