24 Hour Film Contest for Christian Filmmakers

Hey there kids! Do you think you could make a better Christian movie than some of the ones we've reviewed on the site? Here's your chance! Christian Filmmakers.Org is holding a 24 Hour film contest on March 1. That's right, 24 hours to write, shoot, edit and submit the film. And believe me, if you have to put something on youtube it can sometimes take 24 hours to get it done right. Anyway, there's a $500 prize for the winner! You'rs truly just might enter, as I have another film contest that I'm going to enter on March 9 and I hope to have some actors gathered together for that one, so why not shoot 2 films for the price of one. Just kidding, the only price is my time, since I can't afford to pay anyone for anything. Check out Christian Filmmakers dot ORG for details! (I saw this news on Trivium Pursuit & The Panther's Lair at the same time) PS-Sorry for the slow news week, I'm digging but there's not much to report Christian movie wise this week! Look forward to a new podcast episode on the weekend though! Save This Page

Summer Grove Baptist Church $60 Million film deal

Seems that Sherwood Baptist Church, the home of the Kendrick Bros. and Sherwood Pictures, doesn't have the monopoly on movie producing Churches anymore.

Summer Grove Baptist Church in Shreveport, LA(hey! I was there just a few months back!) is considering selling some of their property to a film studio that would partner with the church and produce family films with a Christian message.

It seems that the Church bought an entire shopping mall a few years back, and after turning J.C. Penny's into a worship building they have been leasing out other parts of the mall. According to KTBS, the church "is considering a proposal by the Louisiana Film Institute and Fountain Bridge Studios to buy part of the mall. It's talking about paying the church approximately $2 million a year over 30 years."

$60 million is a substantial chunk of change. I'm sure this is all part of the state of Louisiana's film incentives, which are said to be rivaling my home state of New Mexico's. We recently had a $200 millon+ film studio built here, and Gerad Butler as just in town filming some awful sounding movie.

Anyway, this isn't nearly as home grown as the Kendrick boys and Sherwood, but it is another church getting into the film game, big time.

The church votes on this on Sunday, so we'll see if it goes through.

(story from KTBS.com)
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The Heartwood Dagger

Want to see a new Christian movie for free?

The Heartwood Dagger, a new film from Filmweavers, the makers of Clocks(which I've never heard of), who apparently had some of their crew members (DP & AD) work on another film we recently reported, Pendragon: Sword of His Father.

In keeping with the cutlery theme, this film is about a dagger that is passed down by the men of a family. It is passed through many generations, until one man fails to give it to his son. Now, years later, he has returned to find his son and his grandson conflicting. Can he finally pass on the family legacy and heal their relationship?

You can find out, for free! The film is having its world premiere this Saturday on TBN. It is at 4PM PST. Now, if you're like me and don't have cable TV, don't fret. Did you know you can watch TBN live streaming online? Just go to TBN.org and click the link at the top "Watch Us."

I know that, Lord willing, I'll be logging on this weekend to check it out. If I can convice Don to as well, we might just review this for our next episode.

You can watch the trailer at Filmweavers.com. Check it out!

Thanks to the Fond du Lac Reporter for pointing us to this movie with a great little story!



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Moses, Moses....MOSES!!!!

Do you know what the world needs? What cinema needs? A movie version of the story of Moses! Boy, wouldn't that be a great movie! Imagine all the miracles, plagues, the epic story of a people rescued from bondage and taken to the Promised Land. All wrapped around the fascinating character of a Jew who was raised in Pharaoh's court, only to return to challenge Pharaoh himself in an epic power struggle between the gods of Egypt and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob!

Well, now you can get your wish. Promenade Pictures is starting a 12 part series titled "Epic Stories of The Bible." Naturally, you don't get much more epic than the Exodus, so their first film is The Ten Commandments. This story takes the unusual tactic of focusing on the relationship between Moses and his half-brother Ramesses and the film is almost unique in having an all-star cast of actors. Even more unusual, the film is animated! How crazy is that! Watch the trailer at the bottom of this post.

You may have noticed my sarcastic tone...not...uh...not again. Ok, I'm more than a bit skeptical about this film. It is being released in September 2007, supposedly in theatres, but most likely you'll see this on DVD. This is the 3rd film titled The Ten Commandments to be released in the past 2 years. The first and most famous is the 2006 tv-miniseries version starring Dougray Scott, entitled <The Ten Commandments (read the review over on Bible Films Blog(he also does a good job of overviewing most other Moses films recently) Also in 2006 was the supposedly awful The Ten Commandments: The Musical, starring Val Kilmer. This was basically just a DVD of the stage production.

So what does the new The Ten Commandments have that these others don't? How about really bad CGI(looks to be somewhere below Saturday morning cartoon CGI(think ReBoot and Beast Wars)? Or a has been actor phoning it in as Moses's voice(Christian Slater)? The best moments in the trailer simply remind me of the better stuff in films such as The Prince of Egypt(which is even name dropped in the trailer). The actors make a big deal in the trailer about how this film "humanizes" Moses, but that is the tactic taken by just about every adaptation of this story, from the The Ten Commandments (50th Anniversary Collection) all the way to the Moses (The Bible Collection) from 1997. This one just seems to be a cash-in by some studio looking to line it's pockets by simply rolling out another cheaply produced re-make. This actually reminds me quite a bit of what happened with Inspired By The Bible Experience: New Testament and The Word of Promise: New Testament Audio BIble (Tnew Testament Audio Bible). Pretty much identical products, with identical concepts. Why are there two? Because someone saw the first one( Inspired By The Bible Experience: New Testament in this case) and thought they could throw together a rip-off and cash in on customer confusion.

The story of Moses is really done to death. Even Battlestar Galactica did a version of it( )! If you don't have anything new to say don't bother! At least stuff like The Decalogue and The Ten take a new tactic on this story by transferring it to a new setting. This film has a lot of work to do for me to like it.

Ok, on top of all its other obvious problems, I'm now mad that The Ten Commandments website is so bad. It has a link to embed the trailer but instead of just giving it to you it demands your name and email, and it has now been 45 minutes since I provided that and I still haven't received the embed code. So chalk up another victory for Christian movies with awful website design. You'll have to go there to see the trailer.

Since I can't embed that, I'll post this youtube video instead. Warning, it does feature one cuss word.

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