The Associated Press reports that Helvetica — a popular typeface which, like the air we breathe, is so omnipresent that we barely notice it — is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Click here for a link to a 15-month-old story on movies that have mistakenly shown Helvetica being used in earlier eras — movies like Titanic (1997) and Good Night, and Good Luck (2005). And click here for even more examples of such films! UPDATE: Whoops. It turns out... Read more

And I can’t wait for the inevitable mash-up video that will link this film with Bridge to Terabithia, the other movie which features AnnaSophia Robb leading people into supernatural forests. Haven’t got much else to say at the moment. I do think this film is probably a hair better than, say, Bless the Child (2000), which was also a dull, plodding, cheesy apocalyptic thriller starring an Oscar-winning actress. But then, I guess that isn’t saying much. Read more

Wow. We all knew that the Wachowski brothers had been hired to oversee some pretty substantial reshoots on Oliver Hirschbiegel’s The Invasion, the long-in-gestation fourth version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (following the versions made in 1956, 1978 and 1993). But now Collider.com reports that the reshoots may have been way more substantial than any of us had guessed: I have spent the last few days researching this story on The Invasion and if you’re a fan of The... Read more

Children of Men is on DVD now, so Christopher Orr at the New Republic takes another look at it: “Cinema,” Alfonso Cuarón told The Seattle Times in December, “[has] become now what I call a medium for lazy readers. … Cinema is a hostage of narrative. And I’m very good at narrative as a hostage of cinema.” He was referring to his film Children of Men, and he captured its strengths and weakness admirably. It is a frequently moving, occasionally... Read more

Today must be Faith & Film Day at Variety magazine, since a long list of brand new articles on the subject popped up at their website last night. One of the first articles I noticed, alas, was this one on Christian critics, which begins by quoting “Dr.” Ted Baehr: “When you’re listening to Roger Ebert, you’re listening to his puffery, his opinion,” says Ted Baehr, founder of Movieguide, a ministry that evaluates mass media according to biblical principles, receives approximately... Read more

Reports of the demise of the Walt Disney Treasures series of DVDs were greatly exaggerated, it seems — that, or Disney changed its mind and decided to keep the series going for at least a little while longer. UltimateDisney.com reports that there will be three new sets in December — two of which I am quite eager to acquire: The Chronological Donald, Volume Three The most self-explanatory of the Wave 7 releases, this one’s expected to deliver 30-35 shorts in... 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. Reign over Me — CDN $1,602,341 — N.AM $13,331,000 — 12.0%Shooter — CDN $3,124,895 — N.AM $27,212,000 — 11.5%Premonition — CDN $4,225,986 — N.AM $39,342,000 — 10.7%300 — CDN $19,277,674 — N.AM $179,662,000 — 10.7%Wild Hogs — CDN $11,312,945 — N.AM $135,355,000 — 8.4%TMNT — CDN $2,937,070 — N.AM $38,428,000... Read more

Meet the Robinsons made around $25 million this weekend. I guess that’s good for Disney, inasmuch as the studio’s feature animation department has produced 19 other non-Pixar cartoons over the past 20 years, and only five of them have had better opening weekends — said films being Chicken Little (2005; $40 million), Lilo & Stitch (2002; $35.3 million), Tarzan (1999; $34.2 million), Pocahontas (1995; $29.5 million) and The Lion King (1994; $40.9 million). We can bump that number up to... Read more

I’ve got to review September Dawn in the near future, so I figured I’d check out a couple other films about early Mormon history. First up was Brigham Young (1940), which is everything you’d expect a grand old Hollywood film of that era to be: romantic, idealistic, dramatic, the works. Thankfully, the disc comes with a commentary by film historian James D’Arc, who curates the movie archive at Brigham Young University, and he points out some of the places where... Read more