A Glimpse into Narnia
Can't get enough of Narnia? Well, the official Narnia Facebook page posted the first images from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader over the holiday break. Check them out here.
The film hits theaters on December 10th, 2010.
The Invention of ... "blasphemy"?
MTV Movies Blog reports that writer-directors Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson are "planning big controversies" with their upcoming film The Invention of Lying.The film, which comes out October 2, takes place in a world where everyone believes everything that everyone says because no one has ever lied -- until, one day, the character played by Gervais figures out not only how to lie, but how to manipulate everyone else's gullibility for his own ends.
And what sort of "big controversies" do Gervais and Robinson have in mind?
Expelled co-writer tackles Christian Zionism
Kevin Miller must like controversy. Last year, the screenwriter and occasional actor co-wrote the documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which provoked a lot of debate about creationism, evolution, Intelligent Design, and the social ramifications thereof. And now, this year, he has a new documentary coming out that just might offend some of the conservatives who rallied to his previous film's defense.As Miller puts it at his blog:
It's called "With God on Our Side," and it examines a phenomenon known as Christian Zionism. This theology teaches that the Jews are God's chosen people and that they have a divine right to the land of Israel. Aspects of this belief system lead some Christians in the West to give uncritical support to Israeli government policies, even those that privilege Jews at the expense of Palestinians. This leads to great suffering for Muslim and Christian Palestinians alike and threatens Israel's security as a whole.The filmmakers hope to release the movie sometime later this year, and it should be interesting to see what kind of debates this movie provokes.Our film suggests that there is a biblical alternative for Christians who want to love and support the people of Israel, a theology that doesn't favor one people group over another but instead promotes peace and reconciliation for Jews and Palestinians.
Stryper merchandise on the big screen!
The filmmakers of today certainly haven't forgotten about them, though. If you look very closely at a couple of recent films, you can see that bits of Stryper iconography have begun to pop up, here and there, on the big screen.
Last year, in Wendy and Lucy, we saw a card or sticker bearing the Stryper logo in the office of a grocery-store manager who sends a woman's life spinning in an unfortunate direction after she is caught shoplifting by an employee who happens to be wearing a cross around his neck. The images are very subtle, but they do suggest that the woman is being judged, in some sense, by religious people who, for whatever reason, have refused to show her mercy.
And now we have the trailer for Whip It!, the directorial debut of Drew Barrymore and the first film to star Ellen Page since her breakout role in Juno. Note the T-shirt that Page's character wears in what seem to be at least three different scenes, in the final minute of the trailer below:
Go Ask Alice
Burton's 'Wonderland' weird and wonderful; Depp is Mad!
Check out more images from the film (due March 2010) here and here.
Glass doors and the loneliness of Kirk
The first two Star Trek movies are very different from one another, in many ways. But despite these differences, they do have some interesting parallels.
For example, both films depict Kirk not as a captain -- at least not at first -- but as an admiral who takes command of the Enterprise when a crisis arises; and in both cases, the captain who relinquishes command of the ship is dead or "missing" by the end of the movie, due to an act of self-sacrifice.
But watching the two films back-to-back last night, I was struck by one other thing they have in common: namely, their use of glass doors to symbolize the loneliness of Kirk. You can see it, for example, in the shot above, from The Motion Picture.
Another Post-Apocalypse Flick . . .
USA Today grants a "first look" at Denzel Washington in The Book of Eli
The Book of Eli, set in America after the apocalypse, stars Denzel Washington as a man with a mysterious book that might hold the key to man's salvation. USA Today brings us a first look at the film, with five images.
Co-director Allen Hughes told the newspaper, "This is the first time I can remember where it feels like America is, at its core, vulnerable. We're mortal. After 9/11, the reaction showed how thin that line is between order and chaos. It feels like we're at a boiling point. That's why these themes of redemption and salvation are so powerful now."
Ben-Hur, Jesus, and water bottles
Today Vaughan posted this picture of a crew member lighting the actors who play Judah Ben-Hur and Jesus. I don't recognize the actor playing Jesus, but I wonder if this version of the story will show his face, or if it will merely show the back of his head, like the films made in 1925 and 1959 did.
Note also that the actor playing Jesus is holding a water bottle. That's kind of funny, since it looks like the scene they are working on is the one in which Jesus gives Judah a drink of water -- but presumably out of a gourd or some similar vessel, and not a plastic bottle!
Although, come to think of it, this wouldn't be the first film to show Jesus offering someone a water bottle ...
The subtleties of subtitles.
Case in point: Two nights ago, I was watching Peyton Place (1957), a surprisingly edgy-for-its-time (but still rather tame, compared to its source material) movie about adultery and incest and gossip and, um, "miscarriages" in a small New England town -- and in one scene, as two women and a boy go to church, we hear the choir in the distance. See if you can figure out what lyrics the choir is actually singing as these people approach the church:
Where the Wild Things were.
The blogosphere went gaga for Where the Wild Things Are last week, after a trailer was released for the upcoming film adaptation directed by Spike Jonze from a script he co-wrote with Dave Eggers.
There were a few voices of dissent, though. Noah Millman, for example, responded to Peter Suderman's claim that the trailer is "a perfectly sold hipster nostalgia piece" by articulating several "red flags" that, in his view, indicated the film was not paying proper respect to Maurice Sendak's original book.
Time will tell how the movie itself holds up to scrutiny. In the meantime, here are a couple of earlier adaptations, one complete and one merely a test reel.
First, the original 1973 animated film directed by Gene Deitch:
Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly.
And second, a 1983 test reel combining hand-drawn animation and some very-new-at-the-time computer-generated animation -- produced by Disney and directed by none other than future Pixar guru John Lasseter:
Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly.
"The year's best movie (so far)."
That's what J.R. Jones of the Chicago Reader calls Olivier Assayas's Summer Hours, a haunting and effective drama about three adult siblings who have to deal with their mother's estate after she passes away; it plays in Chicago twice this week as part of the European Union Film Festival.I am inclined to agree with Jones's assessment, though I saw the film last year at the Vancouver International Film Festival. I have been waiting for it to receive a commercial release ever since; in the meantime, I wrote a brief bit about it here.
And for what it's worth, I must say I have been keen to see the film again these past few weeks, since my own grandmother -- pretty much the only grandparent I ever had -- passed away two weeks ago. The various services and family gatherings that took place this past week are the main reason I haven't done any blogging lately, though I hope to get back up to speed in the near future.
For what it's worth, the trailer above doesn't begin to do the film justice, but a few clips bring back just enough of the movie to bring a tear to my eye.
Wild Thing
You make my heart sing, you make everything . . . groovy
I can't wait for the rumpus to begin:
WALL•E + Watchmen = very, very funny
Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly. Hat tip to Upcoming Pixar.
Kings makers discuss their series
Kings, the TV series that quasi-modernizes the biblical story of Saul and David, premieres March 15. ComingSoon.net attended a screening of the pilot episode a few weeks ago and has a handy summary of some of the key characters and narrative details.
The screening was followed by the Q&A below, in which, among other things, series creator Michael Green and a few of the actors discuss the show's real-life political inspiration, the reality of God and the role of religion within the storyline, the sexuality of the Jonathan figure, and whether the network ever censored story elements that happened to come straight from the Bible:
Agora -- the teaser is now online
The international teaser for Alejandro Amenábar's Agora -- starring Rachel Weisz as the 4th-century philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, The Nativity Story's Oscar Isaac as the imperial prefect Orestes, and Sami Samir as the Christian bishop Cyril of Alexandria -- is now online.
The teaser has no dialogue, only images, but at a glance, it almost looks like this film could be a feature-length version of that violent-Christian-mobs flashback in The Da Vinci Code. Hopefully the film itself will be a little more nuanced than that (regrettably, the historical Hypatia was indeed killed by a Christian mob during Lent), but even if it isn't, it could still serve as a launching pad for deeper, better conversations about early church history.
Click here if the video file above doesn't play properly. Hat tip to ComingSoon.net.
For those who don't recognize the director's name, Amenábar's previous films include the Oscar-winning euthanasia flick The Sea Inside (2004), the Nicole Kidman ghost movie The Others (2001) and the reality-bending Open Your Eyes (1997), the last of which was remade with Tom Cruise as Vanilla Sky (2001).
Where the Wild Things Are (online)
Perfect Completion (Man on Wire)
I finally saw Man on Wire, the Oscar-nominated documentary about French wirewalker Philip Petit's illicit crossing between the World Trade Center towers back in the early 1970s. I really ought to have seen this sooner, because my husband, John Frisbie, did the lighting for all the recreations. (And might I add those recreations look incredible?) But with a baby taking up most of my time, I only made it to the movie theater once in 2008--perhaps my lowest number since I saw my first movie (Watership Down) back when I was very, very young.
Man on Wire moved me because Petit's act was so extravagantly senseless. There was nothing utilitarian or pragmatic in his decision to string a guywire between the two tallest buildings in the world and walk back and forth. The stunt was witnessed by a crowd and filmed by one of Petit's accomplices, but even though Petit was a performer to the core, I got the sense that the joy he derived came not from the applause of the crowd, but from the act itself.
Petit's act was senseless but it was not wasteful. As a writer, I struggle under the knowledge that my work can always use more revisions. Nothing I've written has ever been complete. Yet I believe that completion is possible. It must be--otherwise how could there ever be a sonnet? Petit's act was one of those perfect works of art, appropriate and complete and true. It took him a tremendous amount of effort to achieve. I'm going to remember his face, rapt in concentration, the next time I'm tempted by "well, it's good enough."
Where's Joaquin?
Apparently not in Phoenix, anyway
When Joaquin Phoenix said he was done with acting, he apparently meant it. His interview with David Letterman seems to indicate he has certainly checked out.
Letterman's best line: "What can you tell us about your days with the Unabomber?"
The audience has some yuks at Phoenix's expense, but it's also kind of sad to see what was once such a bright flame among Hollywood's finest actors flickering out to, well, whatever this is:
Scandalous Preachers in Film
Haggard the only 'real' one in a list of rotten reverends
Haggard is the only real preacher in the slideshow; the other 10 are fictional characters from film over a number of decades -- including Rev. Henry Kane in Poltergeist II (pictured here), Silas in The Da Vinci Code, and Pentecostal preacher Eulis 'Sonny' Dewey in The Apostle.
(Hat tip to Sarah Pulliam.)
A Pixar Tearjerker?
'Up' may have a few downs
USA Today reports that Up, the latest Pixar project due in May, takes an animated gamble with "a plunge into tearjerker territory."
"He can be a real jerk, but you still love him," Docter told USA Today. "Why is it so important for this guy to get to the falls? It needed that weight. I didn't want it to be just a fleeting thing."
USA Today reports that the potentially tearjerking segments include a "montage of their marriage [that] touches on themes rarely seen in bedtime storybooks: romance, financial hardship, a lost pregnancy, loneliness, and the blink-of-an-eye passage from childhood to wrinkles."
Wow. Pixar's films have always carried some weight along with their immense entertainment value, but last year's WALL-E was the weightiest of all, with its messages about greed, consumption, and stewardship of the earth. Might Up carry even more weight? Possibly, but not too much that all those balloons -- and Pixar's magic touch -- can't lift.
I can't wait. Sign me Up.
(photo from Disney/Pixar; Ed Asner voices Carl Fredricksen, and Jordan Nagai voices Russell)
Check out the trailer:
(If the video won't run properly, click here.)
The Biblical Origin of Movie Posters
Betcha didn't know that a flick about Jesus sparked the first one-sheet. (We didn't either.)
There's a cool new exhibit at New York's Museum of Biblical Art called "Reel Religion: A Century of the Bible and Film."
MOBIA's official website says that the exhibition "probes the fascination the Bible has exerted over filmmakers as different and distinct as Cecil B. deMille, Mel Gibson, John Huston, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Martin Scorsese. The exhibition features 80 rare vintage movie posters reaching back to the dawn of film in 1898."
That 1898 film was The Passion Play of Oberammergau, which actually sparked the very first movie poster. After a small flier proved ineffective for promoting the film, the promoters created a poster measuring 27" × 41" that became the template for the one-sheet promo we see in theaters everywhere today--with those very same dimensions.
A couple of interesting things about this first poster: It notes that the image is an "actual scene" from the movie, and makes a big deal that the film itself is "reproduced by means of 2554 feet of LIFE MOTION PICTURE FILM."
"Film is a recognized art form that has developed relatively recently," says Paul Tabor, MOBIA's Director of Exhibitions. "Not unlike painters, filmmakers from the outset turned to the Bible for emotionally powerful source material. The posters made to promote these films were often works of arts themselves."
We agree.
The Terminator goes to church
There's apparently more going on here than just being slain in the Spirit
Radar Online recently posted some photos from the set of Terminator: Salvation -- including this one, of a nuked-out church.
I can't recall: have we ever seen a church or any other explicitly religious prop or set in the Terminator movies? (The faith elements have been rather pronounced in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, of course. But that's a TV show.)
No 'Doubt' About This Talent
Two Oscar nominees in a stunning scene
It doesn't take long to see why Meryl Streep and Viola Davis were both nominated for Oscars in this clip from Doubt at the NY Times site.
Jack Black Meets Cain & Abel
'Year One' doesn't quite get it right
You didn't expect a comedy with Jack Black and Michael Cera to be entirely reverent toward the biblical account, did you?
Meanwhile, check out the official website of the film, which will also include appearances by Adam, Eve, Abraham, Isaac, Seth, and "Sodom Officer Rick." (Gold star if you can guess which one's fictional.)
Year One hits theaters June 19.
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