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

Just got home from Sin City, Robert Rodriguez’s film adaptation of the comics by Frank Miller. Still processing it. And since my official review won’t be up for over a week, I have time to process it some more. In a way, I shouldn’t have to process it. I have never read this particular series, but I did read a number of Miller’s other graphic novels back in the day, and he’s got a pulpy style that is interesting and... Read more

Give me time, and I could be a fairly big fan of the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (a.k.a. “the Archers”). I already love 49th Parallel (1941) and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), quite possibly the best and most self-critical war-time propaganda movies ever made — I devoted a few paragraphs to them in an article on war movies for Books & Culture — and I am intrigued by the spiritual implications of Black Narcissus... Read more

Came across two articles on Millions today, via CT’s Weblog. The Washington Times‘ Scott Galupo suggests that the film — which has been receiving good buzz and even raves from Christian critics — will “split” the audience that made The Passion a hit, because “conservative Protestants” will “find suspect” the film’s Catholic “message of deeds-based charity”. I haven’t a clue what Galupo means by this, as I grew up in a thoroughly evangelical environment — churches, private schools, Bible camps,... Read more

Mark Steyn is both a political pundit and an arts critic, so his review of The Passion of the Christ — re-posted on his website to coincide with the release of The Passion Recut — starts with a typical conservative denunciation of the forces that rallied against Mel Gibson’s movie. But, unlike most other conservative commentators, Steyn does not quite go on from there to sing the movie’s praises — instead, he actually puts on his film-critic hat and makes... Read more

Thanks to Betty Ragan for tipping me off to this speech by Neil Gaiman on growing up with the stories of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and G.K. Chesterton. Two bits about Lewis’s Narnia books jump out at me in particular: For good or ill the religious allegory, such as it was, went entirely over my head, and it was not until I was about twelve that I found myself realising that there were Certain Parallels. . . . I was... Read more