… the result is Escape from Planet Earth. Saith the Hollywood Reporter: Ed Jones, an executive producer on feature animation Oscar winner “Happy Feet,” has joined Rainmaker Animation to produce “Escape From Planet Earth.” The Weinstein Co. is financing the comedy and will handle worldwide distribution. Additionally, Steve Nichols has joined Rainmaker as animation director. . . . The film marks the first theatrical animated feature for Rainmaker. Production began last week at the company’s Vancouver facility; voice talent has... Read more

What a beautiful film. I regret missing it during its theatrical run. Visually, musically, thematically, and in terms of the actors’ performances, there is quite a bit to chew on here, and I find I’m still thinking about it the day after I watched the DVD. No time for a review, but two brief points. First, I was struck by how this film seemed, at first, to follow that old rule of portraying marital sex by not portraying it —... Read more

Well this sucks: Asserting that our neighbors to the north have become major suppliers of pirated pics around the globe, Warner Bros. is taking the unprecedented step of canceling all promotional and word of mouth screenings there until the Canadian government makes it illegal to take camcorders into theaters. According to Warners, more than 70% of all pirated Warners titles released over the past 18 months originated in Canada. “Within the first week of a film’s release, you can almost... Read more

Barbara Nicolosi announced today that she and some partners have secured the film rights to Sheldon Vanauken’s A Severe Mercy, which she will adapt into a screenplay. She calls it “a really beautiful and wonderful project with strong transcendent themes (and a cameo appearance by C.S. Lewis!)”, and while I have not yet read the book myself, the review at Amazon.com indicates that it is an autobiographical story dealing with pagan love, Christian conversion, jealousy, grief, and the relationship between... 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. Hot Fuzz — CDN $2,120,000 — N.AM $16,145,000 — 13.1%Fracture — CDN $3,340,000 — N.AM $26,453,000 — 12.6%Next — CDN $1,170,000 — N.AM $11,835,000 — 9.9%Blades of Glory — CDN $10,120,000 — N.AM $111,632,000 — 9.1%Spider-Man 3 — CDN $12,250,000 — N.AM $148,000,000 — 8.3%Disturbia — CDN $4,880,000 — N.AM... Read more

It’s awards season again — and apparently my film column for BC Christian News won second place in the ‘Media Review – Newspaper’ category at the Canadian Church Press awards last Friday. The judge, Marianne Meed Ward, commented: Well written, relevant to the interest of your audience, packed with quirky facts and informative — it’s a media survey and piece by piece review rolled into one brief engaging package that never forgets the needs of the audience. A rare achievement.... Read more

Last Thursday, Anne Thompson of Variety wrote the following in an item describing her visit the previous week to Lucasfilm headquarters at the Presidio in San Francisco: At the party I got a kick out of watching Lucas, Robin Williams, John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Staunton and Brad Bird whooping it up and making each other laugh. (Coppola was on a wine tour.) “I’m a big proponent of regional filmmaking,” Lucas told me. (He told me that for the first... Read more

Everyone else is talking about the curious difference between the regular poster for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix vs. the IMAX 3-D poster, so I might as well mention it here too. FWIW, Melissa Anelli of LeakyNews.com has a few things to say about this. (Hat tip to Lou Lumenick at the New York Post.) Read more

Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the screenwriters on the upcoming The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, have just posted the following comments at the film’s official blog: . . . As writers, the biggest challenge we faced was connecting the Pevensies’ story to that of Prince Caspian. In C. S. Lewis’ book, they’re essentially two separate narratives which only come together near the end. While this is perfectly entertaining to read, it makes for a strangely structured movie where your... Read more

Due to the lag between the print and online publishing schedules at one of the papers that I write for, my review of the new Spider-Man movie won’t be up for a while. But suffice to say the movie is an over-stuffed let-down. In the meantime, consider this interview that Sam Raimi did with Entertainment Weekly: You also seem very suspicious of superhero motives in this movie.Peter Parker is really still acting on very immature impulses. He’s dressing up in... Read more