Hollywood talks a lot about artistic freedom, but the prospect of reaching the vast market that is China trumps concerns like that. To get past the still-Communist censors, movie-makers make all kinds of changes. [Read more...]
Evangelicals among biggest moviegoers
February 22, 2013 By 34 Comments
A new Barna survey has found that evangelicals go to more movies than just about anybody. [Read more...]
The Academy Awards
February 22, 2013 By 9 Comments
In light of the above post, we should take the opportunity to discuss the Academy Awards that will be given out Sunday night. As someone who goes to the movies far more than the 3 times per year that is considered a large number, I actually think that this year has a stronger field than usual. Who do you think will win, and (what is not at all the same question) who do you think should win? (I list the major nominations after the break.) [Read more...]
Getting bin Laden: The Movie
January 14, 2013 By 6 Comments
I saw Zero Dark Thirty, the film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Earlier, the word was that it would be released just before the election, which had conservatives up in arms, fearing that a cinematic treatment of President Obama’s victory was Hollywood’s plot to get him re-elected. But there is nothing triumphalistic about this movie. Opponents of the war on terrorism will find lots of material in scenes of torture and brutality (as in killing terrorists in front of their children as they cry). And yet supporters of the war on terrorism will also find lots of material in the opening recording of phone calls from World Trade Center victims right before their deaths (talk about 911 calls), the continuing acts of terrorism throughout the movie, and in the heroism of both the troops and the CIA operatives who brought Osama bin Laden to justice. I think Zero Dark Thirty is what an objective treatment of a controversial issue by a work of art looks like. [Read more...]
A movie about Pontius Pilate
January 10, 2013 By 7 Comments
This sounds like it has the potential to be a terrific movie. Mike Fleming has seen the script:
Brad Pitt is circling the title role in Warner Bros‘ Pontius Pilate, the drama about one of history’s most vilified figures. The studio acquired a script by Woman On Top scribe Vera Blasi with Mark Johnson producing through his Gran Via banner. Pitt is not committed, but it could well move that way quickly.
I revealed this project last summer, when the studio acquired Blasi’s script. I got hold of a draft and it’s very strong stuff and has the makings of a compelling period big budget film. This script follows the evolution of Lucius Pontius Pilate from the sensitive son of a Roman Knight into a ferocious soldier whose warrior exploits make him a general and puts him on a political track under the Roman Emperor Tiberius. Promised a military governorship in Egypt, Pilate is instead assigned by Tiberius to become the prefect of Judea, at a time when Jerusalem was a cauldron of religious tensions between various factions of the Jewish faith. Pilate veers from the political fast track into the express lane to hell and historical infamy. Rather than a straight ahead Biblical film, Blasi’s script reads almost like a Biblical era Twilight Zone episode in which a proud, capable Roman soldier gets in way over his head. His arrogance and inability to grasp the devoutness of the citizenry and its hatred for the Roman occupiers and their pagan gods leads him to make catastrophic decisions. All of this puts him in a desperate situation and in need of public approval when he is asked to decide the fate of a 33-year old rabbi accused by religious elders of claiming he is King of the Jews. [Read more...]
Hollywood’s uniculture
July 19, 2012 By 80 Comments
Reniqua Allen, in lamenting the passing of The Bill Cosby Show, complains about the way television today depicts black families. In doing so, she makes some observations that have wide applications:
Instead of a real look at black culture, Hispanic culture or any specific culture, we get “uniculture.” That’s how Felicia Henderson, creator of the Showtime series “Soul Food” and a newly minted executive producer of a BET family sitcom “Reed Between the Lines,” describes much of our current television universe. Henderson, who has served as a writer and producer for shows such as “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “Gossip Girl” and “Fringe,” says the major networks often show diverse casts, but not true cultural differences. “I celebrate multicultural casting, but my concern is that these shows and these characters are only physically multicultural, physically multiethnic,” she says. . . .
The worlds they pretend to inhabit are not ones in which anyone really lives. It’s one TV cultural universe, with no room for ethnic difference, even among ethnic characters.
British journalist David Frost once said, “Television enables you to be entertained in your home by people you wouldn’t have in your home.”
via Why isn’t the Cosby Show for a new generation on network TV? – The Washington Post.
Exactly! This applies also to the ways television (and most movies) portray all families and all cultures. In the Hollywood universe, everyone of every culture embraces extramarital sex, with no qualms, stigmas, or consequences. No one goes to church, and religion has no influence on anyone’s life. There are no conservatives, except for villains. And children are smarter than adults, especially their parents.
What’s with today’s Christians and movies?
February 27, 2012 By 134 Comments
The Washington Post had a big story about a new venture in “doing church” in which a network of cutting edged congregations is meeting in movie theaters: From a movie theater church, pastor Mark Batterson blends orthodoxy and innovation – The Washington Post.
I’ve noticed that evangelicals today are often fixated on movies. They seem to think that movies drive the culture and that making movies is a way to change the culture.
I’m not against that, by any means. I teach a course in film. But I don’t know that I like movies more than, say, novels or epic poems. Yes, films have vast artistic potential–though few are interested in even trying to reach that potential, the commercial motives dominating so much of the film world. And, yes, films can explore spiritual truths, though that poses particular challenges for a visual medium. Why are Christians today more interested in movies, than, say, in literature or even the other visual arts?
I think it’s good that Christians are getting so interested in film. But I’m curious about why. When I was growing up, I had a friend from a really strict church that wouldn’t let him go to movies. This at a time when most movies were pretty much innocent. Now that stance seems quite rare, if it exists at all, and we seem to be at the other extreme, even though movies have become much less innocent.
I’m curious about your thoughts. And go ahead and discuss the Oscars if you want to. I’ve seen more of the nominated films than I have for some time, though I was not all that impressed with them (though I have Tree of Life on DVD but haven’t watched it yet) and made no effort to watch the Academy Awards. That two of the leading pictures up for awards are about silent movies–The Artist and Hugo–is good in a way. Hollywood is discovering its traditions, which is healthy, and silent movies are very much worth seeing, being pure examples of visual story telling and some of the classic silent films do that in a stunning way. On the other hand, all of this looking back–when you add in all of the rummaging through old comic book collections, sequels, prequels, and remakes of movies made not all that long ago–may be a sign of creative paralysis. Which indeed would mean an opening for Christians, if we could only recover the Christian imagination.
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