Faith and Bible Tales Make Believers of Hollywood

“The Greatest Story Ever Told,” is not the greatest movie ever made, but the 1965 epic about the life of Christ at least understood the nature of its source material. The Bible, Old and New Testaments alike, as a rich vein of subject matter – and profits – for the movie industry.

Then in the late 1960s, Hollywood made it’s hard left turn and God and the Bible were all but forgotten in Tinsel Town.

But this year, the movie industry seems to have rediscovered the Bible as a very marketable/lucrative subject. Three major movies will be released based on Biblical narrative, with another five faith-themed movies also coming to theatres in 2014. Four more Bible-themed movies are in the works for 2015.

According to Gallup, half of Americans identify as “Christian” or “Protestant” with another 24% identifying as “Catholic.” Maybe Hollywood has finally realized that it pays to pay attention to religious audiences.

Some of these movies, such as Darron Aronofsky’s big budget epic, “Noah,” and the Jesus bio-pic, “Son of God,” based on the popular television series “The Bible,” have been heavily promoted and covered by the media. Others have flown under the radar, like Ridley Scott’s “Exodus” starring Christian Bale, set to be released the end of the year (Dec. 12.). Continues after the video. 

 

Mixed Reactions from Christians and Critics

But despite Hollywood’s faith in these movies’ money-making potential, some media critics couldn’t help making jabs at the films, simply because of their theme.

On Feb. 18, CNN Newsroom asked entertainment columnist Michael Musto of the gay website, Out.com for his thoughts on these movies. Musto sneered: “The country is changing [but] some people are still clinging to religion will like these films.”

Haters will hate, but the rise in Bible-based movies has excited Christian audiences. One movie in particular, Son of God, received overwhelming support from both Protestant and Catholic Christians alike. Megachurch pastors across the country have bought out theatres in advanceto show to their churches. The list includes Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, to Joel Osteen of LakeWood Church in Houston to Archbishop Jose Gomez, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, along with many other religious leaders. Combined, these churches have over $ 100,000 in attendance each week, and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has over 4 million members.

Conversely, one film on the list, has received it’s share of criticism from it’s market audience,according to Variety. Christian movie-goers complained that Russell Crowe’s “Noah” depicted him as a religious nut, and the movie contained modern-day messages about environmentalism.

Brian Godawa, a Christian movie screenwriter who reviewed Aronofsky’s script, told The Christian Post: “If you were expecting a Biblically faithful retelling of the story of the greatest mariner in history and a tale of redemption and obedience to God you’ll be sorely disappointed.” Godawa further criticized the environmental message in the movie, saying the film was, “in short, an anachronistic doomsday scenario of ancient global warming. How Neolithic man was able to cause such anthropogenic catastrophic climate change without the ‘evil’ carbon emissions of modern industrial revolution is not explained.”

The film’s star, Russell Crowe, had his own Biblical analysis, which was featured on Good Morning America, Dec.27: “They consider “Noah” to be a benevolent figure. I’m like, are you kidding me? This is a dude that stood by and watched the entire population of the planet perish. So I think people are going to be quite surprised what “Noah” actually really means.”

It shouldn’t be surprising that films stray from strict interpretations, according to Ted Baehr, Editor-in-Chief of Movieguide, the conservative Christian film review site. “People of different opinions” will make a movie according to their perspective, Baehr said. “Even [1961 life of Christ film] ‘King of Kings’ had a 10-minute beginning with an orgy scene.”

Interestingly, Paramount Pictures, the studio that released “Noah,” has pushed back on the polls that showed Christian audiences didn’t like the film. Paramount Pictures attacked the poll and Variety for promoting the poll, saying the poll doesn’t specifically mention “Noah.” Yet Faith Driven Consumer, the poll organizer, defended its survey, saying the poll clearly asks about that film. Maybe Paramount is so upset because the film studio tried it’s hardest to appeal to Christian audiences, testing several different cuts of the film before audiences to get the most approval from religious audiences.

It would behoove Hollywood to pay more attention to Christian audiences. According to Movie Guide, 9 out of 10 of the highest grossing movies of 2013 contained “strong, or very strong Christian, Biblical or moral worldviews”and “no explicit sexual nudity, no Anti-American or anti-patriotic content.”

Faith Films Hitting Mainstream

Besides Biblical epics, films with a Christian message will also be shown in theatres this year. Last year, former Disney star Vanessa Hudgens was praised for her role in what some considereda pro-life, pro-adoption movie, “Gimme Shelter.” This year, movies about Christian persecution and spiritual experiences will be in theatres.

The first film, to be released March 21, called “God’s not dead,”is about a Christian college student (Shane Harper, “Good Luck Charlie,”) who is called to defend his belief in God by his atheist philosophy professor (Kevin Sorbo “Hercules.”) The movie also stars Dean Cain (“Lois and Clark,”) and Willie and Korie Robertson of A&E’s popular television show, “Duck Dynasty.”Continued after the video.

 

 

A New York Times bestseller, “Heaven is for Real,”a non-fiction narrative of a young boy who biologically dies and comes back to life, will come to theatres on Easter.

Two films about religious persecution are also opening in 2014. “Persecuted,”featuring Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, stars James Remar (“Dexter”) as a popular evangelist who is targeted by the government, for not adhering to a new law that requires religious leaders to be inclusive of all religions in their preaching. According to The Christian Post and the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) the fictional law is similar to a real life resolution passed by the United Nations. The film is set to come out in the Spring.

Another film with the same title, (but with a much smaller budget), is in production this year as well. “Persecuted”is about a KGB officer who is ordered to infiltrate the Christian church in Soviet era Russia but falls in love with a Christian girl along the way.

The best-selling Christian fiction series, “Left Behind,” will be gettinga reboot starring Nicolas Cage and Chad Michael Murray.

More Films in 2015

Other films potentially coming out next year include the Will Smith directed, “Redemption of Cain,”“Pontius Pilate,” with Brad Pitt, Moses re-telling “Gods and Kings,” with rumored director Ang Lee; and a film on the Virgin Mary, called “Mary, mother of God.”

It seems like a spigot has opened, from which you could conclude that there has been institutional hostility toward Bible- and faith-based projects. But Ted Baehr isn’t so sure. Asked if a stigma attached to writers, directors and actors involved in Christian movies, he said, “I don’t think so. At the Producers Guild, Mark Burnett [“The Bible” and “Son of God”] was named the #1 producer on television”

And while he acknowledged there are sometimes special hurdles for Christian films to be produced and distributed, Baehr believes “It depends who it is. Fox/Lionsgate/Sony has a division for Christian films, Roadside Attractions,” which is a distributor. “Studios are complex,” Baehr said. “It depends on who is in the right position. It really depends on who you know. Hollywood is all about relationships.”

And right now, Hollywood seems intent on building a relationship with Christian audiences.

NewsBusters – Exposing Liberal Media Bias

Faith and Bible Tales Make Believers of Hollywood

Obamacare"s True Believers

The Democrats have been going through the five stages of grief on ObamaCare. It started with denial, the insistence that the system was working just fine except for a few glitches on its website. Then there was anger, with a few left-leaning commentators venting their frustration with Obama for dropping the ball on the implementation of ObamaCare.

Now they have moved on to bargaining: maybe the “fixed” website will be just good enough to save the system from total collapse and stave off a grim electoral reckoning for Democrats.

Chances are it won’t; I’ll get to that in a moment. But the big change is this: ObamaCare’s backers have stopped claiming or expecting that the system is going to work well, that it’s going to be easy to use, that it’s going to save everybody money.

They’ve stopped telling us that if we like our plan, we can keep it, and instead they tell us that our old plan was no good, anyway. They’ve stopped telling us that the law is going to save us money and give us free stuff. Instead, the new advertising tagline for ObamaCare adopted by the Department of Health and Human Services is “Forget About the Price Tag.” No, really. They’ve stopped telling us that we’re going to love the law once we find out what’s in it, because—well, because we’re finding out what’s in it.

Given two months to deal with the initial shock, they have successfully lowered their expectations and put their shoulders back beneath the task of defending the law, with all of its problems.

Exhibit A is Margaret Talbot: a writer for The New Yorker who, like me, has had her policy cancelled and now has to pay a lot more. She was initially upset, she writes, but then “I remembered my values”: “the new health-care law exists for the common good, not just the individual consumer…. So yes, I’ll subsidize someone else’s prenatal coverage.”

This guff about “values” is partly a lie. If paying hundreds of extra dollars a month to subsidize poor women’s prenatal care were among Ms. Talbot’s “values,” she would already have been giving money for that cause to a private charity. Your values are the things you actually do voluntarily, not the nice things you would like to think about yourself, or the things you do only when someone forces you. More to the point, her values are not leading her to give her own money to subsidize others. They are leading her to volunteer your money. And my money, and everybody’s money. This is the left’s well-known concept of “compassion”: showing how generous they can be with other people’s money.

It’s awfully magnanimous of her to decide for us what our values are and to back a law that forces us to be true to what she thinks our values ought to be. I would pat her on the back for it, but she’s too busy doing that herself.

Yet there is a note of panic at the end, a premonition of the bad news still to come. She concludes:

“But they had better work out the problems with the ACA; if they don’t, and it doesn’t fulfill its promise of insuring the uninsured, I’m really going to feel like a chump.”

If she’s not certain of that, then what the hell was the rest of the piece about? Her “values,” apparently, don’t prompt her to examine whether the sacrifice she’s volunteering us for actual ends up benefiting anyone.

Because if she did, she would find plenty of evidence that it won’t.

The ObamaCare website fixes don’t really fix anything. The site still can’t handle enough traffic, not enough to meet the targets necessary to sustain the new government-sponsored insurance markets. Even when the site works on the front end, the electronic forms sent to insurers, which are the real guts of the system, are still not reliable. The payment system that funnels money from customer to insurers is not even built yet, much less tested. The result is that a substantial number of people may think they have purchased insurance under ObamaCare, only to find out on January 1 that they haven’t. And that’s not to mention the tens of millions of additional people who are about to be kicked off of their insurance and find out that they are forced to pay more on the government exchanges, if they can obtain any coverage at all.

So there is every reason to believe that this law will ending up kicking millions of people off their existing insurance and leave them stranded. There is now a good chance that on January 1, when the law’s new coverage is supposed to come into effect, the number of people who are uninsured will actually increase.

But I have no doubt that when this happens, a hard core of ObamaCare’s supporters will adjust. They will “remember their values.” The new health-care law exists for the common good, not “just” the individual, so it’s OK if no actual individual benefits from it.

Ayn Rand knew all about this kind of collectivist reasoning, and she described it this way:

“‘The good of others’ is a magic formula that transforms anything into gold…. Your standard of virtue is not an object, not an act, not a principle, but an intention. You need no proof, no reasons, no success, you need not achieve in fact the good of others–all you need to know is that your motive was the good of others, not your own. Your only definition of the good is a negation.”

I describe this as the Milton Factor: the advocates of government control would rather rule in Hell than leave us the hell alone. History shows that socialism’s true believers will ride the system all the way down. They start by saying, as an HHS official notoriously declared, that they hope they aren’t creating a “Third World experience.” But they don’t blink when they end up in the Third World, or worse. (What’s worse? See Michael Totten’s latest on the living ruins of Havana, a once-prosperous city ridden down into the Third World and below by every Western socialist’s favorite regime.)

This is what the left means by their “values”: what matters to them isn’t whether anyone benefits; it’s that we all sacrifice. It’s not whether the little guy actually gets pulled up; it’s about making sure that everyone above him gets pulled down.

So over the next year, take a good look around. As the ObamaCare disaster continues to unfold, notice how the left will rally and continue to defend it, no matter how bad it gets.

They will remember their values—and so should the rest of us. I hope we remember it for a long time. 

RealClearPolitics – Articles

Obamacare"s True Believers

Poll: 76 Percent of Americans Are True Believers

Most Americans believe in God, but they don’t always follow God’s instruction on how to live their lives, according to a new survey that found 76 percent of respondents are true believers.

The survey of 764 adults by YouGov.com, taken Oct. 17-18, also found that 38 percent of respondents said they had taken some kind of action because God told them to.

The survey showed that Republicans — about 42 percent of those polled — were more likely to follow God’s instructions, but only slightly more than Democrats, 40 percent of whom told researchers they responded when God called them to action.

Breaking down the respondents by faith, the survey found that evangelical Christians — about 65 percent — were the most willing to follow God’s orders.

It also revealed that about 44 percent of Southerners believe that God has told them to do something, compared to 41 percent of respondents in the West, 32 percent in the Midwest, and 30 percent in the Northeast.

But even though more than three-quarters of respondents said they believe in God, only about 31 percent said God has complete control over the weather and natural disasters; 17 percent said God has no control over those matters.

In 2011, a poll by Public Religion Research Institute found 38 percent of Americans though God used natural disasters to dispense judgment.

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Poll: 76 Percent of Americans Are True Believers