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Risen: An Unpredictable Hollywood Detective Thriller – and a Christian Apologist’s Dream Come True

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Logline

A detective thriller about a Roman Tribune charged with the task of finding the body of Jesus Christ in order to stop an uprising after he is declared risen from the dead.

Not Your Father’s “Christian Movie”

Most “Christian movies,” especially ones about Jesus or the New Testament are cheap looking, cheesy, and quite honestly, tired and redundant.

I don’t even care to see them, and I’m a Christian.

Risen is NOT one of them.

It is NOT a “Christian movie,” filled with mediocre or bad performances of poor preachy writing and directing.

The Hero of the story is an unbeliever. But this is NOT the fake, stilted Kendrick brother’s version of an unbeliever.

Sorry for all those, “NOTs.” It’s just that there is so much baggage with the genre of Christian movies and Bible movies like this, that you have to realize just how different this movie really is.

Oh, and one more NOT. It is NOT another abominable subversion of the Biblical narrative and God like Noah and Exodus: Gods and Kings.

Now for what Risen IS.

Risen is an honest and truthful portrayal of a skeptical mind approaching the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And it is a fantastic story. It is an authentic fresh take on the Gospel from the unique perspective of an unbeliever.

Great writing, unpredictable story, strong acting, truthful and honest portrayal. Riveting drama.

To be honest, Risen is a Christian apologist’s dream come true. It is a narrative that dramatically and existentially incarnates the historical issues surrounding the resurrection of Christ in a much better way for today’s world than the logocentric “Evidence That Demands a Verdict” ever could (That’s not a knock on McDowell. It was good in its day). Of course, using the word “apologetics” in relation to a movie is dangerous, because of all the prejudice in the public against such an agenda. But so what. Atheists and other close-minded Bible haters and Christian bashers will still hate it, no matter how good the movie actually is.

And it is very good. Here’s why: Continue reading →

Hollywood Worldviews: The Seminar • 5 Powerful Lectures by Brian Godawa

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I have been dying to get these videos done for you!

This is the most recent, most developed and most powerful version of this seminar ever.

All the videos are also sold separately. Discount if you buy all 5.

As a Hollywood screenwriter and best-selling novelist, I explore the power of storytelling in movies and in the Bible. I reveal the elements of worldview, and how storytelling incarnates meaning and worldview. I explain the nature of subversion, and how narratives compete and win in the culture wars of both movies and the Bible. I examine the Bible as a model for analyzing how sex, violence and profanity may be used in movies and storytelling. I look at four differences between exposing sin and exploiting sin. I describe the 9 basic elements of story structure used in movies and the Bible to communicate redemption. I describe the genre of horror and explain the 4 ways that horror is used redemptively in the Bible and in movies.

I think you will love these Powerpoint presentations with film clips!

5 Videos include:

  1. Incarnation in the Movies
  2. Subversion in the Movies
  3. Sex and Violence in the Bible
  4. Redemption in the Movies
  5. Horror: A Biblical Genre

High resolution MP4 downloads or MP3 audio only.

All the videos are also sold separately. Discount if you buy all 5.

Check it out the Godawa.com Store here.

OSCAR WATCH • Spotlight: What’s Worse, Pedophile Priests or Cardinals & Popes Who Protect Them?

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Spotlight

Based on the true story of the special investigative reporting team of the Boston Globe that, in 2002, exposed the massive systemic cover up by the Roman Catholic Church of its pedophile epidemic among priests.

This story works like one of those old journalist procedural movies like All the President’s Men. While it’s a well told story, it’s basically a bunch of reporters running around asking questions to people and trying to get documents. I’m not saying it’s boring. It isn’t. It’s quite interesting. But certainly not worthy of a “best film” Oscar nomination. This one may be there for it’s political agenda against the Roman Catholic Church.

And I’m not saying that the Roman Church doesn’t deserve the condemnation. It clearly does. But when it comes to Oscars, a movie is more than an agenda. It’s the acting, the visual, the action, the immersive experience of the senses. This is something you see with The Revenant, but not with Spotlight.

Spotlight is good, but not great. Its agenda is important, but its artistic movie merits are not.

That said, this is truly one of those issues of corruption that is so disturbing, you cannot deny that it undermines the authority and credibility of the offending institution.

Here’s why… Continue reading →

OSCAR WATCH • Brooklyn: This is What American Exceptionalism Used to Be

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Brooklyn

Circa 1950s, a young Irish girl makes her way to America to find work in New York, and finds herself falling in love with the Land of Dreams.

Saoirse Ronan gives an Oscar winning performance in this simple tale of Irish immigrants in the Big Apple. It follows her course as a young single girl named Eilis in Ireland from a struggling fatherless family of her mother and sister. She receives a sponsorship from a Catholic priest in New York to help her find work in America.

She arrives in the Land of Dreams and suffers homesickness and loneliness, until she meets a young Italian boy at a local dance who fancies Irish girls. They strike up a relationship that carries through to the end of the film with true American simplicity and honesty. He’s a plumber in a family with dreams to marry and to buy land and a home on an empty Long Island along with his family members.

It is truly the American Dream in its least corrupted form: hard working self-reliance coupled with family devotion and ethnic community that offers the hope of making one’s way in the world. The essence of the goodness of the middle-class. It is what made America great. Where normal people could come for a chance to work hard without the oppression of race, class or gender that plagued all of history’s cultures before.

It is tempting to find in Brooklyn an analogy with modern day immigration issues. But if anything, it is a rebuke to the tribalist rhetoric that dominates current minority and immigrant exploitation, creates a lawless defiance of legal boundaries, and promotes social violence.

Read on to see why…

Continue reading →

The Dragon King: Novel of First Emperor of China Finally Available

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The wait is over! The Dragon King is officially available at Amazon!

On Kindle here.

In Paperback here.

Cool website here with artwork by Charlie Wen, cast of characters, and first chapters for free.

It’s 220 B.C. The ancient Western Empire is crumbling. In a desperate bid to save his throne, the Greek king over Babylon sends his son, a dishonored warrior, into the mysterious land of the Far East to capture a mythical creature that will give him absolute power: a dragon.

By bestselling author, Brian Godawa, and Charlie Wen, past visual director of Marvel Studios.

OSCAR WATCH • Room: The Most Powerful Pro-Life Movie Since the Planned Parenthood Exposé

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The story of a young girl imprisoned in a small room by her abductor, who escapes with the help of her five year old son, born in that captivity, and what happens after.

This is an emotionally brutal story to watch. It’s not that it’s a horror film, it’s not a thriller or even explicit. It’s because it is so revelatory of human nature in both its evil and its grandeur. It’s more about the power of imagination to overcome the psychological effects of such abuse. And as recent current news events have shown, this kind of thing is quite real.

Whereas most thrillers would end with the girl escaping, this movie’s second half is about the difficulty of both mother and son to overcome the trauma that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. It deals with the aftermath and damage that man’s inhumanity to man wreaks upon victim’s lives as well as their families.

Don’t get me wrong, the movie is quite understated in its realism. We see the strength of this young woman in dealing with her and her son’s issues in the best way she knows how, with her limited yet loving resources. It wrestles with the existential questions: How would a young child born in captivity cope with the smallness of their existence? And how would they see the huge vast world, once released? How frightening would it be to try to enter? And yet, how it is loved ones and friends who help us to fit into that very world. We need each other.

A Case Study in Pro-Life Narrative

There is a big picture going on here. I don’t believe it is without reason that young woman is never named in the film beyond her son’s “Ma.” So in a way she is an archetype for something bigger.  (Brie Larson’s acting in the role is transcendental)

Let me explain… Continue reading →

The Finest Hours: A Movie of Hope, Courage and Self-Sacrifice That Carries You Away

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OPENS THIS FRIDAY, JAN. 29

The 1952 true story of the most amazing small boat rescue in history. Two separate oil tankers break in half in the midst of a raging winter storm off the coast of Massachusetts. This is the story of the amazing captain and his crew who brave the crushing elements and impossible odds to save 32 crew members of one of those tankers. And on a boat that could only carry 20.

When I saw The Perfect Storm, I thought I had seen the true power of the sea and man against the elements.

Uh uh.

The Finest Hours blows that out of the water. It was a riveting adrenaline fest of the limits of courage and self-sacrifice that humanity can attain.

It’s a simple search and rescue story of impossible odds, but it is that simplicity that makes it so profoundly riveting. I won’t tell you what the obstacles were. That would spoil it. Suffice it to say that every obstacle that they encountered just made me open my mouth in wonder and say, “No way. There’s no way they’ll get through it.” Which is pretty dang good, considering you know the basic outcome going into the movie. That’s good storytelling.

And most of it really happened. Which makes it all the more amazing. But listen to this about the faith of the lead character… Continue reading →

OSCAR WATCH • Mad Max: Fury Road – Feminist Heroine and Her Dog Max Fight the Evil Patriarchy

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Post-apocalyptic action. Mad Max, a loner in a desert world of male gangs, cars, and water shortage is held captive by an evil dictator. When one of the dictator’s chief drivers, Imperator Furiosa, turns against him and escapes with female sex slaves, Max is pulled into the ride of his life – or death.

Mad Max Reboot with a Gender Transformation

Actually, the logline isn’t really accurate, cause it makes it seem like it’s Max’s story. But it isn’t. It’s Furiosa’s story. She is the real hero of the piece. Which is interesting, since Max, made famous by Mel Gibson (and made famous Mel Gibson), has been the star of the series of post-apocalyptic macho mayhem from the beginning. It looks like this testosterone franchise just got itself castrated with a feminist subversion, a sign of the real war — on boys.

It should have been called: Imperator Furiosa and Her Dog Max.

I gotta hand it to Miller, the filmmaker, it is a brilliant tactic of social commentary to make an action movie that subverts the genre by giving the viewer what they want, but twisting it into an indictment against them. A kinder gentler misandry.

I wrote about the feminist action silliness of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Well, that was NOTHING, compared to this. Read on… Continue reading →