My friend Matt Page has just posted some information on Jesus of Nazareth (1977) and its DVD release in Europe, over at his Bible Films Blog — and along the way, he posts two screen captures, so that North American obsessives like me can compare the Region 2 release to the Region 1 release that is sitting on our shelves. So, I have tracked down the equivalent screen captures on my own DVD, which was released by Artisan Entertainment six... Read more

Reuters reports that the Vatican has approved a new hour-long film, John Paul II: The Friend of All Humanity, which is half cartoon and half archival montage. And YouTube has the following clip of the movie’s first five minutes, in which the Pope’s death is mourned by his stationery and his “bosom pigeons”: As far as I can tell, the IMDB has no information on this film or on any of the names in the opening credits, except composer Marco... Read more

They turned Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) into a Broadway musical, so why not turn Life of Brian (1979; my comments) — one of my official ten favorite movies of all time — into an oratorio? According to yesterday’s Playbill, Eric Idle and John du Prez will premiere the 50-minute oratorio Not the Messiah at the Luminato festival in Toronto next June: The world premiere of “Not the Messiah” will be conducted by TSO Music Director Peter Oundjian... Read more

Clips from The Nativity Story are still scheduled to play at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis this coming Sunday, but if you want to see the entire movie, it looks like you may have to wait until November 9, when it shows at the National Outreach Convention in San Diego. Screenwriter Mike Rich will be in attendance. The film comes to a theatre near you December 1. Read more

They say that Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time is one of the most-purchased-but-least-read books of all time. Well, I actually read it myself, back in the late ’80s — though I can’t say I’ve retained all that much of it — and I was a fan of Errol Morris‘s movie adaptation, which seems to be the only one of Morris’s feature-length films that has never been released on DVD. Today, The Australian reports that Hawking is working on... 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. Trailer Park Boys: The Movie — CDN $2,417,840 — N.AM $2,417,840 — 100%The Departed — CDN $5,444,486 — N.AM $56,626,000 — 9.6%Jackass: Number Two — CDN $6,282,601 — N.AM $68,383,000 — 9.2%Open Season — CDN $5,301,201 — N.AM $59,154,000 — 9.0%The Guardian — CDN $3,511,053 — N.AM $41,119,000 — 8.5%Man... Read more

Two months ago, I noted that the upcoming remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers — directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel and starring future Golden Compass co-stars Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig — had been renamed The Visiting. Now, a Variety story on producer Joel Silver notes that the film is currently being called The Invasion. So they’re sort of back to the original movie’s title. Hmmm. The first film version of this story was made in 1956. The first remake... Read more

One Night with the King cracked the North American box-office top ten this weekend. And if the estimates hold, its $4,326,000 take will rank as the second-highest opening weekend ever among independently produced evangelical movies — slightly ahead of End of the Spear (2006; $4,281,388) and a couple million behind Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie (2002; $6,201,345; my review). FWIW, as far as I can tell, One Night with the King has not come to Canada yet. It is pretty rare... Read more

My review of Man of the Year is now up at CT Movies. Read more

Gosh, has it been a whole month since the last time any movies were released without being screened for critics in time for those critics to write opening-day reviews? Ah, well, it’s a good thing there are not one, but two, such movies opening today to pick up the slack. First there is Sony’s The Grudge 2 (click here for my review of the previous film), which some industry insiders think may win the box-office trophy this weekend; and then... Read more