If money were no object, I’d snap up the Chaplin Collection DVD boxed sets in a heartbeat. Except for three anthologies of his earlier short films that were compiled in 1938, and that are not included here, these two sets include all the feature films he directed between The Kid (1921) and The Chaplin Revue (1959), plus they have all sorts of delicious bonus features, too. One film, however, is conspicuously absent from these sets. That film is Chaplin’s final... Read more

The New York Times had a story last week on “saturation evangelism” — that is, on Campus Crusade for Christ‘s efforts to mail a free copy of the 1979 film Jesus to every address in the United States. So far, however, most of the mailings seem to have taken place in the Bible Belt; this is mainly because local churches must raise the money to pay for shipping and handling, and the Bible Belt is where most of the churches... Read more

You know how people raised on the King James Bible sometimes have difficulty reading the newer translations? Last night’s screening of Jesus of Montreal (1989) at Granville Chapel was a little like that, for me; apparently there was some difficulty getting the subtitles to work, so the guy in the video booth turned on the English audio track instead — and I realized I had never seen the dubbed version of this film before. A few lines that have long... 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 $20,959,148 — N.AM $177,915,000 — 11.8%Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo — CDN $1,902,312 — N.AM $17,175,000 — 11.1%The Dukes of Hazzard — CDN $6,432,717 — N.AM $68,837,000 — 9.3%The 40-Year-Old Virgin — CDN $1,797,106 — N.AM $20,555,000 — 8.7%The Skeleton Key — CDN $2,536,874 — N.AM $30,144,000... Read more

Last night a friend and I caught Velcrow Ripper’s ScaredSacred (2004), which is being shown at the Pacific Cinematheque as part of its ‘Canada’s Top Ten‘ series. And both my friend and I found ourselves wondering why this film has been praised so much, at least in the Canadian media. The film chronicles Ripper’s efforts to look at how fear has been turned into something more positive in various places around the world. He embarks on his journey in 1999,... Read more

Time for another round-up. 1. First, a reminder that I will be introducing Jesus of Montreal at Granville Chapel this Sunday night. 2. Second, a reminder that the African female-circumcision movie Moolaadé is now playing in Vancouver. 3. One of the things that has made Pixar so much better than all the other animation outfits out there is its devotion not just to technical brilliance, but to good stories. So it is with some sadness that animation buffs heard the... Read more

My reviews of Valiant and The 40-Year-Old Virgin are now up at CT Movies. The latter review in particular gets a bit more personal than my reviews usually do, but given the subject matter, and given that I got personal in my interview in The Big V and in my articles on 40 Days and 40 Nights, etc., it seemed warranted. Read more

A few weeks ago, I posted a few brief thoughts on the films written by Ann Peacock, who also wrote the first draft of the upcoming film version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. At the time, I said that, based on her other films, I was glad that the script had been given to other writers after her — namely, to Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. But these two writers have only one other film to their... Read more