A young friend of mine turned 11 two days ago, and I happened to have a ticket to a preview screening of Madagascar tonight, so of course I took her to see it. And surprise, surprise — we both liked it, quite a bit. (I say “surprise, surprise” because the last DreamWorks cartoon, Shark Tale, put me to sleep. Literally. And that was at a weekend matinee screening.) I may have liked this film because it was co-directed by Eric... Read more

Two interesting TV-documentary-related news items. 1. Yesterday’s Vancouver Sun ran this article on The Big V, the virginity documentary which premieres tomorrow night. In case you’re wondering, I am in the film, but I am not in the article. 2. Reuters reports that Super Size Me (my review) director Morgan Spurlock is behind a new reality TV series called 30 Days, “which places people in a variety of unfamiliar circumstances for 30 days,” and apparently one of his favorite episodes... Read more

1. Just came across this article on the upcoming Star Wars movie, which includes this sentence: The final lightsaber duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan is just one of many showstopping action sequences in Revenge of the Sith. See, that’s part of the problem, right there. They keep stopping the show so much it never starts. (I am also vaguely reminded of how I once criticized the climactic duel in Episode I for being almost pompously theatrical — choreographed — 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. Kingdom of Heaven — CDN $3,854,197 — N.AM $35,097,000 — 11.0%The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — CDN $4,549,964 — N.AM $43,255,000 — 10.5%The Interpreter — CDN $6,366,661 — N.AM $60,954,000 — 10.4%Sahara — CDN $6,234,115 — N.AM $64,457,000 — 9.7%The Amityville Horror — CDN $5,683,720 — N.AM $63,060,000 —... Read more

Two interesting columns in today’s National Post. 1. Andrew Potter reviews Steven Johnson‘s Everything Bad Is Good for You, which evidently argues that “our culture is getting more complex and neurally stimulating, year after year,” thanks to the much-reviled mass media, and that “critics have failed to appreciate the merits of video games, reality television and the Internet.” And why have they failed to appreciate these merits? The problem is that by concentrating our attention on the content of our... Read more

1. DreamWorks and Aardman Animation, the team behind the upcoming Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Chicken Run (2000; my review) — which briefly held the title of top-grossing non-Disney cartoon of all time until DreamWorks’ own Shrek (2001) more than doubled its cume a year later — have hired John Cleese to write their next film, a prehistoric comedy called Crood Awakening, says the Hollywood Reporter. 2. John Carpenter is making a movie called The 13th... Read more

Those of who you find the title of this post inherently distasteful may want to skip this one; and those of you who have seen me write about this subject elsewhere will find little new here, save for one point that comes up near the end. I won’t be writing anything particularly graphic of my own here, but I will be quoting some comments that Michael Medved and his younger brother Harry made a quarter-century ago in a book called... Read more

Just a few items. 1. My review of Mindhunters is up at CT. It’s nothing special — and I could be referring to my review as much as to the film! — and it kind of fell into my lap at the last minute because there weren’t any press screenings in the vicinity of the critic who was originally assigned to it, but there are worse diversions out there. 2. Last night the wife and I attended the screening that... Read more

Caught a couple more Maurice Pialat films last night. We Will Not Grow Old Together (1972) and The Mouth Agape (1974) were his second and third feature films, and if the theme a couple nights ago was women embarking on illicit sexual relationships against the wills of their menfolk, then the theme last night was the intimacy of marriage and other long-term relationships. I say “other” because We Will Not Grow Old Together is about the gradual dissolution of a... Read more

Speaking of biblical epics starring Omar Sharif, it was announced two days ago that ABC is putting its Moses mini-series into production in Morocco in just a little under two weeks. The Ten Commandments will star Mission Impossible 2‘s Dougray Scott as Moses, Priest‘s Linus Roache as his brother Aaron, and Sharif as his father-in-law Jethro, report the Hollywood Reporter, ComingSoon.net and various other sources. The choice of title is interesting. There have been several movies about Moses, but only... Read more