Very interesting article in the Globe and Mail which I reproduce in abridged form below. The thing is that the humanists will be uneasy by definition but it would be perhaps harder to see how a Christian could be equally uneasy. Surely this is precisely the break they’ve been looking for. Er … no. First the article:
Two years after Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, a film rejected by every major studio, earned more than $600-million (U.S.) worldwide, Hollywood is finally beginning to believe in the possibility of a Christian audience.
Earlier this year, executives at New Line Cinema — the Time-Warner subsidiary that first came to fame with slasher flicks in the eighties, and achieved major studio status by producing The Lord of the Rings trilogy — sat down in a Los Angeles screening room and were given a class in what they dubbed “Christianity 101.” The teachers included a Pauline nun who doubles as a film critic, an evangelical preacher and a Presbyterian minister.
Continued here …
In my mind, Hollywood has two challenges to meet here .. both to realize there is a big Christian audience but also, and much more importantly, acknowledge this by movies that are both spiritual and entertaining .. this second hurdle seems higher to cross, but I'm hoping The Nativity Story, which I'll be seeing later today, will be a breakthrough
ReplyDeleteThe fact that the executives have to be given a class is mind-blowing. In Britain, where we now have a generation with little or no idea of the Christian calendar [because of what we have done to our education system and I speak as a humanist] Hollywood could have an educational role to play here. As reel fanatic says, the test will be whether they can make this kind of movie well.
ReplyDeleteReel fanatic - I'll tune in to that. WCL, yes, it is so sad but there it is. Today.
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