Looks promising:

Back story, etc, via Gawker.

Thanks to eagle-eyed regular contributor Sam DeWitt, and also Danny Fisher, for the heads-up about this Buddha cameo from the forthcoming comedy, The Campaign:

Trailer here.

Update: The trailer for Samsara, detailed below, is now online via iTunes. Click here to watch it.

This is going to be good.

If you recall director Ron Fricke’s fantastic movie, Baraka, you’ll almost certainly want to see this, his new “guided meditation on the cycle of birth death and rebirth.”  (more…)

Showed you this screenshot from the Total Recall remake back in September; now, here’s the trailer, for you completists.

I dunno.

Band names can come from anywhere, but this one was a pleasant surprise. This UK hard rock band seems to take its name from this modern documentary film championed by Buddhists and meditators for its depiction of how meditation can help the incarcerated.

Not big news, just kinda cool.

Check it out; Jeff Bridges — aka, The Dude, El Duderino, etc — will be releasing a book called The Dude and the Zen Master, which Entertainment Weekly reports will explore “the meaning of life, laughter, the movies and trying to do good in a difficult world.” His co-author? Zen teacher Bernie Glassman. This is gonna be good.

Here’s the story. 

Niiice. And why not? The Dude has many Buddhist fans. Are you among them? I am.

(Hat tip to the mighty Ben Hutchison.)

Look, it’s Eddie Murphy, meditating, in his new film, A Thousand Words. The premise sounds okay, but then again, I said that about Mike Myers’ The Love Guru when it was announced, and let’s just say things didn’t turn out that way.

Learn more about both via this Metro story about comedy and spirituality and when they do and don’t mix so well.

PS: It at least has to be better than “Rude Buddha.”

And now for something completely different: Doomsday Book is a forthcoming Korean sci-fi/thriller film which, among other things, includes the story of a sentient robot who, on the poster asks, “On the last day of Earth, shall I be saved?” According to Beyond Hollywood, the robot “works at a temple, [and] finds enlightenment. A robot repair man named Park Do-Won (Kim Kang-Woo) and a Bodhisattva Hye-Joo (Kim Gyu-Ri) then try to protect the robot from the robot company.”

After the jump: the film’s loud, action-packed trailer. (more…)

Sleeping Beauty actress Emily Browning has told CBS News Entertainment that she dealt with possible discomfort while filming nude scenes for that film via the practice of meditation. Her words:

“I taught myself to meditate in those scenes. I wasn’t present in those scenes at all, so they didn’t really have as much effect on me.”

Here’s that story.

That’s cool that she found a way to deal, but does that sound like meditation to you? She may not have been sleeping, but she doesn’t seem to have really been awake, either.

So I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia now. There are many things to love about the place, but I think I really understood I could love it here when I visited in September and got to see the legendary drummer Jerry Granelli play a solo show. It rocked my world, and I knew that any place that could sustain someone like him would surely have plenty to offer little old me.

Happily, there’s a great documentary film that does a much better job of showing who Granelli is — and what his contributions to both dharma and music are — than I ever could. I found it online and hope you’ll watch it. Here it is, in six installments. Enjoy.

Jerry Granelli: In the Moment, Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6: