Cameron & Bethea in Fireproof

To put it into perspective, the highest grossing opening weekend of all time to date is The Dark Knight (the latest installment in the Batman franchise. If The Dark Knight had the same kind of return, it would have made about $2.5 billion (yes with a b) on opening weekend instead of the record $158 million of its $185 million production budget.

Then figure that most successful movies get released in upwards of 4 times as many theaters as Fireproof was this weekend. The Dark Knight was over 5 times as many.

However you slice it Fireproof is a financial success.

Gorgeous and I couldn’t get to the theater to see it on opening weekend but did venture out for a date night last night. We stopped at the food court in the mall for some Sbarro’s and went to see the flick.

Much Better Production Quality

Usually I hesitate to go see movies in the theater that I know are overtly faith based. Usually that label means the production quality is horrid. Well unless the film has $30 million or so of Mel Gibson’s money behind it, that is.

I think of movies like Left Behind and I cringe. Obviously that film had a compelling storyline based on a wildly popular novel. Unfortunately the low production quality of films like that only helps to marginalize Christians as out of touch.

The good news is that Fireproof is raising the bar. Considerably. It’s still not at Hollywood standards, mind you, but we’re moving in the right direction for sure.

Realistic Portrayal of Difficult Subjects

Fireproof deals with the challenges of marriage and addiction in a way that’s believable. The movie especially nails marriage challenges. Marriage is complicated and the film covers a wide range of emotions from raging anger to broken crying.

And they do it without going over the top and getting hammy.

There is one sequence that’s especially well done that cuts back and forth between the lead characters that demonstrates the differences between men and women especially accurately and throws in a touch of humor too.

Addiction is never an easy subject to address. And it’s not unusual for Christian media to sterilize the issues and paint simplistic solutions. In contrast, Fireproof handles the challenge of addiction in an honest and believable way.

Some Great New Performances

As an aspiring actor I was glad to see some good performances from the cast largely made up of newcomers. Most folks know Kirk Cameron and he’s some professional challenges since he became an outspoken Christian. Fortunately in this film Cameron delivers across a wide range of emotions.

Ken Bevel Delivers in Fireproof

He nails some of the argument scenes he plays opposite newcomer Erin Bethea at the beginning of the film. He’s intense without going over the top. Cameron’s performance is the glue that holds this film together. But it is far from the only note worthy one.

I was most impressed with Ken Bevel’s debut performance. He does an outstanding job as Cameron’s confidant and best friend. It turns out that Bevel is an active duty Marine Corps Captain and used his accumulated leave to get the time off for shooting the film. Ooh-Rah! I suspect he will be able to move into acting should he choose to leave the Corps.

Stephen Dervan provides the comic relief for the film. He has one scene that made Gorgeous and I both totally crack up. It was another fine performance from the new cast.

Target Audience

The only real disappointment I found, and it is a small one, is that the film came across as a little preachy to both Gorgeous and I. I’m not sure what the fine folks at Sherwood Pictures intended. But I don’t think Fireproof will resonate with a general audience.

This morning Gorgeous made the comment that the movie felt a little like a Sunday School lesson. Some might disagree with me but I think they could have toned down the preaching a bit.

Ultimately most Christians will probably find Fireproof to be decent entertainment. Gorgeous and I really enjoyed it.

I’m just not sure how many non-Christians will find the film appealing.

All in all, Fireproof is a fine piece of storytelling that raises the bar for Christian productions across the board. It was well worth the cost of admission. I’m looking forward to more entertainment along these lines.

Weirdness

I was at a meeting downtown and looked out the window of the office I was in only to see this scene above. There’s something a little unnerving about seeing a flock of police cars surrounding your car. (Mine’s the red one in the middle there.)

I guess there was a fender-bender or something. Savannah’s Finest paid scant attention to my ride except when one of the officers leaned on the trunk to fill out some paperwork.

I stayed bravely in the office where my meeting was.

Celebrities

Then Gorgeous had the CEO and Founder of eWomenNetwork in town for her Accelerated Networking event this month. I wrote up a piece about Sandra Yancey over at SuccessCREEations. Go check out the scoop over there.

Here’s Sandra Yancey (on the left) with one of our local Savannah TV personalities, Jessica Kiss.

And More Weirdness

Then over the weekend Gorgeous and & went out to see the Savannah Derby Devils in their roller derby bout.

Yes you heard that right. Gorgeous & I went to see roller derby. Voluntarily.

Nothing about it was high class, as you can probably guess from the photo above taken from our high altitude perch at the National Guard Armory.

But Gorgeous & I had a good time. There’s even proof that I was there as a photographer for SavannahNow caught Gorgeous & I with one of our friends.

It was a hoot. Besides we know Miss Betty Lovsit. I was able to snag a photo of her with Gorgeous and another of our friends during the bout.

I’m thinking I’ll stay off that track.

It’s enough to keep ya on yer toes!

Actually I offered to Tivo it so that Gorgeous could watch something else instead but she said she kinda wanted to see it as well.

We both like sci-fi.

An Iconic Character

The original Terminator movie introduced us to that iconic relentless machine of destruction, was the rocket fuel that ignighted Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career and gave him his trade mark, “Ahhll be bahhk.”

That movie 24 years ago spawned two sequels and now we’ve got a TV show to add to the franchise. That they are continuing the story is a bit confusing since they wrapped it up so nicely with the third movie.

But then again there is time travel involved and that’s pretty confusing stuff I guess, so paradoxes are probably explainable. Somehow.

A Compelling Story

Why is it so many find the Terminator storyline so compelling? What is it about a relentless robot that keeps coming after getting knocked down again and again that keeps us coming back to watch?

A big part of the attraction is that this is the same story of the ages. For example, take a look at what Reece tells Sarah Connor in the first movie:

Listen. And understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

Believe it or not that story mirrors reality. In the Bible Peter tells us that we have an enemy out there and he’s prowling around like a lion looking to devour us. Jesus said the enemy’s purpose was to steal, kill and destroy. Us.

And the enemy we all share is every bit as relentless in his pursuit to destroy us as those tireless robots in the Terminator movies.

Perhaps that’s why we find the story line of battling relentless evil so compelling.

I’ll be back

Pop Quiz: We all know that the catch phrase which has become associated with Arnold Schwarzenegger and his classic accent originated with the original Terminator. But if I told you Arnold was paid $30 million for Terminator 3, how much would you guess he was paid to play that nearly indestructible robot in the original movie?

Let’s make it multiple choice.

• A). $7,500,000
• B). $750,000
• C). $75,000

How much do you think one of the top money earning Hollywood stars was paid for that movie?

Would you believe Arnold was “only” paid $75,000?

It’s true. Seems like a small amount by today’s Hollywood standards.

Or at least not as advertised, eh?

I had that happen right here at CREEations. This past week I finally upgraded to the latest version of WordPress. Only it didn’t work quite as planned.

Got a lovely error message when I tried to access the control panel and I was completely locked out. No fun.

I didn’t have a chance to mess with it until tonight.

Then wouldn’t you know there were, um, complications reverting back to the previous version so that I could try the upgrade again. What I thought would take an hour or so took more than 4 just to get back to the place I was earlier in the week.

I’ll try the whole update thing again. Later.

On the off chance that you commented here in the last few days, I’m afraid your comment has been deleted when I reverted back to the previous working version. Sorry about that.

We’ll try to get it right next time.

For now I’m going to catch some shut eye. It’s been a long week.

It is going to be a steamy day.

I’ve got too much to do today and not enough hours to get it done.

For some reason Isaiah 40:31 is kicking around in my brain:

But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.
They will soar high on wings like eagles.
They will run and not grow weary.
They will walk and not faint.

Here’s to finding new strength!

SOBCon was a smashing success by nearly every metric. I told our team when we first started kicking around the idea for the conference that the only real measure of success would be if we decided to do another conference after it was all over.

By that measure we succeeded. We’ve already had our first planning meeting for SOBCon ‘08.

While at the conference I had the wonderful opportunity to get to know Mark Goodyear a little bit. He blogs at GoodWordEditing.com and is one of the driving forces behind The High Calling.

In fact, since I’ve been on the road, the good folks over at The High Calling have brought me aboard as a High Calling Contributer.

That will kind of bias my upcoming review of the site a bit biased. But I’ll find all the other sites who have reviewed it and give y’all some links so you can get some other views on it.

Mark and I are also working with Vernon Lun (AKA The Idea Dude) co-founder of theGoodBlogs to bring together some good blogs for a new Christianity category over at theGoodBlogs. So if you are interested in being a part of that project, just give me a shout. Holler at my work email, chris [at] successcreeations [dot] com (making the obvious adjustments for proper email format.)

Then here in Wisconsin Gorgeous and I had a massive rummage sale to finish cleaning out my father-in-law’s house this week.

All I can say on that score is that I was exposed to a whole new world of rummage sale madness. We managed to unload nearly an entire house full of junk stuff in one day simply by dragging it out into the driveway/yard and posting a “Garage Sale” sign at the curb.

It was insane!

If I hadn’t been so swampped helping Gorgeous manage the chaos, I’d have had the presence of mind to snap some photos. As it was we finished the day thoroughly exhausted. We had a ton less junk stuff and several hundred dollars more to our credit.

Now we’ve got just a few things left, mostly those that we intended to keep and take back to Savannah anyway. We’ve got a little U-Haul reserved. We’ll load it up tomorrow and get on the road with a Southerly heading bright and shiny early Sunday morning.

Two (more) days on the road and we’ll be in Savannah once again (finally!)

Gorgeous and I are both ready to be home for a bit!

It has been a wild ride the last couple of months. I’m trying to remember the last time life was boring…. Can’t seem to remember.

And that isn’t the half of it. Trust me.

But all’s well because in spite of the drama I’m still breathing.

And this morning Gorgeous and I are getting on a plane for Chicago and SOBCon ‘07. It is time to do something fun.

We’ll be meeting relationship bloggers from all over, spending time in a wonderful hotel, and just generally having a great time.

I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.

If you are there, look me up. I’ll be running around helping take care of those pesky last minute details that inevitably come up with an event like this. But I really do want to meet you. So just stop me, introduce yourself and say hey.

And here’s to hoping that the drama will settle out a titch when we get back to Savannah.

Enjoy!

Things went remarkably well through it all.

Now I’m working at getting my bearings and digging out from under a week of missed work.

I’ll be up and running shortly. Then we’ll get back to the blog tour.

Thanks again.

Enjoy!

We received a call this afternoon to tell us that Gorgeous’ father passed away.

We are flying out to Wisconsin on the first flight out. I’ll finish the tour after I return.

Thanks so much for your understanding.