The blog for Peter T. Chattaway, film critic, journalist, religion junkie, etc. Not all posts will be film-related, but film will always be just around the corner.
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.
My Sister's Keeper -- CDN $2,690,000 -- N.AM $26,518,582 -- 10.1% Year One -- CDN $3,820,000 -- N.AM $38,304,392 -- 9.9% Star Trek -- CDN $24,080,000 -- N.AM $249,838,139 -- 9.6% The Proposal -- CDN $8,990,000 -- N.AM $94,335,111 -- 9.5% The Hangover -- CDN $18,440,000 -- N.AM $205,038,233 -- 9.0% The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 -- CDN $5,140,000 -- N.AM $58,508,070 -- 8.8% Up -- CDN $22,130,000 -- N.AM $264,816,694 -- 8.4% Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs -- CDN $5,560,000 -- N.AM $66,732,868 -- 8.3% Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen -- CDN $23,490,000 -- N.AM $293,355,885 -- 8.0% Public Enemies -- CDN $3,120,000 -- N.AM $40,141,080 -- 7.8%
A couple of discrepancies: Star Trek was #10 on the Canadian chart (it was #11 in North America as a whole), while Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian was #10 on the North American chart (it was #12 in Canada).
The newest issue of BC Christian News is now online, and with it, my film column, which includes brief notes on Year One, the upcoming mini-series version of Ben-Hur, The Surrogate and the upcoming course on 'The Ethics of Filmmaking' at Regent College, which will be taught by Ralph Winter and John Stackhouse.
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.
Angels & Demons -- CDN $15,830,000 -- N.AM $130,277,166 -- 12.2% The Proposal -- CDN $6,740,000 -- N.AM $69,162,471 -- 9.7% Star Trek -- CDN $23,590,000 -- N.AM $246,331,182 -- 9.6% Year One -- CDN $3,010,000 -- N.AM $32,529,560 -- 9.3% The Hangover -- CDN $15,900,000 -- N.AM $183,054,267 -- 8.7% The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 -- CDN $4,460,000 -- N.AM $53,456,827 -- 8.3% My Sister's Keeper -- CDN $1,010,000 -- N.AM $12,442,212 -- 8.1% Up -- CDN $20,190,000 -- N.AM $250,234,554 -- 8.1% Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen -- CDN $13,620,000 -- N.AM $200,077,255 -- 6.8% Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian -- CDN $7,880,000 -- N.AM $163,391,192 -- 4.8%
A couple of discrepancies: Angels & Demons was #10 on the Canadian chart (it was #12 in North America as a whole), while Away We Go was #10 on the North American chart (it was #20 in Canada).
Movies can be time capsules, especially where technology is concerned. My kids have been watching the Toy Story movies lately, and I was struck by how the second film, which came out in 1999, pays homage to one discarded technology while taking for granted the existence of another technology that has, itself, fallen by the wayside in the decade since that movie came out.
First, the discarded technology: In one scene, Woody discovers a vintage 1950s record player that happens to bear his image, and he exclaims, "A record player! I haven't seen one of these in ages."
Next, the technology taken for granted: Woody, Jessie and Bullseye watch old episodes of Woody's Roundup on videotape -- and they sit on videocassette cases while doing so -- presumably oblivious to the fact that a brand-new technology called DVDs is about to drive videotapes out of business:
Pixar itself was familiar with DVDs by this point, of course; around the time Toy Story 2 came out in theatres, A Bug's Life (1998) came out on DVD, and Pixar proudly proclaimed that that was the first animated DVD to be taken straight from the digital source. One year later, the first two Toy Story movies would be packaged in a three-disc "Toy Box" set that, combined with the three-disc Fantasia (1940-1999) set, was one of the main reasons I got my first DVD player during the Boxing Day sales of 2000.
But it wasn't until a few years later that DVDs surpassed VHS as the format of choice for the average home-video consumer. So within the Toy Story 2 storyline, it made perfect sense for the characters to be watching videotapes. They just wouldn't be watching them for very much longer, is all.
And now for something completely different: I recently watched Star TrekIV: The Voyage Home (1986) for the first time in years, and I was struck once again -- as I often am while watching movies set during that decade -- by how primitive some things from that era seem to me now.
Take, for example, the newspapers we see in one scene, and the screen on the Apple MacIntosh computer that we see in another scene. They're both in black-and-white! And yet, I can still remember how fake and "advanced" it seemed back then, when Scotty finished typing on the MacIntosh's keyboard and the image on its screen began to rotate -- as though the average office computer would be capable of such a thing!
While the black-and-white images would seem primitive to me in any film from the 1980s, they seem especially primitive in this film, since the Star Trek movies at that time were on the cutting edge of computer graphics. The "Genesis Planet" footage from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) -- animated by the team that would go on to become Pixar! -- was so good that the next two sequels, including The Voyage Home, re-used it. And The Voyage Home itself added to the mix by including one of the earliest examples of "morphing" in a mainstream film, during that trippy time-travel sequence in which the faces of Kirk and his crew seem to blend into one another.
But of course, the technology that made those images possible was completely inaccessible to the average person at that time; even the MacIntosh depicted above, primitive as it seems to us now, would have cost about $2,500 back then. (After adjusting for inflation, that's apparently over $5,000 in today's dollars.) So a story set in average homes and average offices had to settle for props like these.
One can only wonder how dated today's movies will look in a decade or so. And how these real-world changes may or may not be reflected in Toy Story 3 when it comes out next year, nearly eleven years after the previous movie in that series.
The article focuses pretty narrowly on that one film, but I also asked McEveety about a couple other films that his company, Mpower Pictures, is working on -- so here are a few "deleted quotes" from the interview.
First, I asked about Left to Tell, a movie currently in development about the Rwandan genocide that is based on a book by a woman who survived the genocide and attributes her survival to her Catholic faith. I asked if Mpower was especially interested in films with religious content, and McEveety replied:
I would say we're not interested in religious material, but then, I'm a faith-filled guy, so how could I not be? So in the course of-- Having been a producer on The Passion of the Christ, you can imagine that I get every script that has anything to do with any kind of Christianity coming through my office, because people just send it to me, so sometimes there's some great things, but in terms of Left to Tell-- Left to Tell is about forgiveness and it's something that is so much needed in today's world, and how she gets to a point where she's capable of forgiving the people who have slaughtered in the most violent way her family members, her most loved ones in the world, so I was attracted to that element of it. But I've always been really interested in spiritual warfare, and there's an element of this film that really gets into spiritual warfare, and for the genocide to happen like it happened in Rwanda, in my crazy imagination there must have been demons everywhere. It was like God stepped away for a second. So for me it would be a blast to just explore that, both in the story but visually, so i think that film is going to be very-- Though it's set in Rwanda during the genocide, it could be set anywhere. So I'm excited about that film. But it should be very visual and it's a sound-design movie, and very hip, I think.
Then, I asked about Snowmen, an upcoming family film written and directed by my fellow UBC graduate Rob Kirbyson. Noting that most of Mpower's films -- which also include the pro-life drama Bella (2006) and the Michael Moore parody An American Carol (2008) -- seem to have some sort of political angle, I couldn't resist asking, tongue in cheek, what the political angle was on this film. With an audible grin, McEveety replied:
Snowmen is just a wonderful-- Snowmen is so great because there is no political side to it. It's just a fun story, a commercial movie, a kids' film, a family film, and something that I really enjoy doing. I very seldom get to do family films, so I was really excited about this movie. But it's a real heartwarming emotional movie that's fun and you'll cry and you'll laugh and it's got a great ending, so it's pretty exciting to have this movie, which is absolutely non-political. (laughs) Which is really what I want to do. I'm not really interested in politics. I don't really want to explore that arena too much. I'm a Christian guy and if I can explore Christian values without being religious about it, that would be ideal. But you know what, I'm not afraid of talking about God either.
Peter Bradshaw makes a very interesting point about Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (1960), which recently returned to British movie screens for one day only:
The story of Spartacus reverses the Jesus myth: instead of getting sold out by his followers and dying a terrible death on the cross, Spartacus is protected by his troops, who are prepared to endure crucifixion rather than reveal the leader hidden in their ranks.
And then Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) came along and put the two stories together. At the end of that film, Brian is crucified along with dozens of other Jews (and at least one Samaritan), but then a soldier comes along, asking who Brian is so that Brian can be taken down from the cross. And whereas the extras in one movie all yelled "I'm Spartacus!" as a sign of self-sacrificial solidarity with their leader, the extras in the other movie all yell "I'm Brian!" as a way of selfishly trying to save their own skins, at the expense of the genuine Brian's life.
It's also interesting to consider that Spartacus was written by people who had an active interest in progressive politics -- the screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, almost didn't receive any credit for the film because of the 1950s blacklist -- so it may reflect some of that left-leaning idealism, whereas Life of Brian devotes a fair bit of screen time to mocking British left-wing politics, albeit in first-century Judean garb.
I don't think the Pythons were anti-liberal, by any stretch, but I do think they were somewhat cynical about the ability of humans as a whole to rise above their own self-centredness. And so, in a roundabout way, they brought the story of Spartacus back to the story of Jesus, as the "hero" of their story is exploited and abandoned by nearly everyone he meets.
It's kind of like how Life of Brian is the only movie I can think of that draws our attention to the ungrateful people who were healed by Jesus. Most life-of-Jesus movies flatter their audiences by suggesting that everyone who was healed would have expressed their gratitude -- just like we would have done, right? Right? But what about, say, the ex-lepers who didn't thank Jesus for healing them? What about the people who just went on to the next thing and possibly even resented Jesus for changing the status quo in their lives?
Anyway. I love Spartacus, and I love Life of Brian. I need the idealism, and I need the skepticism, or even the cynicism. Somewhere between the two lies reality -- and indeed, I find ample helpings of both in the story of Jesus himself.
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.
Angels & Demons -- CDN $15,470,000 -- N.AM $128,139,000 -- 12.1% Star Trek -- CDN $22,940,000 -- N.AM $239,444,000 -- 9.6% Terminator Salvation -- CDN $11,270,000 -- N.AM $119,513,000 -- 9.4% The Hangover -- CDN $12,860,000 -- N.AM $152,919,000 -- 8.4% Year One -- CDN $1,590,000 -- N.AM $20,200,000 -- 7.9% Up -- CDN $17,640,000 -- N.AM $224,113,000 -- 7.9% The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 -- CDN $3,410,000 -- N.AM $43,332,000 -- 7.9% The Proposal -- CDN $2,670,000 -- N.AM $34,114,000 -- 7.8% Land of the Lost -- CDN $2,740,000 -- N.AM $43,672,000 -- 6.3% Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian -- CDN $7,470,000 -- N.AM $155,953,000 -- 4.8%
A couple of discrepancies: Angels & Demons was #8 on the Canadian chart (it was #11 in North America as a whole), while Imagine That was #9 on the North American chart (it was #12 in Canada).
I also wrote a post at the CT Movies blog a few days ago listing several other Genesis-themed movies, along with links to any comments I may have made about those films that are currently available online.
Anyway, back to Year One. Here are two points I considered making in my review but, for whatever reason, didn't:
One, Hank Azaria is a very talented voice actor -- he and Harry Shearer play almost every male character on The Simpsons whose last name isn't Simpson -- and I strongly suspect that the growly voice he brings to the part of Abraham may have been inspired by George C. Scott's performance as Abraham in John Huston's The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966).
At any rate, while I do quibble with the way the part of Abraham is written in Year One, I thought Azaria's performance was very good -- certainly better than the movie deserves -- and I have already begun to drop phrases like "wine and sponge cake" into random conversations as a tribute to him.
And this isn't the first time Azaria has brightened up an otherwise dull movie, even just in recent memory; last month, as Christian Toto notes, Azaria was one of the best things about Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, in which he played the villainous Pharaoh.
Two, unless I'm missing some subtler nuance, it seems to me that Year One plays right into certain old stereotypes about homosexuality: lesbians are hot, indeed very hot, whereas gay men are fat, grotesque, and somewhat predatory.
This may or may not be a point worth making about a film that is so relentlessly crass and juvenile in other ways (writer-director Harold Ramis has said that he made the movie for teenaged boys, such as his 14- and 19-year-old sons), but it will be interesting to see if anyone else picks up on this aspect of the movie or says anything about it.
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.
Angels & Demons -- CDN $14,750,000 -- N.AM $123,300,000 -- 12.0% Star Trek -- CDN $22,100,000 -- N.AM $232,028,000 -- 9.5% Terminator Salvation -- CDN $10,590,000 -- N.AM $113,831,000 -- 9.3% The Hangover -- CDN $8,340,000 -- N.AM $105,389,000 -- 7.9% Up -- CDN $14,360,000 -- N.AM $187,179,000 -- 7.7% Drag Me to Hell -- CDN $2,600,000 -- N.AM $35,146,000 -- 7.4% The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 -- CDN $1,510,000 -- N.AM $25,000,000 -- 6.0% Land of the Lost -- CDN $2,110,000 -- N.AM $34,980,000 -- 6.0% Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian -- CDN $6,730,000 -- N.AM $143,447,000 -- 4.7% Imagine That -- CDN $255,520 -- N.AM $5,700,000 -- 4.5%
1. Taylor Kitsch will play the title character in John Carter of Mars, and his X-Men Origins: Wolverine co-star Lynn Collins will play the Martian princess Dejah Thoris. Thomas Haden Church has also indicated that he, too, may have a part in the film, which will be the first live-action movie directed by Pixar stalwart Andrew Stanton. Two months ago, it was reported that Michael Chabon had been hired to rewrite the script, but there is no indication of that in this week's reports, which credit the script to Stanton and Mark Andrews. Filming may start as early as this November, in Utah. -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter, ComingSoon.net, The Amazing Website of Kavalier & Clay, Hitfix, Salt Lake Tribune
2.The Hobbit director Guillermo Del Toro has confirmed that Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis and Hugo Weaving will all be back as Gandalf, Gollum and Elrond, respectively. Del Toro also says he is "very close" to announcing who will play the young Bilbo Baggins; the older Bilbo was played in The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) by Ian Holm. And while The Hobbit is being split into two films, Del Toro says he will not direct any so-called "bridge" film, i.e. a film that would bridge the gap between the two Hobbit movies and the three Rings movies. -- BBC Radio, MTV Movies Blog (x2)
3. A lawsuit filed by J.R.R. Tolkien's heirs against the studio that made The Lord of the Rings will go to trial before a jury as planned in October, now that a state court judge has turned down the studio's request that she alone should consider the lawsuit's claims. -- Variety, WENN
5.Harry Potterand the Half-Blood Prince will open in regular theatres on July 14, but it won't play on IMAX screens until July 29 -- and the fact that IMAX venues won't be getting the film until it's more than two weeks old prompted IMAX shares to fall 4% last Monday. The delay is due to Warner Brothers' decision last year to postpone the film's release date, which was originally set for November; when the decision was made, all the IMAX screens had already been booked for most of July by Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Meanwhile, Daniel Radcliffe says the first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which has been split into two films, will end on "a very tense cliffhanger"; that film will come out in November 2010, and the second part of Deathly Hallows will come out in July 2011. -- Hollywood Reporter, Empire
7. Chris O'Dowd has been cast in Gulliver's Travels as the "bad guy" or "Lilliputian nemesis" to the title character, who is being played by Jack Black. -- Hollywood Reporter
8. Neil Patrick Harris has joined the cast of Beastly, the modernized version of Beauty and the Beast; he will play "a blind tutor who helps and bonds with a teen . . . who is shellshocked from being turned into a hideous young man." -- Hollywood Reporter
9. Kevin Lima, the animator turned live-action director whose résumé includes Disney's Tarzan (1999) and Enchanted (2007), is now attached to direct a remake of The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964), the part-animated, part-live-action film that starred Don Knotts as "a man who turns into a talking fish." The original film marked the last work ever done by the original Warner Brothers animation division; it is not yet clear what sort of animation the new film will use. -- Hollywood Reporter, Cartoon Brew
1. Rob Cohen, director of the original Fast and the Furious (2001) and the most recent Mummy (2008), has signed on to direct Medieval, an action film that Cohen describes as "The Magnificent Seven in the Middle Ages." When the studio bought the script three months ago, it was compared to The Dirty Dozen. This would not be Cohen's first trip to the Middle Ages, since he also happened to direct the fantasy pic Dragonheart (1996). -- Variety, Ain't It Cool News
2. Ridley and Tony Scott are co-producing an eight-hour German-Canadian TV mini-series based on Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth; it will concern "the building of a cathedral in 12th-century England" and involve "war, religious strife and power struggles as well as two interwoven love stories." Rufus Sewell, Ian McShane and Donald Sutherland are topping the cast. -- Variety, Hollywood Reporter
3. Natalie Portman will play a "warrior princess" in Your Highness, the medieval comedy starring Pineapple Express co-stars Danny McBride and James Franco. -- Variety
4. Photos have begun to surface from the set of Ridley Scott's Robin Hood. Meanwhile, it is said that Vanessa Redgrave, still grieving the recent death of her daughter Natasha Richardson, has left the film and handed her role -- that of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, the mother of King Richard and Prince John -- over to Eileen Atkins. Atkins, for her part, has said she is "terrified" by this last-minute assignment because "they keep rewriting the script and changing my lines quite dramatically". -- Hey U Guys, WENN
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.
Angels & Demons -- CDN $13,830,000 -- N.AM $116,174,931 -- 11.9% Star Trek -- CDN $21,220,000 -- N.AM $222,712,175 -- 9.5% X-Men Origins: Wolverine -- CDN $16,550,000 -- N.AM $174,347,386 -- 9.5% Terminator Salvation -- CDN $9,660,000 -- N.AM $105,568,008 -- 9.2% My Life in Ruins -- CDN $284,410 -- N.AM $3,223,161 -- 8.8% Up -- CDN $10,600,000 -- N.AM $137,210,701 -- 7.7% Drag Me to Hell -- CDN $2,140,000 -- N.AM $28,233,230 -- 7.6% The Hangover -- CDN $3,120,000 -- N.AM $44,979,319 -- 6.9% Land of the Lost -- CDN $1,140,000 -- N.AM $18,837,350 -- 6.1% Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian -- CDN $5,870,000 -- N.AM $127,326,188 -- 4.6%
A couple of discrepancies: X-Men Origins: Wolverine was #10 on the Canadian chart (it was #11 in North America as a whole), while Dance Flick was #10 on the North American chart (it was #15 in Canada).
1. Rumours of a sequel to Monsters Inc. (2001) have been circulating for months now, ever since a Pixar staffer clicked on a blog devoted to Pixar while Googling the terms "monsters 2013 pixar" back in January. (Actually, the rumours arguably go back even further, to an interview that Monsters Inc. director Pete Docter gave last summer in which he said he could "neither confirm nor deny" that a sequel was in the works.) Now comes word that Disney officially revealed the existence of this film-in-the-making to potential buyers at last week's Licensing Expo -- and while the buyers were sworn to secrecy, some of them apparently couldn't help themselves. Docter, who also directed this year's Up, is reportedly going to direct the new Monsters Inc. as well. -- Jim Hill
2. If you look very, very closely during a certain scene early on in Up, you can catch a glimpse of one of the new characters that has been created for Toy Story 3, which is due in theatres next summer. -- MTV Movies Blog (x2), Upcoming Pixar
3. The 3-D versions of the first two Toy Story movies (1995-1999) will be released as a double feature for a "special limited engagement" in October. Disney was originally going to release the first movie in October and the second movie in February, but they are now going to release the 3-D version of Beauty and the Beast (1991) in February instead. Toy Story 3, also in 3-D, will come out June 18, 2010. -- ComingSoon.net
2. Josh Brolin is thinking of producing a movie about John Brown, an abolitionist who killed several Southern slave-owners and tried to start a slave rebellion in the years leading up to the American Civil War; he was regarded by Abraham Lincoln and others as a "misguided fanatic" and he remains a controversial figure to this day. -- ComingSoon.net
3. Alejandro Amenábar's Agora premiered at Cannes a few weeks ago, and various critics, rounded up by The Daily's David Hudson, have discussed how the film casts certain fourth-century Christians, including St. Cyril of Alexandria, in a very negative light. The filmmakers themselves have talked about how their film portrays the philosopher Hypatia as a martyr for science, but at least one observer has said that this is a distortion of the historical record. -- The Daily, Associated Press, Tim O'Neill
4. Another film that premiered at Cannes last month was Tsar, which concerns a Becket-like clash of wills between Ivan the Terrible and St. Philip of Moscow in the mid-16th century. The Daily has rounded up reviews of that film, too -- and it notes that Oleg Yankovsky, the actor who played St. Philip, died of cancer only a few days after the film's premiere; he was 65. The film is directed by Pavel Lungin, who previously directed Ostrov (2006), aka The Island, an acclaimed film about Russian Orthodox monks. -- The Daily, Variety (x2)
5. Magic Lantern Entertainment is working on Noah's Ark, the follow-up to Promenade Entertainment's computer-animated version of The Ten Commandments (2007) -- and the new film, which has sometimes gone by the title The Flood, is now going to be a "stereoscopic 3-D toon . . . intended for theatrical release." The company's website notes that it is working with Promenade on a version of David and Goliath, as well. -- Variety
6. Ashutosh Gowarikar, director of such Bollywood hits as Lagaan (2001) and Jodhaa Akbar (2008), has been tapped to direct Buddha, the biopic written by David S. Ward. In the past, it was said the film would cost $120 million, but now it has a reported budget of $35 million. -- Variety
Last week, I mentioned that the pregnancy thriller -- currently being developed by director Paul Verhoeven, and not to be confused with the upcoming Bruce Willis sci-fi flick Surrogates -- is based on a book by Kathryn Mackel, a Christian novelist and screenwriter who worked with Winter on the film versions of Left Behind (2000) and Hangman's Curse (2003).
This week, Variety and the Hollywood Reporter revealed that Halle Berry, who co-starred in the X-Men trilogy (2000-2006) produced by Winter, is "in talks" to play the wife who is so desperate for a child that she turns to a surrogate mother, only to discover afterwards that the woman carrying her baby is insane.
Berry hasn't been seen on the big screen since Things We Lost in the Fire (2007) came out nearly two years ago, so websites like Hitfix have already begun to suggest that The Surrogate could be her "comeback" movie; it is already being perceived as a "comeback" movie for Verhoeven, who hasn't directed a Hollywood feature since the poorly-received Hollow Man (2000).
But Berry has already shot another movie, according to the IMDb, called Frankie and Alice, in which she will play "a young woman with multiple personality disorder who struggles to remain her true self and not give in to her racist alter-personality." That film is currently in post-production and doesn't seem to have a release date yet.
I don't know why it took almost three weeks for me to hear about this, but anyhoo -- it's awards season again, and my film column for BC Christian News won second place in the 'Media Review' category at the Canadian Church Press awards last month. The judge, Marianne Meed Ward, based her decision on the columns I wrote for last year's May, June and July issues.
1.Sir Ridley Scott and his brother Tony are producing a "prequel" to the Alien series (1979-1997); the original film was, of course, directed by Sir Ridley himself three whole decades ago. There is no word yet on whether the prequel will take place before or after the Alien Vs. Predator movies (2004-2007), which are set in the present day, but those films are arguably non-canonical and thus don't matter anyway. The new film will be directed by someone called Carl Rinsch. -- Bloody-Disgusting (x2), Collider
2.Boom Studios will publish Die Hard: Year One, a comic-book prequel to the original Die Hard (1988) in which John McClane will be a rookie cop who "deals with a catastrophe during the 1976 Bicentennial celebration." Die Hard itself was based on a book called Nothing Lasts Forever, which in turn was written as a sequel to the Frank Sinatra movie The Detective (1968) -- but presumably this comic will have nothing to do with that earlier story. -- MTV Splash Page
3. Ryan Reynolds says he is "intimately" involved in the plans for Deadpool, a spin-off from the X-Men Origins: Wolverine prequel. Whether it will be a prequel to Wolverine or only a sequel to the prequel -- and thus possibly, but not necessarily, a prequel to the original X-Men films (2000-2006) -- remains to be seen, but one Fox source did reportedly say that the film will be "a complete exploration of this unique character - his origins, his emergence as the Merc with the Mouth, etc." The studio is developing another Wolverine movie, too, of course. -- Hitfix, IGN, David Poland, MTV Splash Page, Variety (x2), Hollywood Reporter
4. Bryan Singer, who directed the first two X-Men movies, says he might be interested in returning to the franchise to direct the Magneto prequel -- but not if it dwells at any length on the Holocaust part of the character's back-story. Between Apt Pupil (1998), Valkyrie (2008) and the prologue to the original X-Men, Singer says he's done enough Nazi stuff. -- ComingSoon.net
5. A bunch of Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) fans got together and made a 38-minute short film called The Hunt for Gollum, the events of which coincide with the early scenes in The Fellowship of the Ring. It's actually pretty good for a low-budget, volunteer-based production; you can watch it below. -- Entertainment Weekly, BBC News
Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly.
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.
Millenium -- CDN $232,849 -- N.AM $232,849 -- 100% Angels & Demons -- CDN $12,390,000 -- N.AM $104,913,439 -- 11.8% Ghosts of Girlfriends Past -- CDN $5,000,000 -- N.AM $50,021,779 -- 10.0% Star Trek -- CDN $19,830,000 -- N.AM $209,313,884 -- 9.5% X-Men Origins: Wolverine -- CDN $16,160,000 -- N.AM $170,843,712 -- 9.5% Terminator Salvation -- CDN $7,950,000 -- N.AM $90,949,924 -- 8.7% Up -- CDN $4,950,000 -- N.AM $68,108,790 -- 7.3% Drag Me to Hell -- CDN $1,100,000 -- N.AM $15,825,480 -- 7.0% Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian -- CDN $4,430,000 -- N.AM $104,150,268 -- 4.3% Dance Flick -- CDN $690,481 -- N.AM $19,084,907 -- 3.6%
A couple of discrepancies: Millenium was #8 on the Canadian chart (it wasn't on the North American chart at all, though if it were, it would be #19), while Obsessed was #10 on the North American chart (it was #16 in Canada).
Born, raised, married, and still living in Vancouver, British Columbia. I reviewed films for the Vancouver Courier '99-'03 and have been on the staff of BC Christian News since '99. In addition to a 2005 Evangelical Press Association award-winning film column for the latter paper, I also review films for Christianity Today, and my articles have appeared in such publications as Books & Culture, Bible Review, Faith Today, ChristianWeek, the Vancouver Sun, the Georgia Straight and Beliefnet.com. I am a member of the Vancouver Film Critics Circle and the Faith and Film Critics Circle.
