Four days ago, I wrote about how March of the Penguins, Just Like Heaven and The Exorcism of Emily Rose were being dragged into the culture wars. Now A.O. Scott of the New York Times beats the drum again, paying special attention to Just Like Heaven: But a movie that looks at first like a soft, supernatural variation on the urban singleton themes of “Sex and the City,” by the end comes to seem like a belated brief in the... Read more

Talk about your instant sequels. A few weeks ago the wife and I went to the local hospital for an ultrasound — oh, is this the first time I’ve mentioned her pregnancy in this forum? well, we’re into the second trimester now, so it’s about time I said something — and the nurse began asking us about our “family histories”. Yup, it turns out we’re expecting twins. And the nurse even went so far as to speculate that they might... Read more

E! Online reports that the original French version of March of the Penguins — the one that had what Entertainment Weekly described as “Teletubby-style French music and Hello Kitty script (much of it involving penguins ‘talking’ about their hopes and dreams)” and “courting couples … whisper[ing] foreplay poetry to each other” — has been “snubbed” by whoever it is that decides which French film ought to be considered for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In its place,... Read more

Time for another round-up. 1. The stories about Hollywood’s efforts to appeal to the Christian niche market just keep on comin’. GetReligion.org links to a Wall Street Journal story on The Exorcism of Emily Rose: The $19 million project is a hit in part because Screen Gems deliberately courted an audience that it might not have counted on for a typical horror flick: religious conservatives. . . . Studio executives figured that horror movie-loving teens would flock to the picture,... Read more

My reviews of Proof and Flightplan are now up at CT Movies. Incidentally, I just noticed that Flightplan was mentioned in a news story I quoted here, in which Peter Sarsgaard says he wasn’t allowed to use the word “Jesus” in this film. But I seem to recall hearing it at least once, though I do not recall who said it. Read more

Time for yet another article based on my interview with Scott Derrickson, director of The Exorcism of Emily Rose. This one was written for ChristianWeek, and has been re-posted at CanadianChristianity.com. Due to the paper’s long-ish lead time — long-ish for a newspaper, that is — I wrote this article within hours of seeing the film, but over a week before the film came out; so this article does not take into account the surprisingly politicized nature of some of... Read more

Just a quick note to say that I just found out that the Mike White-written, Jared Hess-directed, Jack Black-starring film that I blogged here five months ago, about the “true story” of “a Mexican priest who secretly moonlights as a masked wrestler in order to save an orphanage from closure,” has a title: Nacho Libre. I have no idea what to expect from this film, but I’m looking forward to it. Read more

I don’t think I ever linked to this NPR report, now almost a month old, about the evidence for homosexual behaviour among penguins and how this behaviour just might prove embarrassing to all the right-wing pundits who have praised the surprise hit movie March of the Penguins for its alleged “family values”. But I’m linking to it now because the perceived conservatism of these penguins continues to make the news — as evidenced, for example, by this editorial in last... Read more

My review of the new Ben-Hur DVD set is now up at CT Movies. The set has actually been out for a week now, but the review copy didn’t arrive until early last week, and then I had to spend hours and hours just watching and listening to everything — all while juggling my other assignments — before I could write anything. So, FWIW, my review was written under tighter time constraints than I would have liked, and may seem... Read more

Mark Steyn, that connoisseur of all things musical, has just posted a love letter to Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), starring Catherine Deneuve. FWIW, I happened to review this film myself, back in my student-reporter days, when the restored edition came out in the mid-1990s; you can read my review on page 12 of this PDF file, but it’s Steyn’s write-up that has me itching to see the film again. (I have a copy of the soundtrack album,... Read more