Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Alabama Memories

"Burlington-based team tries to restore a family habit; Brothers offer TV movies to share in" by Sarah Rodman |  Globe Staff, September 20, 2013

BURLINGTON — In a world in which individual screens are programmed exactly to the tastes of the eyeballs watching them, Chip and Micheal Flaherty harbor an almost quaint hope: They want to bring back family viewing time.

To this end, the brothers, who head the Burlington-based company Walden Media, have created a series of TV movies presented as “Walden Family Theater,” airing Fridays at 8 p.m. on Hallmark Channel....

Friday night’s installment, “The Watsons Go to Birmingham,” the family drama, is set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four young girls on Sept. 15, 1963. In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of that event, Walden Media held a screening and participated in a candlelight vigil and march with the Salvation Army to benefit the Kroc Center at the Strand Theatre in Dorchester this past Sunday.

The film bears the company’s signature: a combination of drama, humor, and history lesson.

Hollywood always lies about history.

Founded in 1999, Walden Media — backed by sole investor billionaire Philip Anschutz and named for the Concord pond, with a tip of the cap to Thoreau — is not a household name but has been making waves in the feature film business. The company takes beloved, and oftentimes award-winning books, and adapts them for the big screen, including “The Chronicles of Narnia” films....

Micheal says they found a “coalition of the willing” for the family movie series in producing partner Arc Entertainment — headed up by fellow Bostonian Trevor Drinkwater — and sponsors Walmart and Procter & Gamble. He says the group then pitched Hallmark.

“We want to make family films, particularly the kinds of films that Walden is used to, which are films based on books that people love and aren’t afraid to tell a story that will get people talking,” says Micheal....

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Related: Alabama's 50th Anniversary


Ah, the days of Deen in the Old South with the Southern belles when people were on the move and making change

If you are offended by my sarcastic commentary on the divisive stereotypes sold to us by the supremacist paper, slice me a break, will ya? 

Sorry for racing through this post, readers, but I think you understand.

"The son of a Southern Baptist mother and a Syrian Muslim father, Hammami was raised in Daphne, Ala., where he was a gifted student and high school class president. He later embraced the ultraconservative form of Islam known as Salafism before ultimately moving to Somalia in 2006 to fight for Al Shabab. Growing up, Hammami loved Kurt Cobain and Nintendo and dabbled in drugs. He also attended Bible camp."

They just make these guys up, don't they? This guy looks like the classic CIA cutout.

That will get you to the bottom of this. I guess they killed him (or removed him from the case assignment to go somewhere else) before launching the attack.