This is so unsurprising that I feel kind of bad about blogging it and thereby wasting both my time and yours … but I can’t stop keeping tabs on this stuff now. Anyway, it seems that Saw III, like many horror films this year, has not been screened for critics. Read more

Barbara Nicolosi fears Facing the Giants — and has some pretty compelling reasons why you, too, should fear its influence. On a related note, it might be interesting to compare this film’s box-office performance — and thus its potential influence on the Christian movie biz — with that of One Night with the King. The latter film seems to be following the typical movie trajectory — have a big(-ish) opening weekend, then progressively smaller weekends as the theatrical release runs... Read more

My interview with Amy Berg, director of the documentary Deliver us from Evil, is now up at CanadianChristianity.com. I may post a longer version here in a few days. Read more

What is Hoodwinked director Cory Edwards up to these days, you ask? Today, he posted an item at his blog saying, among other things, that he and a couple of his colleagues have just finished a rewrite on the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie: The job has been stressful, since the studio had already started rendering the movie and finishing it for its March 2007 release. The release and all marketing tie-ins were completely locked in stone, even if... Read more

I’ll get around to reviewing One Night with the King soon, really I will. In the meantime, today’s Los Angeles Times has an interesting — and long — exposé on producer Matthew Crouch: There’s a lot to be thankful for. His televangelist parents have authorized more than $32 million in tax-free donor money for the funding of three of his movies, TBN officials say. In addition, $16 million was given to a ministry that funded “One Night.” . . .... Read more

I’m not exactly a huge horror buff, but I am something of a continuity nut, so I do love it when someone charts the ups and downs, the changes and consistencies, across an entire decades-spanning franchise — even a horror franchise. So, this being that rare month in which we get to experience both Halloween and Friday the 13th, and only a couple weeks apart, it has been a treat to read both Joe Leydon‘s survey of the Halloween movies... Read more

Gadzooks, I’m behind on my Bible movies. I’ve been meaning to finish my write-up on One Night with the King ever since it opened nearly two weeks ago, and now, Color of the Cross is only two days away from being released. Arrrgh. In the meantime, check out the stories on the film put out recently by the mainstream media. The Associated Press reports: “Color of the Cross” tells a traditional story, focusing on the last 48 hours of his... Read more

I have never read Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising, though a friend of mine did give me a copy of one of the other books in that series some years ago. I now find myself wondering if there is anything vaguely or remotely religious about the series. Why? Because Variety reports that a film version is now being produced by Walden Media — the outfit behind Amazing Grace and the Narnia movies — and the director they’ve hired, after... Read more

Variety reports that Pan Nalin has signed on to direct Buddha, the story of Siddhartha, sometime next year. No details yet on how this film will approach the material, but I imagine it won’t be the sort of Sunday School lesson we got in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Little Buddha (1993) — a film that I remember finding so-so at best, though I loved the soundtrack albums and used to listen to them quite often. Anyway, the reason I imagine Nalin will... Read more

You gotta love it when the person transcribing an interview doesn’t quite know what the people are talking about. From ComingSoon.net‘s account of a Q&A; between Harlan Ellison and Battlestar Galactica writer-producer Ronald D. Moore: Q: The venue has changed and there is now a supernatural quality. Something like the force is at work. Can you talk about that?Moore: Well, I sort of felt that as the religious aspects of the show were becoming more and more prominent and they... Read more