Go Steve Greydanus!

May 24: The REEL FAITH Movie Review Show Returns

It’s the New Season of Action-Packed Movie Reviews Through a Catholic Lens

BROOKLYN, NY – Do Hollywood and independent filmmakers know that Catholics are the largest sector of their U.S. marketplace? Nearly 78 million Americans are Catholic, 25% of the U.S. population, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn thinks big with its movie review show REEL FAITH.

Friday, May 24 at 8 PM ET, New Evangelization Television (NET) premiers its fourth season of the weekly REEL FAITH movie review show. NET is a branch of DeSales Media Group, official media outreach of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn.

People around the world can tune-in by clicking the “Watch Now” button at NETNY.net; REEL FAITH airs on Cablevision Channel 30 and Time Warner Cable Channel 97 in the New York metro area; and across the USA NET programs are on Verizon FiOS On Demand. To watch REEL FAITH on Verizon FiOS, select the “Religion” folder, then “NET Catholic.”

Dubbed the “Catholic Siskel and Ebert,” David DiCerto (former film critic for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office for Film and Broadcasting) and Steven Greydanus (film critic for the National Catholic Register and creator of DecentFilms.com) host REEL FAITH with the vision of spreading the Gospel message while encouraging greater film literacy.

The new season of REEL FAITH will feature a tribute to the late Roger Ebert, who greatly influenced both hosts.

“Roger Ebert made film criticism as popular as movies themselves,” says Greydanus, whose writing had been quoted in two of Ebert’s reviews and who, in anticipation of the REEL FAITH tribute, wrote the memorial column “How I Believe in Roger Ebert.”

“So much of what we do on the show was inspired by Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel,” adds DiCerto. “They helped bring the conversation down from the lofty citadels of cineastes and infused it with an everyman accessibility, introducing ‘two thumbs up’ into our pop-culture lexicon. When pitching the show to NET, they were the template. We just gave it a unique faith twist.”

Each week, REEL FAITH takes a look at Hollywood’s biggest films and independent releases, uniquely through a Catholic lens. With the help of film scholar Father Robert Lauder, REEL FAITH also introduces viewers to motion picture classics by highlighting “Movies with a Message.”

“Catholic film reviewing has been around for as long as the movies themselves, but we’ve been slow to bring it to the screen, which is ideal for a visual medium like movies. The Church has always been aware of the power of images and on REEL FAITH we can interact with the movies we’re reviewing in a way you can’t do in writing. It’s almost a more Catholic way of reviewing movies,” says Greydanus.

REEL FAITH’s Action-Packed Summer

REEL FAITH is in production now with DiCerto and Greydanus reviewing highly anticipated adaptations of comic book classics such as Marvel’s Iron Man 3 and DC’s latest film incarnation of Superman in Man of Steel; big-budget sequels like Star Trek Into Darkness, Fast and the Furious 6, and The Hangover, Part 3; plus family fare including Despicable Me 2, Epic, Disney’s Planes, and Pixar’s Monster’s University, a prequel to their 2001 hit, Monsters Inc.

REEL FAITH’s season premiere on May 24 also features a recap of some current movies, including the Jackie Robinson story 42, the theatrical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and director Terrence Malick’s To The Wonder.

NET is available to more than 1.8 million homes throughout the New York City area, millions more nationwide on Verizon FiOS On Demand, and worldwide on NETNY.net. Follow NET’s REEL FAITH updates at Facebook.com/ReelFaithShow.