Finally got around to listening to the production team’s audio commentary on the DVD for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Around the 33-minute mark — during the scene where Edmund first meets the White Witch — director Andrew Adamson makes the following comment: I kind of decided early on that it was as if this story had really happened, and C.S. Lewis had written about it in a way that children could understand, but... Read more

IGN.com has posted a “script review” of Nativity — the upcoming movie about Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus, written by Mike Rich, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, and starring Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary and Shohreh Aghdashloo as Elizabeth. The film is currently being shot in Matera, Italy — the very same region where Mel Gibson shot The Passion of the Christ (2004) and Pier Paolo Pasolini shot The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964). Next month, the production moves... Read more

Time for a few updates on recently-posted items. 1. Scott Derrickson talks to Fangoria about his in-development adaptation of John Milton’s Paradise Lost: Derrickson recognizes the care that needs to be taken and the potential that lies within the material; he’s also fully aware that it’s a daunting and delicate task that will take a little time to bring to the screen. “There’s still work to be done on the script,” Derrickson tells Fango. “Stu has done a lot of... Read more

At last, some news that makes me want to break out the old action figures. The official Star Wars website has announced that the original theatrical versions of Episodes IV, V and VI will finally come out on DVD on September 12, without any of the crap that was added to them in the 1997 and 2004 special editions. (Of course, if these are really the original theatrical editions, then the first Star Wars movie won’t have an “episode” number... Read more

Reuters reports: The youngest film director at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, 21-year-old Ash Christian, is living proof that being a chubby gay kid from Paris, Texas, doesn’t mean you can’t direct and star in a movie. “Fat Girls” is a semi-autobiographical comedy about awkward Texas teenager, Rodney, and his friend, Sabrina, who is so fat that in a moment of passion with her boyfriend in a car, her rear end gets stuck in the steering wheel. . . .... Read more

Religio-political documentaries seem to be a theme at the Tribeca film festival this year. Yesterday, I mentioned Jesus Camp. Today, IndieWIRE reports that writer-director Randy Olson’s Flock of Dodos is a documentary about the intelligent design debate that “aims for the style of Morgan Spurlock‘s ‘Super Size Me,’ or a Michael Moore film to try to make science interesting.” Olson, who, as an evolutionist is squarely on the side of Darwin, clearly favors the established scientific explanations for how life... Read more

The second trailer for Superman Returns is now online, and once again, I find myself wondering whether I will be able to take Kevin Spacey even remotely seriously as Lex Luthor, especially given that he already did the bald-bad-guy thing in his cameo for Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002). Still, at least he won’t be doing that smugly-uplifting thing that’s affected most of his films for the past decade. At least, we hope he won’t. Cool effects, though. UPDATE: Just... Read more

Michel Gondry, whose Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004; my article on amnesia and memory movies) was one of my top ten films of its year, is messing with our brains again. The Hollywood Reporter says Gondry will direct Be Kind Rewind beginning in September. The film will star Jack Black as “a junkyard worker . . . whose headaches lead him to believe his brain is melting. His brain is magnetized, leading to the unintentional destruction of movies... Read more