Die Hard not a Christmas movie, Bruce? Say it isn’t so

And so this is Christmas, John Lennon noted in 1972. Time once again then to watch the greatest Christmas movies ever made and debate that age-old question (at least since 1988): Is the explosive action thriller Die Hard (trailer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIOX44m8ktc&t=20s), starring Bruce Willis and the late Alan Rickman, the ultimate Christmas heart warmer, the greatest of them all?

I jest not.

According to a YouGov poll, conducted in 2021, “47 per cent of people who had seen Die Hard say it is NOT a Christmas movie, while 44 per cent of people insisted it is,” Radio X in London reported earlier this month.

Men and women disagreed with half of men (50 per cent) who had seen Die Hard think it’s a Christmas movie compared to just over a third of women (37 per cent), who had watched the film.

Michael Agger’s Dec. 13, 2007 post on Slate titled “Now I Have a Machine Gun. Ho Ho Ho” first made the case Die Hard is really a Christmas movie:

“This holiday season, some of you – no matter what anyone says – are still going to snuggle up on your couch with a mug of hot chocolate and watch It’s a Wonderful Life. That’s fine; there are worse Christmas movies out there. But for those of you who like to spike your cocoa, Slate has compiled a list of alternative Christmas classics. These movies fall into two categories: Christmas movies that never quite made it into the canon, and films that aren’t Christmas movies per se, but are set during the holiday and evoke it every bit as well as the old standbys. Why settle for Jimmy Stewart when you can have Bruce Willis?” (http://www.slate.com/…/now_i_havea_machine_gun_ho_ho_ho…)

Agger, now culture editor of the New Yorker, told Kaitlyn Tiffany, a staff writer at The Atlantic, last December, “I wasn’t even aware that this had grown into a huge thing. I had no idea.” He didn’t have a lot “to say about where the idea had come from,” Tiffany wrote, “and only remembered ‘bullshitting’ in the office – out loud! pre-Slack! –trying to come up with some easy holiday-week content to feed the web.”

Mark Hughes, a film and television screenwriter, who has also worked as a media specialist and campaign ad writer, penned a piece for Forbes magazine on Dec. 14, 2011, where he picked Die Hard as number one on his list of “Top Ten Best Christmas Movies Of All Time” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2011/12/14/top-ten-best-christmas-movies-of-all-time/?sh=79c1a3fb5c60) as the story was headlined.

Wrote Hughes: “Die Hard is everything every Christmas movie should always be forever. It’s a mix of the baddie from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas; the unbeatable hero who shows up to teach everyone a lesson from Miracle On 34th Street; the ghosts of past, present, and future who bring insight and change from A Christmas Carol; plus every redemptive struggle about family and personal evolution and good versus evil, all wrapped up in a big shiny box with a bow made of explosions and bullets. There’s Christmas, and then there’s Christmas with punching terrorists in the face and winning back your entire family – which do YOU prefer? It doesn’t matter what you prefer, actually, because Bruce Willis prefers the latter, and Bruce Willis always wins. You’d know that if you watched the Die Hard movies. So start watching now, beginning with this one….”

Falice Chin, then a producer with CBC Radio One for Calgary Eyeopener, weighed in an online analysis piece for CBC News Dec. 15, 2017 headlined “Why Die Hard is the ultimate Christmas movie – despite naysayers.” You can read it here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/author/falice-s-chin-1.3505737 Chin is now a senior producer of Edmonton AM.

“Among the many holiday nods – 12 bad guys, wife named Holly, giant teddy bear gift in waiting and endless Christmas décor – there’s also a film score featuring ominous renditions of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy sprinkled with the jingling of sleigh bells,” Chin noted.

Die Hard, directed by John McTiernan and written by Steven E. de Souza and Jeb Stuart, follows the Christmas Eve exploits of John McClane (Bruce Willis), playing an off-duty New York City cop visiting in Los Angeles for the holidays to see his estranged wife, Holly Gennaro McClane (Bonnie Bedelia), and two daughters, as he takes on a group of highly organized criminals, led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), at a holiday party on the 32nd floor of Nakatomi Plaza, a Los Angeles skyscraper that is the American headquarters of the Japanese-owned business Holly works for, as Gruber and his men stage a heist under the guise of a terrorist attack using hostages, including Holly, to keep police at bay.

Die Hard is based on Roderick Thorp’s 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever, and was the sequel to 1966’s The Detective, which was adapted into a 1968 film of the same name that starred Frank Sinatra. Willis, not the first choice for the role (Sinatra declined to reprise his role 20 years after The Detective and action star Arnold Schwarzenegger turned the part down) was known primarily as a comedic television actor in 1988, particularly for co-starring as a private detective with Cybill Shepherd in Moonlighting on ABC between March 1985 and May 1989.

Die Hard changed all that and made Willis into an action star. Made for $28 million, Die Hard has grossed more than $140 million theatrically worldwide. The film’s success has spawned four sequels to date: Die Hard 2 in 1990; Die Hard with a Vengeance in 1995; Live Free or Die Hard in 2007 and a Good Day to Die Hard in 2013.

Sadly, Willis was diagnosed last March with aphasia – a brain disorder which impacts the ability to speak and other cognitive abilities – and revealed he was stepping away from acting. His enforced early retirement came as a huge shock to his fans, as well as his many friends in Hollywood.

On July 14, 2018, Willis, in his Comedy Central roast, said Die Hard, the beloved action flick, isn’t a Christmas movie – “it’s a god damn Bruce Willis movie!” (https://www.indiewire.com/2018/07/bruce-willis-die-hard-christmas-movie-1201984149/ ) IndieWire reported at the time.

To this, I can only respond by paraphrasing New York Sun editor Francis Pharcellus Church 1897 reply to eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon, when she asked if Santa Claus is real.

Die Hard not a Christmas movie, Bruce? Say it isn’t so. One can only hope Bruce Willis has an early Christmas morning transformation akin to Ebenezer Scrooge’s: “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me.’’

“And it was always said of him,” the narrator concludes Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, “that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!’’

Happy Christmas, Bruce!

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

Christianity, Popular Culture and Ideas, Religion

The Chosen: Christian entertainment sans cheese/plus a Jesus with a sense of humour

Bad scripts and worse acting are frequently heard criticisms when it comes to the Christian entertainment genre. The “big knock” against the Christian movie, television and streaming genre for more secular audiences – aside from the fact the films are Christian – has long been heavy-handed theological scripts, clunky acting and cheesy sets, with mainly bad plots, which, to be charitable, do little more than preach to the choir. There hasn’t been, aside from the occasional blockbuster, much for broader audiences to judge such films or television on if they were done, well, well. You know, decent scripts, good actors, high production values, that sort of thing. Hollywood, which is usually a synonym for Sodom or Gomorrah in the vocabulary of many Christians, is seldom on the side of the angels, unless commercial potential can stand in for faith in salvation if need be.

The Chosen TV series debuted on Dec. 24, 2017. Two seasons have aired. Season 3 is expected to air later this year. Seven seasons are planned.

Angel Studios, the streaming platform behind the Christian series The Chosen, announced in early January that it had raised $47 million in funding from venture capitalists. The financing was led by VC firm Gigafund and Bain-backed Uncorrelated Venture. Original seed investors Alta Ventures and Kickstart Fund also participated.

In addition to VC money, $5 million was crowdsourced directly from fans, and The Chosen is the most crowdfunded media project in history. It has received 9.6 out of 10 on IMDb. John Jurgensen, a reporter who covers music, television and digital entertainment for The Wall Street Journal, wrote last November: “The success of the series is a powerful reminder to Hollywood that faith-focused projects can sometimes become breakthrough hits.” Chris DeVille, a journalist based in Ohio, writing for The Atlantic magazine last June, observed: “Take it from a critic and a Christian with an aversion to Christian entertainment: The show is good.”

I concur. It is the first Biblical series I’ve seen that consistently portrays Jesus as both “fully human” and “fully God.” Usually, I find the former left out. But Dallas Jenkins’ Jesus (Jonathan Roumie) has a very keen sense of humour when the occasion calls for it. Who would have imagined? Jesus with a sense of humour. Indeed, these Apostles (my favourite, I think, is young Matthew [Paras Patel], the tax collector, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of Autism Spectrum Disorder), Pharisees (shout out to Erick Avari as Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin), Sadducees, and assorted residents of the Red Quarter of Jerusalem, located near the Gate of the Moors and Coponius Gate, in the southwestern part of the Western Wall, all appear as flesh-and-blood real people might well have in the 1st century Anno Domini (AD).

For background expertise and script consulting, the creators of the show have been conferring with Father David Guffee, a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, based at St. Monica Catholic Church in Santa Monica, California, and national director at Family Theater Productions; Rabbi Jason Sobel of Fusion Ministries in Hollywood, and Professor Doug Huffman, associate dean and professor of New Testament, overseeing the undergraduate division of Talbot School of Theology at Biola University in La Mirada, California. Last weekend, Jeanette and I watched Dallas Jenkins, creator, director and co-writer of The Chosen, do a “deep dive” into the first season’s eight episode on the show’s free mobile app with the three Biblical consultants, Father Guffee, Rabbi Sobel, and Professor, and Jenkins kicking off the 40-minute or so deep dive roundtable discussion with the timeless, “A Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi, and an evangelical scholar walk into ….” This sounds like the beginning of a joke with reference to a drinking establishment, but 1st century Jerusalem Anno Domini (AD) and theology is what’s on tap here.

I first got to know the work of Dallas Jenkins back in 2011 with Jeanette at the Winnipeg Real to Reel Film Festival, as he had just directed What If … the previous year.

What If, a film about a businessman who is shown by an angel what his life could have become if he had followed God’s calling for his life, starred Kevin Sorbo, Kristy Swanson, Debby Ryan, and John Ratzenberger, who portrayed mail carrier Cliff Clavin on the comedy series Cheers, for which he earned two Primetime Emmy nominations. As “Mike the Angel,” Ratzenberger throws what I consider to be the best guardian angel punch in cinematic history to date at Ben Walker (Kevin Sorbo).

Dallas Jenkins dad, Jerry B. Jenkins, did most of the actual writing of the Left Behind novels, while Tim LaHaye was primarily the idea man. Left Behind started out as a series of 16 best-selling novels, published between 1995 and 2007, dealing with the Protestant evangelical Christian predispensationalist “End Times” view of the Rapture and the Tribulation that follows. The drama comes from the struggle of the rag-tag Tribulation Force against the Global Community and its leader Nicolae Carpathia – the Antichrist.

I’ve read the 16 novels – from Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days, published in 1995, and then Tribulation Force: The Continuing Drama of Those Left Behind; Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist; Soul Harvest: The World Takes Sides; Apollyon: The Destroyer Is Unleashed; Assassins: Assignment: Jerusalem, Target: Antichrist; The Indwelling: The Beast Takes Possession; The Mark: The Beast Rules the World; Desecration: Antichrist Takes the Throne; The Remnant: On the Brink of Armageddon; Armageddon: The Cosmic Battle of the Ages; Glorious Appearing: The End of Days; The Rising: Antichrist is Born: Before They Were Left Behind; The Regime: Evil Advances: Before They Were Left Behind; The Rapture: In the Twinkling of an Eye: Countdown to Earth’s Last Days, right through to Kingdom Come: The Final Victory in 2007.

Left Behind isn’t great literature,” wrote Alissa Wilkinson, critic-at-large at Christianity Today in the Washington Post in 2016, “but it’s highly engaging reading for a mass market, fast-moving fiction with elements drawn from sci-fi, romance, disaster porn, and political and spy novels. Left Behind has the code-cracking conspiracy feel of a Dan Brown novel, but also the appeal of a familiar story – one that inscribes the reader’s own world, with its televisions and airplanes and phones and computers, into biblical events.

“This is the genius of the Left Behind books: They work on two levels.”

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

hitchhiking

Hitchhiking down the road to Edmundston, walking across the water to Madawaska, Maine for a few beer, and camping out in His Honour’s back yard

I have fond memories going back to 1975 of my first long-distance hitchhiking expedition from Oshawa at 18, just after Grade 12, to the Baker Lake and Edmundston areas of New Brunswick, and then walking over the Edmundston-Madawaska Bridge, which opened in 1921, from Des Veterans Promenade, as it is known now (not sure about back then) or Highway 2 to Bridge Street or US Highway 1 in Madawaska, just across the Saint John River in Aroostook County, Maine.

I think there was something about a girl in a bar in Madawaska (I know, sounds a bit like the opening salvo of a country-and-western song; I believe the legal drinking age may have been 18 in Maine at the time) and me later sleeping in front of either Edmundston City Hall, or the Edmundston Police Force station (I’ve forgotten which, but the building was downtown, near the old S.M.T. (Eastern) Limited bus station, I think, in those days).

Remarkably, I only had a summer-weight sleeping bag and packsack (and notably no tent) in late June in the Maritimes.

Remarkably, no one either disturbed me or arrested me.

My next stop would be camping out with the same gear in Charlottetown in the back yard of the Government House of Prince Edward Island, often referred to as Fanningbank, where I was again neither disturbed or arrested, albeit I don’t recall then Lt.-Gov. Gordon Bennett inviting me in for some breakfast either.

A few days later, my sleeping back and I wound up camping out for the night atop some embankment, surrounded by cedar trees, I believe, in Truro, Nova Scotia. When I woke up the next morning my sleeping bag and I had descended about 30 yards down the embankment during the night, while my packsack was still back at top, marking where we had started out.

One of my last stops was Channel-Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, where I discovered endless fog and Pizza Delight, which had been founded seven years earlier in 1968 in Shediac, New Brunswick. While it would be another 24 years or so, Chez Camille Take-Out on Chemin Acadie in Cap-Pelé, about 15 miles east of Shediac, and also on the Northumberland Strait, would become my favourite fried clams joint anywhere, with John’s Lunch on Pleasant Street in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, running a close second. Now if I could only make it back to check out the Shediac Lobster Festival!

All in all, this admittedly was not a particularly well-thought out adventure at the age of 18, but I was fortuitous in more ways than one. Along with not being disturbed or arrested, it didn’t’ rain for the 11 or so nights I spent under the starry Atlantic summer night sky, sans tent, and I wasn’t unduly tormented by mosquitoes or blackflies, both of which, I suspect, are not unknown to inhabit the Maritimes that time of year.

Hitchhiking, at least in much of North America, is something of a lost travel adventure art that more or less disappeared around the time of my mid-1970’s trek to the Maritimes (with the odd exception such as Globe and Mail writer John Stackhouse’s insightful Notes from the Road cross-Canada series in the Summer of 2000.) Of course, fear reigns supreme now and no one is going to pick you up, right? Well, maybe not. About a dozen years ago now, and more than 30 years after my Maritimes saga, I did a fair bit of hitchhiking again in Ontario, down in Prince Edward County on Lake Ontario, or simply “The County,” as it is known to locals.If you wanted to meet some interesting County characters and hear some down-home stories, all you had to do was stick your thumb out. I did it many a time on the Wellington-Bloomfield-Picton routeOne Sunday morning a man picked me up in Wellington and drove me to Picton, all the while telling me stories about what he considered to be the two worst winters in the County in his experience – 1946 and 1977. In ’46, he was in school and the snow was so deep, he said, you could touch overhead telephone lines (not that it was advisable to do so) walking on top of snowbanks. But ’77 was even worse, he said, with the County briefly loosing a snow plow in Lake Ontario near Wellington; the military having to bring their big blowers out from CFS Mountain View to clear some areas; a couple of kids with their dad’s car hitting a snowbank on the way home from school in a blizzard and being stranded for several days in Bloomfield. In both 1946 and 1977, my driver said, the County was cut off from the mainland for five days straight. Then passing through Bloomfield, he told me about an-all-but abandoned house on the outskirts of the village toward Picton. Well, not quite abandoned. While there were no longer human inhabitants, the elderly woman who owned it, with some help from relatives, he said, still returned most every afternoon from her home nearby in the village to feed her birds, which still lived there on Highway 33.

Another time, I was picked up by a grandmother and her grandson while I was hitchhiking. Her family home had been in Bloomfield for 130 years. But she’d also travelled far and wide before her path took her back to the County. While she was well-known for many things, including being the spouse of a well-known-in-his-own-right Hallowell politician, less well known perhaps was the true fact that she gave Hollywood screen legend Clark Gable his last x-ray in Los Angeles in 1960.

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

Christianity, Movies, Popular Culture and Ideas

Sixth annual Real to Reel Film Festival about to kick off in Winnipeg

Paul Boge gets it. He runs the Winnipeg Real to Reel Film Festival like, well, a film festival. Just because the films are shown in a church and are mainly new offerings on the market from what might be loosely called the Christian movie genre – a hot genre even in secular Hollywood these days – Boge doesn’t give them a free pass, as it were. If your film has copyrighted music or other material subject to copyright protection and you’re a filmmaker, you better have arranged all the necessary copyright clearances, or it won’t be screening this week at North Kildonan Mennonite Brethren Church on Gateway Road in Winnipeg. Boge, a consulting mining engineer and capital project manager with the family firm Boge & Boge Consulting Engineers in Winnipeg, wears many hats, and is a member of the church.

This year’s festival runs on four screens from today through Feb. 21, opening at 7 p.m. with three flicks, including A Matter of Faith, from Rich Christiano’s Five & Two Pictures, where a college classroom clash between a biblical creation-believing freshman and a professor teaching evolution (a popular theme in the last few years, also canvassed in God’s Not Dead and God’s Not Dead 2, being released in April) is showing in Theatre 1. You can watch a YouTube trailer for A Matter of Faith here at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiRGdJ2uPwk Christiano, a former Catholic from Waterloo, New York, became a born-again Christian in 1980. One of his early influences after his conversion experience was John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church.

Two of the other feature films showing at this year’s festival are Henline Productions of Loveland, Ohio’s Polycarp: Destroyer of Gods, based on a novel authored by Pastor Rick Lambert, a co-pastor of Grace Bible Church in Cincinnati, and War Room, from Alex and Stephen Kendrick.

St. Polycarp, one of the three chief Apostolic Fathers, was a second century bishop of Smyrna, one of the new centres for the Christian world after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and located in modern-day Turkey on the Aegean Sea, was martyred at the age of 86 in 155 AD on the orders of Statius Quadratus, proconsul of Asia.

Born in 69 AD, the real-life Polycarp was an important historical link to that Sub-Apostolic Age, during which it was possible to learn by word of mouth what the Apostles taught from those who had heard them for themselves.

But sorting out fact from fiction when it comes to the life of Polycarp of Smyrna, like so many ancient saints from the Sub-Apostolic Age, is no simple task. Much is simply shrouded in the mists of time and certainties are in short supply. Even the historical fact that Statius Quadratus was the proconsul of Asia at the time who ordered Polycarp’s martyrdom is not beyond dispute, nor is the exact year of Polycarp’s death. Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus wrote it was St. John the Apostle himself who made Polycarp a bishop.

The main sources of credible historical information concerning St. Polycarp are the Epistles of St. Ignatius; Polycarp’s own Epistle to the Philippians; sundry passages in St. Irenaaus; and the Letter of the Smyrnwans recounting the martyrdom of St. Polycarp. The Epistle of St. Polycarp was a reply to one from the Philippians, in which they had asked him to address them some words of exhortation.

Four out of the seven genuine epistles of St. Ignatius were written from Smyrna. In two of these – Magnesians and Ephesians – he speaks of Polycarp. The seventh Epistle was addressed to Polycarp.

Just before his martyrdom in 155 AD, Polycarp was urged by Quadratus, or whoever the proconsul was, to curse Christ, leading to Polycarp’s celebrated reply: “Fourscore and six years have I served Him, and He has done me no harm. How then can I curse my King that saved me?” Polycarp was then burned and stabbed to death.

Henline Productions, formerly J&J Productions, is the brother and sister Protestant evangelical homeschooled filmmaking team of Joe Henline, 20, and Jerica Henline, 22.

In 2010, they entered the five-minute short video No Time in the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival and finished as semi-finalists in the competition.

Their next film, The Forgotten Martyr: Lady Jane Grey, shot in 2011 was entered into the 2012 San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival and won them the Best Young Filmmaker award, and was runner-up in the Short Film category. Awards from other independent Christian film festivals included, Best Young Filmmaker at the GloryReelz Christian Film Festival, Golden Crown Award (Best Student Production) at the International Christian Visual Media Festival and Best Young Filmmaker at The Attic Film Festival.

In their script for Polycarp, a 12-year-old slave girl, Anna, is rescued and adopted by Christians in 2nd century Smyrna and befriended by the aged Polycarp. You can watch a brief 1:52 YouTube trailer for it here at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IjPlffZVy8

In real life, of course, Polycarp was supposedly born into slavery, purchased as a young boy, and raised by a godly woman in Ephesus.

As Anna is taught by Polycarp and her new family, she struggles to reconcile her beliefs with those of the Christians. When the Roman proconsul demands that all citizens worship Caesar to show their allegiance to Rome, Polycarp and the Christians stand for their faith against the growing threat of persecution, and Anna is forced to choose whom she is willing to live – and die – for.

Polycarp was awarded Best Feature Film, Audience Choice Award and Best Original Music Score at the second Christian Worldview Film Festival last March at Castle Hills First Baptist Church, also in San Antonio.

Tulsa native Garry Nation received the award for Best Lead Actor in a Feature Film for his performance as Polycarp.

A family-friendly drama, War Room is about learning to fight the right kinds of battles. Filled with humor, wit and heart, it follows Tony and Elizabeth Jordan, a middle-class couple, and their daughter, Danielle, as they struggle through personal, marital and spiritual issues. Their lives are forever changed after Elizabeth meets an elderly widow who helps her develop a secret prayer room in her home. You can watch a YouTube trailer for it here at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIl-XY9t_Lw

The Kendricks, who are both associate pastors on the staff of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia, got their start in 2003 with their first movie Flywheel. They conceived the idea for Flywheel in the spring of 2002 after they saw the results from Barna Research Group demonstrating empirically popular culture movies and television shows are more influential in American society than the Christian church.

Flywheel, which tells the story of a dishonest used car salesman who comes to grips with his need for God, relied on untrained actors from the Sherwood Baptist Church congregation to play all the roles, debuting as an independent film on a single Carmike Theatre screen in Albany, Georgia in April 2003 and ran for six weeks initially, often outdrawing Hollywood films on adjoining screens.

Then came Facing the Giants in 2006 and in 2008 Fireproof, made on a $500,000 budget, but generating more than $33.4 million at the box office, making it the highest-grossing independent film of the year. Their most recent film until the release last summer of War Room, Courageous, was released in September 2011. It was produced with a budget of $2 million and has grossed more than $34.5 million to date. Facing the Giants, which grossed more than $10 million; Fireproof, which grossed more than $33 million; and Courageous have a combined gross of nearly $80 million at the box office, with a combined budget of less than $4 million.

The Kendicks wrapped up principal photography on their fifth movie, War Room, in July 2014 in and around Charlotte, North Carolina. It is their first project independent of Sherwood Pictures, the movie ministry of Sherwood Baptist Church. It being produced by Kendrick Brothers Productions with Provident Films and AFFIRM Films in distribution partnership. Provident Films, a division of Provident Music Group, develops, produces and markets faith-based films. Nashville-based Provident Music Group is a division of Sony Music Entertainment. AFFIRM Films is a division of Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions (SPWA), a Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) company, which is a subsidiary of Sony Entertainment Inc., which in turn is a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sony Corporation.

It is also the first Kendrick brothers project shot outside their hometown of Albany, Georgia. It drew more than 1,000 volunteers from 85 churches in the Charlotte area who stepped up and reached across denominational lines to support the production. The Kendricks remain associate pastors at Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia.

Each Kendrick brothers film explores a subject important to Christians and the Christian life: personal integrity in Flywheel; resilient faith in Facing the Giants; loving marriages in Fireproof and heroic parenting in Courageous. War Room’s focus on prayer strategically highlights a subject of interest to a majority of Americans. According to a National Opinion Research Center survey on frequency of prayer, nearly 90 per cent of Americans claim to pray regularly. Some 60 per cent say they pray at least once a day – for Christians, that number grows to 84 per cent, according to a U.S. News and Beliefnet online poll. Almost 80 per cent of American Christians say they pray most often at home.

One of the most frequently asked questions that filmmakers ask about the festival, according to the online FAQ on Winnipeg Real to Reel Film Festival’s website is: “Does my movie have to be a Christian movie?”

The answer is, “No. While there are varying definitions of ‘Christian’ movies, WR2R is interested in both Christian movies and also movies that are not expressly Christian but feature challenging, encouraging themes that highlight interesting stories.”

The festival is a mix of larger budget films from some of the bigger American players in the Christian movie-making genre – such as Pure Flix Entertainment, Sherwood Pictures, Kendrick Brothers Productions and Provident Films – and local made-in-Manitoba efforts, including Winnipeg teenager Joshua Hood’s six-episode Shaw Cable TV-produced television project called Millworth, which takes a look at life inside Winnipeg’s worst fictional high school, and is entered in the Short Films 2 category screening Saturday at 6 p.m. and again Sunday at 1:30 p.m. with the filmmakers present.

Boge’s FireGate Films made the 2006 feature-length movie Among Thieves, with Boge writing, directing and producing the film, which explores the possibility the end is in sight for the United States dollar as the world’s reserve currency, as Gulf Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar have contemplated ending dollar dealings for oil and moving to a basket of currencies including the euro and Chinese yuan or renminbi. The last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than U.S. dollars was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1990.

Perhaps at least partially as a result of making Among Thieves, Boge has an interest in young filmmakers, who may be long on promise but short on cash. The festival FAQ notes: “My film is low budget. Do I stand a chance?”

The reply: “YES!!! Story trumps budget. If you have a great story but not a lot of cash you will be considered for the festival.”

Among the documentaries airing is Mully, directed by Austin, Texas-born director, playwright and actor Scott Haze. Mully premiered at the Austin Film Festival last November.

Charles Mulli was a poor abandoned six-year-old Kenyan boy who grew up to become successful, powerful and very rich, but decided to sell all he had to rescue street children whose condition reflected his own childhood. Saving one child has turned into rescuing thousands for Mulli.

The story has remained near and dear to Boge’s own heart. He has travelled to Kenya and done volunteer teaching with Mulli’s organization and written two books about his African experiences: Father to the Fatherless: The Charles Mulli Story; Hope for the Hopeless: The Charles Mulli Mission; and most recently, The Biggest Family in the World, chronicling the life of Charles Mulli in an illustrated children’s book and published in December 2014. Faye Hall, administrative assistant for Winnipeg Juno-winning singer-songwriter Steve Bell’s Signpost Music and IncarNATION Ministries, spent two years creating 32 paintings that capture Mulli’s life for Boge’s The Biggest Family in the World.

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

Christmas, Toys

Denmark’s LEGO® has two entries on top of Dream Toys Top 12 list compiled annually by the Gainsborough-based Toy Retailers Association (TRA), representing toy retailers in the United Kingdom and Ireland

LEGO®, the 83-year-old bricks-and-mortar Danish company famous for the LEGO brick, its most important product, which was twice named “Toy of the Century,” keeps on building its reputation for being one of the world’s best toymakers, with two entries – City Deep Sea Explorers 60095 Exploration Vessel Building Kit and Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle – on the Dream Toys Top 12 list compiled annually by the Gainsborough-based Toy Retailers Association (TRA), representing toy retailers in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The list was released earlier this month.

The privately held LEGO Group in Billund, Denmark was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Kristiansen. The name ‘LEGO’ is an abbreviation of the two Danish words “leg godt,” meaning “play well.” The company has passed from father to son and is now owned by Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, a grandchild of the founder.

The brick in its present form was launched in 1958. The interlocking principle with its tubes makes it unique, and offers unlimited building possibilities.

The Dream Toys Top 12 list is decided by a a panel of leading toy retailers in the United Kingdom, including Argos, Boots, Selfridges, Smyths Toy, The Entertainer, TK Maxx and Toys R US, and is considered one of the most accurate and predictive lists worldwide for annual Christmas toy popularity.

The City Deep Sea Explorers 60095 Exploration Vessel Building Kit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-EQ9dd7ZFE), recommended for ages eight 12, has 717 pieces and features a working winch, large wheelhouse, below-deck cabins and a lifeboat, and accessories that include include two mugs, walkie-talkie, binoculars, life preserver, welder, two boxes – and did I mention – 16 gold bars! You can activate the shipwreck collapse function and there is also a submarine. You should be able to pick up this bad boy out of your Christmas bonus for under $150 in Canada!

The eight-to-12-year old group accounts for 22 percent of toy sales, according to London-based The NPD Group Inc., a market research firm that tracks about 80 percent of the U.S. toy market, as well as working with the Gainsborough-based Toy Retailers Association in the United Kingdom. NPD says the eight-to-12-year old group had been ignored in recent years because they’re the biggest users of mobile devices.

Anne D’Innocenzio, the long-time national retail writer for The Associated Press in New York City, wrote earlier this month that the U.S. toy industry is expecting to have “its strongest year in at least a decade after several years of kids choosing video games and mobile apps over Barbie and stuffed bears.”

Annual toy sales are projected to rise 6.2 percent to $19.9 billion in 2015, according to The NPD Group Inc. That’s up from a four per cent increase last year, and the biggest increase in the decade since the group has tracked toys using its current system.

The growth is being fueled, D’Innocenzio writes, “by increasing popularity of collectibles, toys based on Hollywood blockbuster films and better technology that allows toys to do things like talk back to children.”

Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle, which cashes in on the Star Wars theme with the upcoming premiere in Los Angeles Dec. 14 of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the seventh installment in the main Star Wars series, has 1,005 pieces, and is recommended for ages nine to 14, and will set you back about the same amount in that $150 price range. It includes spring-loaded shooters, storage bays and detachable weapon racks, which you can re-arm.

The Force Awakens story is set about 30 years after the events of Return of the Jedi, which was released in 1983. And yes, Harrison Ford is back as Han Solo, as is Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker and Carrie Fisher as Leia Organa, more general than princess now. Thanks for asking.

LEGO® was also on the Dream Toys Top 12 list last year with the LEGO® Movie Benny’s Spaceship, one of only three toys on the 2014 list that were not battery-powered.

But for the many that are, toymakers are using chip technology, which is getting cheaper and more powerful, in toys.

Canadian toy company Spin Master Ltd. had the hit Zoomer Dino-Boomer last Christmas, which has an autonomous mode where via the sensors in his nose, Zoomer Dino-Boomer can go on the attack, or the same can be accomplished by picking him up and pushing his buttons, or using the control pod to send him on the hunt. He shows his moods through his colour-changing eyes and can even bust a move with his occasional dancing dinosaur routines. Spin Master is back this year with Meccano Meccanoid G15 that allows kids to build and program their own personal four-foot-tall robot that records and plays back audio and it learns from them. It has more than 1,200 parts and features 64 megabytes of memory.

Located on Front Street West in Toronto. Spin Master was founded in 1994 in a Toronto garage by college friends, Ronnen Harary, Anton Rabie and Ben Varadi, who had $10,000 between them. You know the type of entrepreneurial story. Twenty years later, Spin Master is an all-encompassing global entertainment, robotics, toy and digital gaming company, with a design lab in Los Angeles. It is currently the number three manufacturer in the games category in North America, with double digit growth.

Clive Shelton, owner of Clive Shelton Associates in Bromley, is a chemist and toy safety expert who advises the Toy Retailers Association. He says “there is more computer power in some of these toys than was used in the first mission to the moon. That is the age we live in. They prepare children for their future lives with technology.”

While updated versions of classic board games such as Parker Brothers’ Monopoly, the real estate game invented by Charles Darrow, an out-of-work heating contractor, which Parker Brothers’ began marketing on Nov. 5, 1935, and Mouse Trap, designed by Colorado’s Harvey “Hank” Kramer for the Ideal Toy Company in 1963, continue to do well year after year, experts said that they are more likely to be considered “family entertainment” and purchased as such.

There is much to be said for the charm of board games and train sets, and, indeed, toys– wood, metal and even plastic – from an older largely forgotten world now. I made my first visit to Toad Hall Toys on Arthur Street in the heart of Winnipeg’s Exchange District on the Saturday afternoon before Christmas in 2013 and it was simply, in a word, magical. And by no means forgotten by its loyal patrons.

Toad Hall Toys was established in 1977 by Ray and Ann England and is Manitoba’s largest and oldest independent toy retailer, priding itself, it says, “on our unique selection, old world charm, and friendly and knowledgeable staff. ”

The store, or course, takes its name from Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s book, The Wind in the Willows. Today, the store is run by Ray and Ann’s daughter Kari. “We offer a vast array of products from over 50 different countries. Our mandate is to provide a unique experience that stimulates the imagination, rather than rotate through the latest mass market trend or fad.”

Indeed so.

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

Christianity, Movies, Popular Culture and Ideas

The Devil, Prince of this World, is not surprisingly about to get his pop culture due on Fox Television as Lucifer Morningstar, recently retired as Lord of Hell and running a piano bar in Los Angeles, the City of Angels

Some movie film buffs are attracted to 1940’s and 1950’s Hollywood film noir, the stylish but low-key black-and-white German expressionist influenced flicks that emphasize cynicism and sex as motivations for murder and other deadly sins (not necessarily in that order). Think Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep in 1946, with Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, based on Raymond Chandler’s 1939 novel of the same name. Or perhaps the 1950 classic, D.O.A., starring Edmond O’Brien and Pamela Britton.

Both are fine films, as are many others of the genre. But I wouldn’t say I am quite an aficionado of film noir. Rather, I appreciate it on its artistic merits.

The same is true for TV series science fiction or sci-fi. While I am a sucker for a good story with elements of time travel or parallel universes (“The City on the Edge of Forever,” the second to last episode of the first season of Star Trek, first broadcast on Thursday, April 6, 1967, which was awarded the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, remains in a league of its own in my mind), I’m not quite a diehard Trekkie, although I think the original series, which ran on NBC Television for three seasons from 1966 to 1969 is superb, albeit cheesy. But cheesy is OK. Popular culture is made up of a rich cornucopia of cheesy television and movies that almost require a mandatory bowl of Cheetos® to consume such classics as the black-and-white a double-bill of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, also known as The Head That Wouldn’t Die, a 1959 science-fiction-horror film, directed by Joseph Green (made for $62,000 but not released until 1962), and Plan 9 from Outer Space, the 1959 American science-fiction thriller film, written and directed by Ed Wood on a $60,000 budget, and dubbed by some critics as the worst movie ever made.

While it took me a while to warm up to it, I also came to like Star Trek: The Next Generation, which aired from 1987 to 1994. I’ve also seen most, although probably not all, of the movies from the seemingly endless Star Trek-spawned movie franchise.

Three additional Star Trek spin-offs, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise; well, I could probably count on the fingers of one hand how many episodes of the combined series I’ve ever watched, although knowing Star Trek: Enterprise, which aired originally between 2001 and 2005 and was titled simply as Enterprise for its first two seasons, features Scott Bakula of Quantum Leap fame as Capt. Jonathan Archer, and there is a recurring plot device based on the Temporal Cold War, in which a mysterious entity from the 27th century uses the Cabal, a group of genetically upgraded Suliban, to manipulate the timeline and change past events, I probably will have to give in and start watching its 98 episodes at some point.

Then there is the Christian movie genre. We discover things where we discover them. While I had seen The Rapture, a rather odd but interesting movie starring Mimi Rogers and David Duchovny, later of The X-Files and Californication fame, on VHS videotape cassette in Durham, North Carolina shortly after it was released in 1991, for me, my first real introduction into what I would call the Christian movie genre took place a decade later in Yellowknife, of all places (when I lived in Yellowknife a standard observation was that there were more bars than churches, although that’s hardly unique to Yk).

I remember seeing A Walk to Remember, an American coming-of-age teen romantic drama, when it was released in 2002 downtown at the Capitol Theatre on 52 Street, starring Shane West and Mandy Moore as Landon Carter and Jamie Sullivan, based on the 1999 novel of the same name by the Catholic romance fiction writer Nicholas Sparks. That would be the Nicholas Sparks whose earlier 1996 book, The Notebook, was released as a movie of the same name in 2004, two years after A Walk to Remember came to film screens. I can’t recall exactly how I came to find myself in the Capitol Theatre to watch A Walk to Remember. I don’t recall any of my colleagues going with me, although more than one expressed incredulity the next day when they asked me and I said I enjoyed the movie. I saw it again a couple of years ago for the first time on DVD, and I still enjoyed it.

I won’t spoil the plot for you; the summary is on the Internet and easy enough to find and the ideas, to be honest, are not exactly original. Cheesy? You bet. Pass the Cheetos®. But I’m happy to say the movie was made for about $11 million and has taken in about $47.5 million at the box office. Not a particularly big budget film and far from record box office, but OK.

I wrote a piece here in soundingsjohnbarker (https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/flying-largely-under-the-mainstream-cinematic-radar-christian-movie-genre-is-hot/) last Sept. 15 headlined, “Flying largely under the mainstream cinematic radar: Christian movie genre is ‘hot’” where I mentioned just a few of last year’s Christian movie offerings, including The Giver, starring three-time Academy award winner Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges, which is set in a fictional post-war 2048 where the community has decided to get rid of colors and, as a consequence, different races and feelings. All citizens have had the memories from before erased from their minds.

I also talked a bit about Heaven Is for Real, directed by Randall Wallace and written by Christopher Parker, based on Pastor Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent’s 2010 book of the same name, and starring Greg Kinnear, Kelly Reilly, Jacob Vargas and Nancy Sorel, which tells the story of three-year-old Imperial, Nebraska, native Colton Burpo, the son of Pastor Burpo, and what he says he experienced heaven during emergency surgery; and When the Game Stands Tall, starring Jim Caviezel, best known for portraying Jesus in Mel Gibson’s blockbuster 2004 film The Passion of the Christ, now playing Catholic De La Salle High School Spartans’ football coach Bob Ladouceur (with Laura Dern as his wife, Bev Ladouceur), and telling the story of the record-setting 151-game 1992–2003 winning streak by De La Salle of Concord, California, just east of San Francisco. The movie is an adaptation of the 2003 book of the same name by Neil Hayes, then a columnist with the Contra Costa Times. The movie was filmed in Louisiana.

As well, I mentioned Tim Chey’s movie, Final: The Rapture, released in 2013 in theatres, but on DVD just last November, starring Jah Shams, Mary Grace, Carman, Masashi Nagadoi and Dave Edwards. While there have been generally cheesy church-sponsored, Halloween “Hell Houses” videos in the past, Final: The Rapture is an unusual sub-genre of Christian horror movie or Christian disaster movie. The movie’s poster promise, “When the Rapture strikes … all of hell will break loose.”

Chey said his purpose is “to scare the living daylights out of nonbelievers … If it means I have to make a horror film to make it realistic to win people to Christ, then so be it.”

Online Maranatha News of Toronto calls Final: The Rapture “the scariest Christian movie ever.”

Final: The Rapture depicts the apocalyptic chaos that ensues for four nonbelievers – an African-American, an Asian, a Hispanic and a Caucasian man living in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and on a South Pacific island, after the Rapture occurs. “In Los Angeles, Colin Nelson desperately attempts to flee to Bora Bora. Keenly aware that he’s in the Tribulation period, his only hope is in a mysterious man. In Tokyo, a journalist, Masashi, tries to unravel the disappearance of millions of people as the government closes in on him. In Buenos Aires, Marie searches for her final relative as time runs out. And on a deserted island in the South Pacific, Tom Wiseman, an avowed atheist, attempts to be rescued after his plane goes down.”

The film was shot in six countries over five months for about $7 million, Final: The Rapture, raised the necessary production money across a spectrum of investors, ranging from faith-based to hedge funds.

Just in passing, I wrote about God’s Not Dead with Kevin Sorbo; Noah with Russell Crowe; Son of God, produced by evangelical Mark Burnett from Survivor, and his Catholic wife, Roma Downey (whose A.D.: The Bible Continues miniseries based on the early church, as described in the first 10 chapters of the Acts of the Apostles is airing on NBC currently); and the “new” Left Behind movie about the Rapture by Paul Lalonde and Stoney Lake Entertainment, with Nicolas Cage starring as Rayford Steele, and Civil Twilight’s song “Letters from the Sky” being used in the trailer, released in North American theatres last October.

The interesting thing is if I was to revisit the genre today nine months later for a comprehensive update, I’d be saying the Christian movie genre is not just hot, it is on fire, churning out television miniseries and movies at a pace that would be better suited to a book than a blog post.

Mind you, the devil, Prince of this World, is not surprisingly about to get his due as well. Such is the nature of the supernatural and spiritual warfare.

A new DC Comics-based Fox TV high-concept genre series Lucifer where Lucifer Morningstar “bored and unhappy as the Lord of Hell, resigns his throne and abandons his kingdom for the gorgeous, shimmering insanity of Los Angeles, where he opens an exclusive piano bar called Lux” is set to air on Fox next year.

It gives new meaning to the dangers of glamorizing evil, something we Catholics get a refresher course in every Easter through the renewal of our baptismal promises where the priest asks us, “Do you renounce Satan and all his works, and all his empty show; do you renounce the glamour of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin; do you renounce Satan, the author and prince of sin?”

The production of Lucifer is incredibly slick and well done. That said, watching a three-minute trailer on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4bF_quwNtw), I couldn’t help laughing near the end of the trailer when Lucifer, played by Tom Ellis, baffled, asks the female L.A.P.D. homicide detective, Chloe Dancer (played by Lauren German) who unlike almost all the other women who are charmed by him, while she isn’t, “Did my father send you?”

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

Christian Cinema

St. Polycarp, a second century bishop of Smyrna, is subject of new movie just released on DVD

St. Polycarp, one of the three chief Apostolic Fathers, who was a second century bishop of Smyrna, one of the new centres for the Christian world after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and located in modern-day Turkey on the Aegean Sea, was martyred at the age of 86 in 155 AD on the orders of Statius Quadratus, proconsul of Asia. Martyred, but not forgotten, Polycarp is the subject of the Henline Productions of Loveland, Ohio movie Polycarp: Destroyer of Gods, which was released on DVD May 5, and is based on a novel authored by Pastor Rick Lambert, a co-pastor of Grace Bible Church in Cincinnati.

Four out of the seven genuine epistles of St. Ignatius were written from Smyrna. In two of these – Magnesians and Ephesians – he speaks of Polycarp. The seventh Epistle was addressed to Polycarp.

Henline Productions, formerly J&J Productions, is the brother and sister Protestant evangelical homeschooled filmmaking team of Joe Henline, 20, and Jerica Henline, 22.

In 2010, they entered the five-minute short video No Time in the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival and finished as semi-finalists in the competition..

In real life, of course, Polycarp was supposedly born into slavery, purchased as a young boy, and raised by a godly woman in Ephesus.

Polycarp was awarded Best Feature Film, Audience Choice Award and Best Original Music Score at the second Christian Worldview Film Festival in March at Castle Hills First Baptist Church, also in San Antonio.

Tulsa native Garry Nation received the award for Best Lead Actor in a Feature Film for his performance as Polycarp.

“This is a moving story of second-century persecution, reminiscent of the persecution many believers face today,” said Alex and Stephen Kendrick, producers of Courageous and Facing the Giants.

Then came Facing the Giants in 2006 and in 2008 Fireproof, made on a $500,000 budget, but generating more than $33.4 million at the box office, making it the highest-grossing independent film of the year. Their most recent film, Courageous, was released in September 2011. It was produced with a budget of $2 million and has grossed more than $34.5 million to date. Facing the Giants, which grossed more than $10 million; Fireproof, which grossed more than $33 million; and Courageous have a combined gross of nearly $80 million at the box office, with a combined budget of less than $4 million.

The Kendicks wrapped up principal photography on their fifth movie, War Room, last July in and around Charlotte, North Carolina. It is their first project independent of Sherwood Pictures, the movie ministry of Sherwood Baptist Church. It being produced by Kendrick Brothers Productions with Provident Films and AFFIRM Films in distribution partnership. Provident Films, a division of Provident Music Group, develops, produces and markets faith-based films. Nashville-based Provident Music Group is a division of Sony Music Entertainment. AFFIRM Films is a division of Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions (SPWA), a Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) company, which is a subsidiary of Sony Entertainment Inc., which in turn is a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sony Corporation.

It is also the first Kendrick brothers project shot outside their hometown of Albany, Georgia. It drew more than 1,000 volunteers from 85 churches in the Charlotte area who stepped up and reached across denominational lines to support the production. Pre-production began in 2013 and the movie is in post-production currently and scheduled to be released Aug. 28. The Kendricks remain associate pastors at Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia.

Each Kendrick brothers film explores a subject important to Christians and the Christian life: personal integrity in Flywheel; resilient faith in Facing the Giants; loving marriages in Fireproof and heroic parenting in Courageous. War Room’s focus on prayer strategically highlights a subject of interest to a majority of Americans. According to a National Opinion Research Center survey on frequency of prayer, nearly 90 per cent of Americans claim to pray regularly. Some 60 per cent say they pray at least once a day – for Christians, that number grows to 84 per cent, according to a U.S. News and Beliefnet online poll. Almost 80 per cent of American Christians say they pray most often at home.

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

Christian Cinema

Tim Chey and the Christian cinema ‘cheese’ factor

There was much consternation among Tim Chey and his Christian movie fans recently when all of the major Hollywood movie studios took a pass on releasing his $50-million epic, David and Goliath, shot last year in Morocco and produced by RiverRain Productions.

The usual suspects, including the secular media, were trotted out for a whipping, and Chey and his supporters decided to go ahead and release the film on their own in 31 cities on Good Friday, April 3, while they tried to raise more money to get the film shown on more screens in more cities through Indiegogo, a San Francisco crowdfunding company. The movie earned about $161,000 at the box office over the Easter weekend. When the Indiegogo campaign closed March 12, they had only managed to crowdfund three per cent of their $777,000 USD goal, with 499 donors contributing $19,653 USD. According to the filmmakers, GodVine reported “The Hollywood studios have rejected David and Goliath for being too Bible-based and religious. One studio executive said, ‘You mention God in almost every scene.'”

Godvine went onto quote Chey as reportedly saying, “We were constantly being ridiculed by the secular media.” Contrast that with the upbeat tone Chey took in a Beverly Hills, California-based Ripple Effect Communications media advisory on April 21, 2014, just weeks before shooting was set to get under way for David and Goliath in Morocco. “Chey, who just finishing location scouting in Morocco, is jubilant,” according to Carol Edwards’ media advisory for Ripple Effect Communications. “We’re going to have thousands of extras, A-list special effects, and it will exceed the epic-look of ‘Noah,’ Chey was quoted as saying. “The $50 million dollar film comes at a perfect time. Hollywood is embracing faith-based films as of late and the audiences are growing at a record pace according to reports.”

What a difference a year can make.

Martin Stillion, reviewing David and Goliath in Peter T. Chattaway’s “Filmchat” on the religion blog Patheos April 5, wrote that Chey “undertook a mendacious, self-pitying marketing campaign to position the film as the ultimate underdog, “rejected by Hollywood for being too ‘God-centered’ – a claim based on an alleged remark from one of those potential distributors.

“This may seem a little puzzling. Why wouldn’t distributors be interested? After all, David and Goliath comes along at a time when a lot of attention is being paid to both “faith-based” films (God’s Not Dead, Old Fashioned, Do You Believe?) and Bible epics (Noah, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Son of God), and several of those films have done well financially. So Chey’s film, a faith-based Bible epic that retells one of the most archetypal biblical stories, is in the right place at the right time.

“But it forgot to bring the right stuff.

“I could give you a dozen reasons that distributors wouldn’t want to touch this film, and none of them have anything to do with its being ‘God-centered.’ They have to do with its being a very, very bad movie. I know that’s a common criticism of faith-based films, but seriously, this one makes God’s Not Dead look like Blade Runner.”

Chey has directed 10 feature films, including the $20 million Carry Me Home with Cuba Gooding, Jr., Suing the Devil with Malcolm McDowell, Genius Club with Stephen Baldwin and Final: The Rapture, starring Jah Shams, Mary Grace, Carman, Masashi Nagadoi and Dave Edwards, which depicts the apocalyptic chaos that ensues for four nonbelievers – an African-American, an Asian, a Hispanic and a white man living in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and on a South Pacific island, after the Rapture occurs.

Trotting out the secular media – or even other Christians – as a whipping boy is not exactly a new theme for Chey. In an April 25, 2014 Christian Post story by Stoyan Zaimov, headlined “CP Exclusive: ‘David and Goliath’ Director Assures Big-Budget Movie Will Be ‘Biblically Correct in Every Way,’ Chey is quoted as saying, “We were constantly being ridiculed by the secular media, our films were being sabotaged by online piracy, and fellow jealous Christians were mocking us saying the acting was bad, script was horrible, etc., etc.

“Thousands of people were coming to Christ so why did I let that bother me? I don’t know. The Lord showed me clearly it was a spiritual attack. I repented and began to trust the Lord again. Within two months, we raised millions of dollars and made the $20 million dollar Carry Me Home on the early life of John Newton, writer of Amazing Grace and now David and Goliath.”

Bad scripts and bad acting are hardly new criticisms when it comes to the Christian movie genre. Nor are they ones without merit. As I observed in a blog post last Sept. 15 headlined “Flying largely under the mainstream cinematic radar: Christian movie genre is ‘hot’” the “big knock against the Christian movie genre for more secular moviegoers – aside from the fact the films are Christian – has long been heavy-handed theological scripts, clunky acting and cheesy sets, with mainly bad films, which, to be charitable, do little more than preach to the choir, there hasn’t been, aside from the occasional blockbuster, much for broader audiences to judge such films on if they were done, well, well. You know, decent scripts, good actors, high production values, that sort of thing.” You can read the piece here at: https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/flying-largely-under-the-mainstream-cinematic-radar-christian-movie-genre-is-hot/

The story of Chey’s conversion from atheist to born-again believer has been oft told in many places, but the shorthand goes something like this. Chey was born and raised in Los Angeles and “once threw his mother’s Bible in the trash and hectored his Christian friends,” noted Matt Soergel in a generally flattering piece in the Florida Times-Union when Suing the Devil was released in 2011. Chey was educated at Harvard University, University of Southern California (USC) School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles and Boston University School of Law. He practiced law for three years, but “realized I just didn’t have a heart for law,” he told interviewer Nathan Jones of The Christ in Prophecy Journal of David Reagan’s Princeton, Texas-based Lamb & Lion Ministries in a Jan. 20, 2014 broadcast interview. “I was an artist, caught up in something that really meant nothing to me,” he told Soergel of the Florida Times-Union.

His first film, which he wrote and directed was, Fakin’ Da Funk, a 1997 comedy starring Pam Grier and Dante Basco about a Chinese son adopted by black parents who relocates to South Central Los Angeles. A second story involves Mai-Ling, an exchange student played by Margaret Cho, who by another twist, gets sent to the wrong ‘hood.'”

The film was nominated for the Golden Starfish Award at the 1997 Hamptons International Film Festival and won the Audience Award at the 1997 Urbanworld Film Festival.

In 2001, Chey was in his mid-30s, single, and in the Philippines scouting locations for his next movie. After a busy night boozing at strip clubs,” Soergel wrote in his May 23, 2011 piece for the Florida Times-Union, he picked up the Gideon Bible in his hotel room and began reading: “”I got down on my knees and accepted Jesus Christ right there,” Chey said.

He was back in the Philippines in 2002 in Manila, Pasig City, Bataan, Manila Bay, and Antipolo to direct Gone, his first Christian-themed film, a post-apocalyptic thriller based on his screenplay, starring Dirk Been and Joel Klug star as tenacious lawyers who are sent to Manila to defend a multinational corporation, but instead, meet their fate in the Last Days after the Rapture.

Suing the Devil, released in August 2011, was his fifth Christian-themed movie and set in Australia, where he obtained much of the financing for it. It’s about a young law student who files an $8- trillion dollar civil lawsuit against Satan for all the misery he’s caused humanity. Corbin Bernsen, played divorce lawyer Arnie Becker on TV’s L.A. Law, which ran from for eight seasons on NBC from 1986 to 1994, and is a long-time evangelical Christian, plays a TV news host.

To law student Luke O’Brien’s (played by Bart Bronson) surprise, a loquacious Satan – in the form of Malcolm McDowell, star of the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange – shows up to defend himself.

Describing McDowell to Soergel, Chey said, “He’s a seeker. We had great talks. We talked a lot about God, a lot about life. He’s a spiritual person.”

In a June 2010 interview, about 14 months before Suing the Devil was released, McDowell had this to say about the movie: “From my point of view – I play the Devil – [the film] is about a loser that can’t get his act together or his life together and blames everybody else for his loser-ness. He’s a big loser, and so he, of course, blames the Devil and he goes to court to sue the Devil. And I answer the summons. And so it’s really a comedy in a courtroom.

“You know, I’m not into the religious connotations of what good and evil are. In fact the Devil I played is not really evil. I mean, the Devil really is charming, seductive. I mean, it’s like Nazism … charming, seductive, all these things. It’s just the underbelly of angst … but it was really actually a terrific script and I had a ball.”

How that fits in with Chey’s observations 11 months later in the Florida Times-Union, I leave for you to decide.

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

Books, Christianity, Films

The indefatigable Paul Boge, a Winnipeg engineer-author-filmmaker with a heart for Kenya, back in Thompson Feb. 27

Charles Mulli, left, Paul Boge, right
Paul Boge, the Winnipeg engineer-author-filmmaker with a heart for Kenya, will make a return visit to Thompson Feb. 27 to March 1 as guest speaker at this year’s annual Thompson Christian Centre Fellowship’s Family Enrichment weekend, says Pastor Ted Goossen.

“He will speak at the Friday night banquet sharing about his work and how he integrates his faith into his work environment,” Goossen said. “Saturday morning brunch Paul will share about his newly released children’s book – The Biggest Family in the World – an illustrated book on the Charles Mulli orphanage in Kenya.”

Mulli was a poor abandoned six-year-old Kenyan boy who grew up to become successful, powerful and very rich, but decided to sell all he had to rescue street children whose condition reflected his own childhood. Saving one child has turned into rescuing thousands for Mulli.

Faye Hall, administrative assistant for 54-year-old Winnipeg Juno-winning singer-songwriter Steve Bell’s Signpost Music and IncarNATION Ministries, who is herself an increasingly noticed artist, spent two years creating 32 paintings that capture Mulli’s life for Boge’s The Biggest Family in the World. “She has done an indescribable work,” Boge blogged last Sept. 8. “I could not even dream of the paintings being this good.”

Boge, 41, is an award-winning author and has also written The Urban Saint: The Harry Lehotsky Story; Father to the Fatherless: The Charles Mulli Story; Hope for the Hopeless: The Charles Mulli Mission; and most recently, The Biggest Family in the World, chronicling the life of Charles Mulli in an illustrated children’s book published last December.

He has also written two novels in a potential trilogy, The Chicago Healer in 2004, and The Cities of Fortune in 2006.

Boge was last the keynote guest speaker at Thompson Christian Centre Fellowship’s annual family enrichment weekend five years ago in 2010, when he talked about his then recently published book, The Urban Saint: The Harry Lehotsky Story, which explored the life of old west end Winnipeg inner city pastor Harry Lehotsky, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2006 at age 49.

Boge won Word Guild’s best new Canadian author award in 2003 for his first book, The Chicago Healer, published the following year.

In addition to being an author, Boge, is a consulting mining engineer and capital project manager with the family firm Boge & Boge Consulting Engineers in Winnipeg, and no stranger to Thompson. He lived and worked here for nine months in 2003, five months in 2005 and for another 10 months in 2007, while working on three separate surface projects for Vale, and doing much of his writing in his apartment at night.

Boge is also behind FireGate Films, an independent Winnipeg company that made the 2006 feature-length movie Among Thieves, with Boge writing, directing and producing the film, which explores the possibility the end is in sight for the United States dollar as the world’s reserve currency, as Gulf Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar have contemplated ending dollar dealings for oil and moving to a basket of currencies including the euro and Chinese yuan or renminbi. The last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than U.S. dollars was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1990.

Boge is also the co-ordinator for the fifth annual Winnipeg Real to Reel Film Festival at North Kildonan Mennonite Brethren Church, running this year from Feb. 17-22. He is a member of the church.

On March 1, the Sunday night wrap up for Thompson Christian Centre Fellowship’s Family Enrichment weekend will include the traditional free chili dog supper.

Following the chili dog supper, there will be a free showing of the 2003 movie Flywheel. Alex and Stephen Kendrick, who are both associate pastors on the staff of Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia, conceived the idea for Flywheel in the spring of 2002 after they saw the results from Barna Research Group demonstrating empirically popular culture movies and television shows are more influential in American society than the Christian church.

It is also the first Kendrick brothers project shot outside their hometown of Albany, Georgia. It drew more than 1,000 volunteers from 85 churches in the Charlotte area who stepped up and reached across denominational lines to support the production. Pre-production began in 2013 and the movie is in post-production currently and scheduled to be released Aug. 28. The Kendricks remain associate pastors at Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia.

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22

Food, Restaurants

‘Make mine halibut, please’: Fish-and-chips-Catholic-on-Friday

If you grew up Catholic in Canada in the 1960s and 1970s, you probably have memories of having a favourite fish-and-chips shop, serving halibut, haddock or cod, along with French Fries, maybe some coleslaw and a wedge of lemon.

Now true enough, Pope Paul VI had proclaimed Paenitemini (Apostolic Constitution On Penance) on Feb. 17, 1966, which allowed episcopal conferences to permit Catholics in their jurisdictions to substitute some other penitential practice aside from abstaining from meat on Fridays, a prescription which had been in force in the universal church since Pope Saint Nicholas 1, also known as Saint Nicholas the Great, in 851 (with the exception in Canada of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday in accordance with the prescriptions of Canon 1253, proclaimed in 1983. Fridays are days of abstinence, but Canadian Catholics can substitute special acts of charity or piety on this day).

The fact such substitutional acts of charity or piety have never really been spelled out in any great detail or emphasis by most bishops in Canada or the United States has meant that the Friday-abstinence story has been cast not surprisingly by reporters since 1966 primarily in terms of “no more going to hell for eating a hamburger on Friday,” as Daria Sockey wrote in “What Ever Happened to Meatless Fridays?” in the National Catholic Register on June 1, 2003, “rather than a call to continue the tradition of Friday penance, embraced out of love, and with leeway for more variety.”

Following the lead of the Vatican and national episcopal conferences in France, Canada and Mexico earlier in 1966, the U.S. norms (which are similar but not identical to those in Canada) were approved in “On Penance and Abstinence,” a pastoral statement of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops on Nov. 18, 1966. The first day Friday American Catholics could eat meat on Friday under the new regulations was the first Friday of Advent on Dec. 2, 1966.

I was nine years old, growing up in Oshawa, Ontario, when all this came to pass in 1966. As far as I can remember, it didn’t really change our family practice and the fact that for years, well into the 1970s anyway, my dad still picked up fish-and-chip dinners for us on Fridays after work.

My earliest memories of that were fish and chips from the Rose Bowl that operated at the corner of Bond and Prince streets for many years, memories that include malt vinegar and newspaper wrapping.

Sometime in the early 1970s, an H. Salt, Esq. Authentic English Fish and Chips franchise came to Simcoe Street North in Oshawa, and we enjoyed their fish and chips also for a time. Haddon Salt had operated his fish and chips store in Skegness, in the northeastern corner of England, before moving to the United States and, along with his wife, Grace, opening their first shop in Sausalito, California, under the name of Salt’s Fish & Chips in 1965.

At its peak in the 1970s, there were close to 60 H. Salt, Esq. Authentic English Fish and Chips restaurants in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), including Oshawa. Today, the company is headquartered in Monterey Park, California, and has about 18 remaining locations operating in Chino, Corona, Covina, Downey, Long Beach, Gardena, Garden Grove, Hollywood, North Hollywood, Orange, Rancho Palos Verdes, Reseda, San Fernando, Temple City, Upland, West Los Angeles, and Westminster in Southern California.

When I went off to Trent University in 1976, my love of fish and chips followed me to Baker’s Seafood (now gone) at 262 Hunter St. W. on the edge of downtown and an old residential neighbourhood fronting Hunter at the corner of Bethune Street. A sign midway between the first and second storeys of the Hunter Street side of the building had a white background and red letters proclaiming Baker’s Seafood. On the side facing west on Bethune Street was a similar sign reading “Fish and Chips” and on the wall next to the front door was a sign with a cartoon-like blue fish in the middle holding a knife and fork and a lemon that said: “Est. 1954. Seafood. Chicken. TAKE OUT. Shrimp – Scallops. Salads – Veggies. HALIBUT Fish and Chips. Peterborough’s Tradition.”

Another great Peterborough fish and chip is Jeff Purvey’s Fish & Chips, which has two locations, although I am more familiar with the older Rubidge Street restaurant.

The Purvey tradition started in 1919 when Henry Purvey went into business on Dundas Street in Toronto. Henry’s son, Jeff Purvey, was born there. After serving for six years in the Canadian Armed Forces during the Second World War from 1939 to 1945, Jeff joined his father and together they expanded into three Toronto locations on Yonge Street, Danforth Avenue and McRae Avenue in Leaside.

In 1956 Jeff moved to Peterborough and opened the Rubidge Street location with just 12 seats originally.

And, of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention The Pilot House in downtown Kingston, Ontario, established in 1981 at the corner of King and Johnson streets, where I spent some cheerful Friday evenings during my graduate school days at Queen’s University from 1993 to 1995, and the pints were as famous as the fish and chips.

You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22