Scorsese’s Jesuit epic gets December US release

Silence, starring Liam Neeson, is based on Shusaku Endo's novel about Portuguese missionaries travelling to 17th-century Japan

by Associated Press

Martin Scorsese’s Silence, a historical drama about faith in feudal Japan, will open in time to qualify for the Academy Awards.

Paramount Pictures said on Monday that Silence will open with a limited release on December 23 with a nationwide expansion to follow sometime in January.

Whether the film, a decades-long passion project for Scorsese, would be ready in time for release this year had been a major question mark in Hollywood’s awards season. Scorsese’s last two feature films, The Wolf of Wall Street and Hugo, collected a total of 16 Oscar nominations.

Silence, which stars Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver and Liam Neeson, is based on Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel. It’s about two Portuguese Jesuit missionaries travelling to 17th-century Japan to spread Christianity and find their missing mentor.

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• Scorsese’s Jesuit epic gets December US release

Aliens

From Ann Barnhardt:

"May I be permitted to make a Xenomorph analogy?  It’s like Aliens.  The Latin Mass people are like the Colonial Marines.  We certainly have the tools, but there is definitely a lack of… discipline.  And cohesion.

(As an aside, yes, absolutely, I wanna be Vasquez.  Not Ripley.  VASQUEZ.  One of the great movie lines of all time…"

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• Wild Turkey and Sprite.

‘Iron Sky’ Pits President Sarah Palin Against Nazi Invaders From Space

By Drew Bowling

(WebProNews) A very peculiar sci-fi movie called “Iron Sky” is making its way through the circuit of film festivals in Europe this season, yet it is conspicuously not coming anywhere near the United States. The flick is replete with great stuff Americans love to watch: spaceships, fighting Nazis, fighting Nazi invaders from space, Jerry Bruckheimer-levels of explosions, a campy yet potent sense of dark humor and… President Sarah Palin?

Oh. Now it all makes sense why it’s staying away from the U.S. Well, sort of.

In the film, the President of the United States is female, does adorn a certain someone’s signature red dress suit, sports a very familiar hairdo-and-glasses combo, and has the initials S.P. But it’s not a former governor of Alaska.

Already, this movie sounds more like a fantasy horror than sci-fi comedy. At any rate, “Iron Sky” confidently offers something for everybody to either love or hate, which is all the makings of a summer blockbuster, right?
The film, which is in English, depicts a fleet of Moon Nazis that intent on invading Earth so as to resume their mission of world domination. The last first and last line of defense for the United States of America, and the rest of the world, I fear, is the commander-in-chief of the United States, the aforementioned Palinesque Stephanie Paul.

This movie is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book gone absolutely berserk on angel dust, but “Iron Sky” is surreal enough to entice just about anybody’s interest. Just try to watch the the trailer below without quietly craving more.

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Mel Gibson on Viking Epic ‘Berserker’, ‘Maccabee’ & ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’

 AP Photo

From Simon Dang at The Playlist:

When it was announced that Mel Gibson was teaming with writer Joe Eszterhas for a biblical epic about Jewish historical figure Judah Maccabee, we more or less assumed that it would mean the death of his long-gestating Viking epic, which was originally supposed to team Gibson with William Monahan, Graham King and Leonardo DiCaprio. Monahan even confirmed late last year that he never wrote a word for the project and that, as far as he knew, it never went past the announcement. Well, it looks like throughout all his recent struggles, Gibson never gave up on his Viking dreams.

At a recent American Cinematheque Q&A [via L.A. Times] after a screening of "Mad Max," Gibson revealed that he's "got a couple of things on the boil, a couple of projects that I'm writing. I just got a second draft of something I'm really excited about today." Questioned whether it was his Judah Maccabee project, Gibson surprisingly replied -- to the delight of the crowd -- that "it's actually a Viking thing. Vikings, as you know, are very unsympathetic characters and these guys will be bad. I sort of hooked up again with Randall Wallace, who did the script on 'Braveheart.' Yeah, it's pretty good. It's called 'Berserker.'"

Questioned whether the Vikings will have horns on their hats as is the typical stereotype, Gibson said "they did not have horns. No, I don't think they had horns. They're going to look real." He continued, "They're not going to be running around like the '50s," referencing Richard Fleischer's 1958 pic 'The Vikings' starring Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis. "I want to make something real and visceral."

Gibson also later confirmed that the team on board the earlier iteration of the project (King, DiCaprio, Monahan) was pretty much gone, adding that "things begin and people wander off and do their thing and I do my thing. I just took my stuff and wrote it with Randall. Where it goes from here is anyone's guess." No word on if the plan to film the whole project in the defunct Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon languages is still going ahead but, either way, we've definitely got fingers crossed that Gibson can make it all happen.

The Q&A also touched on George Miller's latest 'Mad Max' film, which Gibson more or less confirmed as the same feature film he was going to star in with Miller in the early '00's -- as we previously reported. He did, however, interestingly add that he had met his replacement, Tom Hardy, some time ago. "I like that kid [George's] got, Tom Hardy. He's a very interesting actor. He reminds me of one my sons a bit but I had lunch with him, he's a firecracker. It'll be good. He was already cast [at the time], he just wanted to check in. I don't know, maybe it was like 'Is it okay?' I was like 'Sure, it's fine. Have a ball, knock yourself out. I got better things to do.'"

As for his Judah Maccabee project? "I'm working with Joe Eszterhas on that. That's from the last two books of the Old Testament, which is like; [turns to audience] just read it some time. Maccabee 1 and 2. Just read it, it's like a Western. It's an amazing story. It's heroic beyond belief. The entire might of the Seleucid Empire, which was Persia, their whole objective at the time was to wipe Judea off the map and they almost did it except for this little hold out that miraculously grew and wanted it all back again."

All in all, it certainly sounds like Gibson has plenty on his plate with the two histrorical epics and, if the reception from the crowd at the Q&A are any indication, it seems like his troubled times are behind him. Forgive and forget, Leo?

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Solemn Mass in Movies: "True Confessions" (1981)

h/t to  Msgr. Charles Pope

Related:

High Mass Clip in 1940s Feature Film

Elephant Love Medley (Originals Version)

Airplane as a Thriller

Saint Bernadette of Lourdes Film

A Message From the Director

navis pictures
h/t to A Jeweller: "Actors are home-schooled children."

Mel Gibson to Return to the Big Screen

Mel Gibson arrives for the Los Angeles industry screening of "X-Men Origins-Wolverine" at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood, CA.
JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

Mel Gibson is headed back to the big screen.

The 53-year-old actor -- who is expecting a baby with girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva -- has signed on to headline The Beaver, a drama to be directed by Jodie Foster.

Gibson will play "a depressed man who finds solace in wearing a beaver hand-puppet," according to Variety. Foster will play his wife...

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Liberty vs. Nature

By Bishop Richard Williamson

Eleison Comments XLVI

Why is modern youth so goofy ? The movies shown on long-haul airplane flights rarely promise to be anything but silly, but a movie from Catalonia recently made this ever hopeful 12-hour prisoner watch, and suggested an answer – liberty! The movie may have said more than it meant.

Here is the story. A young couple, unmarried but living together as is the way of “partners” today, are shown agreeing to part company if either of them ever feels like it. However, they love one another enough to hire together an apartment where she is happy to make with her man her first domestic nest. Alas, he has to be hospitalized with a grave liver problem, requiring a transplant for him to survive.

Visiting him regularly and caringly in the hospital, she offers him a part of her own liver. At last he accepts. The doctors find her compatible. The transplant is performed. Both recover from the operation. Joyfully he returns to the apartment to rejoin the girl who has saved his life, but he finds her… different! While he was in the hospital, a male colleague at her place of work took an interest in her, and she in turn found him attractive. So when the “partner” whom she saved rejoins her, she tells him that they may be bonded by his having in him a physical part of her, but he no longer has the best part of her, which is her heart! Weakly he comments, “What a pity!” But given their original agreement, what more was there to say?

The movie ends with her gently weeping in his arms, leaving open the possibility of a happy-ever-after ending, whereby he would regain her heart’s affections, etc, etc. However, it seems just as probable that she will “move on” (as they say today) to her new “partner”. In fact, to any bond created by her considerable sacrifice she even seems likely to prefer freedom for her feelings.

Now nothing in the movie remotely promotes the Catholic formula for such domestic happiness of man and woman as this “valley of tears” allows of, namely, a girl keeps her heart in reserve for the one man she will marry, marries him, and then never lets him go. But the movie does quite objectively suggest that that “liberty” which can cut off a girl’s deepest natural instincts of nest-making and self-sacrifice for her man, is not necessarily going to make her happy. Girls, if you are looking for happiness in this life, let alone for eternity, trust Mother Church. Kyrie Eleison.

La Reja, Argentina

Posted by Bishop Richard Williamson at 12:11 PM

The Shining - as a Romantic Comedy

Vatican Newspaper Rips Hollywood's "Hopeless" Vision

Rome, Feb. 26, 2008 (CWNews.com) - An essay in the official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano argues that this year's Oscar awards went to films that portray America as a society "without hope."

The signed column by Gaetano Vallini was critical of Oscar-winning films such as No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. These movies and others nominated for Academy Awards are "sinister, filled with violence, and above all, without hope," the writer said.

Vallini found fault especially with No Country for Old Men, saying that the film by Joel and Ethan Coen-- which garner 4 Oscars including the coveted "Best Picture" award-- was marred by "absurd and mindless acts of violence." While praising the craftsmanship of the Coen brothers, he said that their picture showed a "lack of moral conscience." The message of the movie, he said, seemed to "obliterate the American dream."

Worse, the L'Osservatore Romano critic continued, "this clearly pessimistic view that the United States offers of itself through movies" was confirmed by the Oscar awards, in which the film industry honored the pictures that offered this grim vision.

Vallini pointed that the independent filmmakers, working outside the orbit of Hollywood, chose to honor movies with a more positive message, such as Juno, the story of a young woman coping with an unexpected pregnancy. He also praised The Diving Bell and the Butterfly as a film that, "going against the prevailing trend, portrays the beauty of life."

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Warner Brothers Sides With Blu-ray in High-def Disc Battle

By Thomas K. Arnold

Jan 5, 2008

Warner Home Video on Friday announced it is casting its lot exclusively with the Blu-ray Disc format, leaving rival HD DVD with just two studios.

The move, which had been both widely expected and publicly denied, comes on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show, where both next-generation disc formats have big presentations on the agenda.

Warners -- with a market share of more than 20% the biggest Hollywood player in the home entertainment industry -- previously had been the only major studio to release titles in both Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. The decision to ditch HD DVD after May 2008 gives Blu-ray a decided advantage, since the format now enjoys the exclusive support of four of the six major studios-Warner, Walt Disney Studios, Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox, as well as minimajor Lionsgate...

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Update:

Paramount in HD DVD blow

By Matthew Garrahan and Mariko Sanchanta in Las Vegas

Published: January 8 2008 02:49 | Last updated: January 8 2008 02:49

Paramount is poised to drop its support of HD DVD after Warner Brothers’ recent backing of Sony’s Blu-ray technology, in a move that will sound the death knell of HD DVD and bring the home entertainment format war to a definitive end....

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