Time for a few more quickies! 1. The Hollywood Reporter says Keisha Castle-Hughes, the now-15-year-old star of Whale Rider (2002), has been cast as the Virgin Mary in Catherine Hardwicke’s Nativity. 2. The Hollywood Reporter also says Lauren Graham and John Goodman are joining Steve Carell in Evan Almighty. 3. FilmStew.com reports that Tina Turner may record the theme song for Casino Royale. Turner earlier recorded the Bono- and Edge-written theme song for Goldeneye (1995), so if this rumour pans... Read more

Remember Amazing Grace? That’s the William Wilberforce biopic being produced by Walden Media, with Ioan Gruffudd as the abolitionist Wilberforce and Albert Finney as his fellow anti-slavery activist John Newton. Well, it turns out there’s going to be another movie about Newton, according to Variety — and since that Wilberforce movie has already claimed the title of Newton’s popular hymn, this new movie has to be called something else: Mandalay Integrated Media Entertainment and Prelude Pictures have launched development of... Read more

A colleague pointed me to “Dr.” Ted Baehr’s latest column for WorldNetDaily.com today, with a note saying that Baehr reads this blog — “AND IT MAKES HIM REALLY ANGRY!” Naturally, I had to check it out for myself — but I was disappointed to see that my name does not appear anywhere on the page. And even though I am “a reviewer for a well-known Christian magazine”, I cannot be absolutely certain that Baehr is responding to my earlier post... Read more

As you may have heard by now, Isaac Hayes will no longer be providing the voice of Chef on South Park, apparently due to the show’s recent episode ‘The Great Scientology Secret‘. Hayes’s official reason, according to a statement: “There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins. . . . Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should... Read more

Bring out the candles and the cupcakes! It was one year ago today that I started this blog. And what an interesting year it has been. I somehow managed to post seven messages on my very first day, a feat I don’t think I have repeated since; click here for the last of them, and check out the others under “Previous Posts”. I got a SiteMeter button in mid-April, when this blog was about a month old, and it’s been... Read more

Been a while since I’ve done this. Time for some quickies! 1. Reuters reports that Cars — the first Pixar film to be directed by John Lasseter since 1999’s Toy Story 2 — is a hit with exhibitors, who saw the new film at a convention in Las Vegas yesterday: “I thought it was a great movie,” said Kevin MacLeod, executive vice president of Empire Co Ltd’s Empire Theatres, a Nova Scotia-based chain with 380 screens. MacLeod said he believed... Read more

Ever since The Passion of the Christ (2004) came out of nowhere and conquered the box office, Hollywood has been looking for ways to rake in more of those “Passion dollars“. Now, says the Hollywood Reporter, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore is pursuing this market on behalf of his global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth: “What we have found about this movie is (that) the word-of-mouth gets people to come in and see it and bring others to come see... Read more

What hath Mel Gibson wrought? He famously shot The Passion of the Christ in Latin and Aramaic, and is now making Apocalypto in ancient Mayan. And now, it seems, he is inspiring other period filmmakers to pursue linguistic verisimilitude. From a report on Vin Diesel‘s upcoming projects, via the Associated Press: Diesel is going the Mel Gibson route with the “Braveheart”-like epic “Hannibal,” about the 3rd century B.C. Carthaginian leader who led an army riding elephants across the Alps in... Read more

Here’s an odd tidbit from the latest report on the Da Vinci Code trial, courtesy of the Associated Press: On Monday three years to the week after “The Da Vinci Code” was first published the multimillionaire writer found himself on the witness stand in courtroom 61 of London’s High Court, denying accusations of copyright infringement from authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. In a witness statement made public by lawyers as he took the stand, Brown said was “shocked at... Read more

I just got a press release from the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival, announcing the films that will be part of their line-up March 30 – April 9. I haven’t had a chance to read it thoroughly yet, but the first title that catches my eye is Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, the true-story foreign-language-film Oscar nominee, about a Christian woman who stood up to Hitler’s regime. My friends Jeffrey Overstreet and Steven D. Greydanus assure me it is one of... Read more