Terry Mattingly has posted a follow-up item on the wildly overblown kerfuffle over Facing the Giants and its PG rating, at GetReligion.org. He makes some good points, e.g.: To make a long story short, the studio and the producers behind Facing the Giants stand by their story that their original communications with the the MPAA — email and telephone talks — said the PG rating was based on content that could be interpreted as characters proselytizing on behalf of Christianity.... Read more

We already knew that Andrew Adamson, director of the clueless and lacklustre The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), was coming back to direct Prince Caspian. Last Sunday, Infuse Live reported from Comic-Con 2006: Producer Mark Johnson . . . and director Andrew Adamson didn’t want to do a second Narnia film unless they could figure out how to make it bigger, badder, and overall better than the first. Just about six months ago, they... Read more

IndieWIRE reports that Magnolia Pictures has picked up the documentary Jesus Camp “for a September theatrical release that will target both conservative Christian and liberal doc audiences alike. . . . [Magnolia president Eamonn] Bowles explained that he has decided to pull the doc from next week’s scheduled screening at Michael Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival so as not to taint the perception of the film in the run up to the release.” JUL 27 UPDATE: The Hollywood Reporter also... Read more

The Associated Press reports that, after three and a half years of hype and controversy, the mania for all things Da Vinci Code may finally be coming to an end, having peaked with the movie: “The Da Vinci Code” itself is still a best seller, in the top 5 on The New York Times’ paperback fiction list, but no longer can a book simply be compared to Brown’s and expect to catch on. Noting a drop in demand, Barnes &... Read more

The other day, I came across this description at CHUD.com of the new trailer for Spider-Man 3 that was shown at Comic-Con: But the biggest highlight has to be the Spider-Man 3 presentation, where Sam Raimi and most of the cast of the movie showed the unfinished new trailer. There were placeholder effects in spots, but even with animatics inserted the thing gave me chills. The Venom reveal is astonishing, and this trailer is going to silence a lot of... Read more

I never thought this would happen, but I actually have a soft spot in my heart for Adam Sandler these days. It’s certainly not that I like “Adam Sandler movies”, per se. I do have fond memories of The Wedding Singer (1998) and 50 First Dates (2004; my comments), and I suspect it’s partly because Drew Barrymore somehow brings out the best in him. But most of his other star vehicles have been a chore to sit through, especially when... Read more

Remember that four-disc edition of the expanded version of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) that I mentioned here two weeks ago? I had assumed that two discs would be devoted to the movie itself and two discs to the bonus features, as was the case with the expanded versions of Pearl Harbor (2001), The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) and Kingdom of Heaven (2005). But now IGN.com reports that, nope, the expanded movie... Read more

My article on the films of Alfred Hitchcock — and on his Catholic faith, such as it was — is now up at CT Movies. It is part of the site’s ‘Filmmakers of Faith’ series (“This series will include everyone from biblically-minded evangelicals to directors who may only have a ‘church background’ and perhaps a lapsed faith … but their films are clearly informed by their spiritual history”). Read more

Remember Vin Diesel’s plan to make a feature film about the legendary Carthaginian general Hannibal, with all the dialogue in ancient Punic? The Hollywood Reporter (via Reuters) says Diesel still plans to make that movie, but in the meantime, he’s lending his voice to a cartoon about Hannibal for BET Networks: “I knew that BET would be the perfect place to launch an animated series that celebrates an African mythology and a general that is probably the most notorious general... Read more