New From Oprah Winfrey: “Belief”

Posted on July 29, 2015 at 3:07 pm

Oprah Winfrey’s seven-chapter series “Belief” starts on October 18, 2015. It follows some of the world’s most fascinating spiritual journeys through the eyes of the believers. Episodes include: the largest peaceful gathering in the history of the world as a group of believers seek redemption along the banks of a holy river; a free climber on the side of a mountain who believes there is no greater power than just being present as he climbs without rope; inside the ceremonies of the past as a 21st century woman seeks to find a miracle cure using ancient ceremonial treatments; the quiet of the night as a culture seeks to hang on to its 50,000 year-old history by searching the stars for insight to share with future generations; and, a courtroom and prison where a grieving mother must grapple with forgiveness as she comes face-to-face with her son’s killer. These stories and others will all lead us to ask: “What do you believe?”

Sunday, October 18 *PREMIERE
“Belief: The Seekers”
Witness stories from around the world united by one of the most basic human needs – a desire to find purpose and meaning in our lives. First, 19-year-old Cha Cha, a devout evangelical Christian college student, hopes to reconnect with her faith after a recent trauma has shaken her to the core. Next, Reshma Thakkar, a young Indian-American Hindu woman from Chicago, travels to the banks of the Ganges River in India for the Kumbh Mela, joining millions at the world’s largest spiritual gathering. Meanwhile, in Budapest, Hungary, 13-year-old Mendel Hurwitz prepares for his Bar Mitzvah, the Jewish transformation from adolescence to adulthood. Mendel’s synagogue in Budapest once faced extinction, and this tiny population of Jews are struggling to keep their culture alive. In the final story, Terry Gandadila, an Aboriginal elder in Australia who is nearing death, passes on the wisdom and knowledge of his tribe to his grandson. Together, they walk the songline, an ancient roadmap that the tribe believes reveals how the world was created and how to live life in accordance with their ancestor spirits.

Monday, October 19
“Belief: Love’s Story”
Journey around the world in search of what it means to love one another. First, in western Pennsylvania, Ian and Larissa Murphy are two evangelical Christians who fell in love during college. Ten months into their relationship, Ian suffered a traumatic brain injury, dramatically changing their relationship while also showing them what it means to love unconditionally. Next, we meet Rena Greenberg and Yermi Udkoff of Brooklyn, New York as they prepare to marry in the Hasidic faith, which believes every person is born with one half of a soul, and only through marriage can the two souls reunite with each other. On the other side of the world, former professional skateboarder Jordan Richter from northern California is embarking on the Hajj, a pilgrimage that is one of the five tenets of his adopted religion, Islam. By joining millions of pilgrims in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Jordan hopes to make peace with his past and cement a promising future. Finally, two leaders in Nigeria who were former enemies 20 years ago, Christian Pastor James Wuye and Muslim Imam Muhammad Ashafa, come together to reconcile and to honor one of the most sacred teachings at the heart of both their faiths: love your enemies.

Tuesday, October 20
“Belief: Acts of Faith”
Our beliefs can be a powerful guiding force to endure and overcome in some of the most difficult situations. In this episode, everyone faces a challenge to overcome, and they find their source of strength in a variety of different ways. In Topeka, Kansas, Judi Bergquist visits her son’s killer in prison with the hope that the act of forgiveness will help them both move forward with their lives. Next, under the blue Guanajuato, Mexico sky, Enedina Cuellar Pacheco is riding on horseback with Christ’s Cowboys in the hopes a miracle heals her son who suffered traumatic injuries in a tragic car accident. Together with thousands of riders, she makes the rigorous trek to the iconic 65-foot-tall statue of Cristo Rey. Finally, on the small Pentecost Island, Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, a young boy, Bebe, will act out a death-defying rite of passage into manhood. Bebe will bravely land dive off a giant wooden tower with just a tree vine tied around his ankles, participating in a sacred ritual that his tribe believes blesses the soil for a bountiful harvest.

Wednesday, October 21
“Belief: A Change Is Gonna Come”
Explore how our beliefs help us change. First, Anju, a young woman in central India, has committed to forgo all of life’s conveniences and permanently sever ties with her family in order to be initiated as a Jain nun. Anju must first pass three tests designed to challenge her commitment. Next, Howard Fallon and his daughter Shane arrive in the Nevada desert for Burning Man, an annual festival that provides an experiment in community art, self-expression and culminates in the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy. Howard and Shane are seeking to reconnect and heal after unimaginable personal loss. In another part of the American desert, Ashly Hines, a member of the Yavapai-Apache Nation, prepares to participate in the Sunrise Ceremony, a spiritual ritual into womanhood. Finally, scientist Marcelo Gleiser stands at the foot of one of the most powerful telescopes in the world. He has journeyed to the heart of the Atacama Desert in Chile to look deep into space for clues as to how the universe was born and how it is changing over time. He finds the more he searches the universe, the more he must embrace the mystery of the unknown.

Thursday, October 22
“Belief: God Help Us”
When tragedy, illness or loss feel overwhelming and relief seem beyond our reach, many believers appeal to their faith for strength. First, Karen Cavanagh, a Catholic from Slingerlands, New York is called to the Sufi path as a way of healing from a traumatic brain injury. Karen travels to Konya, Turkey to combine her Catholic faith with the practice of becoming a Whirling Dervish, a group who worships through meditative dance. Next, in Lima, Peru, a teenager, Beto, prays to the Lord of Miracles, a painting of Christ on the cross that is revered throughout the country. Beto is selected to march in an annual procession honoring the icon, bringing pride to his family. Then, in Lebanon, 13-year-old Walid, a Syrian refugee whose family fled their home in war torn Syria, still finds a way to participate in Ramadan, the Islamic faith’s month of personal and spiritual reflection observed with fasting and prayer. Finally, in Indonesia, 19-year-old Buddhist monk Bodhi Cahyno believes meditation can help him find a source of inner strength after enduring a challenging childhood. Guided by his mentor and teacher, Bodhi travels to the holy site of Borobudur in Indonesia – the world’s largest Buddhist temple – to celebrate Vesak, an annual ritual that commemorates the birth, enlightenment and death of the Buddha.

Friday, October 23
“Belief: The Practice”
For many people, committing to a spiritual life through study, practice and compassion reveals faith. First, Shi Yan Fei is a young Buddhist monk at the Shaolin Monastery in Dengfeng, China, who came to the monastery because of his passion for Kung Fu. While Shi Yan Fei has nearly mastered Kung Fu’s physical movements, he has encountered difficulty mastering the spiritual element. Next, 65-year-old John Davie is hoping to reconnect with his Catholic faith as he embarks on the “Way of Saint James,” a 500-mile trek through the countryside of France and Spain. For a thousand years, Christian pilgrims have walked the “Camino,” which culminates at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. Then, Mohamed El Haskouri, a teenage boy in Morocco studies diligently to perfect his recitation of the 80,000 words of the Qur’an in an ancient art called Tajweed. Finally, two teenage girls in Israel, 18-year-old Jewish cellist Hagit and 17-year-old Muslim flutist Mais find common ground and friendship in their shared love of performing classical music with the Polyphony Orchestra.

Saturday, October 24
“Belief: A Good Life”
Explore how beliefs help us face the fear of death and the mystery of what happens after we die. In this episode, we witness how death can also be a powerful call to action – to embrace life and those we love. In the shadows of Mt. Everest, Lekshey Choedhar, a young Buddhist monk at the Pema Tsal Sakka Monastery, learns a valuable lesson about the fleeting nature of life. There, Buddhist monks make devotional works of art called sand mandalas, which they then destroy in a ritual that symbolizes the impermanence of existence. Next, atheist Alex Honnold walks the edge between life and death as a world-renowned free-solo climber. He faces his mortality and finds meaning in his life as he climbs — with no ropes or harnesses — up a towering cliff in the Moab desert in eastern Utah. Then Donna Winzenreid, a military wife and mother of three in Colorado Springs, Colorado who has been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, fights for her life by holding on to her Methodist faith. Next, India is home to more than a billion people and one of the world’s largest religions, Hinduism. Once a year, on the first day of spring, Hindus from all walks of life unite to celebrate the festival of colors – Holi. Gopesh Goswami, a Hindu priest, celebrates Holi as an opportunity to set aside daily responsibilities and experience joy, togetherness and the essence of a good life. Finally, from a space shuttle orbiting Earth, astronaut Jeff Hoffman stares out at a pale blue dot suspended in the vast expanse of the universe. He describes it as a transcendent experience, an overwhelming feeling that human beings are all truly connected.

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Spiritual films Television

One-Line Movies With the Year’s Best Actors

Posted on December 2, 2013 at 3:59 pm

The actors who created some of this year’s most intriguing performances each appear in a eleven original (very) short films directed by Oscar-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski. The one-line scripts are from the year’s best screenwriters, from Lake Bell of “In a World” to Sarah Polley of “Stories We Tell” and Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg of “This is the End.” Watch Oprah Winfrey, Michael B. Jordan, Bradley Cooper, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Robert Redford, Forest Whitaker, and more create a world in a moment.

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Actors Shorts

Lee Daniels’ The Butler

Posted on August 15, 2013 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some violence and disturbing images, language, sexual material, thematic elements and smoking
Profanity:	Some strong language, n-word and other racist epithets
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and alcohol abuse, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Peril and violence including police brutality, lynching, murder, rape (off-camera), sad deaths
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	August 16, 2013
Date Released to DVD:	January 13, 2014
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00EV4EUT8

Washington Post reporter Wil Haygood was covering the 2008 Obama campaign when some young black women told him that they were going to vote for America’s first major party Presidential candidate who was African-American, even though their fathers told them not to. The generational chasm that separated the fathers who were not ready to see one of their heritage in the White House and the daughters who were inspired him to check to see whether there might be someone in the White House itself who was of that older generation. He found one, Eugene Allen, who had been a butler in the White House from the Truman administration to the Reagan administration, and who was planning to vote for Barack Obama, and Haygood wrote an article telling his story.

That story inspired this film, with Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines, born on a plantation in the Jim Crow south and serving eight Presidents while raising two sons. Like the young women Haygood met, the next generation had very different ideas and aspirations. The conflict between a man whose job was to serve by being “invisible in the room” had sons who wanted to be anything but invisible. As Sidney Poitier said to Roy Glenn in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” in 1967, “Dad, you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man.”

There are some awkward moments in trying to get through so much material so quickly, with just brief glimpses of some of the Presidents and some of the events. By the time we figure out that it is Robin Williams playing President Eisenhower, painting a landscape as Cecil serves him from a silver tray, his appearance is over. John Cusack has two juicy scenes as Richard Nixon. As the eager, if socially clumsy Vice President, he visits the kitchen to hand out buttons and ask the staff what issues are important to them. “As members of the Negro race,” he intones, as though they do not know who they are, “what are your biggest concerns?”

Later, Cecil sees the President unraveling under the impeachment proceedings. James Marsden has some of President Kennedy’s charisma, and Minka Kelly is lovely and utterly heartbreaking as Jackie, sobbing in the pink suit covered with blood that she could not bring herself to remove. Liev Schreiber shows us President Johnson’s swagger, leaving the bathroom door open so he can talk to his aides while he is on the toilet. Presidents Carter and Ford are seen only in brief archival footage, but Alan Rickman and Jane Fonda are both excellent as the Reagans, shown with more warmth and humanity than the caricatures we might expect.

This cavalcade of star power is just the frame. Director Lee Daniels and screenwriter Danny Strong (Danny Siegel on “Mad Men”) put the human story at the center of the tumultuous historic changes from the late 1950’s to the first decade of the 21st century. That gets a little didactic and clumsy. Cecil Gaines is given two sons, Louis (David Oyelowo of “Red Tails”) and Charlie (Elijah Kelley of “Hairspray”), so that Louis can become involved in the Civil Rights movement, from sit-ins to freedom rides, and then the Black Panthers and anti-apartheid, while Charlie goes to fight in Vietnam. But sensitive and heartfelt performances and the ultimate recognition by the characters that despite their estrangement, the connection between Cecil and Louis is powerful and unbreakable makes their reconciliation hit home. There is a distracting and unnecessary detour into the relationship between Cecil’s wife, Gloria (Oprah Winfrey) and a neighbor (Terrence Howard). And the cameos by big stars as the Presidents are distracting — and a grim reminder that even powerhouses like Winfrey, Whitaker, and Daniels and a relatively modest budget were not enough to get a Hollywood greenlight without some white stars. Some of the best scenes are when we see the African-American characters away from the “other face” they have to show whites, relaxed and joking in the White House locker room (Cuba Gooding, Jr. Lenny Kravitz) and or at neighborhood parties.

Ultimately, this is Cecil’s story. When he was a child, service was a chance to get out of the cotton field. In his first job away from the plantation, he learns to present a pleasant, respectful, and helpful face to the customers, to “make them feel not threatened,” to look at them only to “see what they need.” And he learns to stop using the n-word about himself or anyone else. When he comes to the White House, he is told, “You hear nothing. You see nothing. You only serve.” As for the issues, when it comes to the staff, “We have no tolerance for politics at the White House.”

While Louis and his friends are staging a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter, his father is serving dignitaries, wearing white gloves and a tuxedo. But all the courage and determination Louis shows in his passionate commitment to equality don’t reach the power of the moments when Cecil challenges the long-standing tradition of paying the African-American staff of the White House 40 percent less than the white staff, and not allowing them the opportunity for promotion.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness,” the movie’s opening epigraph from the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King tells us. “Only light can do that.”

Parents should know that this film includes strong language, drinking, drunkenness, and alcohol abuse, sad deaths, peril and violence including police brutality, rape, murder, lynching, racial epithets, sexual references and non-explicit situations.

Family discussion: Talk to members of your family about their own experiences before and during the Civil Rights era and read about some of the people and incidents mentioned in this movie, including Emmett Till, Pablo Casals, and James Lawson.

If you like this, try: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, “Eyes on the Prize,” and “The Remains of the Day” and the books The Butler: A Witness to History and White House Butlers: A History of White House Chief Ushers and Butlers

Interview: Lee Daniels of “The Butler”

Posted on August 12, 2013 at 7:00 am

“Lee Daniels’ The Butler” is inspired by the real-life story of a black man who worked in the White House for decades, serving eight Presidents from Truman to Reagan. Born in the Jim Crow-era South of lynchings and segregation, he lived long enough to cast a vote for Barack Obama. Forest Whitaker plays Cecil, the butler, Oprah Winfrey his wife, Gloria, and David Oyelowois their son, Louis, who becomes a leader in the Civil Rights movement. The cast also includes Robin Williams as Dwight D. Eisenhower, Alan Rickman and Jane Fonda as Ronald and Nancy Reagan, John Cusack as Richard Nixon, and Vanessa Redgrave as a plantation owner.

One of the challenges of a film like this is dressing all the characters over decades of changes in style and fabrics. How did you manage that?

That is the formidable and brilliant Ruth Carter, who does not get enough credit for her work. She’s worked with Spike Lee on “Malcolm X” and some of his other films. She’s an Academy Award-nominated African-American costume designer, the first I think, who really understood the period, really understood the generational differences as time passed and gave me her heart and soul. She was as exciting to work with as Oprah.

How do you evoke the important details of such a large swath of history without getting lost?

We don’t focus on history. History is the backdrop. The focus is the family. I have to tell what I know. I’ve never been in the White House. So that was really a specific choice to focus on the father and son love story and make the rest of it a backdrop, the White House and the Civil Rights movement. Otherwise it is not a story; it’s a history lesson. Danny Strong wrote an incredible script. He know so much about history. I had to do some research on the White House, but the sit-ins, the bus rides, the different drinking fountains, those were things my family and I experienced. I once drank from a “whites only” fountain and got slapped by my dad. I thought there would be Sprite coming out of there! My experience is that experience, either from personal experience or from my mom or my dad, or my aunts and uncles and grandparents.

How did you talk with Forest Whitaker, who plays the title character, about the way his character would show his age over the course of the film?

He is one of if not the premier actors of our generation. He brings a load of stuff that he’s studied and thought about. For me, it was really about being a puppeteer, guiding him, telling him maybe a little too much here or there but it’s all him. I just told him when to bring it down or bring it up, like adjusting the volume. He comes at you like a cannon, but with humility.

Why was it so important to you to get Oprah Winfrey to appear in this film?

We are friends, because she produced “Precious.” We were looking for something to do together. But then she got nervous. And I said, “Wait a minute. You told me you were looking for something. Now I done brought you something. Now you’re getting nervous because of something called OWN. I don’t care about OWN. I care about seeing you as an actress, the way you were in ‘The Color Purple.'” I pushed her, pushed her, begged, pleaded. Cried. Until she came to Poppa. Then once I got her, it was intimidating. Not because of her. It was in my head. I was “Oh, my God, it’s OPRAH! What do I do?” So it was about un-knowing her. That’s what excites me as a director, taking people and confusing the audience about who they are, who they think they know. Because I remembered the actor she was and the work she’d done for “The Color Purple.” So it was about me stripping her down and once that happened she was vulnerable. She was raw. She was nervous. She was anxious. She was like a little girl. And I felt very protective of her. She was just one of the crew, lining up for that messy food at craft services with everyone else, one of the gang. The only ego was the film.

What do you want people to talk about on the way home from this film?

How they could laugh and cry at the same time. How I didn’t take it too seriously. In the research I did with the slaves and the Civil Rights movement, they didn’t take it too seriously. If they didn’t laugh, they got terrified. So they had to laugh through the tears. I hope people will say, “Lee Daniels did not take it too seriously, and by that he told the truth.”

There is a strong theme in the film about the meaning of service. What does it mean to serve?

To help. To help in any way possible. Louis helped his country by doing what he did and Cecil helped his country by doing what he did.

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Directors Interview

Trailer: The Butler Tells the Story of A Man Who Served Eight Presidents

Posted on May 14, 2013 at 3:56 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAagFuR_XIM

Lee Daniels (“Precious”) directs this story of Cecil Gaines, the White House butler who served eight Presidents, starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey, with Robin Williams as Harry Truman, James Marsden as John F. Kennedy, Alan Rickman and Jane Fonda as Ronald and Nancy Reagan, and Nelsan Ellis (“True Blood”) as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. The movie will be released in October.