come anticipate Kevin Sarbo as an evil atheist philosophy professor in the new film from Pure Flix Entertainment, GOD'S NOT DEAD

"What If?" might be crazier. What about his poor fiancee?

i love how jack chick sets up these ridiculous straw men, and then uses footnotes to correct them.

his stuff appeals to people who participate in that Meet Me at the Flagpole shit at schools

does jack chick's work appeal to all that many people un-ironically?

don't answer that

Chick is a joke for kids. There's much more interesting stuff out there like here:

http://www.apologetics.org/

the Apologetics movement seems to me a bit like 'missing the point', but I still find it adorable that they try so hard

i couldn't make heads or tails of that website

it seems to me that all metaphysics is built on sad but some of the Christian apologetics guys build great big huge elaborate skyscrapers on sand

built on sand i meant but i guess that was a serendipitous typo

ty nv, seems quite interesting at first glance

"all metaphysics is built on sad" is beautiful

"God's Not Dead" continues to surprise at the box office. The Freestyle Releasing film about one Christian college student's quest to defend his faith grossed an additional $7.7 million with 580 more theaters added to its release. Now in its third weekend in theaters, the film from director Harold Cronk stands with an impressive $33 million to its name.

director Harold Cronk

new display name there for the taking

I can't wait to see this.

Heaven Is For Real will cut this movie's B.O. success story down in a week and a half.

new display name there for the taking

OK, then.

prefer Solaris

when the philosophy prof quotes shakespeare like an angry credo

Saw Under the Skin tonight and saw ppl leaving this movie and they looked exactly what i woulda expected.

It was one of three Bible-thump movies in the cinema.

colton burpo #3 movie this weekend

how did this presumably ridiculous movie that i assumed would be nothing but a source of in-jokes become an actual success?

They should hand out Burpo kooshes at HIFR

What's the proportion of people who've paid to see this movie ironically?

don't pay money for this movie, seriously folks. if you have to go for the yuks, then sneak in.

how did this presumably ridiculous movie that i assumed would be nothing but a source of in-jokes become an actual success?

― Merdeyeux, Saturday, April 19, 2014 9:43 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

christians--they are everywhere

the success of this film is one of those depressing reminders that i share this country with millions upon millions of bigoted, willfully ignorant nutcases

We need a series of GG Allin biopics to bring some equilibrium

aleister crowley biopic IIRC

This shit used to be straight to vhs/dvd fodder :(

in some ways it's a symptom of the growth of mega-multiplexes—they need stuff to fill all those screens.

the weird thing is, these films aren't even fundie-lite like the "son of god" thing ("Jesus was a very nice man who could do magic"). these are fairly hard core "Xians are being persecuted by the godless elite!" stories—or at least "god's not dead" is.

well not as hard core as this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5o_LwqX77I

1/2 of that film is really gory violence like communist thuggos decapitating people or sending a spike through a kid's ear etc.

This shit used to be straight to vhs/dvd fodder :(

― getting strange ass all around the globe (Neanderthal), Saturday, April 19, 2014 10:15 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

actually i think the building blocks of the current success were things like screenings in churches, churches renting out single screens, etc.

nah it got limited releases and would spread by word of mouth in smaller markets (there's a similar model now w/ certain movies targeted to the hispanic audience). it's just now fundie flicks have the distribution and marketing muscle and competence of real studios behind it. the audience was always there. it's similar to how every few years hollywood will remember that black ppl exist and go to the movies.

Ave Sathanas

nah it got limited releases and would spread by word of mouth in smaller markets

yes, but before that there was a bible-belt circuit for christian movies, consisting of churches, community centers, rented-out high school auditoriums, etc.

o yeah ron ormond, etc

Frailty increased the number of believers iirc

Kind of amazed that this movie appeals to anyone, really. The premise is beyond ridiculous.

fairly sure if this came out when I was in high school, it would have been a youth group field trip to see this movie. Fundies eat this kinda faux-persecution bullshit up like hotcakes. Most liberal Christians, on the other hand, are embarrassed by movies of this ilk. On the other hand, the reason Heaven is For Real (ugh) is doing well with critics is apparently it has distanced itself from the blatant hammer-to-the-face propaganda stylings of films in this genre (I can't speak to the validity of those claims obv).

It was amusing - a similar film, Last Ounce of Courage, came out last year to really terrible reviews. And this one Christian movie critic, of the more liberal variety, wrote an extremely critical review of it on her blog, calling it "bigoted", "mean-spirited", as well as questioning its motives. Her comments section filled up with angry fundies attacking her, one of them calling her a "bigoted liberal"!

Kind of amazed that this movie appeals to anyone, really. The premise is beyond ridiculous.

― ▴▲ ▴TH3CR()$BY$H()W▴▲ ▴ (Adam Bruneau), Sunday, April 20, 2014 11:06 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah but it's the same premise as one of the most popular email "memes" w/in the evangelical milieu

yeah every negative review of one of these xian films on variety, film international, wherever automatically gets a million comments from fundies screaming that the author is just one of the hollywood liberal mafia.

there's usually one or two poor souls who actually try to explain that thinking a movie about christlove is bad doesn't mean that the same person thinks jesus is bad.

fundies not down with critical thinking, news at 11.

Well what Jesus said/did and what fundies do in his name are more or less complete opposite ends of the spectrum as far as I'm concerned. If this was really a movie about Christlove it would be all about helping poor people, healing the sick, and casting out money lenders. Not two idiots having a pride-off.

I'm waiting for the Cliven Bundy movie to come out, it will probably have the same fanbase

Bad review = "I told you so."

yeah the movie Last Ounce of Courage was about a bunch of 'courageous' Christians standing up for the 'real meaning of Christmas' when evil Atheists stop city hall from displaying a manger, and how in the end they bully the town into ignoring sep of church and state and get their way.

I saw some of it but the unintentional LOLs faded quick when I realized how much sway some of these people hold IRL

I remember when I was a Fundie, we had these green workbooks (I forget what they were called), and one of them had a sad story about how a science teacher had the audacity to teach Evolution, and how little Billy raised his hand and stammered "b-b-but I believe in Jesus and the Resurrection" and the teacher of course replies "Well I'm sorry, Billy, but Evolution is a scientific fact!", concluding with a summary of how this is proof persecution against Christians still occurs.

The workbook also said "Evolution is ridiculous! If you saw a car in a garbage dump, would you assume it had evolved from the materials around it?"

yeah the movie Last Ounce of Courage was about a bunch of 'courageous' Christians standing up for the 'real meaning of Christmas' when evil Atheists stop city hall from displaying a manger, and how in the end they bully the town into ignoring sep of church and state and get their way.

I saw some of it but the unintentional LOLs faded quick when I realized how much sway some of these people hold IRL

― getting strange ass all around the globe (Neanderthal), Sunday, April 20, 2014 1:41 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i feel like these folks live in another country, almost literally. trying around small-town kentucky i saw tons of christmas mangers and ten commandments etc. planted just outside of country courthouses. something that would pretty much never happen around here. it's not they didn't get the memo--it's that nobody in town has any interest in challenging the displays, and prefer to ignore/defy the memo.

i admit i don't have many "christian" feelings toward these assholes.

DRIVING around

This is shit is tribal, not theological. Negative film criticism is always taken on as a personal attack by those who identify (a LOT) with the movie's subject matter/genre/etc. And since you get pissed off people on the internet who feel personally attacked, they harden up into defensive mode and respond in (perceived) kind. Want another example of this with another subculture? Folks who really likes the Star Wars prequels.

A great, GREAT deal of the screaming bullshit done by rightwing/evangelical types makes far more since if you find+replace "Christian" with "Roman" or "Klingon" or "Trekker" or "Juggalo." It's a people in a rightwing authoritarian subculture wrapping themselves themselves in a trademarked term they call "Christian" and get away with it because they grab the most screentime and we're never called on their shit in the 60s-80s by media types giving them airtime.

Since = sense.

Dysgraphia and smartphone text entry make for interesting randomized word substitutions.

omg there's a FIFTH movie in this series coming out this year, apparently

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God's_Not_Dead_(film_series)

Directed by Harold Cronk, the premise will follow Reverend David "Dave" Hill as he runs for office in a campaign against an opponent that seeks to remove religion from public policy; and the Reverend begins to question: "Is God dead in American politics?".

thinking of actively disrupting every showing of this movie at my local theatre.

Harold Cronk

Cronk returns!

Is Kevin Sorbo dead?

I’d say that is just going to be like the Police Academy movies, where they’ll keep making them as long as the returns are greater than the costs, but these guys are doing an ideological project and getting funding from billionaires, so they don’t really need to rely on box office and licensing success.

So we’re probably going to get more of these than we got of cheap o Land Before Time sequels

The Land Before God

Love offerings from billionaires

Going to replace this film canister with Wicker Man brb

The teacher named Professor Radisson, begins the class by having each student sign a document that denies the existence of God.

Man, philosophy class was the best

my Classics course made us crucify a classmate

weirdly he was ok with it

God's Not Dead: Rise Up (2023)

#onethread

weirdly he was ok with it

― Cthulhu Diamond Phillips (Neanderthal)

i use she/her pronouns now, but yeah, it was fun.

My (tortured Catholic) photography professor just showed us prints of him naked on a cross. Sounds like the philosophy class was more fun.

My (tortured Catholic) photography professor just showed us prints of him naked on a cross. Sounds like the philosophy class was more fun.

― papal hotwife (milo z)

i love that the word "tortured" is twice-redundant in this sentence (with "Catholic" and with "naked on a cross").

other director in this series is named Vance Null.

why do all Christian directors have names that sound like producers of second rate Abbott and Costello knockoffs

Vance Null sounds like an Alan Smithee alternate

Vance Null should be the singer in a bluegrass motley crue cover band

vance nullo

xxp Definitely sounds like someone who doesn't want her/his real name associated with the project.

Vance Null is known for God's Not Dead (2014), Samson (2018) and Tekken: Kazuya's Revenge (2014).

apparently "kazuya's revenge" does not live up to the standard fans of the first Tekken movie were expecting

to me that's impressive, that you take people who are like "look i loved the first tekken film but this is just crap, a real wrong turn for the tekken franchise"

when you've lost Manly Movie (re: Tekken sequel):

Manly Movie gave the film a score of 3 out of 10, commenting that:

"It's like the producers and writers have no idea who these characters are, and had no intention of giving a crap, but were advised that certain actors were free for a cameo – use them".