Saturday, December 13, 2008
Amazing Grace
Amazing Grace is a 2007 film directed by Michael Apted about the campaign against the slave trade in 18th century Britain, led by famous abolitionist William Wilberforce, who was responsible for steering anti-slave trade legislation through the British parliament. The title is a reference to the hymn "Amazing Grace" and the film also recounts John Newton's writing of the hymn.
The film premiered at the closing of the Toronto Film Festival on September 16, 2006 and its US premiere was at the opening of the Heartland Film Festival, Indianapolis, Indiana on October 19, 2006, after which director Michael Apted participated in a question and answer session. It also was screened as the centrepiece of the annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
The film's wider release was on February 23, 2007 through IDP and Samuel Goldwyn Films, coinciding with the 200th anniversary of the date the British parliament voted to ban the slave trade.
Amazing Facts
Amazing Facts is an American Christian ministry. Beginning as a single radio program in 1966 it has expanded into television programming, training, health, prophecy seminars and online Bible study ministries.
Amazing Facts was founded in 1966 by Joe Crews in Baltimore, Maryland. Inspired by the success of The Rest Of The Story, hosted by Paul Harvey, Joe Crews' original objective for Amazing Facts was to reach out to both Christian and non-Christian listeners via daily 15-minute programs by opening with a scientific or historic fact, and how it applies to the overall Biblical messages. Later, the program offered accompanying home Bible study courses, as well as books written by Crews himself. In 1987, Amazing Facts initiated a television ministry that has expanded to four programs as well as periodic evangelism series. It's theology is largely that of the Seventh Day Adventist church.
Shortly before his death in 1994, Crews invited Doug Batchelor to assume the position of President/Speaker, which he has held ever since. Today, the Amazing Facts radio program "Bible Answers Live" broadcasts mainly out of Sacramento, California each Sunday evening to about 155 national stations. Amazing Facts has also opened a Center of Evangelism and commonly hosts seminars using the same presentation model.
Amazing Facts has multiple evangelistic teams that host prophecy seminars around the United States. In 2008 Amazing Facts formed a partnership with Weimar Institute to offer health ministries.
The Amazing Race
The Amazing Race, sometimes referred to as TAR, is a reality television game show in which teams of two people (with one exception), who have some form of a preexisting personal relationship, race around the world in competition with other teams. Contestants strive to arrive first at "pit stops" at the end of each leg of the race to win prizes and avoid coming in last, which carries the possibility of elimination or a significant disadvantage in the following leg. Contestants travel to and within multiple countries in a variety of transportation modes, including planes, taxis, rental cars, trains, buses and boats. The clues in each leg point the teams to the next destination or direct them to perform a task, either together or by a single member. These challenges are related in some manner to the country or culture where they are located. Teams are progressively eliminated until three teams are left; at that point, the team that arrives first in the final leg is awarded a large cash grand prize, usually one million U.S. dollars.
Created by Elise Doganieri and Bertram van Munster, the original series has aired in the United States since 2001 and has earned seven Primetime Emmy Awards, including all six "Outstanding Reality-Competition Program" awards that have been given. Emmy-award-winning New Zealand television personality Phil Keoghan has been the popular host of the show since its inception. Hollywood mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer has been TAR's main producer. The show has branched out to include a number of international versions following a similar format.
Amazing Stories
Amazing Stories was an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction. Before Amazing, science fiction stories had made regular appearances in other magazines, including some published by Gernsback, but Amazing helped define and launch a new genre of pulp fiction.
Amazing was published, with some interruptions, for almost eighty years. The title first changed hands in 1929, when Gernsback was forced into bankruptcy and lost control of the magazine. Amazing became unprofitable during the 1930s and in 1938 was purchased by Ziff-Davis, who hired Raymond A. Palmer as editor. Palmer made the magazine successful though it was not regarded as a quality magazine within the science fiction community. In the late 1940s Amazing began to print stories about the Shaver Mystery, a lurid mythos which explained accidents and disaster as the work of robots named "deros"; the stories were presented as fact, and led to dramatically increased circulation but also widespread ridicule. Palmer was replaced by Howard Browne in 1949, who briefly entertained plans of taking Amazing upmarket. These plans came to nothing, though Amazing did switch to a digest format in 1953, shortly before the end of the pulp-magazine era. A brief period under the editorship of Paul W. Fairman was followed, at the end of 1958, by the leadership of Cele Goldsmith. Despite her lack of experience she was able to bring new life to the magazine, and her years are regarded as one of Amazing's most creative eras. She was unable to arrest the declining circulation, though, and the magazine was sold to Sol Cohen's Universal Publishing Company in 1965.
Under Cohen Amazing was filled almost entirely with reprinted stories. Cohen did not pay a reprint fee to the authors of these stories, and this brought him into conflict with the newly-formed Science Fiction Writers of America. The conflict cost Amazing two successive editors (Harry Harrison and Barry N. Malzberg) in a short period at the end of the 1960s. Ted White took over as editor after Malzberg, eliminated the reprints and made the magazine a respected name again: Amazing was nominated for the prestigious Hugo award three times during his tenure. White left at the end of the 1970s. The 1980s saw Amazing pass into the hands of TSR and Wizards of the Coast, who made intermittent attempts over the next twenty years to create a successful modern incarnation of the magazine. A last attempt was made by Paizo Publishing at the end of 2004, but publication was suspended after the March 2005 issue and never resumed.
Gernsback's initial editorial approach was to blend instruction with entertainment; he believed science fiction could educate readers. His audience rapidly showed a preference for implausible adventures, however, and the movement away from Gernsback's idealism accelerated when the magazine changed hands in 1929. Despite this, Gernsback had an enormous impact on the field: the creation of a specialist magazine for science fiction spawned an entire genre publishing industry. The letter columns in Amazing, where fans could make contact with each other, led to the formation of science fiction fandom, which in turn had a strong influence on the development of the field. Writers whose first story was published in the magazine include Howard Fast, Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, and Thomas M. Disch. Overall, though, Amazing itself was rarely an influential magazine within the genre. Some critics have commented that by "ghettoizing" science fiction, Gernsback in fact did harm to its literary growth, but this viewpoint has been countered by the argument that science fiction needed an independent market in which to develop if it was going to reach its potential.
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