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

Pardon the tabloid headline. But after reading this story in Variety on the stresses that people in the visual-effects industry have had to deal with lately, my heart does go out to them: If the visual effects industry had its way, the Disney tentpole that sailed into theaters May 25 might have been named “Pirates of the Caribbean: At Wits’ End.” Industrial Light & Magic topper Chrissie England, who’s seen many blockbusters come through her shop, calls the editing/post-production race... Read more

Click here for the Daily Mail story on this. Read more

Martin Scorsese talks to the Associated Press about Silence, the Shusaku Endo novel he hopes to film next year: Scorsese is turning his sights to a story of missionaries in 17th century Japan. “Silence” is a long-cherished project that he hopes to shoot partially in Japan in summer 2008. Although it’s a period piece, Scorsese thinks it has lessons for America today. “It raises a lot of questions about foreign cultures coming in and imposing their way of thinking on... Read more