Author: Blogging For 20 Years

• Please pray for anyone with the courage to stand up to a bully or to bullies. 
• And to also pray for those suffering at the hands of a dictator.

“The impulse to pray was overwhelming.” –from a book published on the 50th anniversary of a key battle in history

• His Oscar-winning work helping the future director of “the scariest movie ever” win his Best Director Oscar and the DGA award.
• Starring alongside Terri Garr in a couple of classics from 1974.
• He played the arch nemesis of a caped protagonist in Hollywood’s first comic-book movie. No DGA nomination.  Most comic-book movies don’t receive DGA nominations.  Released in 1978, this was the first of the interplanetary travel movies from 1977 to 1987 on my Star Wars To Predator list to follow Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, a movie with the line “This is important.  This means something.”
• He reprised his role as a villain in the first sequel to Hollywood’s first comic-book movie. Hollywood’s second comic-book movie.  Again, no DGA nomination.  Just pointing out again that most comic-book movies don’t receive DGA nominations.  Anyway, this sequel was the second biggest summer movie at the box-office in 1981.  But you wouldn’t know that according to an online box-office site.  What they have is a lie that they’ve been publishing for years.  “It’s important, Marion.  Trust me.”  Facts scare those folks, apparently.
• Starring in a 1986 film scored by Jerry Goldsmith…an interesting year for that film composer. Interesting for religious reasons.
• Starring with Willem Dafoe in a 1988 film nominated for Best Director…and a DGA nomination as well. 
• Winning his second Oscar in another Best Picture winner (from 1988 thru 1994…a consistently successful string of Best Picture winners, one of which has a very important scene involving television. Some folks in the media have been persistent over the years with their subjective opinions in trashing that particular Best Picture winner. Facts scare those folks, apparently.)

“It is difficult for me to put into words…yet I am positive that certain pieces of music, certain works of art, and certain books and plays were created, not by the composer, artist, author, or playright but by God, and those whom we have acknowledged as the creators of these works were only the instruments employed by God to communicate with us.” –from Og Mandino’s The Greatest Miracle In The World

The first of the Spielberg trilogy (three hit films) that put Spielberg on top of Hollywood.

• 1975.  Hollywood’s first summer blockbuster
• 1977.  “This is important.  This means something.”
• 1981.  “It’s important, Marion.  Trust me.”

*Sidenote about Og Mandino…“If anyone adds another book or experience to the Bible, making it equal in authority to God’s Word –refuse to believe him.”  -from pg 58 of Donald Whitney’s Simplify Your Spiritual Life.  So I might add that my experience is to not place anything before my reading of the Bible, a lesson I’ve had to learn the hard way.  However, I might add the following quote from pg 59 of that same book from Donald Whitney:  “Read Christian books that teach…”  In other words, there is room for Christians to read other books.  But make sure you don’t neglect your reading of the Bible.  (Psalm 119:16  …I will not neglect Your Word.)

SOMEONE MADE THE FOLLOWING COMMENT TO SOMETHING I HAD WRITTEN AT YOUTUBE A WHILE BACK…

People hate this movie just because the fate of the survivors in the previous movies, not because it is bad. I remember how angry I was at the end of this movie the first I saw it at the theater. But over time I learned to appreciate it. It’s not a bad movie at all. And it was shoot by a genius in filmmaking, David Fincher, even with all the meddling by stupid producers. I feel that after Aliens if they had made another sequel in which Ripley, Newt and Hicks had survived again would have been a huge fail. Have you read the Gibson’s version of Alien 3? Boring, cliched, absolutely uninteresting script. All the goodies survive again but it doesn’t have a tenth of interesting value than of the theatrical version of Alien 3.

SO I RESPONDED WITH THE FOLLOWING COMMENT…

Your evolving opinion of Alien 3 doesn’t change the fact that television is a cancer on Western society.  Television is a cancer that needs to be removed.  Television is a social contagion that has been around for way too long.

IT WAS IMMEDIATELY CENSORED AT YOUTUBE

There’s nothing like good old-fashioned censorship by big tech to shape and control what’s being said online.

…A MORE GRAMMATICALLY-EFFICIENT RESPONSE WOULD BE…

Your evolving opinion of Alien 3 doesn’t change the fact that television is a cancer on Western society that needs to be removed.  Television is a social contagion that has been around for way too long.

MANY CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH GOD FOR A FAITHLESS IMBECILE…

At least three while watching The Sixth Sense for the first time in a hotel room by myself.  (All within the first 65 minutes of the movie.) …

• Film music during the opening credits that let me know the movie was going to be one of those exceptional movies that had marked most of the years of my life, dating back to 1975. A pattern I had first noticed in 1996 (and kept alive by Titanic and Saving Private Ryan) that had continued into 1999 with The Sixth Sense.  I felt as if Hollywood was following me.  Very creepy feeling.
• Words from a Latin-speaking soldier early in the movie. I had been told by an uncle that something happens early in the movie that was connected to a big twist revealed at the end of the movie.  Thinking that the Latin words might have something to do with the big twist, I stopped looking after that scene where Bruce Willis looked up the translation of those words.  That scene would take on a whole new meaning in January of 2003, when I saw The Sixth Sense for the first time since the theatrical release of Signs.
• Shopping for an engagement ring. When the fiancé opened his mouth, what he had to say somehow didn’t surprise me, as if I expected him to say what he said.  (I had displayed a similar attitude from just a few weeks earlier.)  This should have been even creepier than the feeling I had during the movie’s opening credits.  But I was so clueless back then.

There were many other close encounters that year, four of which include:

• Noticing a billboard that read “Don’t make me come down there. –God”.
• Realizing that I needed God during my wedding ceremony…but that I wasn’t sure if there was a way I could know that He was actually real.
• Upon learning that my six year-old cat had cancer, I vocalized for the first time in my life my belief in God as I believed He was punishing me for my sins.
• In a newly updated version of The Exorcist…two priests talking to each other while taking a break from performing an exorcism. The 1973 version had them sitting in silence in a very brief scene.  So when they started speaking in the updated version, I was very much surprised.  One of the priests answered as to why the enemy was doing what it was doing by saying “To reject the possibility that God could love us.”

• In 1966:  Time asks “Is God dead?”.   Time complained they couldn’t find “a work of art that would convey a contemporary notion of God”.
• Late 60’s/early 70’s:  The film industry struggling for economic survival.
• 1972 – 2003:  Hollywood creates 209 movies that would outgross the Best Picture winners, according to the yearly box-office charts.  The average Best Picture winner ranks in the top 10 at the yearly box-office during this era of 32 years.
• In 2004:  The Passion Of The Christ opens to box-office records for opening weekends in February, after which it would spend six more weekends grossing at least $10 million.  Spending four weekends total at the top of the box-office charts, it would become the highest grossing R-rated film at the domestic box-office for 20 years.  (What other worldview or religion has a film about its central core to do so well at the box-office, to hold an important box-office record for so long?)
• In 2005:  The film industry goes out of its way to snub The Passion Of The Christ in most categories during awards season, except for three minor categories.
• 2004-2022:  Hollywood creates over 1,000 movies that would outgross the Best Picture winners, according to the yearly box-office charts.  The average Best Picture winner ranks below 52 at the yearly box-office during this era of 19 years…as opposed to ranking in the top 10.
• In 2023:  A successful director who once received a DGA nomination for directing a comic book film (the kind of movie that has proven to be Hollywood’s bread and butter for many years) directs an R-rated film that would become one of the year’s top ten biggest hits at the box-office.
• In 2024:  The film industry showers accolades on that hit film during the awards season.  Later in the year, a comic book film smashes the domestic box-office record for all R-rated films, finally ending the 20 year-old record held by The Passion Of The Christ.
• In 2025:  God, the Creator of the universe, gets mocked at an awards show early in the season.  Later that week, the R-rated comic book box-office record-holder fails to get a DGA nomination.  (Since 1978, only one comic book movie has received the DGA’s most prestigious nomination.)  Later in the month, Oscar history is made when the movie leading with the most nominations became the first movie ever to land more nominations than the number of people outside of Los Angeles County to see the movie.  Okay, that last sentence is probably just a joke.  Probably.

• COMIC BOOK MOVIES:  Hollywood’s bread-and-butter for many years.
• DGA RECOGNITION:  Hollywood’s most valid movie award nominations, from both a historical and logistical perspective.  

• Getting a prestigious DGA nomination for directing a comic-book movie.
• After last year’s success during the awards season with your R-rated hit movie, was it worth it?  Any regrets?

*Going forward from this year’s nominations, any significance of Hollywood’s movie awards have been reduced to ashes.  (Psalm 28:4-5)