Now that we have a baby and can’t really get to the movies, there are finally a couple of movies
we want to watch! Keri really wants to see Elizabethtown, and I must confess to my own desire to see the latest Cameron Crowe film, filmed throughout Kentucky (including Louisville) and set in the town of that name. I also really want to watch the Wallace and Gromit movie, “Curse of the Were Rabbit.” I don’t think W and G are well known here (it is an animated British series I’ve only seen on video) but I like them a lot.
Actually I had a couple of tickets to a free screening of Elizabethtown through Grace Hill Media, so that I could review it here on my blog. I regularly get these invitations and have only been able to take advantage of one (Cinderella Man). In fact I have another one in my inbox for a movie called “Dreamer.” Grace Hill media is a firm that basically helps studios market films to faith-based audiences – something studios became pretty interested in after the massive revenue generated by Mel Gibson’s Passion last year. Grace Hill had the innovative idea of tapping into the blogosphere by allowing bloggers like me to attend advance screenings of movies with the promise to review them (which I did for Cinderella Man – click on it above to read.) The idea is that such blogs will help generate a buzz (esp among “faith based people”) for films that they believe are of high quality and reflect moral standards and ideals that might resonate with such people.
Now sometimes these things can get a little overboard. When the movie “Constantine” came out I received a copy of a Constantine-inspired Bible study series and related material (I don’t remember the details). I also currently have a “musical Bible study guide” based on Elizabethtown. I suppose that movies can be good starting points for talking about the Gospel when they have spiritual themes or reflect a biblical worldview – a good seeker film study can be a nice evangelistic tool. But I really feel funny about the idea of a musical Bible study (not sure why its musical…) based on a movie like this. Are we basing our approach to Scripture on these movies, reading the Bible through the matrix of popular films? That seems like a pretty dicey proposition and a bad precedent to me. What do you think?
In general, though, I know that the films that Grace Hill markets should, at the very least, be free of the kind of sexual content and crude langage that pervade so many other movies, which is really good to know. And I have no problem with a studio that wants to let people who are concerned with such things know that they might like a particular film. So I’m happy to participate. Besides, let’s be honest, I LOVE getting free passes to write a review – at least in a couple months when Asa is more settled. I sure hope they market the first Narnia movie!