Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly. 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 $1,168,053 — N.AM $1,168,053 — 100%School for Scoundrels — CDN $1,306,001 — N.AM $13,968,000 — 9.3%Open Season — CDN $4,034,986 — N.AM $44,129,000 — 9.1%Jackass: Number Two — CDN $5,667,146 — N.AM $62,693,000 — 9.0%Jet Li’s Fearless — CDN $1,953,707 — N.AM $21,660,000... Read more

I still haven’t seen Antonio Vivaldi: A Prince in Venice, but since the VIFF added a third screening — due to the film’s popularity, apparently — I might get around to it yet. In the meantime, Variety reports that Joseph Fiennes will play the title character in Boris Damast’s Antonio Vivaldi, based on a screenplay that Jeffrey Freedman has been researching for “more than two decades”. The cast also includes Lena Headey, Malcolm McDowell, Jacqueline Bisset and Zuleikha Robinson. No... Read more

IGN.com has posted a 103-second web featurette on Apocalypto. Nothing much new here, but here are a few key quotes: “Apocalypto” means “new beginning”. However, to have a new beginning, something has to end. I’m hardly the first person to point this out, but once again, Mel Gibson’s scholarship is a little shaky. “Apocalypto” is actually Greek for something like “uncover, disclose, reveal, unmask,” etc. Hence, for example, the Apocalypse, or the Book of Revelation, gets its title from the... Read more

Well, perhaps I exaggerate. But check out this Production Weekly synopsis for the upcoming Rambo IV: In the Serpent’s Eye: The next chapter finds Rambo recruited by a group of Christian human rights missionaries to protect them against pirates, during a humanitarian aid deliver to the persecuted Karen people of Burma. After some of the missionaries are taken prisoner by sadistic Burmese soldiers, Rambo gets a second impossible job: to assemble a team of mercenaries to rescue the surviving relief... Read more

When news first came that The Nativity Story would star 16- year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes as the Virgin Mary — almost certainly the youngest actress ever to play the part — I was intrigued. For years, I have heard pastors and priests talk about how the historical Mary was probably in her early to mid teens — a fact that has not been acknowledged by any previous narrative film of which I am aware — so I figured church types would... Read more

My review of The Last King of Scotland is now up at CT Movies. Read more

This installment’s theme: Women who aren’t what they seem. 1. Variety reports that Patricia Clarkson, Ryan Gosling and Emily Mortimer are set to star in Lars and the Real Girl: Pic is the story of a timid man whose life changes dramatically when an Internet friend comes to visit. The beautiful, religious missionary is in fact an inanimate replica of a woman. I’m not really sure what that’s supposed to mean, but for now, I’d like to recommend that the... Read more

Disney may have censored the knobby knee that was mistaken for something else from the new DVD version of The Little Mermaid (1989) … but they forgot to censor the making-of documentary on Disc 2 which makes use of this shot! Since both versions of this shot are on this set, I figured I’d capture them myself, instead of relying on other people’s images as I did in my earlier post. First, the original image, which is a little blurrier... Read more

Why bother looking for descendants of Jesus when you can just clone the real thing? Variety reports: In his first departure from the horror genre, “The Hills Have Eyes” helmer Alexandre Aja is attached to direct an English-lingo bigscreen adaptation of the Gallic bestseller “The Gospel According to Jimmy.” Rights to the book by Goncourt winner Didier Van Cauwalaert were acquired recently by Alexandre Films, the Gallic production company of Aja’s helmer/producer father Alexandre Arcady. . . . Set in... Read more