UPDATE: “Reel Faith”: The Advent/Christmas edition!

The first episode, covering Megamind, Morning Glory and Due Date, is currently available at the Reel Faith website. Episode 2, covering Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Tangled and 127 Hours,  airs on NET this Sunday (watch online).

UPDATE (September 2, 2010): Last week’s episode of “Reel Faith,” now available at the Reel Faith website, was the last episode for the summer. Following NET’s season schedule, the show is now on hiatus. When will we return? Watch this space! I’ll keep you posted.

Did you appreciate the show? Please let NET know! Contact NET via their Contact page (phone number is included along with email form) and/or offer a comment at the “Reel Faith” combox.

For what it’s worth, I had a blast doing the show. I’m grateful to NET for giving David and me the chance to try this. I think the show was a success; we learned a lot over the course of the 12 episodes, and I’m pleased to say that I think we came a long way in a short time. (Which is another way of saying we had a sort of rocky start. Hey, TV is hard!) Our last show, I think, showcases some of our best work, so check it out! And watch for “Reel Faith” to return.

UPDATE (June 16, 2010): Hey! Looks like NET is able to host episodes Reel Faith episodes right on the show’s website! If you missed last week’s show, you can still catch it online, at least until it’s replaced by this Friday’s show. (As far as I know the plan for now is to post only the most recent show.) Check it out! And please, let us (and the NET folks) know what you think at the Reel Comments page!

Original post follows.

Hey! I’m reviewing movies on TV!

I mean, you know, I’m on TV reviewing movies. The movies are in theaters, not on TV. Movies on TV, I’ve reviewed before, not on TV. Me, I mean.

Ahem. Over the summer I’m co-hosting a cable TV movie review show with David DiCerto, formerly of the USCCB Office for Film and Broadcasting, for NET NY, a “faith-centered cable TV network” in Brooklyn, New York. (For more on NET, see Joseph Pronechen’s National Catholic Register article “Putting Out into the Deep to Cast the NET.”)

“Reel Faith” is a half-hour movie review show reviewing opening and new theatrical releases. The show airs on Fridays at 8:30pm EDT. For the first episode, which aired last Friday, we did a sort of catch-up, reviewing Iron Man 2, Robin Hood, Shrek Forever After and Babies. For tonight’s episode, we’re doing The Karate Kid, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Killers and Marmaduke. Next week is Toy Story 3, The A-Team, Splice and more.

Each episode also features discussion of one of the 45 films of the 1995 Vatican film list, hosted by Fr. Robert Lauder, who hosts a Friday night film series at Immaculate Conception Center in Queens.

I’m enjoying doing the show. I’m learning that TV is very different from radio, and co-hosting a show is very different from (read: harder than) being a guest! I’ve done TV before, but always as a guest. We’re learning as we go, we’re having fun, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the summer season!

So how can you watch? If you don’t live in the NYC area or don’t have access to NET via cable, you can catch the show online at NET’s Watch Now page. For now at least you need to catch the shows when they broadcast; it’s not clear whether it will be possible to archive the shows at YouTube, since we use clips from the movies and studios can be weird about that. (Apparently it’s fine for the cablecast and webcast, but some studios don’t like to see clips on YouTube.)

So, head over tonight at 8:30pm EDT and catch our second episode. I’ll post more as the summer season develops.