Every time a dog movie comes out, someone writes an article on the perils of owning the specific breed of dog depicted in that movie. The latest movie to get the 101 Dalmatians treatment is Eight Below, courtesy of CanWest News Service: Worried that dog breeds popularized by celebrities, movies and television will become the targets of puppy mills, Canadian and U.S. kennel clubs are asking people to think seriously before buying one of the dogs as a pet. “Everybody... 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. Ultraviolet — CDN $1,527,424 — N.AM $14,751,000 — 10.4%Eight Below — CDN $6,666,249 — N.AM $66,424,000 — 10.0%The Pink Panther — CDN $6,920,040 — N.AM $74,603,000 — 9.3%Date Movie — CDN $3,814,068 — N.AM $44,264,000 — 8.6%16 Blocks — CDN $1,911,380 — N.AM $22,704,000 — 8.4%Curious George — CDN $4,311,137... Read more

Just a quick note to say that I’ve updated my index of Disney DVDs and the cartoon shorts appearing thereon. I love this stuff. Read more

IndieWIRE reports that The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, the latest film about Inuit culture from the makers of Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001), will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7: “Once we saw Norm and Zach’s film, we knew that one of the most important films from and about Canada had crossed our paths,” explained festival co-director Noah Cowan, in an email exchange with indieWIRE today. “Although we still have significant work to... Read more

The Hollywood Reporter reports that the surprise victory of Crash over Brokeback Mountain at the Oscars last Sunday should not have been that surprising after all, for a variety of reasons. Among the signs to which they point is this: Moreover, insiders are also pointing to a little known piece of Oscar trivia: not since 1980’s “Ordinary People” has a film won the best picture Oscar without also having had a nomination for best film editing. “Brokeback” wasn’t a film... Read more

It took me a couple dozen years, but tonight I finally got around to watching The Dark Crystal (1982), the all-puppet fantasy movie co-directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz and produced by Gary Kurtz. Interesting. I especially had fun spotting the story elements which reminded me of Return of the Jedi (1983) — the clothes that collapse after a character dies and his body vanishes, the person who falls down a deep shaft to his death — or, for... Read more

My review of Failure to Launch is now up at CT Movies. And click here for a three-week-old news story about “adultescents” that informed one paragraph of my review. Read more

The Harry Potter movies have a nasty habit of leaving out many of my favorite lines and scenes, and one particularly glaring omission that many fans caught was the fact that Mad-Eye Moody (Brendan Gleeson) never says “Constant vigilance!” in the film version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005). Well, now that the film is out on DVD, we can see that there was, in fact, a scene in which the character says these words — but... Read more

Passover and Easter are only a few weeks away, and you know what that means — a new batch of religious movies re-issued, or released for the first time, on DVD! Top of the list is the 50th anniversary edition of The Ten Commandments, the 1956 epic that has been released on DVD a few times before — so you might say this one isn’t that big a deal. But look! This time, it comes with the original silent 1923... Read more

Those of you who live around Winnipeg might have heard me on the radio last Sunday — I took a call from GodTalk during the Oscars to talk about The Constant Gardener. Although the interview took place last Sunday, the show wasn’t listed in the program’s online archives until today — and as of this writing, there is still no mp3 for this show, whereas you can download mp3s of all the previous episodes! Ah well. FWIW, this was at... Read more