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by Ed Stetzer March 3, 2014 The following post is a guest post from Dr. Jerry Johnson. Jerry A. Johnson, Ph.D., is President & CEO of National Religious Broadcasters (NRB). He's a theologian who has taught on cinema and theology. This post is about the March 28, 2014 movie Noah. I interviewed Jerry about the film last week at the NRB meeting. In that interview, he mentioned asking Paramount to add a disclaimer and they just did (see the bottom of this post). Last Friday, Jerry shared five positives of Noah, and today he's sharing five negatives. Here are...

t is surely indicative of our secular era that the error-filled bloviations of media figure and self-styled moralist Dennis Prager have such wide acceptance. I think I’ve finally figured out why, but more on that later. At this point, let’s take a look at his recent column entitled “Noah: One of the Most Moral Stories Ever Told,” sparked by the upcoming release of Darren Aronofsky’s film. Prager begins by reminding us that he has taught the Torah for more than 40 years, and that most of his teachings are available for download—for a small fee. He doesn’t go into much...

Most religious movies feel as if they’re made by a church committee, but every now and then a wild-eyed prophet wanders in and rattles the theater with brimstone. Regardless of your feelings about either movie, Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” qualifies and so does Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Now director Darren Aronofsky (“Black Swan,” “The Wrestler”) has ascended to the mountaintop and returned with the strangest, most visionary cinematic parable yet. “Noah” is equal parts ridiculous and magnificent, a showman’s folly and a madman’s epic. It elaborates on the Book of Genesis’s slender story of...

As Darren Aronofsky and Russell Crowe unveil “Noah” in U.S. cinemas this week, British archaeologist Irving Finkel offers a new perspective on the story with his book “The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood.” In his book, published in the U.S. by Doubleday, Finkel tells the story of how he managed to get his hands on a cuneiform tablet, which was part of the flood story. As a curator for the British Museum, he relies on members of the public bringing artifacts to him for inspection. He was on duty one afternoon in 1985 when a man...

Glenn Beck was invited to see “Noah” by an executive vice president of Paramount Pictures over the weekend, who requested that the multimedia personality see the movie before taking a position on it with his audience. “I felt like kind of a dirtball, basing my review on something that I hadn’t seen, on someone else’s review,” Beck said on radio Monday. “That’s what people do to me. They don’t listen or watch, then they review. It was wrong of me to do.” Unfortunately — though Beck said everyone at Paramount was extremely gracious — he has only more words of...

Ten Ways Noah’s Ark Prefigured the Church Stephen BealeWhen Catholics speak about the Church as the “barque of St. Peter,” two images usually come to mind—the actual fishing boat of St. Peter and the ark that saved Noah and his family from the Genesis flood.Indeed, since the time of the Fathers, Catholics have always seen the epic ark as a type of the Church. Just as the ark was the means by which Noah and his relatives were spared destruction, so also the Church is the instrument by which Christians are saved. The comparison between the two has an...

It is truly a Hollywood epic of biblical proportions, the original disaster story of the man chosen by God to undertake the greatest rescue in history before an apocalyptic flood engulfs the world. But even before it opens in America this week and Britain on April 4, Noah, a $130 million blockbuster with Russell Crowe in the lead role, is already awash in a turbulent sea of controversy. The film, packed with special effects based around a massive replica arc built in Long Island near New York, also stars Sir Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah and Emma Watson, the Harry Potter...

Expensive biblical epics haven’t been a staple of Hollywood for decades, but this week saw the release of the first trailer of Noah which will hit theaters in early 2014. Enter controversy. Some like J.W. Wartick have written on concerns over possible “divergence from the Biblical story.” Fair enough, but I don’t have a problem with divergence, if it is in the sense Brian Godawa describes: " …there is nothing wrong with engaging in creative license, whether it is magical seeds or six-armed Watchers, or even Noah as a warrior. I don’t even think there is a problem in using...

NEW YORK (AP) - In the beginning of their work together on "Noah," director Darren Aronofsky made Russell Crowe a promise: "I'll never shoot you on a houseboat in a robe and sandals with two giraffes popping up behind you." Decades after Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments" and "Ben-Hur," Aronofsky has renewed the tradition of the studio-made, mass-audience Bible epic, albeit as a distinctly darker parable about sin, justice and mercy. While much of his "Noah" is true to Scripture, it's nothing like the picture-book version many encounter as children.

Darren Aronofsky wrestles one of scripture's most primal stories to the ground and extracts something vital and audacious, while also pushing some aggressive environmentalism, in Noah. Whereas for a century most Hollywood filmmakers have tread carefully and respectfully when tackling biblical topics in big-budget epics aimed at a mass audience, Aronofsky has been daring, digging deep to develop a bold interpretation of a tale which, in the original, offers a lot of room for speculation and invention. The narrative of the global flood that wiped out almost all earthly life is the original disaster story, one that's embraced by most...

In today’s politically correct culture, the mainstream media lionizes people not because of their particular acumen, ability, talents or intelligence, but because they parrot the establishment line that the media wants the public to adopt: contempt for America, hatred for Israel, and endless justification for Islamic supremacists and jihadists.A prime example of this is the Islamic supremacist Reza Aslan, a Board member of a lobbying group for the bloodthirsty and genocidally antisemitic Iranian regime.  Reza Aslan is such a intellectually formidable scholar that he writes “than” for “then” and apparently thinks the Latin word “et” is an abbreviation. He writes...

First I want to thank all the FReepers who prayed for little Noah in this thread: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3124084/posts I'm sorry to report that he lost the battle on Friday. What makes it worse is his parents were just granted full adoption of him on the Wednesday before his death. This child had a tragic beginning but I can tell you he died in loving arms. He had members of his church and FReepers praying for him. His family needs prayers now as they are really torn. Thanks again everyone.

Pope Francis has nixed a would-be meet and greet with the creative team behind “Noah,” including star Russell Crowe, director Darren Aronofsky and Paramount vice chair Rob Moore, which studio executives had been scrambling to schedule as a photo-op, Variety has learned. The meeting was tentatively on the calendar for 8:30 a.m. Wednesday in the VIP section so the pope could figuratively lend a blessing to the $125 million biblical epic. The reason the Vatican cancelled it, according to a source, is over concerns word would leak, causing a spectacle as Crowe and Aronofsky landed in Rome. When reached by...

Next week, the film Noah opens. Having taught the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) from the Hebrew for more than 40 years (hundreds of hours are available by download through my website), I consider the Biblical flood story one of the world’s most profound moral teachings. As I will show, it means that God cares about goodness more than anything else. Let me explain by answering the most frequent challenges to the story. Q: Why did God destroy the world? A: Because “the Lord saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth. . . . And the Lord regretted...

Maher began the monologue by declaring that America is “stupid” because 60 percent of the country reportedly believes the tale of Noah’s ark is literally true. He went on to slam the film Noah as “floating giraffe cr**,” but said it “must be doing something right” since it’s been condemned by both Muslims and Christians. And the fact that it might lose a lot of studio money, he joked, “may put it in hot water with the Jews too.”

With the actual film due to come out in just a couple weeks — indeed, it had its world premiere just two nights ago — you might think that people would be less inclined to dwell on that early draft of the Noah screenplay that leaked a couple years ago and wait for the finished film. But no. Today, The Wrap posted a review of the script by Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, and it covers much of the same territory that has been covered by other early critics of the script. (Among other things, he assumes, as others have, that the...

Movie review by Media Critic, Scooter Van Neuter MEXICO CITY (WNB) - I was fortunate to attend the premier of the movie Noah Monday night in Mexico City. Here is my review: Paramount Studio's decision to premier Noah in Mexico City was obviously based on the premise that most of the reviewers would be murdered or kidnapped before they could write their reviews and at least in my case, it almost worked. Nobody had warned me about Mexico City taxis and as a result I was kidnapped twice and sexually assaulted once while getting from the airport to the historic...

As a Christian and a fan of Hollywood’s past biblical epics, I got excited upon viewing the first trailer for Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. The story of Noah and his ark has resonated through every culture of man, yet has never been the subject of a major Hollywood motion picture.Alongside my enthusiasm, skepticism lurked. Modern Hollywood producing a biblical epic adhering to the written narrative and theological themes seemed unlikely given a culture increasingly opposed to the source material. That doubt grew with last month’s report that a disclaimer would be attached to the film’s marketing explaining that “artistic license...

The director of the upcoming Bible epic "Noah" shot down rumors that the movie had caused a hullabaloo for himself and Paramount Pictures. "There isn't really a controversy," Darren Aronofsky told Variety on Thursday, at "Foundations of the Deep: Noah and the Flood," an art exhibition with work inspired by the story. The director of "Black Swan" and "The Wrestler" added that he made the film for both "believers and non-believers" and was especially interested in challenging any preconceptions that the latter group might have about attending a religious film. "I'm more concerned about getting non-believers into the theater or...

ROME – Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe has been lobbying to get Pope Francis to agree to watch his new biblical adventure story, Noah. But there is little sign that the spiritual leader of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics will comply. Religious audiences have been split in their views on the megabudget Darren Aronofsky production, which will hit cinemas in the U.S. March 28 and come to Italy two weeks later. Paramount Pictures says that more than four out of five religious moviegoers say they are interested in seeing the film, but some Christian groups say it strays too far from...