When I was a kid, I loved going to the circus. When I wasn't fantastizing about growing up to become a nun, I was hanging out on my backyard swingset daydreaming about running away to join the circus. My dad took me to see Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus and the Shriner Circus every single year -- I knew which of the Ringling Brothers tours was the best, and at one point I had a serious crush on the teenage son of a lion tamer. I'd never given much thought to the jobs the circus animal trainers had; in my circus fantasies, I was a trapeze girl, flying through the air with no paralyzing fear of heights.

Circus Rosaire, a documentary by director Robyn Bliley, gives us a backstage pass into the lives of the Rosaires, a family of "circus people." The Rosaires have been court jesters and circus performers for nine generations, but they live a much less glamorous life now than they did in the good old days when circus people were treated like royalty. Back in the good old days for circus folk -- before there was a Hollywood creating stars and starlets for the world to obsess over - they'd come into towns and be feted like celebrities These days, they're much more likely to be working a small-town carnival than performing at the White House, on The Tonight Show, or in a palace.

My pulse rate immediately jumped during the first scene of Curt Johnson's documentary Your Mommy Kills Animals. A woman wearing a fur coat is brutally assaulted. I breathed a sigh of relief to see that it was "only" a commercial, but before my blood could settle, the next scene shows a dog being even more brutally assaulted. That footage, sadly, is real, allowing no lowering of the blood pressure.

And so it goes throughout the film. If, like me, you didn't know beforehand the difference between animal rights, animal liberation, and animal welfare, you certainly will by the time the end credits roll. Far beyond a simple educational primer, though, the doc drops you in the middle of a very contentious issue and pushes every hot button imaginable. You're simply not allowed to not react. I found my emotions rolling between heated anger and utter disgust, yet never felt manipulated by the film itself. Instead, director Johnson presents opposing viewpoints in a fairly evenhanded fashion. The film is not entirely without its own bias -- which becomes more apparent upon a second viewing -- but you're allowed to draw your own conclusions without feeling like the filmmakers are shoving you into a predetermined corner.

The basic framing device is the trial of the so-called "SHAC 7," a group of six animal rights activists accused of violating federal anti-terrorism laws by encouraging direct action protests on their web site. The group was formed as part of a worldwide campaign to stop animal testing at the Huntingdon Life Sciences laboratory -- really, to shut down the company. Two members are interviewed, and in their appearances, interspersed throughout the film, they appear calm, kind, peaceful and entirely reasonable. How could they pose any kind of threat?

According to a statement released by representatives of distributor Halo-8 Entertainment, Curtis Johnson's documentary Your Mommy Kills Animals has been pulled by "several" retailers, including Internet giant Amazon.com, in advance of its scheduled release date yesterday. The doc examines the animal rights movements. The statement quotes an unnamed retailer who claims that this is "due to legal threats from a well-known Washington lobbyist who represents major corporations in the tobacco and food industries." Matt Pizzolo, President of Halo-8 Entertainment, stated: "Our understanding is that there is no legal restriction on the film whatsoever and some retailers are buckling under threats that have no legal basis."

Cinematical has confirmed that Your Mommy Kills Animals does not appear on the Amazon.com web site. We asked for a comment from Amazon and received the following response from Patty Smith, Director of Corporate Communications for Amazon.com: "Our understanding is the film is subject to active litigation between the parties, and as a result we removed it from our catalog as per our usual practice when we receive notice of an allegation of copyright violation. We are in the process of investigating whether in fact, that dispute still exists. If the matter has been resolved, and the seller has been given the rights to sell the title, we'll happily list it on our site."

Asked for further comment, a Halo-8 representative told Cinematical that the DVD had been ranked #21 for political documentaries when Amazon received a Cease & Desist order and made the decision to remove the title, canceling all pre-orders. The Halo-8 representative also said that Your Mommy Kills Animals had been booked for a one-week run at the Laemmle Grand theatre in Los Angeles in September, but that the booking was canceled at the last minute due to receiving a Cease & Desist order. The rep provided links to reviews in the Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly for the week (and theater) in question, and says that other festivals and theaters, as well as Halo 8 Entertainment itself, had received Cease & Desist orders. Other online retailers, such as Best Buy, Circuit City and DVD Empire, have product pages for the DVD, though availability differs; for example, Netflix lists it with "unknown" availability.The DVD is available for direct order from Halo-8.

Your Mommy Kills Animals played the festival circuit and was picked up for distribution by Halo-8 after selling out screenings at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal. It received a theatrical release this past summer; Nick Schager began his review: "Those on both sides of the animal rights issue will find much to fume over"; he called it an "in-depth, eye-opening examination of the movement, dubbed in 2005 by the FBI as the nation's number one domestic terrorist threat." My review of the DVD release was slightly delayed but will be posted later today.

No ladies, these aren't more shots of Daniel Craig emerging from the ocean in a pair of tighty-whities, but commanderbond does have the first photos of Craig on the set of Bond 22: Bond Harder. Filming took place yesterday at the Palio di Siena horse race in the Tuscan town of Siena. The race is a bi-annual event that dates back to the 11th century and is notoriously dangerous. Over 50 horses have been killed and many more injured there since 1970. Eleonora di Giuseppe of the Italian Federation of Equestrian Sport says that "horses [in the Palio] are exposed to unacceptable risks," and that putting the race in a Bond film would only glamorize the event. When asked if he felt exploited, a nearby horse shrugged and answered "Nay."

The makers of Bond 22 have been ordered not to show any violence "involving either people or animals" that takes place during the race. So filming took place yesterday but the scenes with the actors will be filmed separately and inserted at a later date. How does the race factor into the film? Well, Commanderbond is calling this a spoiler, so heads up. If you like to go into movies completely fresh, you might want to consider not reading on. (You can occupy yourself by reading and re-reading my other posts, and marveling at their grace, texture, and wit). The horse race sequence will likely be the climax of the film and "is said to see 007 pursuing the film's villain down narrow cobbled streets, then across the town's rooftops and through its medieval aqueducts as the horses charge around the Piazza del Campo. The town's bottini, a tangled network of underground tunnels, will reportedly also play a role in the film." Cool! Bond 22: The Legend of Curly's Gold will be in theaters November 7th of next year.

That provocative title is taken from a leaflet handed out by PETA activists to children arriving at performances of The Nutcracker accompanied by fur-clad mothers. It's also the title of a documentary that has just been picked up for distribution. Filmmaker Curt Johnson was inspired to explore the animal rights movement by "a post-9/11 FBI alert identifying animal rights activists as the number one domestic terror threat." Johnson interviewed activists and detractors alike, seeking out as many points of view as possible. Variety's John Anderson hailed it as "a miraculously evenhanded treatment of a snarlingly divisive debate" when it played at HotDocs. "There are no good guys or bad guys in this propulsive film," Anderson wrote, "but there's enough in the way of odd characters and bad behavior to amuse and inform auds who only marginally care about the content." Other reviews have been equally positive.

Your Mommy Kills Animals sold out screenings recently at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, playing as part of their "Documentaries on the Edge" series. At the festival, which continues through July 23, programmer Mitch Davis announced that distributor Halo-8 Entertainment had secured worldwide theatrical and home video rights to the film, beating out "numerous other buyers." You can see the trailer at Halo-8's web site, while the film's MySpace page has additional pictures, videos, a ringtone and merchandise. The best part? You don't have to wait long to see it -- though I recommend you don't wear fur to the theater. Halo-8 plans to release Your Mommy Kills Animals theatrically in September; a DVD will follow in November.

There is a moment in Joe Dante's neato kitsch comedy, Matinee, when Cold War kids Gene (Simon Fenton) and Dennis (Jesse Lee) are sitting in a movie theater, bored silly by the zany (and entirely fictional) body-switching family comedy, The Shook-Up Shopping Cart (a double bill with the equally non-existent The Bashful Bobcat). It was Dante's way of simultaneously mocking and paying tribute to the low-concept filler that Disney made in between what are now the company's enduring classics, and it was a hilarious moment.

While Disney's remake of their 1959 mega-hit, The Shaggy Dog, is not loaded with hilarious moments, it is, as they say, what it is, even if it is that same sort of self-congratulatory jape. Tim Allen plays a dog-hating lawyer who by convenient magic becomes one, makes a fun enough show of it, rolling together nicely the parts played by Tommy Kirk in the original and Dean Jones in the 1976 sequel, The Shaggy D.A. Like My Three Sons star Fred MacMurray in the original, Allen is a Disney contract player, and while he may not be the fatherly comfort that the MacMurray was, he can certainly sell a movie in the same way. People know Tim Allen from Home Improvement; they know him as the voice of Buzz Lightyear from the Toy Story movies; they know him from The Santa Clause, and that is all the selling/warning that most people need.