Top movies, family films for 2011. Are your Oscar favorites here?

Editor’s Note: As you prepare for this Sunday’s Academy Awards telecast, take a look at John Mulderig’s choices, reprinted below, for 2011′s top movies. And at the end you’ll find a bonus listing of the year’s top 10 family films. By John Mulderig Catholic News Service NEW YORK (CNS) — In late 1965, the three-decade-old National [...]

Taking a shine to Martin Sheen

The first time I met Martin Sheen was in the summer of 1999, a couple of months before “The West Wing” premiered. NBC was hosting a garden party for TV writers with much of its on- and off-screen talent present. I had worked arduously with an NBC publicist to get some interview time with Sheen [...]

There be audiences?

The promotion team for the upcoming feature film “There Be Dragons” has its work cut out. This is the same group that laid the groundwork for “The Passion of the Christ,” which sparked controversy well before the film’s debut in theaters. A screening of “The Passion of the Christ” following the U.S. bishops’ 2002 fall general [...]

Mormons promote our movie reviews

In the category of shameless self promotion, we were pleased to see that the Mormon-owned daily newspaper the Deseret News in Salt Lake City last week gave a plug to our movie reviews as a “unique voice in a noisy lobby” and published some sample capsule reviews. The article plugging us began: The Roman Catholic [...]

Vatican to boycott — or not?

ROME  – That is the question vexing many Hollywood film reporters these days: What will the Vatican do now that the prequel to the controversial “The Da Vinci Code” is set to hit theaters next month? Headlines here and there have been claiming either the Vatican was calling for a worldwide boycott or was cautioning against a boycott over fears [...]

Back to exorcism class

The National Catholic Register blog takes notice of a recent Time magazine article on exorcism and praises the piece for covering a Catholic topic in a way that “neither ridicules nor sensationalizes the subject.” The blog includes a picture of Linda Blair from “The Exorcist.” The Time magazine article is an interview with journalist Matt Baglio, who recently wrote ‘The Rite: [...]

Film prof’s take on ‘Slumdog’

By the time I got hold of  David Schaefer, a communication arts professor for the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, it was 11:15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time — but 12:15 a.m. Singapore local time on Tuesday the 24th.  Schaefer has been examining India’s films since 2002, and his examinations take him close to the source of [...]

New movie “respects Christianity”

There’s a new movie out called “New in Town” featuring Renee Zellweger that by all reports might be worth seeing. The National Catholic Register posted a blog item about it earlier this week headlined “New Film Respects Christianity.” You can read the review of the movie here from the U.S. bishops’ Office for Film and [...]

“Benjamin Button” pro-life and pro-death, but in a good way?

I’ve been catching up on movies lately. Mostly I’ve been renting films that I missed last year (“The Visitor,” “Dark Knight,” “In the Valley of Elah” — all definitely worth the rental, though a bit depressing to watch in close sequence). In theaters, I appreciated “Frost/Nixon” for the entertaining back story on the first political scandal I [...]

‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’ review now posted

The review of “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” by the U.S. bishops’ Office for Film & Broadcasting is now posted in our movie review section. You’ll see that, for rather obvious reasons, the film is classified A-II — adults and adolescents.