My column this month outlines how you can make a retreat from your seat if you are unable to a retreat house.
For Lent this year, the Pauline Center for Media Studies hosted a six-part weekly program using The Way, starring Martin Sheen. In the film written and directed by Sheen’s son, Emilio Estevez, Sheen plays Tom Avery, a widower who travels to France to bring home the body of his son who died in an accident. Tom discovers his son had just set out to make
the 800-kilometer pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James of Compostela and resolves to
take his place on the Camino (see October 2011 St. Anthony Messenger).
Because we wanted to keep the motif of the pilgrimage, even though we met at our center and people arrived by bus or car, our slogan was “If you can’t walk it with your feet, you can do it from your seat!” The same can be said for an annual retreat, which can be made at home if you’re unable to get away to a retreat house. Summertime is ideal to live out Jesus’ invitation to the disciples in Mark 6:31: “Come away by yourselves to a deserted
place and rest a while.”
Narrative films are an ideal way to bridge faith and life, using the format and methodology of the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius. A Scripture verse that reflects Tom’s reality and journey in The Way is John 9:11.
Continue reading the On Faith and Media column here
Since I moved my blog to WordPress on October 5, 2008 I never dreamed of 500.000 hits or page views. In this day of YouTube videos getting a million hits in a day or an hour, this half million in three years eight months, an average of 300 hits a day with 2,900 in one day in 2010, does not seem like much in the virtual scheme of things. Yet it provides me with a motive of thanksgiving for the Internet and the gift of communication between God’s people the world over and who knows? Maybe the universe. (We don’t know who might be listening, do we?)
WordPress sent me an analysis of that best day: March 9, 2010
Thank you for your visit, your time, your interest. Be assured of my prayers.
19th Catholics in Media Awards to Hugo, Modern Family, I Am & The Way at April 29th Awards Program
“Bold and Beautiful” Star John McCook to MC
Ubiquity Pictures CEO Barbara M. Gangi is
Honorary Chairperson
(Los Angeles, CA, April 2, 2012) – The Catholics in Media Associates (CIMA) 19th Annual Mass and Awards Brunch on Sunday, April 29th will honor the 5-time Academy Award-winning, Martin Scorsese-directed family film Hugo, the Tom Shadyac documentary I Am and ABC Television’s Emmy, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and Peabody Award-winning series Modern Family. The Emilio Estevez film The Way, starring Martin Sheen, a previous CIMA Lifetime Achievement Award winner, will receive the CIMA 2012 Board of Directors Award. The 2012 CIMA Awards at theBeverly Hills Hotel, Beverly Hills, CA, will begin with a 10:00 AM Mass with a brunch and awards ceremony to follow, announced CIMA President Haskell V. Anderson III. CIMA board member John Kelly is executive producer and CIMA Vice President Nancy Norton Bevins is producer of the 2012 CIMA Awards program. Master of Ceremonies is John McCook, Emmy-nominated star of “The Bold and the Beautiful.” Honorary Chairperson is Barbara M. Gangi, CEO ofUbiquity Pictures.
The CIMA Awards were created in 1992 by former DGA President Jack Shea and his wife, veteran television screenwriterPatt Shea and other prominent Catholics in the entertainment industry. Their purpose is “To promote and applaud individuals, films and TV programs that uplift the spirit and help us better understand what it is to be part of the human family.”
The CIMA 2012 Film Award will be given to the Martin Scorsese film Hugo, Scorsese’s first 3D film, a family mystery based upon the Brian Selznick novel about a boy who lives alone in a Paris railroad station and the enigmatic owner of a toy shop. Winner of five Academy Awards and named “Best Picture” by the 2012 National Board of Review Hugo has received two 2012 BATFA Awards and the 2012 Golden Globe for “Best Director.” Graham King’s GK Films and Johnny Depp’s Infinitum Nihil are producers. David Crockett, Barbara De Fina, Christi Dembrowski, George Kacandes, Charles Newirth and Emma Tillinger are executive producers. Hugo was released nationally on DVD on February 28th.
The 2012 CIMA Television Award will be presented to the ABC Television series Modern Family, created by Executive Producers Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan and revolving around three families interrelated thru patriarch Jay Pritchett (Ed O’Neill). Modern Family has received the 2009 Peabody Award, the 2010 Emmy Award for “Outstanding Comedy Series,” the 2010 Screen Actors Guild Award for “Outstanding Ensemble Performance” and the 2012 Golden Globe Award for “Outstanding Television Series – Musical or Comedy.”
The CIMA 2012 Documentary Award goes to I Am, written, directed and narrated by prolific Hollywood film and television comedy director Tom Shadyac (Bruce Almighty, Liar Liar, Ace Ventura, The Nutty Professor) relating his personal experiences and personal journey following a devastating 2007 bicycle accident. I am is concerned with “The nature of humanity and the world’s ever growing addiction to materialism” and asks the questions “What’s wrong with the world?” and “What can I do about it?” Jennifer Abbott and Jonathan Watson are executive producers.
The CIMA 2012 Board of Directors Award goes to the Emilio Estevez film The Way, starring previous CIMA Lifetime Achievement Award winner Martin Sheen. The Way is a powerful and inspirational story about family and friends and navigating the challenges of an ever-changing and complicated world.
Filmed on location in Spain and France along “The Way of St. James,” The Way was written and directed by Emilio Estevez. Trevor Drinkwater, Ramon Gerard Estevez, Alberto Marini, Janet Sheen and John Sloss are executive producers.The Way was released nationally on DVD on February 21st.
ABOUT CIMA
CIMA was formed in 1992 by working professionals in the entertainment industry to help them relate their faith to their professional lives. Through their annual awards, CIMA “Recognizes films, television programs and other entertainment forms that lift the spirit and help us better understand what it is to be part of the human family.”
For 2012 CIMA Award tickets, sponsorship and program advertising visit www.catholicsinmedia.org or call 818.907.2734.
The nation, indeed the world, is enthralled by Jeremy Lin, the undrafted humble Harvard underdog who has stunned the NBA and the New York Knicks with his performances on the basketball court these last couple of weeks.
But hidden in the deep South, somewhere around the decrepit environs of North Memphis, Tenn., a high school football team struggles to succeed just as it did in 2010 when The Tigers, the school’s football team, for the first time in the school’s 110 year history, made it to the playoffs.
“Undefeated” is an Oscar-nominated feature-length documentary about that team that enthralls from the first two minutes. I admit, I was not enthusiastic about reviewing another sports film, let alone football.
Now I can say that I understand why people see football as a religion — in a good way. Why? Because over the six years that the chubby white volunteer coach Bill Courtney guided this team, they prayed, fought, asked forgiveness, and lived genuine “agape” as a community.
Last Sunday night at the launch for Jeff Dietrich’s book “Broken and Shared” he ended the readings with an Advent reflection he had just written a few days before. It is very moving and gives a whole different view of the “occupy” movement.
COMMENTARY
They came just before dawn; they came with fire trucks and ambulances and sirens blaring; they came in helicopters with rotary blades flapping; they came marching in lock step with helmets and visors and steel batons at “port arms.” They came and came and came. They came to disperse, to clean up, and to clear out Occupy LA. The morning air was cold and I was shivering not from the cold but from fear. Small drops of sweat trickled down my armpits. This was the last place I wanted to be. At age 65 I was in the distinct minority of this ragtag assembly of youthful rabble-rousers, an alien in this collection of seemingly disorganized children.
Have a Little Faith (Sunday, November 27, ABC, 9/8) is Mitch Albom‘s fourth book into a made-for-TV movie and the Hallmark Hall of Fame latest holiday offering.
The movie will seem familiar territory for Albom fans at first, then it moves beyond the interview with a beloved mentor, to living the lessons learned. Based on a series of interviews, like “Tuesdays with Morrie”, Albom (Bradley Whitford) visits Rabbi Lewis (Martin Landau) who asks Mitch to write and deliver his eulogy. Mitch accepts but only if he can interview the rabbi, since it has been a long time since they were in touch.
What Mitch learns from Rabbi Lewis opens his eyes to people and stories of faith around him. He learns about the Reverend Covington (Laurence Fishburn), an ex-con and recovering addict, who runs an inner-city Detroit church, with a badly leaking roof, for those in need of help.
As with Albom’s stories, he takes us on a life-changing journey with him. The acting in “Have a Little Faith” is believable, and Martin Landau especially adds other-worldly humanity and humor to the story. Albom makes us ask: who are the people who have made a difference in our lives, who have helped make us who we are today?
The main attraction, besides the film, was the participation of the film’s star, Martin Sheen, his eldest son writer/director, Emilio Estevez, and producer David Alexanian. The panel was moderated by communications professor Dr. Craig Detweiller of Pepperdine University. Other panelists were Jesuit Fr. Eddie Siebert, president of Loyola Productions and chaplain to CIMA, the Rev. Scott Young, executive director of the University Religious Conference at UCLA, and me.
“The Way” is the story of California widowed father and ophthalmologist, Tom, who goes to France to bring home the body of his son, who died in an accident just as he was to embark on the famous Camino to the Shrine of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. He finds three companions along the way, a pilgrimage that changed him from choosing a life to living it, opened up his view of the world from his small little golf course to countries and people he never thought about, that healed a father-son relationship, even in death, and celebrates the divine hope of reconciliation, even in a church that can be, as the character Jack says, a “temple of tears.”
Sister Rose's My Movies Weblog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.