Miranda and I plucked a movie out of a hat the other night. We had a babysitter already for some other plans that fell through, and we’re like eh might as well keep the sitter and go see a movie.
We picked The Shift because the trailer looked kinda thriller intense fun, narrowly beating out that Hunger Games prequel or whatever.
I thought the movie was pretty bad. It just didn’t set up the world and story in a way that made sense and had heft for me. But I hate to criticize the movie too much because, hey, I can’t make a movie at all let alone a good one. But more importantly, this movie was very specifically a Christian story made by a Christian production company for Christians. That doesn’t make it automatically bad but it means I don’t think they care what some heathen like me thinks.
The best part is after the movie.
The credits start to roll, and an on-screen timer starts to roll. 01:57 until a special message. We wait for it. The film’s lead, Kristoffer Polaha comes out in his cool guy street cloths and $2,000 haircut. He says this time of year, it’s so important to be generous and giving. Of course, especially us Christians need to open our wallets and do what we can to help others in need. That’s why we’re asking you (dramatic pause) to pay for other people to come see this movie.
We very literally LOL’d.
They put up a QR code on the screen you were supposed to use to buy more tickets to see this movie (and this movie only) and distribute them. They might as well have walked through the isles with a collection basket.
Chris, have you thought about implementing some kind of reaction functionality on this blog? I loved this post and would have liked to let you know somehow, but a comment feels sometimes a bit too much if I don‘t have to add anything meaningful.
Anyways:
Jetpack actually offers that exact feature and I’m a Jetpack user on all my WordPress sites.
https://share.cleanshot.com/2cpNWQtG
Buttt… I just don’t love the look of the button and don’t have quite the energy right now to whip it all into something I’d like. I take the point though, I’ve always been a fan of generic “Like” buttons.
You can always follow on RSS and “like” from there I suppose but it doesn’t really make it back to the site. I do syndicate to Mastodon so liking there does get seen.
So, the studio behind the movie does this quite a lot (https://www.angel.com/pay-it-forward), which made the one movie, Sound of Freedom a supposed hit, though few people pitched up to the theatre (https://www.dailydot.com/debug/sound-of-freedom-amc-ticket-sales/).
Feels like the dagger books on the NYT best seller list.