Religious groups honor Chocolat, Return to Me

Christian Century, May 2, 2001

The Religion Communicators Council named Chocolat the best movie of 2000 and The West Wing the best television drama in its annual Wilbur Awards.

An Oscar nominee for Best Picture, Chocolat is a Miramax film featuring 1997 Oscar winner Juliette Binoche as a chocolate maker in a 1950s French village beset with rigid morality enforced by a mayor who controlled the local Catholic parish. NBC's award-winning The West Wing won an award for an episode called "Take This Sabbath Day," which dealt with the death penalty.

Earlier in Los Angeles, the annual Movieguide magazine awards honored Mel Gibson's The Patriot, a drama about the American Revolution, as Best Film for Mature Audiences, and Return to Me, starring Carroll O'Connor, a romantic movie about a heart transplant patient, was awarded the Epiphany Prize for Most Inspirational Movie.

Films with positive content that reflect Christian values are on the increase, Movieguide publisher Ted Baehr reported at the awards show. A total of 118 films that played in 2000 included positive content--double the number of 1997, he said. Films released without blatant sexuality, excessive violence and bad language continue to earn more money on average than their more explicit counterparts, he contended. "That's what the average moviegoer really wants to see," Baehr said. --RNS and CENTURY sources