One more article of mine on Kingdom of Heaven is now online. This time it’s an interview piece with director Sir Ridley Scott and leading man Orlando Bloom for Christianity Today. In places, it overlaps with my piece on the film for the Canadian papers, but it’s longer and has some of the more interesting quotes, I think. Read more

Mark Steyn has his own obituary up now for the late Sir John Mills, and he mentions one or two films that I had never heard of before, but which I will have to try to see now, such as Tunes of Glory (1960), which I see has been available as a Criterion DVD for just over a year now. (That’s Sir Alec Guinness, not Sir John Mills, on the cover, though.) Read more

Picked up the soundtrack to the new Star Wars film today, more for the bonus DVD than for the actual music. Perhaps it’s premature to post my first impressions, as I have given each disc just one spin each so far today, but comment I shall. The bonus DVD is a nice little trinket — completely superfluous, of course, but an interesting attempt to meld all six films by setting music videos to individual John Williams tunes, with each music... Read more

A few days ago I was contacted by a reporter who was looking for information on a controversy allegedly brewing over Kingdom of Heaven, the Crusader-themed movie which opens this Friday. Turns out the reporter was following up an article in the Times of London entitled: “Christian right goes to war with Ridley’s crusaders.” The Times article begins by breathlessly stating: Christian conservatives in America are marshalling their forces against Sir Ridley Scott’s forthcoming crusader epic, The Kingdom of Heaven,... Read more

Last month, I wondered if the upcoming Gates of Heaven DVD would include Les Blank’s short film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980). I’m guessing it won’t, now, since it turns out the short film will be included as an extra on the upcoming Criterion edition of Blank’s feature-length documentary Burden of Dreams (1982), which is also about Herzog (specifically, about the making of Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo). Looks like hardcore Errol Morris fans may have to shell out for an extra... Read more

Two more articles of mine are online now. 1. An edited transcript of the historians’ panel at the Kingdom of Heaven junket that took place almost four weeks ago. 2. My article for Books & Culture on the recent spate of Oscar-winning euthanasia movies, zeroing in on Million Dollar Baby, The Sea Inside and The Barbarian Invasions. Read more

The University of London’s Royal Holloway college asked over 3,000 people to pick the “perfect family film”, and the result was Back to the Future (1985), reports BBC News. Interestingly, the Sun reports that researchers said the film topped the list “because it combines the perfect mix of ingredients — comedy, romance, social justice and adventure — essential to family viewing.” I first came across this report elsewhere, and wasn’t quite sure what to make of the claim that “social... Read more

Just one day after I posted that item about Robert J. Sawyer’s disappointment with the effect that Star Wars has had on the popular perception of science fiction, the New York Times ran this story on other sci-fi writers who similarly gripe that it’s about bloody time George Lucas put an end to his space opera. At one point, the reporter writes: Like science itself, science fiction has evolved since the days of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne in... Read more

Bizarre. Apparently Richard Linklater is planning to direct a “fictionalized thriller” based on Eric Schlosser’s popular and extremely well-written bit of muckraking journalism Fast Food Nation, starring Maria Full of Grace‘s Catalina Sandino Moreno. (Maybe she’ll smuggle a burger inside her stomach this time.) Why a “fictionalized thriller”, I wonder? Schlosser told some very interesting and even poignant stories that were all based on people he had interviewed, so it’s not like the source material is hurting for narrative content.... Read more