Harry Knowles of AintItCoolNews.com has posted the following montage of footage from John Rambo — previously known as Rambo IV — and you’ll have to watch it quick if you want to see it at all, since Harry says he’s taking it down after a couple days. Warning: This is bloody, brutal stuff; unlike a certain other 1980s action-movie franchise that is being revived right now, this one seems to be going out of its way to hold on to... Read more

I was watching John Huston’s The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966) tonight — mainly to brush up on the Noah’s Ark section — when I suddenly noticed something. Adam is played by Michael Parks. That’s him above, getting his first glimpse of Eve. And this is him again below, partaking of the good fruit in the Garden of Eden: Now, the last time I saw this film, the name “Michael Parks” didn’t mean anything to me. But now I recognize... Read more

I know some people who dismiss or outright loathe Ron Fricke’s Baraka (1992) because they think it is a mere “knock-off” of Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi (1983), which Fricke shot. (I will never forget the local critic who told me after a screening of Reggio’s Naqoyqatsi that he found Baraka “vomitous”.) But I also know people who like Baraka better because its soundtrack uses tribal chants and the likes of Dead Can Dance rather than the music of Philip Glass, which... Read more

Three more interesting reviews or commentaries on The Lives of Others came through my Google Reader account today. First, Timothy Garton Ash of The New York Review of Books: Watching the film for the first time, I was powerfully affected. Yet I was also moved to object, from my own experience: “No! It was not really like that. This is all too highly colored, romantic, even melodramatic; in reality, it was all much grayer, more tawdry and banal.” The playwright,... Read more

Fun stuff. And for some reason it reminds me of the time Trent, Darin and I sang every last verse of ‘99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall‘ during a drive through the Rockies some 15 years ago. Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly. (Hat tip to Joe Leydon at MovingPictureBlog.) Read more

Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly. (Hat tip to the Nord Report.) Read more

I haven’t commented on recent Terminator developments yet. Last week, the newly-formed Halcyon Co. bought the rights to the franchise and announced that it planned to make not one new movie, but a whole trilogy of new movies — and this was quickly followed by rumours that the new films might include a digital Arnold Schwarzenegger and an actual Nick Stahl. One detail that I don’t think was cleared up is whether MGM is still involved. Then, yesterday, Fox TV... Read more

It wasn’t all that long ago that a $100 cheque from an American newspaper or magazine would pay me over $150 in Canadian currency. But these days, I’m lucky to get $110. So I cannot help but note these sentences from today’s Globe and Mail: “The Canadian dollar hit its highest intraday level in almost three decades Friday, and many strategists believe the currency has further to go. The loonie touched 91.63 cents (U.S.) on Friday after a much stronger-than-expected... Read more

Bizarre. Colleagues of mine in New York, Chicago, Seattle and Washington DC have all told me that they won’t be getting a chance to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End until Monday the 21st. And as far as I can tell, Vancouver won’t be getting any previews of the film — which opens Thursday the 24th at 8pm — at all, though critics and whatnot might be allowed to see it for free on opening night. This is... Read more

The New Haven Register says a car chase in Indiana Jones IV will be shot on the outskirts of Yale University next month: Indiana Jones will be racing up Chapel Street next month, a spokesman for director Steven Spielberg confirmed Monday. The fourth installment of the hugely popular series, arriving in theaters almost 20 years after the third, will include some kind of car chase on Chapel between College and High streets. A pre-production crew was in the city last... Read more