Movie: Amazing Grace; travel
I will be traveling today and tomorrow and likely not able to post. (Am speaking at a banquet for the Pregnancy Center of Rome, GA.)
Tomorrow night, Feb. 23, after I return home, I plan to see the movie Amazing Grace on its opening night. It tells the story of William Wilberforce, an English Christian and politician who worked 20 years in this dual position to stop transatlantic slavery.
Many modernday pro-lifers have developed strategies based on Wilberforce’s success, or at least gained encouragement.
Read World magazine’s review of Amazing Grace here. Go to the official website here for information on theatres and showtimes.
This is another of those movies, like The Passion of the Christ, we would help most by seeing on its opening weekend. Here is the trailer:
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Interesting. I won’t be able to see the movie on opening night, but I would like to see it.
Just FYI, there’s a column on OpinionJournal that has a different opinion of the movie:
Hollywood’s “Amazing” Glaze: What the new movie covers up about William Wilberforce.
In a nutshell, the reviewer claims that the film’s producer went out of his way to minimize the role that Christianity played in Wilberforce’s anti-slavery crusade. If true, that’s unfortunate.
It’s a movie, not a political movement. I don’t think it’s our obligation to “help” the movie by seeing it on opening night. I think we should do what we can to fight the over-hyping of things like “opening night box office statistics” and see it when we feel like it.
Naaman, I saw the movie last night, and the impetus for Wilberforce’s actions was clear from the get-go: God. I don’t understand how the OpinionJournal columnist missed that.
A large portion of the beginning of the movie had to do with Wilberforce’s awakening to God and subsequent personal struggle whether to stay in politics or go into full-time ministry.
A large portion of the next part of the movie has to do with how Wilberforce decided that staying in politics and fighting slavery was his Godly duty. A high point after he made that decision was Wilberforce’s singing “Amazing Grace” in a room full of pro-slavery politicians.
My dear Gary, I didn’t see the Oscars last night, I was meeting Dawn Eden (the Dawn Patrol blog) but I listened to Laura Ingraham’s sound bites and commentary on the way home, if you don’t recognize that Hollywood is political, you’re fooling yourself.Ever since the “Passion of the Christ”, which made $600 million worldwide, putting it in the top ten movies of all time, Hollywood has been looking for ways to capitalize on this market. Brent Bozell in the Media Research Council article I discuss on my blog, comments on this phenomenon, and credits the formation of Walden Media (“Narnia”,” Amazing Grace”, “Bridge to Terabithia”) as Hollywood’s attempt to capture us as an audience. We ignore this, and they’ll stop these great films, saying, “there’s no pleasing those Christians”.
I saw “Amazing Grace” on opening night,to help the numbers, to celebrate the 200th Anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade that very day, and share the experience with the readers of my blogs.
Leticia, I understand that Hollywood is political. I’m just saying we don’t have to contibute to that. I am uncomfortable with seeing a movie on a particular day “to help the numbers.” I have no problem with with celebrating the 200th Anniversay of the abolition of the slave trade or to be able to share the experience with the readers of your blogs. I pine, perhaps, for simpler times, when the a movie was judge by its quality, and even total box office, more than such irrlevance as how many people go on opening night.
Such is the world; they live and breathe the bottom line.I’m not saying I like it; just if we want to influence Hollywood, we have to vote with our feet.