Here’s the latest dispatch from the crossroads of faith and culture:

Photo Finish wins sci-fi honor. With the broadcast TV Networks considering their pilots for the 2019 fall schedule announcements to made next week (more on those next week), here’s one concept I honestly think has potential for 2020 – especially since it’s sizzle reel recently won a prestigious creative award at the seventh annual Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival held at Southern California’s Santa Ana Ebell Club.

That’s right. Photo Finish, the Fugitive-meets-Quantum Leap high-concept series executive producer Michael Jue and I co-developed and wrote (off an ingenious premise by Mike) has gotten some terrific recognition that is sparking renewed interest in the show.

The series would follow the adventures of Albert Einstein Sato, an Asian-American scientist, who, after inventing a camera that can photograph the future, finds himself framed for murder and on the run from federal authorities and the power-hungry SiliconValley industrialist intent on using the device for nefarious ends. While eluding capture, Albert often puts his own freedom and safety at risk when his camera (aka the XLR-8) warns him of impending dangers for the people he meets along the way. Why the camera alerts him to take the pictures at precisely the right location (and within 12 hours of future catastrophe) is a mystery – since the feature wasn’t part of its design. It is, indeed, a mystery that has the agnostic scientist questioning if a benevolent Higher Power could be involved.

The Photo Finish film stars Asian-American actor/stuntman and XMA World Headquarters founder Mike Chat as Albert and the late Meshach Taylor (Designing Women) in one of his final roles as the enigmatic (and, basically,  evil) tech trillionaire Ethan Hayes. Michael Brewer (The Last Revolutionary) directed. Giselle M. Finley executive produced with Michael Jue. Madeleine Liebert produced.

Encourage one another and build each other up – 1 Thessalonians 5:11