Some film news tidbits

I was about to post on a couple of tidbits on New Line's recent acquirement of The Rite and Brad Pitt's talks to join Tree of Life (two upcoming films with themes or topics likely to bring God-talk into open spaces), but as I googled more info I discovered Peter Chattaway's already got it covered with more info than I would have (see here and here). Why am I not surprised? (Guess I'll take some solace in that yesterday I actually posted on The Hobbit before he did, heh.)

Anyway, New Line's The Rite is really piquing my interest. It's being adapted from an upcoming non-fiction book (due to be published in 2009) of the same title by journalist Matt Baglio who follows an American priest who studied at an exorcism school in Italy for one year before returning to the U.S. to become one of its few exorcism experts. I googled Baglio and came up with some tidbits: he lives in Rome with his wife and son, is described as a screenwriter in this article, is part of the American Magazine team (for whom he's written about Olympic Turin, surfing in Italy, and tourism travails), and writes for HSToday (a mag for "homeland security decisionmakers"). Nothing in the religious category here, so I'm really curious to know why he chose the subject he did for his book. If you run across anything else by or interviews with Baglio, let me know.

Also, in the course of my googling (yes, I spend way too much time doing this), I ran across this interview in Boston Catholic Journal with a priest in Rome who does exorcism, a Canadian piece about a Calgary priest who attended an exorcism school in Rome, and an article in the NYTimes about a course in the subject. Update: Here's a Telegraph piece, a Reuters article, a short one from BBC and one in Pravda about Vatican schooling of priests on the subject.

(Image: public domain)