Vatican to organize congress about Catholic television
Vatican Organizing a Congress on Catholic TVTo Promote Collaboration and Intercommunication
VATICAN CITY, OCT. 25, 2005 (
Zenit.org).- The Holy See is organizing an international congress geared toward those working in the field of Catholic television.
Archbishop John Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, confirmed the news today.
The U.S. prelate said the event will have "much more to do than study the history of the Church's involvement in television, which -- unfortunately -- has been all too limited." No dates have been set for the event.
The congress, he added, will have to answer several questions.
"First, it would help all of us to know about one another -- to exchange our experiences and also to see if we can exchange our productions," the prelate said.
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Can films be cursed; are there Hollywood hexes?
Sunday HeraldCurse Of The Omen ... and other Hollywood HexesFrom The Omen to The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby there are tales of fatal accidents, devil worship, doomed planes and car crashes …
Barry Didcock looks at some of the most cursed films of all time and finds a Poltergeist-style gumbo of death, disaster and hard-to-explain events. Is this a trail of satanic hexes, or do we just want to believe?
late night, an empty road, a car. A man and a woman speed towards a head-on collision which will kill one of them and burn an unforgettable image into the mind of the other.
It sounds like the pitch for a movie but, while film is at the heart of it, this story is very real indeed. The place is Holland, the year 1976, the date August 13 – a Friday, as bad luck would have it. The man is designer John Richardson, currently working on Richard Attenborough’s second world war epic, A Bridge Too Far, but most recently employed as special effects consultant on supernatural chiller The Omen. The woman is Liz Moore, his assistant. In a few moments she’ll be dead, cut in half when the car’s front wheel slices through the chassis and into the passenger seat. Richardson will survive to tell the tale – and quite a story it is too.
Less than a year earlier, he had masterminded the parade of gruesome deaths which had made The Omen a box office smash, among them the decapitation of a photographer played by David Warner. And, like everyone else who had worked on the film – including stars Gregory Peck and Lee Remick – he was well aware of the whispers and rumours which had surrounded its filming. There had been talk of a hex, a curse, a hoodoo.
Did he believe it? Not then, perhaps. But as he came to in the minutes after the crash, he saw something that must have chilled him to the bone: his passenger, dead from injuries which bore an uncanny resemblance to the ones he had prepared for Warner. And a road sign marking the distance to an otherwise insignificant Dutch town. It read: Ommen, 66.6 km.
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"Preventing Abuse Conference" to be held on Nov. 9 in L.A.; focuses on human trafficking
Media Availability on Human Trafficking and Child Abduction; Group Commends Lifetime Miniseries and Announces Preventing Abuse Conference
To: National Desk
Contact: Tony Nassif, president and founder of the
Cedars Cultural and Educational Foundation, 818-848-7522,
tnassif@cedarsfoundation.comLOS ANGELES, Oct. 25, /
Christian Wire Service/ -- Tony Nassif, president and founder of the Cedars Cultural and Educational Foundation, commends Lifetime Television network for producing and broadcast a miniseries entitled HUMAN TRAFFICKING bringing light on a devastating evil.
Human trafficking (modern day slavery) is the third largest money maker next to gun running and drugs. It is modern day slavery, selling women and children for commercial sexual exploitation. Human trafficking of women and children happens right here in America! Human trafficking even threatens our national security.
On Wednesday, November 9, 2005 (8:45 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.) Tony Nassif, president of the Cedars Cultural and Educational Foundation will host THE PREVENTING ABUSE CONFERENCE on human trafficking and child abduction at The Westin/Bonaventure Hotel, 404 South Figueroa Street in Los Angeles, CA. Registration is available by email at
conference@cedarsfoundation.com.
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2nd annual "National Media Prayer Breakfast" to be held in L.A. on Nov 4
PRAYER BREAKFAST FOR HOLLYWOOD'S ELITE IN L.A. ON NOV 4TH2nd Annual “National Media Prayer Breakfast” Mobilizes Spiritual Support for Hollywood
Anne P. Sharp
Sharp Concepts
Phone/Fax: (818) 994-2309
Mobile: (818) 720-3825
Email:
anne@annesharp.comWeb:
www.annesharp.comFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEHOLLYWOOD, CA (
ANS) -- On November 4th, Hollywood celebrities, top producers, directors and executives will be joined by people from across the nation at the 2nd Annual “National Media Prayer Breakfast,” to mobilize spiritual support for the 700 most powerful media professionals in the world.
The words “prayer” and “Hollywood” are not often seen in the same sentence, but prayer for Hollywood’s leaders will definitely be on the minds of attendees of the 2nd Annual National Media Prayer Breakfast in Los Angeles, California in a few weeks. More than 1,000 people are expected to attend, joining celebrities, top producers, directors and decision-makers to pray for the 700 most powerful and influential media professionals in the world.
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Old books and movies: created in a culture that was permeated with a Christian worldview
Catholic News AgencyColumns
GOOD BOOKSBy Joseph E. Rendini
Old Books, Old Movies
Rather than a book, I am going to discuss some old feature films in this column. Most of these films are based upon novels or short stories so, while it is a stretch, I can just barely classify them as literature. Some of them are available on DVD; virtually all of them are shown from time-to-time on the Turner Classic Movies cable channel. They are all worth watching.
No one needs to be reminded that today’s Hollywood movies lack Christian content. But there was a time not so long ago when the Christian worldview so permeated American society that it even popped up in the movies. And not merely in overtly Christian religious films, such as The King of Kings (1927), The Song of Bernadette (1944), The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952), The Ten Commandments (1956) or Ben-Hur (1959). The Christian understanding of life and death, love and marriage, sin, forgiveness and redemption peeked through some purely secular films, from the memorable to the relatively obscure and now forgotten. So, rather than moan about what today’s popular films fail to do, let us learn from what yesterday’s succeeded in doing, sometimes unconsciously or even despite themselves, in the hope that what has happened before can, God-willing, happen again.
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