Is it just me, or does anyone else get the urge to sing ‘Papa Loves Mambo‘ whenever they see the words “Devil Wears Prada“? Read more

Click here to see the trailer for The Reaping, a horror flick about a modern-day recurrence of the ten biblical plagues, starring Hilary Swank and AnnaSophia Robb. Looks cheesy. Looks fun. Read more

Y’all know that James Earl Jones played the voice of Darth Vader. But what if Star Wars had used voice clips from other James Earl Jones films, instead of getting him to record new dialogue…? UPDATE: Click here if the video file above doesn’t play properly. Read more

I’ve been meaning to post some thoughts on an old cartoon that I recently watched, but thanks to screaming babies and the like, I have not quite had the presence of mind to write anything up yet. In the meantime, the August issue of Sight & Sound boasts a nice long animation timeline that starts all the way back in 1832 and continues right up to the present day. It’s a fascinating set of milestones, including not just hand-drawn cel... Read more

John Mark Reynolds on “the fun film, but moral mess” that is the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise thus far: In another era, Disney would have created a sympathetic pirate (Long John Silver) or a funny pirate (Smee), but never a pirate whose goal was to make the audience want to be a pirate (Johnny Depp). Pirates were and are very bad men. They are not about liberty, but about abusing others liberty in order to get what they want.... 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. Le Secret de Ma Mere — CDN $527,848 — N.AM $527,848 — 100%Asterix et Les Vikings — CDN $105,290 — N.AM $105,290 — 100%The Da Vinci Code — CDN $26,665,910 — N.AM $213,289,000 — 12.5%Click — CDN $10,265,001 — N.AM $119,702,000 — 8.6%Superman Returns — CDN $13,842,524 — N.AM $163,648,000... Read more

I saw The New World twice last December, once at a critics’ screening in Vancouver and once on a junket in Los Angeles, and both times, the film that I saw was 149 minutes long. But the version that was released across North America in January was 135 minutes long, and not only were some bits cut out, but other bits were added to the film, as well. So I have been meaning to see the shorter version for quite... Read more

In case anyone’s wondering, I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest the day before it opened and liked it, on balance. Not unlike the first film, the first hour takes a while to set up all the various plot threads, but the final hour is pure action-comedy gold. (I’m not sure where that leaves the middle half-hour.) The special effects in particular are truly a thing to behold; while I’m normally more of a skeleton man than a... Read more

Last night the Cinematheque began a series of films by Peter Whitehead, and they kicked it off with Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London (1967), an intriguing time capsule from the heyday of “Swinging London”. And one of the most fascinating things about the film is how it actually subverts the high esteem with which “Swinging London” was, and still is, regarded. For example, in one interview, a young Michael Caine deplores the “class-conscious” laws that compel regular pubs... Read more

I got a DVD with the trailer for Jackass: Number Two this week. The image above is from the cover of the slipcase in which the DVD came. And look whose reviews of the original film got quoted, both on the slipcase cover and in the trailer itself. (Click on the image for a higher-res version, if you can’t make it out here.) FWIW, the Christian review quoted above can be found here. Read more