King Kong opened three days ago, and I’ve been sitting on my comments because I’ve been pretty busy with other stuff. But since the industry pundits are concerned that this film may be underperforming at the box office, I figure I should toss my thoughts out there while they’re still quasi-relevant. The feeling I had after watching the film was that I had just sat in on someone else’s romance, someone else’s special dinner date, or something like that. A... Read more

A few years ago, Josh Hartnett starred in a modernized version of William Shakespeare’s Othello called O (2001). Now it looks like he’s going to star in a modernized version of Hamlet, to be called Texas Lullaby. The Hollywood Reporter says: Set in a small eastern Texas town, the movie revolves around a young man (Hartnett) who learns that his widowed mother [Ellen Barkin] has married his father’s brother [John Malkovich]. His father’s ghost tells the young man that he... Read more

Narnia director Andrew Adamson has said that he really, really wanted his film to be “empowering” to girls in a way that C.S. Lewis’s original story was not. Two weeks ago, in the Globe & Mail — I think it was this article, though I’m not entirely sure, now that it’s gone to subscriber-only status — there was this item: The filmmakers did make one significant alteration to the source material. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which was... Read more

According to the IMDB, Hoodwinked! — a wacky riff on fairy tales that is one of the ten films eligible for this year’s Best Animated Feature Oscar — opens in Los Angeles tomorrow, but although it was once slated for a December 23 release, it doesn’t open anywhere else now until January 13. So I probably shouldn’t say anything about the movie itself just yet. But I will say I was pleasantly surprised to see the words “SCORE BY …... Read more

I’ve contributed a blurb on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to the Matthews House Project: Like a zombie version of the classic children’s tale, Andrew Adamson’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe goes through the motions of C.S. Lewis’s story but drains it of its spirit. A few moments work fairly well (Lucy’s first meeting with Mr Tumnus among them), but the characterization of Aslan and the White Witch is all wrong, and... Read more

The Toronto International Film Festival Group has announced this year’s top ten Canadian films, as selected by a panel of ten film critics and members of the Canadian film industry. Somehow, despite poor distribution for Canadian films in general and my own unusually poor attendance at this year’s Vancouver film festival, I have already seen five of them (in bold): C.R.A.Z.YFamiliaA History of ViolenceHorloge Biologique (Dodging the Clock)The Life and Hard Times of Guy TerrificoMemory for Max, Claire, Ida and... Read more

Today, I made it to page 170 of Vengeance, a 352-page (if we don’t count endnotes) book by George Jonas about the top secret Israeli agents who tracked down and assassinated various Palestinian terrorists as retaliation for the deaths of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Tomorrow night, I am going to see Munich, the new Steven Spielberg movie based on Jonas’s book. Think I can finish the book by then? Although Jonas’s book is a work of non-fiction, it... 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. Les Boys IV — CDN $424,283 — N.AM $424,283 — 100%Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire — CDN $27,974,865 — N.AM $244,119,000 — 11.5%Pride & Prejudice — CDN $2,501,525 — N.AM $26,385,000 — 9.5%Just Friends — CDN $2,501,537 — N.AM $26,464,000 — 9.5%Aeon Flux — CDN $1,607,892 — N.AM... Read more

Time for another few newsbite quickies. 1. The Chronicles of Narnia grossed $67.1 million in its opening weekend, according to studio estimates. This is the 2nd-biggest December opening, after 2003’s The Return of the King; the 3rd-biggest opening of 2005, after Star Wars III and Harry Potter IV; and the 23rd-biggest opening weekend of all time. 2. Jeffrey Wells reports that Jesus might make an appearance in Oliver Stone’s movie about September 11: Andrea Berloff’s script is about the true... Read more

My review of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is now up at CanadianChristianity.com. Shorter versions of this review will appear in the print editions of ChristianWeek, ChristianCurrent and BC Christian News. I’m feeling like a real contrarian right now. I am honestly stunned by the gushing praise this film is receiving, and from such unlikely quarters — five out of five from The Guardian, four out of four from The Globe and Mail, etc.... Read more