Friday, February 15, 2008

Episode Twenty-Three - The Heartwood Dagger

Episode Twenty-Three is up.

In this episode we review The Heartwood Dagger. Written & directed by Dustin Ledden, starring Dan Bell, Rick Ramirez, Aaron Ledden, Mike Yitri, Norma Dalen. Don't ask me who played who, since I can't find any real info on the title other than its festival entry page at the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival.

This film didn't even have an IMDB page until I made one for it. Heck, I only found IMDB entries for a couple of the handful of people I know who worked on this film.

The story is about a dagger that has been passed down from father to son since Pilgrim(literally) times. Now Robert Fuller has realized that he failed his son and his mistakes are being passed onto the relationship between his son and grandson. He tries to show them the symbolism behind the dagger and mend their family relationships. But a mysterious stranger threatens to steal the heart of the grandson...

Show Notes:

The Filmweavers website.

Peter Chattaway's interview with Cindy Bond, producer of The Ten Commandments and the upcoming Noah: A New Beginning. Cindy Bond is also the president and COO of Promenade Pictures, the studio behind those films.

The Christian Post reports on the so-called Christian Oscars, the Annual Faith & Values Awards, selected by the Christian Film & Television Commission and hosted by Ted Baehr, founder of Movieguide.org.

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Golden Calf
Stranglehold (Don)

I don't have one this week, been too busy with school/work(Jon).

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Outro:




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4 comments:

John-Clay said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
John-Clay said...

I've seen this movie and I know the guys that worked on it. Granted it's not a perfect film, but you guys were pretty hard on it.

You would also do well to do some research about the film and even contact the filmmakers to ask some questions before you rake it through the coals before proceeding to tar and feather it.

I've noticed that on many reviews you don't sound very educated about who starred in a film or how to pronounce names or what actually happened in a film. I get the impression that you half heartedly watch a film once...and then just have a fun comment session.

Sure, I still listen now and then...but I think you could really up the professionalism of the podcast. :)

jonnyflash said...

My off the cuff response is, "a bad movie is a bad movie," and it has to stand of fall on its own merits. If you have to hear personal testimony and have the filmmmaker explain themselves to understand the film, then the film has failed.

I don't want to be mean, and I try to be professional. But name pronunciation is hard. I don't know how to pronounce some of my favorite actors because I've never heard their real names out loud. I had no idea Mykelti Williamson's name was pronounced "Michael T" until I met the director of one his films at a film festival.

As for professionalism, we try. We really do. But at the end of the day if a free podcast is worth anything more than what you paid for it then I would say that's all you can expect.

I'm glad you listen, and I'll try to raise the bar on my research and notes on the film. And I'll continue my mangling of names until movie credits are spelled phonetically.

Don said...

We definitely need to be more professional in some aspects, but loose conversation is the point of the show. We were hard on it, and we're a bit more forgiving of many aspects of film making the further we've traveled along with the podcast. But Jon's right. A bad movie is a bad movie. We both have 'bad' movies that we love, so it's up to the viewer, but we always point out both sides of the film, good and bad.

We're very low budget, and we both do the podcast in our very small amount of free time. If a film really motivates us to research it, we do. Often, we just do the best we can with the very little available information for most of the films we review. Also, we've purchased all but 3 or 4 of the DVDs we've reviewed. That's 40+ films that we've spent our money to purchase and review. We support the films we pan.

One of our favorite Christian filmmakers, Rocky Lane, has been very hard to find. We still don't know what he's up to, but we loved both of the Billy Graham films he did.

Thanks for the criticism. It's a free show, but we'll take your comments to heart and see what we can do.