AMAZING GRACE – The Movie
that is hoping
to make...
AMAZING GRACE – The Movie
that is hoping
to make Amazing Changes
with YOUR Help
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Opens Feb 23, Friday, 2007
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See the fabulous trailers:
http://www.amazinggracemovie.com/
and click the Amazing Grace banner to get access to one of the trailers.
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Film Overview
Amazing Grace, based on the life of antislavery pioneer William Wilberforce, is directed by Michael Apted (The World is Not Enough, Coal Miner's Daughter) from an original screenplay written by Academy Award® nominee Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things).
The film stars Ioan Gruffudd (Black Hawk Down), Albert Finney (Erin Brockovich), Romola Garai (Vanity Fair), Michael Gambon (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), Benedict Cumberbatch (Hawking), Rufus Sewell (Legend of Zorro), Ciaran Hinds (Rome) and introduces Youssou N'Dour.
Ioan Gruffudd plays Wilberforce, who, as a Member of Parliament, navigated the world of 18th Century backroom politics to end the slave trade in the
Elected to the House of Commons at the age of 21, and on his way to a successful political career, Wilberforce, over the course of two decades, took on the English establishment and persuaded those in power to end the inhumane trade of slavery.
Romola Garai plays Barbara Spooner, a beautiful and headstrong young woman who shares Wilberforce's passion for reform, and who becomes his wife after a whirlwind courtship. Youssou N'Dour is Olaudah Equiano. Born in
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The Amazing Change Campaign
http://www.amazinggracemovie.com/amazing_change.php
William Wilberforce's work is far from finished. There are still an estimated 27 million slaves in the world today. Modern day slavery can come in many different forms. Entire families may work long days in rice-mills, brick kilns or on plantations. Children may be abducted and forced to fight in a rebel's army. All of the people in these examples are slaves—they cannot come and go as they please and are often beaten or threatened with violence. They have no autonomy in their day-to-day lives and deserve the right to be free.
In conjunction with the release of the film Amazing Grace, we have launched a campaign to abolish modern day slavery and allow children and adults around the world to live in freedom. Through this campaign we hope to motivate students and communities to make their mark on history by speaking out against modern day slavery.
At theamazingchange.com, you'll learn about the "two great objects" that were central to William Wilberforce's Life:
- The abolition of slavery
- The reformation of manners (society)
Visit The Amazing Change and learn more about what efforts you can take to make these two great objects a part of your life. Educate yourself by reading stories about modern day slavery, learn how to start your own
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I signed up:
I plan to see this movie opening day, February 23, 2007 . I have registered online at the movies website as a blogger
http://www.amazinggracemovie.com/
and have signed the petition
http://www.theamazingchange.com/
Why… not join me…..? Hmmm?
“Never doubt
that a small group of thoughtful, committed people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead
Let us choose to be free and make a difference.
"By arguing on the ‘force of circumstances,’ we have argued away all force from ourselves; and stand lashed together, uniform in dress and movement, like rowers of some boundless galley. Practically considered, our creed is Fatalism. And free in hand and foot, we are shackled in heart and soul with far straighter than feudal chains." Thomas Carlyle
Thank you for your conscience and your action.
Don’t you just love being alive in the day of the internet. We SO CAN make the difference. We don’t have to wait for some great politician to be our champion. We ARE the Champion we’ve been waiting for. Let us Stop Waiting for Someone Else to Make the Difference, let us STOP “Waiting for the World to Change”.
Get Inspired
By
BEING the INSPIRED
PASSION HAS POWER
TRUTH HAS POWER
REALLY BE ALIVE
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Never missing an opportunity to spread the word to STOP the GENOCIDE IN DARFUR :
- http://www.Savedarfur.org
- http://www.ajws.org/
- www.sudandivestment.org/
- http://www.genocideintervention.net/index_home.php
- http://www.standnow.org/
“Peace will not work if just one man alive is unjust
if one man alive is ignorant or hungry or crazy or ashamed
For we have seen, if only one of us decides to pull the plug, the millions of us can kiss the world good-bye whether we like it or not.”
From Joseph Pinauro’s little book “to believe in man”, illustrated by Sister Corita Kent
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If you have gotten this far on this post, you will have noticed I have some duplicates. Yes, indeed, mistakes, me, mistakes. "Me", far from the perfect person I always try so hard to be. ; )
ReplyDeleteHere's the thing, it is a pain in the neck and elsewhere for me to go back and edit once I have all the font colors and the Youtube inclusions. Please, believe me, I have tried in the past and end up staying up all night to get my imperfections to be less imperfect.
SO. . .... I am going to just accept this post with all of its imperfections, therefore I accept my own imperfections. Can you deal with that...?
Thank you. : )
you should know about Zach Hunter then. Zach is 15 and is the student global spokesperson for the amazing change.
ReplyDeletewww.myspace.com/lC2LC
anonymous,
ReplyDeleteThank you. I did check out Zach's links on the movie's website and linked to the "Loose Change" project and other ways to help stop this madness. It is wonderful what he is doing. And since he has lived through this himself - he is a very affective advocate to inspire the rest of us. I do hope people go to the website and get on board with this honorable endeavor. We all need to step up and do our part. Otherwise, it won’t stop. And it will be a stain on our character.
ilovemylife
For some unknown reason Ioan's first name was deleted above when giving the actors' names and describing the true story behind this fabulous film.
ReplyDeleteIoan Gruffudd, the star of “Amazing Grace”.
Pronounced Yo’-wahn Griffith
His first language is Welsh and he is bilingual, also speaking English.
I taped Ioan on Craig Ferguson’s 12:35 a.m. talk show, last night, which was February 21, Wednesday, 2007. First a clip was shown of his movie ”Amazing Grace”. Then he walked out with a shiny suit, white shirt and no tie. He talked a lot about how it went when he and his companion of seven years got engaged. It was too funny. Well, not for Ioan when it was happening, because it didn't go flawlessly. Alison had given him the ultimatum that if he didn’t ask her to marry him by the end of the year, she told him, “You’re out.” So he went out and bought a ring the next day in California (without her knowing), took it back to London (when he was shooting, ”Amazing Grace”), then to Cuba. It was New Year’s Eve night in Havana, Cuba, well New Year’s Day at 1: 00 a.m. and she was complaining to him that he was boring. “You so boring, it’s New Year’s eve, you’re so boring, what’s wrong with you?!” They had been drinking a little bit. And he mixed her a drink, a mohito (spelling?) with a little ice. He had put her engagement ring in the glass but she wasn't drinking it fast enough to his liking. He was nervous because Alison was loosely moving the glass around. He tried to have her drink faster and then the engagement ring flew out and hit her in the lip. She started yelling at him. A little real life drama - she was going to make him sleep in one room at one point. He had to call after her “Angel, please, come back”.
He was great on the show. Brilliant! Brilliant!! Yeah, brilliant, he was! Fantastico! Freakin’ deluxe! (Yeah, I bought Very Annie-Mary.)
He said they are getting married September 2007 here in the United States on the Baja Peninsula in California or in Mexico. : ) anyway… Sounds promising to me. Hmmm…. She is originally from Summitt, New Jersey. The name I believe he said was Alison Evans. Seven years ago, is back when that Elle magazine article came out I believe - the one that is here at my blog.
http://ilovemylifebrothersandsisters.blogspot.com/
And in the article they both (Matthew Rhys and himself, Ioan Gruffudd) said they were single – it must have been one of those on-again-off-again 7 year relationships. : )
Craig asked him where he was from. Ioan said Cardiff, the capital (southern Wales) but they didn't get into Matthew Rhys being a friend since childhood, going to RAD together (I think that stands for the Royal Academy of Drama) or being flat mates for ten years. He calls his companion "Angel" and she calls him "Baby Angel". Craig pretended to throw-up when he said this.
I've been up all night - problems with my blog - it went crazy - then all of my youtubes on every one of my posts vacated this blog. It's still not right, the spacing changed completely and all of the avatars of visitors, etc are at the bottom instead of at the top over to the right - but at least it's better and all the youtubes are back. I had to change all of the font colors because the background color changed and you couldn’t read the light-colored words. Crazy. Been yelling a little at the computer and laughing at myself at the same time. So all of this about Ioan was on the blog post at one point, but then I noticed it was gone. Ghostly things like that have been happening all night on this blog. It all started when all of the youtubes on this very post disappeared after being on my blog for awhile. What is that all about, I wonder?
I wrote on the movie’s blog (AMAZING GRACE) and it was immediately following someone by the name of cferguson. I think it is Craig Ferguson – because of what he wrote. He had seen an advance viewing of the movie. His post was dated Feb 20. And so-o interesting that Ioan shows up on his show. My post there was on Feb 21.
This might work, then again with my luck perhaps brushing off on you, who know ?!
http://s177430995.onlinehome.us/amazing_grace/newsite/community/viewtopic.php?p=140
Did you see Amazing Grace opening day? Did it move you?
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw the trailer for this film on TV this week, I thought to myself – that looks like Ioan Gruffudd, whom I have been blogging about on My Blogs and other blogs, such as abc.go.com on the show, Brothers and Sisters’ blog and the yahoo Luke MacFarlane fan website. Then I went the website for the movie, amazinggracemovie.com – I found indeed that William Wilberforce is played by Ioan Gruffudd. So after searching my entire state, Rhode Island, and the adjacent state of Massachusetts, I could only find one theatre screening this movie opening day. And I was going to make a point of seeing it opening day, as it is important to movies, statistically to get the numbers the first weekend. And I just had to see it as I was so drawn to the story after linking around to the amazinggracemovie.com website and learning of the AMAZING CHANGE campaign by a teenager, Zach Hunter, who has been a slave.
So I drove the hour to get to Lincoln, Rhode Island to see AMAZING GRACE today. I thought as I drove into the multiplex, how appropriate that I was seeing the film in a town called Lincoln, since President Abraham Lincoln had a pivotal role that he seemed destined to fill regarding slavery in the USA. The first showing time of this film was 10:30 a.m.
I knew as I was watching this very well-cast and acted story unfold in front of my eyes, that I would stay for the second showing of the film. During the second showing, I attempted in the dark to scratch down lines that I favored throughout the film. I stayed for the third showing just to soak it all in.
Each time I viewed AMAZING GRACE, I appreciated it more. I know that when this film comes out on DVD, I will buy it. There are more than one, two or three outstanding scenes in this film. Ioan Gruffudd plays his part in such an understated way.
I overheard people’s response to the movie immediately following it in each of the three sittings:
Male: “I’m so glad I came”
Female: “That was really good.”
One woman that I asked how she had heard of the film, she said, the paper and that she knew of Ioan's other work on Masterpiece Theatre, The Forsythe Saga and Horatio Hornblower.
And other glowing comments.
I adore this film.
May I humbly suggest that if you go to see this film, that you don't walk out when it first appears that the film is over. I saw a few people do this and there is more coming that is worth staying at least to through the end of the bagpipes play the entire rendition of AMAZING GRACE.
I am a human rights activist and so loved seeing a true story about human beings who live their lives with integrity and against the odds of society, government, status quo and apathy. And the casting is superb and all those precious relationships all with William are ... for your soul.
John Newton to William Wilberforce:
"I wish I could remember their names. . . their beautiful African names.
We call them with just a grunt, ... *
We were apes, they were heroes."
* (missed getting this part down)
What is the Latin phrase that was referred to as a loose translation: "We cheat."?
And what was the first quote by William Wilberforce's butler, Richard, while out sitting on the wet grass with Wilberforce? And who was the author of that quote?
I hope you did or will love it.
And let me know if you saw it on any other day on opening weekend Feb 23 - 25. Or just anytime...
Sign the petition for AMAZING CHANGE, please. Human trafficking and slavery will go on until we decide to be the human beings we are called to be by virtue of being born.
Thank you for your conscience and your action.