Tag: amy

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Ben Mendelsohn, Starring in New Netflix Series titled, “Bloodlines”

 

Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn is starring in a new Netflix series titled Bloodlines, which has been streaming on Netflix since March 20th. In the series, Mendelsohn portrays the family's black sheep out of a group of affluent brothers. His bad attitude was sparked by a traumatic event which the other brothers were not old enough to remember.

In an interview with EW.com, Mendelsohn spoke about playing villains and how he is generally has a strength in playing them. For him, playing villains “In a traditional sense, that’s always an important role. It’s important execution-wise, so I take it as a great compliment.” Mendelsohn has had much experience in his career playing the lead antagonist. He also portrays the villain in such feature films as The Year My Voice Broke, as well as Animal Kingdom.

On Friday April 3rd, Ben celebrated his 46th birthday. Be sure to catch Ben Mendelsohn's performance in the film Amy, also starring Rachel Griffiths, which is currently being distributed by World Wide Motion Pictures Corporation.

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Happy Mother’s Day 2015

 

Happy Mother's Day. Here’s to all the Mothers who deserve an incredible amount of recognition and praise for their hard work in supporting, providing, and loving their family members. Mother’s Day gives us an opportunity to celebrate their living existence, especially for daughters who look up to them. They shape who we are as a person. In honor of this Mother’s Day, here are a great list of activities that mothers and daughters can bond over with.

  1. Being Pampered. Take your Mother out for a spa day. She deserves it. Here’s a spa located in Ojai that will truly make it magical. It’s called Ojai Valley Inn & Spa; rating is 5 stars and service is wonderful. The resort features an award-winning on-site spa and golf course.
  1. Watching A Movie.  This is great bonding moment for moms and daughters. A movie can make you laugh, smile, or cry. A great movie to watch is The Blind Side. What better way to see Sandra Bullock, America’s sweetheart, as a loving mother who fosters a boy that becomes a pro football player. Another great film to watch this Mother’s Day is Amy. Amy stars Rachel Griffiths as Amy’s mother, Tanya, and Alana De Roma as Amy. It tells the tale of a girl who is having trouble communicating after her father’s death and the only way to communicate is through singing. Her mother believes if people listen to Amy closely, beautiful things will happen.
  1. Having Brunch. The perfect way to celebrate Mother’s Day is by taking your Mother out to brunch. People enjoy themselves more when they’re surrounded by great food and company. One great brunch place is The Cottage in La Jolla, California. Located on the corner of Fay Ave in the downtown area of La Jolla. Their French toast is delicious with generous amount of powder sugar, strawberries and syrup.
  1. Painting. Wine and Canvas is a studio where you can enjoy a variety of wine selections while painting, Wine and Canvas offers new paintings every day for customers to choose from and paint. There is an instructor who will guide the class. By the end of the night, both moms and daughters will have gotten in touch with their artistic side.
  1. Personalized Mugs. Creating a personalized mug may be the best thing to give to your Mother. She will cherish it and enjoy drinking her favorite tea and coffee from it. Here’s a great mug from Amazon if you’re having trouble with the personalization aspect.

Take this opportunity to show Mother’s out there they are loved. Everyday should be a special day for mothers and they should always be recognized for their hard work and the many sacrifices they make.

In addition, Amy is available on DVD and Vimeo and distributed by World Wide Motion Pictures. Be sure to check all the activities and mark it off your check list.

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Actress Rachel Griffiths – Parallels of St. James Church Scandals and Film Amy

 

Two stories, one fictitious and one actual, link together through Australian actress Rachel Griffiths to speak of a single message on behalf of the most treasured inhabitants of our society: our children.

The memory of voiceless, innocent children take a part of Griffiths’s real-life history.  The recent arson and destruction of St. James Church in Brighton brought about memories of times when Griffiths attended this church - memories darkened by the church’s history of sexual abuse.  During the 1970’s and 80s, Father Ronald Pickering abused young boys as he served as priest at St. James.  The psychological trauma inflicted on several of these boys ended in tragic suicides.

"We've all attended many funerals of boys that we now know were abused by [Father Ronald] Pickering ... and other perpetrators in the parish - at the actual church that it occurred in,” former parishioner Griffiths told 774 ABC Melbourne.

Griffiths further commented on the struggle it had been to rebuild a community around the church after revelations of the many sexual abuses that were made.  Such revelations of the corruption of innocence within the walls of St. James were only heard after voices were given to the voiceless, and when the children’s trials were finally understood.  The sad stories of St. James Church and the victims who fell through the cracks of our protection meld with the story of the film Amy, starring Rachel Griffiths, to tell us that a child’s silence is never really sound-proof.  It takes only a moment’s worth of listening to hear a voice sing.

Amy (1997) is a film about the struggles of a silent 8-year-old girl and her mother Tanya (Griffiths).  The little girl named Amy does not speak for mysterious reasons discovered as the film’s storyline progresses.  Her silence, a trait so uncharacteristic of the nature we know children to have, is revealed to actually be a cry for help.  Amy depicts an often helpless Tanya finding a voice for her child.

 

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Celebrate Female Directors this Women’s History Month

 

Happy Women’s history month! Female directors may be a rarity in Hollywood today, but women were a much larger part of the film industry at the beginning of the silent film era. Before film was seen as a lucrative commercial enterprise, filming was often done as an artistic hobby. One of the most influential directors of her time, often overlooked in history books, was Alice Guy-Blache, who wrote, directed, and produced more than 1,000 narrative films in France between 1896 and 1907, and in the United States from 1910 to 1922. She is sometimes credited as the woman who began the narrative story style everyone enjoys today.

During the 1900’s, female directors were pioneers in primitive color techniques, such as hand painting and stamping, and they helped in creating the first examples of sound in film by recording on wax cylinders.  By the early teens and the 1920’s men invaded the directing roles and women were pushed to working on writing screenplays. Additionally, at the end of WW1, society pushed women back into their domestic roles as the men returned home from war. Currently only 11 % of films have a female lead actress, and only four women have ever been nominated for Best Director by the Academy. Those women were Lina Wertmuller in 1977 for Seven Beauties, Jane Campion in 1994 for The Piano,  Sofia Coppola in 2004 for Lost in Translation, and Kathryn Bigelow, who was the only woman to win in this category for The Hurt Locker in 2010. In 2013, not a single female was nominated in the Directing, Cinematography, Film Editing, Writing, or Music categories, and across the 19 categories only 35 women were nominated in total, while 140 of their male counterparts were nominated.

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