Just some links to some new articles of mine. First, my review of The Interpreter, which I saw two nights ago and had to review yesterday despite a terrible cold. Second, my article on Kingdom of Heaven director Ridley Scott and leading man Orlando Bloom, which I wrote for BC Christian News and modified somewhat from an as-yet-unprinted article that I wrote for ChristianCurrent; I would call the article an “interview” except it was one of those junket things where... Read more

Actor-comedian-musician Jack Black and actor-writer Mike White, after collaborating on the so-so Orange County and the much-better-than-it-had-a-right-to-be School of Rock, are at it again — this time in a Nickelodeon movie about “a Mexican priest who secretly moonlights as a masked wrestler in order to save an orphanage from closure.” And it’s “inspired by a true-life story”! Those who like to keep an eye open for religious connections in film, however weird or obscure they might be, might be intrigued... Read more

I still haven’t seen Sahara — the wife took my brother-in-law to the preview while I was on the Kingdom of Heaven junket — but I have to say, after reading Mark Steyn’s negative review, I want to see it more than I did before. Here’s his opening paragraph: Until James Bond came along in the Sixties, the most successful movie series to date had been the Road pictures with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. Sahara seems to... Read more

This just in from the Hollywood Reporter: all six Star Wars films will be screened at Leicester Square in London on May 16, one day after Revenge of the Sith premieres at the Cannes festival and three days before the film opens to the general public. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I suspect this will be the first time the special-special editions of the original trilogy (i.e. the 2004 DVD versions, as distinct from the special editions released in... Read more

Good news for fans of Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki — especially if you happened to discover him through Drifting Clouds (1996) or The Man without a Past (2002; my review), the first two installments in his “unemployment trilogy”. Agence France-Presse reports that Kaurismaki will film Vartija (The Guard), about “a security guard searching for happiness in the concrete jungle of Helsinki,” in May and June of this year. I really enjoyed the Kaurismaki retrospective at the Pacific Cinematheque a couple... Read more

Here’s another story on companies that “clean up” DVDs, courtesy of the Washington Post. The part that boggles my mind the most is in the opening paragraph: apparently Alexander Payne’s Sideways is one of the films that has been “sanitized” for family-friendly viewing. This, remember, is a film about two guys on a wine-tasting road trip, one of whom is getting married in a few days and therefore wants to cheat on his wife-to-be with a few different women before... Read more

The wife and I just got home from Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Wowzers. It’s one of those films about the corporate culture that makes me glad I’m a work-at-home freelancer. And it’s one of those films that makes you wonder, If the powers that be are so good at lying through their teeth to us, then how can we separate the truth-tellers from the liars? I also wonder about the worldview, for lack of a better word,... Read more

Jeff Overstreet recently posted a news item regarding Left Behind co-author Jerry Jenkins’ new contract with Tyndale; apparently he’s going to write 15 new novels for them in the next five to six years — that’s a rate of roughly three novels per year. One thing Jeff does not mention is that Jenkins has apparently already begun cranking out prequels to the Left Behind series, which we all thought — apparently mistakenly — had ended last year with The Glorious... 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. Hostage — CDN $4,992,240 — N.AM $33,408,000 — 14.9%Sin City — CDN $7,279,578 — N.AM $61,300,000 — 11.9%Sahara — CDN $3,332,830 — N.AM $36,446,000 — 9.1%Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous — CDN $3,756,657 — N.AM $41,561,000 — 9.0%Robots — CDN $9,754,977 — N.AM $115,704,000 — 8.4%Guess Who — CDN... Read more