Caught a press screening of Country of My Skull (or, as it is known in North America, In My Country) this morning. It’s good to see a film about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission — especially one that acknowledges the positive religious tenor of the whole thing — but whatever social or political impact this film might have had is seriously watered down by the time it spends on a rather trite love affair between two journalists, one... Read more

Speaking of Kingdom of Heaven, there was an article in the New York Times today about a lawsuit alleging that the film stole its story from a recent history book, Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade, by James Reston Jr. Given that history is a public-domain kind of thing, it may be difficult to prove that the filmmakers stole any particular author’s reconstruction of history, but the response offered by director Ridley Scott is... Read more

Looks like I might get a chance to see Kingdom of Heaven, Ridley Scott’s upcoming film about the Crusades, next week. So I’ve been looking around for other Crusade-themed films, just to see how this subject has been handled in the past, and, uh, there don’t seem to be all that many of them. George MacDonald Fraser’s The Hollywood History of the World mentions only two, both of which happen to be available on VHS — Cecil B. DeMille’s The... Read more

I’ve been thinking about the relationship between real-life crimes and the movies lately. A couple days ago, I finally got around to seeing documentarian Nick Broomfield’s Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (2003), his follow-up to Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (1992), and it is interesting to see how his new film looks at the effect that his last film had on the lives of some of the people it portrays; the new film begins,... Read more

As per last week’s introductory post, 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 $3,530,706 — N.AM $26,201,432 — 13.5%Million Dollar Baby — CDN $9,659,554 — N.AM $94,133,278 — 10.3%Be Cool — CDN $5,022,065 — N.AM $52,336,105 — 9.6%Hitch — CDN $15,852,542 — N.AM $166,444,518 — 9.5%Ice Princess — CDN $1,151,415 — N.AM $13,342,028 —... Read more

Just got a release schedule from a Canadian publicist. It included the following blurb about Beowulf & Grendel, an upcoming Sturla Gunnarsson film starring Gerard Butler (Dear Frankie), Sarah Polley and Stellan Skarsgärd: Adapted from the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, Beowulf, that inspired J. R. Tolkein’s Lord Of The Rings, BEOWULF & GRENDEL is a medieval adventure that tells the blood-soaked tale of a Norse warrior’s battle against the great and murderous troll, Grendel. Heads will roll in this provocative take... Read more

Just saw the trailer for The Island. Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Sean Bean, Steve Buscemi and so forth? In an action movie about genetic engineering, with who knows how much fodder for moral discussion? This could be my kind of sci-fi. I am very, very interested. I am also very, very apprehensive, as the film is directed by Michael Bay, whose extremely unsubtle, constantly violent, attention deficit disorder style of filmmaking got on my nerves during Pearl Harbor (and by... Read more

Gadzooks, can’t let a day go by without blogging. So I’ll just toss some box-office trivia out there. With $498.2 million in the till worldwide, Meet the Fockers (my review) is now being touted as the top-grossing live-action comedy of all time — which is apparently a testament to how unusually popular this film is overseas, where comedies normally don’t translate as well as action movies and the like. I am not sure how I feel about this. I suppose... Read more

Happy Easter to those of you on the western liturgical calendar! I’ve been on the eastern calendar since meeting my wife just over two years ago, and while the two calendars do occasionally sync up — as they did last year — it is more common for Holy Week to come a wee bit later for the Orthodox than it does for Catholics and Protestants. (This year, Pascha takes place way off on May 1!) So, with all this Easter... Read more

I have always liked the letter M. The M volume was my favorite of all the World Book Encyclopedia volumes, for it contained both “Mythology” and “Motion Pictures”. M is also the first initial in the first names of both my sisters. And it is the first letter of the last three films I saw that I have not blogged yet. A couple nights ago the wife and I watched Munchhausen (1943), the film that Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels... Read more