Englebertnightingale
Posts: 128
Joined: 20/11/2011
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Hi everyone. Well I thought I was well and truly done with this discussion, I thought I had reached the summit of Mt. Ararat and was heading down the other side, but that was before the announcement of two movies about the life of Jesus. I've already posted in that forum. At the outset I just want to say, I'm not positioning myself as anti-movies about JC. I only mean to discuss what it means in out shared western culture, and on that note I have a small theory. It's not a well researched theory but perhaps someone knows more and could build upon it. I did some research, a simple google search, i think it was religion in hollywood or something like that. This article turned up from 2009: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100927647 Basically the biggest grossing independant film of 2009 wasn't Slumdog Millionaire or Milk but rather a film that was seemingly made as part of a new Christian movie industry movement. Here is an excerpt from the article: Fireproof, starring former teen idol Kirk Cameron, was all the talk of some 2,000 Christian movie fans gathering at the San Antonio (Texas) Independent Christian Film Festival in January. This crowd was markedly un-Hollywood, the men wearing jeans and Polo shirts, the women in high necklines and low hems. The lights had hardly dimmed for opening ceremonies when Doug Philips, the festival's organizer, told the audience they were drawing a battle line in the culture wars. "We're here to send a message to the world that we no longer want our children immersed in toxic media which is in opposition to the Lord Jesus Christ," he announced to the cheering crowd. "Christian filmmaking is coming of age. Christian filmmaking is coming of age!" Again, I'm not making a criticism, I'm simply questioning what it means. My particular interest is when you combine this trend with another trend that is the decline in revenue for the film industry due to piracy. I might be wrong, but my guess is that the religious audience discussed in this article aren't your typical pirates. In fact I can't imagine any of them really doing that based on their concerns about certain types of morality. I might be wrong. It's just my opinion. Calm down. Everyone take a deep breath, in and out, in and out. Okay, let's move along. Here is my constructed theory: Has Hollywood, or the independent fringes, the smaller studios that fund directors like Aronofsky et al. Have they noticed this lucrative trend and as such are selecting films accordingly? Keep in mind the serious recession taking place right now. What types of decisions are all studios having to make? We've seen major projects like The Lone Ranger have their funding reviewed for the same economic trend, how is it playing out for the small studios, what decisions are they making in this climate? and for what reasons? We have seen a superhero trend in cinema, and we are still in it, could this be another trend emerging here? A religious movie trend? That's all i'll speculate on this for now, and as such I'll post this and then get to the other post I was planning to write tonight.
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