Just a few more news items while they occur to me \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n 1.<\/a> Errol Morris<\/a>, who is currently making a documentary about Abu Ghraib<\/a>, has a long and fascinating post<\/a> at his blog on the role that photographic images have played in the public discussion about that prison \u2014 including some discrepancies as to who, exactly, was wearing the black hood in perhaps the most famous (or, rather, infamous) photo to come out of that scandal.<\/p>\n 2.<\/a> Bill Maher talked to Larry King<\/a> last night about the upcoming documentary<\/a> that he and Larry Charles are working on:<\/p>\n KING: This is the atheist view of religion.<\/p>\n MAHER: Well, yes. It\u2019s certainly the doubter\u2019s view. How much of an atheist a person is, even I, who I\u2019m not a believer, say, look I can\u2019t know. My main proposition is I don\u2019t know, and, therefore, if some other human being tells me or anybody else what happens when you die, my answer to them I don\u2019t know what happens when you die so how do you know? The answer is you don\u2019t know, so to purport to present yourself as someone who can tell in such great detail, and the detail is amazing, isn\u2019t it, about what happens when you die you?<\/p>\n We have to get away from a system of faith. Mitt Romney always says we need a person of faith in the White House. They all would say the same thing who are running for president. No, we need a person of doubt in the White House. Stop with the faith and start with the doubt.<\/p>\n KING: Where do you \u2014 give me what I will see. Do you talk to religious leaders?<\/p>\n MAHER: Oh, we talk to everybody. We went everywhere. We went to every place where there\u2019s religion. We went to Vatican City and we went to Jerusalem and we went to Salt Lake City and, you know, I think I\u2019ve insulted everybody, you know. It\u2019s across the board, and we got amazing access. I mean, we were \u2026<\/p>\n KING: Really?<\/p>\n MAHER: We were at the dome \u2014 we were standing right next to the rock, the Dome of the Rock where Mohammed flew up to heaven. We were \u2014 we were in that mosque, places they never filmed before. The Wailing Wall you\u2019re not allowed to have cameras, inside the Vatican. We just found out that even though the sign says you\u2019re not allowed to enter here there\u2019s so many tourists with cameras and such and nowadays when you make a documentary like this it\u2019s kind of guerrilla shooting. You don\u2019t need a big crew. You just pretend you\u2019re tourists and you\u2019re shooting and then can you make a movie.<\/p>\n KING: Is this like Michael Moore<\/a> in a sense?<\/p>\n MAHER: I would never compare myself to Michael more because, first of all, he\u2019s a genius. He does what he does incredibly well, but I think \u2026<\/p>\n KING: This isn\u2019t that type?<\/p>\n MAHER: This is \u2014 You know, I hope that people laugh \u2014 we\u2019ve shown 10 minutes. That\u2019s all we have so far. We\u2019re still cutting it together. But the 10 minutes that we\u2019ve shown I\u2019ve seen it shown to audiences twice. They laugh so hard because the topic of religion is just so inherently funny. I mean, politicians are funny because they promise things that they can never deliver on, and the gap between what they promise and what they deliver is great fodder for humor, as people from Mark Twain up into our own day have demonstrated but what religious people have promised, your own planet, come on, that\u2019s a little beyond Social Security.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 3.<\/a> Variety<\/a><\/i> reports that Roland Emmerich \u2014 director of Stargate<\/i> (1994), Independence Day<\/i> (1996), Godzilla<\/i> (1998), The Patriot<\/a><\/i> (2000) and The Day After Tomorrow<\/a><\/i> (2004), among other films \u2014 will direct a remake of Richard Fleischer\u2019s Fantastic Voyage<\/a><\/i> (1966; my comments<\/a>). Remember: the last remake this guy made was Godzilla<\/i>. But I\u2019m a sucker for movies that take place inside the human body, so I will probably buy this one on DVD anyway.<\/p>\n 4.<\/a> Jason Apuzzo<\/a> at Libertas says the upcoming remake of Escape from New York<\/a><\/i> (1981) cannot help but be \u201cirrelevant\u201d:<\/p>\n What made Escape From New York<\/i> so interesting was it pushed to its logical extreme what was happening to New York at that time. Before Giuliani became mayor, crime was rampant, Times Square was a den of drug pushers and prostitutes, and the subways were filled with graffiti and beggars. Surveys at the time showed close to a majority of residents wanted to move out of NYC if they could. Escape From New York<\/i> was the best of the NYC going to hell movies, for example The Warriors<\/i>, that came out during the 70s\/80s. Just to show how times have changed anybody remember the looting that occurred during the blackout of 1977. Compare that to the calm in the city after 9-11 or during the blackout of 2003. How can one make a remake when NYC is now one of the safest major cities in the world?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 5.<\/a> Two months ago<\/a>, RKO Pictures announced it would co-produce remakes of four of its classic horror films \u2014 though only three titles were revealed at the time. Today, The Hollywood Reporter<\/a><\/i> said the fourth film on the list is Isle of the Dead<\/a><\/i> (1945) \u2014 which, like the other three films, was produced by Val Lewton<\/a>:<\/p>\n In the 1945 film directed by Val Lewton, Karloff played a Greek military commander on an island where a plague breaks out. He orders the isle quarantined and as residents fall ill and die, some begin to suspect that a vampire-demon might be the cause of the deaths.<\/p>\n RKO plans to set the remake against the backdrop of a viral outbreak in Afghanistan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 6.<\/a> The Fox Faith Movies<\/a> website<\/a> has not been updated in a while, so it still says their next theatrical release will be The Redemption of Sarah Cain<\/a><\/i>. However, today, Christians in Cinema<\/a> noted:<\/p>\n This weekend, the Lifetime Network<\/a> is premiering \u201cSaving Sarah Cain\u201d on Sunday, August 19th, at 6 PM (Eastern & Pacific), 5 PM (Central), and 4 PM (Mountain). The latest film from partners Michael Landon, Jr., and Brian Bird (The Last Sin Eater<\/a>) is based on Beverly Lewis\u2019 novel \u201cThe Redemption of Sarah Cain.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n