Empire Online has an update on Darren Aronofsky’s Noah movie: “It’s an adaptation of Noah’s Ark,” he exclusively reveals to Empire Online, “and I’m pretty much done with the script.” But it’s not, he insists, to be confused with the upcoming Evan Almighty. “This is not a comedy. It’s funny, because Noah’s always been done as a comedy. This is definitely more the sci-fi version. It’s the traditional Noah story, but it’s told in a serious way. More fantasy than... Read more

This story is over a month old now, but it’s still funny — in a scary kind of way: Director Mike Figgis spent longer at LAX airport than intended. He’d arrived in Los Angeles, along with half the acting and directing world, for what is known as ‘pilot season’, when the big studios try out new scripts, directors and actors in a two-week frenzy of auditions and career make-or-breaks. When Figgis was being grilled by airport immigration, he was asked... Read more

Robert Koehler of Variety reviews Munyurangabo at Cannes: Like a bolt out of the blue, Korean American filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung achieves an astonishing and thoroughly masterful debut with “Munyurangabo,” which is — by several light years — the finest and truest film yet on the moral and emotional repercussions of the 15-year-old genocide that wracked Rwanda. Pic’s supremely confident, simple storytelling and relaxed, slightly impressionist visual style follow a conflict that emerges between two friends as one makes a... Read more

As a Bible-movie connoisseur, I could not help but notice the first few paragraphs of this Variety story: Egypt’s Media Production City has announced three projects set to lens in the 21-million-square-feet studio complex. Producer John Heyman’s $130 million “Nefertiti” project, Exodus Films’ $15 million “The Exodus Scrolls” and Blighty shingle Young Legends’ $5 million “Young Cleopatra” have all inked deals with Egypt’s largest film complex. A media free zone with 31 video and cinema studios, the complex was opened... 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. Away from Her — CDN $584,025 — N.AM $2,401,000 — 24.3%Georgia Rule — CDN $2,100,000 — N.AM $16,281,000 — 12.9%Fracture — CDN $4,670,000 — N.AM $36,604,000 — 12.8%Spider-Man 3 — CDN $30,700,000 — N.AM $303,342,000 — 10.1%28 Weeks Later — CDN $2,380,000 — N.AM $23,706,000 — 10.0%Shrek the Third —... Read more

The New York Times evidently thinks it’s news that a movie studio has hired Grace Hill Media to promote Evan Almighty to Christian audiences. Never mind that outfits like Grace Hill Media have worked on lots of films, and films with even the slightest religious elements are often considered for their possible appeal to religious audiences; I still get a kick out of the that the first junket I was ever invited to, as a member of the religious media,... Read more

Eric Idle has been all over the Canadian media lately; he expressed his possibly-ironic outrage over Shrek the Third during a radio interview in Toronto, and I saw him being interviewed by George Stroumboulopoulos on TV the other day. Now The Toronto Star has an item on Not the Messiah (He’s a Very Naughty Boy), the oratorio based on Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979; my comments) which premieres in Toronto this coming Friday: The new show is going to... Read more

Two months ago, I made an extremely brief reference to an upcoming CGI cartoon by the name of The Ten Commandments. Tonight, I discovered that if you click here, you can see a promo featuring several of the filmmakers, including Christian Slater (who plays Moses), Alfred Molina (who plays the Pharaoh Ramses), Elliott Gould (who plays God) and Ben Kingsley (who played Moses himself in a 1995 TV-movie produced as part of “the Bible Collection“, but merely narrates this newest... Read more

From a Variety story on the Nigerian film industry: While Hollywood’s interest in Africa continues unabated, African helmers are making a concerted effort to get their own stories out to the world. Chief among these are Nigerian helmers keen to break away from the straight-to-video model of local filmmaking. Nigerian helmer Jeta Amata’s “The Amazing Grace” — about how British slave trader John Newton’s voyage to Nigeria in 1748 led to him writing the famous hymn — has become the... Read more

Brian Johnson of Maclean’s reports that Denys Arcand considers his new film, L’Âge des ténèbres AKA The Age of Innocence AKA Days of Darkness, to be “the final chapter in a trilogy that includes Decline of the American Empire and The Barbarian Invasions.” That’s interesting, because The Barbarian Invasions (2003) features characters from both Decline of the American Empire (1986) and Jesus of Montreal (1989), so I have always seen that film as the concluding chapter of a sort of... Read more