Sorry, I can’t resist. The picture of my daughter Elizabeth at right was taken at a baby shower hosted by my parents last Saturday — seven weeks after she and her twin brother were born, for those keeping track — and something about the open mouth and the way she puts her fists together reminded me of that other image. Read more

Time for another batch of news quickies. 1. The Devil’s Miner opened in limited release a couple weeks back, and comes out on DVD in May. Click here for my review and here for other reviews. 2. The Disney-Pixar merger, whereby the Disney corporation owns both companies but Pixar executives take charge of all the animated features in production, continues to have some interesting effects. Reuters and Studio Briefing report that Disney’s new management have pulled the plug on Elton... Read more

Life-of-Jesus movies have been made in many languages — from the early French talkie Golgotha (1935) to Mel Gibson’s Aramaic- and-Latin The Passion of the Christ (2004) — but I don’t believe one has ever been made in Arabic before. That may change soon, though, now that a Coptic Orthodox Christian screenwriter and a Muslim movie producer have joined forces in Egypt. Alas, the usual don’t-you-dare-depict-a-prophet protests have begun — thanks this time to “the highest authority in Sunni Islam,... Read more

Thanks to Matt Page for catching the fact that Color of the Cross, the “black Jesus” movie I mentioned here last month, now has a website and a trailer, and is scheduled to be released some time in October (as per the poster) or November (as per the trailer). Matt has already made just about every comment that I would be inclined to make, so go read his post; but in the meantime, I will add just a couple of... Read more

Hmmm, I may have to retract that part of my interview with Katherine Orrison where I said that the DVD version of the silent version of The Ten Commandments (1923) had a “hand-tinted” version of the Exodus sequence but not a Technicolor version. I have always known, or at least believed, that the VHS version of the film had the two-strip Technicolor version; whereas the DVD version is black-and-white, except for a bonus feature which, according to the menu, shows... Read more

Just a note to say that I’ve posted the longer version of my interview with Katherine Orrison, who provides the commentaries on the new Ten Commandments DVD set. Once I have a moment, I hope to find my VHS copy of the silent version and post some screen captures, from both the VHS and the DVD, comparing the different colour formats used in the Exodus sequence there. 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. She’s the Man — CDN $2,408,722 — N.AM $20,476,000 — 11.8%Eight Below — CDN $8,670,783 — N.AM $77,156,000 — 11.2%The Shaggy Dog — CDN $4,959,194 — N.AM $47,925,000 — 10.3%V for Vendetta — CDN $4,642,748 — N.AM $46,194,000 — 10.0%The Pink Panther — CDN $7,994,972 — N.AM $80,744,000 — 9.9%16... Read more

Richard Fleischer has died at the age of 89, reports the Associated Press. He was the son of Max Fleischer, who co-directed those famous wartime Superman cartoons, among others; and he went on to direct many movies of his own, some of which are memorable and others of which are, um, not-so-memorable. The Fleischer film I know best is probably 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), since I watched it repeatedly when I was a kid; I have not seen... Read more

Mark Steyn mentioned a few months ago that Nigeria “now has the third biggest film industry in the world, after Hollywood and Bollywood.” What he didn’t mention — but I guess it was inevitable — is that the Nigerian film industry now goes by the name “Nollywood”. And now, the Associated Press reports that one church has been taking the industry by storm: Now playing across Nigeria: The saga of a church that self-produced a few films and became an... Read more

Time for another quick batch of goodies. 1. I haven’t a clue what the political situation is like in California right now, but apparently a number of people are really, really hoping that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger takes time out from politics to make a movie or two. Moviehole reports that he is not only being courted for Terminator 4 and Conan 3, but that screenwriter William Goldman has dusted off the screenplay he once wrote for Crusade, a film that... Read more