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

Time to unload the last few days’ worth of stories. 1. IGN.com says Good News Holdings plans to start shooting its adaptation of Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt in October — and they plan to shoot it in Israel. IGN.com says no actors or directors are attached to the project yet, but “a casting search is on for the boy who will play the young messiah in the film.” MAR 31 UPDATE: Click here for the official... Read more

I saw Mira Nair’s The Namesake a few days ago and liked it quite a bit. I particularly couldn’t help shedding a tear during the flashback in which Gogol’s father takes his young family down to the beach. As it happened, I had gone to the theatre straight from a beach excursion with my own family — and I can only hope that my son and I get along better when he finishes high school than Gogol and his dad... Read more

My review of Meet the Robinsons is now up at CT Movies. Read more

… that the two films opening in over 3,000 theatres today would both begin at orphanages, and would both contain scenes in which a person refers to “Louis Armstrong” walking on the moon? Read more

My review of Amazing Grace is now up at BC Christian News; an expanded version will appear soon in ChristianWeek. APR 16 UPDATE: The expanded version is now up, too — here. Read more

I have not yet seen Grindhouse — the upcoming double-bill by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez — but tonight I bumped into someone who caught it on the recent press junket, and he tells me that all versions of this film shown everywhere in the world will begin with one of the “Restricted” trailers, featuring the cougar shown above, that were created in British Columbia during the 1970s or 1980s. Awesome. (Click here to see four trailers that were created... Read more

The cover art for the British and American editions of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has been revealed! Personally, I would like to know why, in the American cover, Harry and Voldemort are not facing each other but, instead, are looking at something else. (Hat tip to ComingSoon.net, among others.) Read more

The theatrical release of Evan Almighty, the sequel to Bruce Almighty (2003), is less than three months away, now. The new trailer will debut tomorrow night during a marathon of The Office, the TV series that stars Evan Almighty‘s Steve Carell. Meanwhile, today, Cinematical put up this new poster for the film. I guess it’s about time I started brushing up on my Noah’s Ark movies. Read more

IESB.net reports that various movie studios, emboldened by the success of 300, are vying for the film rights to another graphic novel about an ancient battle of epic, even mythical, proportions, by the name of War in Heaven — which, alas, seems to have no connection to the Charles Williams novel of that name: Trac 2 Media, is developing a feature film adaptation of the forthcoming comic book series “War in Heaven.” The project has been dubbed “the next 300.”... Read more