The newest issue of BC Christian News is now online, and with it, my film column. This one’s a bit of a hodgepodge — if any one film gets the most attention, it would be Broken Flowers, since that was the photo that accompanied the article — but I also make passing comments about The 40-Year-Old Virgin, The Exorcism of Emily Rose (which I will see tonight), the Fellini retrospective, and the upcoming DVD releases of The Small One and... 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. Wedding Crashers — CDN $22,172,051 — N.AM $187,718,000 — 11.8%The 40-Year-Old Virgin — CDN $5,146,118 — N.AM $48,726,000 — 10.6%The Dukes of Hazzard — CDN $7,137,173 — N.AM $74,391,000 — 9.6%Red Eye — CDN $3,051,801 — N.AM $32,676,000 — 9.3%The Skeleton Key — CDN $3,315,913 — N.AM $37,899,000 — 8.7%The... Read more

Hmmm, I can’t allow an entire weekend to go by without posting something. I just got home from a screening and discussion of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ at Granville Chapel, and this gave me an opportunity to play with screen captures and slide shows and other programs I am only just beginning to learn how to use. I would have used actual moving clips, but I have not yet figured out how to extract them from the... Read more

How many biblical cartoons has Disney made? I’m not sure, really, but four come to mind off the top of my head. And with the exception of The Small One (1978), which comes out on DVD next month, they were all based on the story of Noah’s Ark. The first, Father Noah’s Ark (1933), came out four years ago on the Silly Symphonies two-disc set; and the third was the Donald Duck sequence set to Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ in... Read more

According to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, Disney has struck an exclusive deal with Wal-Mart to distribute The 3 Wise Men (2003) through that store only, from the DVD’s November 1 release date through the end of the year. The film is a French-Spanish co-production, but it sounds like the DVD will have only a Spanish track in addition to the brand-new English track, which will feature the voices of Martin Sheen, his son Emilio Estevez, Christian recording artist Jaci... Read more

Steve Carell, AKA the 40-year-old virgin, stole the show from Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty (2003; my review; my Bible study) — and now he’s stealing the entire franchise. Variety reports: Steve Carell is making a deal to star for Universal in “Evan Almighty.” He’ll likely increase his $500,000 salary for “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” at least tenfold. Conceived for Jim Carrey until he declined to reprise his role in “Bruce Almighty,” sequel will take the news anchor character Carell played... Read more

Late to the party, I’m sure, but for those who are looking forward to Serenity, the big-screen follow-up to Joss Whedon’s short-lived sci-fi series Firefly, and who have not gotten a whiff of the film’s “viral marketing“, check out these mysterious online clips (and, ideally, in the order that I saw them; the “first” one’s kind of a creepy head-scratcher if you haven’t seen the others yet): Session 416; Session 1; Sesson 22. Read more

Just a quick note to say that my review for ChristianWeek of the DVD re-release of The Passion of Christ (1981), a short film directed by Philip Earnshaw and based on the paintings of Canadian Catholic artist William Kurelek, is now up. Read more

My article on Billy Graham movies is up at CT Movies now, along with a sidebar on World Wide Pictures’ “top five” — which, I freely admit, tilts strongly towards the less formulaic films, or the films that felt freest to play with the formula a little bit. Readers of this blog may recall my earlier posts on the Billy Graham movies of the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and ’00s, as well as this post on an earlier generation... Read more

Mike Pesca at NPR caught my review of The 40-Year-Old Virgin for CT Movies the other day, so he interviewed me for a report that appeared today on Day to Day. We spoke for half an hour, but I’m one of three interviewees who had to be packed into this five-minute report, so only a few soundbites made it in. By sheer coincidence, last week I happened to watch ‘Homer Bad Man‘, the Simpsons episode in which Homer is interviewed... Read more