Last week, some e-pals and I were discussing ‘Religion for the Robots,’ a recent Sightings column by Robert M. Geraci. One of the topics that came up was whether robots would be directly responsible to God or, rather, to their human creators — or both. Then, on Saturday night, I went and saw the sneak preview of the new Pixar film Ratatouille, and before it, there was a teaser for WALL-E, which comes out next year. I have embedded 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. Spider-Man 3 — CDN $30,570,000 — N.AM $330,016,000 — 9.2%Shrek the Third — CDN $25,510,000 — N.AM $297,249,000 — 8.6%Ocean’s Thirteen — CDN $5,990,000 — N.AM $69,810,000 — 8.6%Knocked Up — CDN $7,710,000 — N.AM $90,482,000 — 8.5%Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End — CDN $22,350,000 — N.AM $273,757,000... Read more

Variety reports that at least three “horror” films produced by Val Lewton in the 1940s might be remade in the near future: Evolution Entertainment’s horror division Twisted Pictures has formed a joint venture with RKO Pictures and plans to remake four genre pics from the RKO library. The companies will co-finance development and production of “The Body Snatcher,” a 1945 Robert Wise-directed thriller that starred Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff; the 1943 pic “I Walked With a Zombie”; and the... Read more

Yikes. Universal Studios has gone out of its way to let people know that the PG-rated Evan Almighty is way, way more family-friendly than its PG-13 predecessor Bruce Almighty. So what happened when Entertainment Weekly‘s Carey Bell dialed the 1-800 number that God, played by Morgan Freeman, uses in the film…? Oops. Read more

Last year, I noted that French-language films made in Quebec are sometimes shown with subtitles even when they are shown in France — because the dialects in the two countries can be very different. Now comes this item via the National Post: Like children all over North America, pint-size Quebecers have been flocking to theatres recently to see the animated film Shrek the Third, or Shrek le Troisieme as it is known here. The only problem is they are leaving... Read more

While Martin Scorsese prepares his adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s Silence AKA Chinmoku, a couple other items regarding films about Jesuit missionaries and Christian martyrs in 17th-century Asia popped up in my news feed this morning. First, Doug Cummings at FilmJourney.org says he has just finished writing the liner notes for an upcoming DVD release of the previous adaptation of Endo’s novel, which was written by Endo himself and directed by Masahiro Shinoda in 1971. The DVD will be released as... Read more

I am not familiar with Thomas Wheeler’s novel The Arcanum, but this description in Variety sounds at least a little interesting: Gold Circle Films has picked up feature rights to Thomas Wheeler’s fantasy-adventure “The Arcanum” out of turnaround from Miramax. “The Arcanum,” Wheeler’s debut novel, is set in 1919 and follows the titular secret society comprising the era’s leading occult investigators — Arthur Conan Doyle, Harry Houdini, H.P. Lovecraft and Marie Laveau — as they battle demons descending on New... Read more

Last month, inspired by the kerfuffle over the rating for Live Free or Die Hard, I started a list of movie franchises which began on an R-rated or X-rated note and then shifted down to the PG-13 or PG-rated level as the sequels came out. So far, I cannot think of a single case in which the PG or PG-13 sequel was all that good. Now, I am wondering something slightly different. How many franchises have begun on a PG-13... Read more

Variety reports that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End has been heavily edited for its release in China: Chinese auds will get to see a trimmed version of “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” when it opens here Tuesday after censors cut back on a number of scenes featuring Hong Kong star Chow Yun-fat. According to local media, more than half of the scenes featuring Chow as a Singapore pirate, have been cut, including his recitation of a... Read more

I’m slipping! I forgot to mention last week that Hostel Part II — which turned out to be a flop — was coming out last Friday without being shown to critics beforehand. At any rate, I heard of no screenings, and all the reviews I’ve read so far were published in the Saturday or Sunday papers — which is usually a sign that the critics couldn’t see the film until the paying public could. It is not uncommon for horror... Read more