Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace, the movie about William Wilberforce, the 18th century British reformer who put and end to slavery in Great Britain is due to be released on Friday. Wilberforce is one of my heroes and I'm looking forward to seeing the movie. It was released by Walden Media, the company that also recently released Bridge to Terabithia.

Micheal Flaherty, President of Walden Media, talked about the vision of his company to inspire and to promote reading good books in a recent talk at Hillsdale college:

"You are what you read. We are shaped and influenced by the books that we read. They prepare us for more than interesting conversations—they actually prepare us to face real crises that we encounter in life. Few people would dispute this simple statement, so let’s ask a simple related question: What are we reading today?

Walden Media was started several years ago by myself, Cary Granat, and Phil Anschutz. We wanted to create a company dedicated to recapturing imagination, rekindling curiosity, and demonstrating the rewards of knowledge and virtue. All of our films would be based on great books, great people, and great historical events. They would be made by the best talent in entertainment and they would all be linked to educational materials developed by some of the best talent in education. We were taking Henry David Thoreau’s famous advice—to march to the beat of a different drummer—to Hollywood, which is why we decided to name our company after Thoreau’s most famous book, Walden."

Read the entire speech here:
Let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage

1 comment:

Donna said...

I so admire what the folks at Walden Media are doing. It's nice to have an option of good family friendly fare that are actually good movies. I really want to see Amazing Grace.