…what counts is a new creation…

Fireproof is a movie that exceeded expectations at the box office opening weekend. With a production budget of only about a half million dollars it managed to clear upwards of $6.8 million according to Box Office Mojo. That’s exceptional by any standards -  a 1,360% return. Even if you figure that the marketing budgets for most films generally are about equal to the production budget, getting nearly 7 times your money back in three days is good for business.

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.

We’ve had bunches going on ’round here. Between work, starting two businesses, volunteer work and time out for a little fun it’s been a little crazy.

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!

Last night I found myself watching the first episode of the new Terminator TV show. It wasn’t exactly religious programming for a Sunday night. But it was right after the playoff game between the Giants and the Cowboys and the TV kinda stayed on that channel.

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. [Read more →]

Happy Birthday, Girl!

Don’t you hate when things just don’t work right?

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.

I know summer has truly made its arrival here in Savannah when I wake up first thing in the morning and the windows are covered with condensation outside.

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!

What a tremendous couple of weeks it’s been!

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.

If any of you follow my blogging over at SuccessCREEations you know there has been plenty of Drama in my life these days.

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!

Thank y’all so much for your thoughts and prayers as my wife and I navigated through this challenging time.

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!

I will have to delay my part in the High Calling Blog Tour.

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.