Are You There God? It’s Nicolas Cage and the Year in Cinematically-Pimped Religion

[cbayer]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/28/are-you-there-god-it-s-nicolas-cage-and-the-year-in-cinematically-pimped-religion.html


Elena Scotti/The Daily Beast

Matthew Paul Turner

FLOCKED AND FLOGGED 12.28.14

From biblical epics like Noah and Exodus to Kirk Cameron and sexy Jesus, 2014 witnessed a crop of films unashamedly adulterated with faith-driven narratives and godlyish themes.

We knew this year was going to be a religiously charged year for Hollywood, one that would feature a well known bible story directed by Darren Aronofsky, a truly unbelievable “true story” starring Greg Kinnear, and another film about Jesus as a white man hanging out with lots of other white people, including Roma Downey.

This was the Year of Our Lord for movies, one unlike any in recent memory, a year that offered us a wide array of cinematically-pimped religiosity, a crop of films that seemed unashamedly adulterated with faith-driven narratives and godlyish themes. It’s as if a Hollywood host of execs all of made the same resolution for 2014: cash in on God and people who believe in God.

The onslaught of God at the theater began in February when the married production team of Mark Burnett and Roma Downey released Son of God, a movie featuring a hot white European actor as Jesus. Edited out of Burnett and Downey’s massive History Channel hit miniseries—The Bible—the couple perfected their Christlike tale with the help of numerous screenings in front of conservative evangelical audiences of pastors and conservative theologians, ultimately creating The Whitest Story Ever Told. But despite Son of God being the kind of “Passion” made by Christians for Christians and starring Downey as the noticeably Botoxed mother of Christ, the film didn’t do bad, grossing nearly $60 million at the box office.

more at link

[hedda_foil]

1. Godlyish themes!

[cbayer]

3. God-lite?

[Humanist_Activist]

2. Just from subject line alone...

I'll leave this here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/onetruegod

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. I saw that Rapture thing that Cage did.

It was horrible, of course.
Cage does not get raptured because he is an adulterer, and also a pilot, left alone flying a plane with 2/3 of the passengers having gone Poof!

His teen-ish daighter is at a mall when her brother and half the mall people go poof, leaving empty piles of clothes.
So she wanders around for a goodly part of the film, dodging out of control vehicles, which for some reason seem to
a. be moving with no drivers for at least 30 minutes
b. crashing just in time for her to see them, over a period of 30 minutes.

Cage spends most of the movie looking like he wishes he had been raptured.

The movie made The Towering Inferno look like an Oscar winner.

[cbayer]

5. Thanks for the synopsis, because there is no chance that I will actually ever see this.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. I almost felt sorry for Cage

who seems on a self destructive path.
This movie may end his career.

[AtheistCrusader]

6. It's actually worse than the books, and that's saying something.