Movie
Evangeline Lilly embraces faith-driven project ‘Legend of Destruction’ after stepping away from Hollywood
For more than two decades, Evangeline Lilly built a career inside some of Hollywood’s biggest and most fantastical worlds. She survived a mysterious island in “Lost,” fought alongside elves as the elf Tauriel in “The Hobbit,” and entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the superhero Wasp.
But at 47, the Canadian actress, author and mother of two said that despite her successful Hollywood career, her ambitions are now different.
“I retired from acting about five years ago,” Lilly told The Christian Post. “At my core, the thing that’s most important to me is my faith. What’s most important to me is philosophy and really thinking through the great questions, the big, huge, important questions in life.”
Those priorities are part of what drew Lilly to “Legend of Destruction,” a historical epic about the violent collapse of Jerusalem and destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. Lilly voices Queen Berenice, a Jewish ruler caught between her people, her faith and the political forces threatening Jerusalem, and also serves as an executive producer on the film.
According to Lilly, the project offered her something her blockbuster career, despite all its rewards and accolades, never could: the opportunity to engage directly with questions of faith, morality, biblical history and human nature.
“I’m so proud to have been a part of these huge, incredible franchises that I got to be a part of,” she said. “I think in so many ways they were important to a lot of people, and also they don’t really satisfy my passions.”
Directed by Gidi Dar, “Legend of Destruction” was originally released in Israel in 2021 and uses hand-painted images to tell the story of the Jewish revolt against Rome and the internal divisions that helped bring Jerusalem to ruin. Other stars who contributed their voices to the film include Oscar Isaac, Elliott Gould and Billy Zane.
Lilly, an outspoken critic of using artificial intelligence to replace human artists, shared how she first encountered the film before the AI explosion in film and media. The actress said the film’s reliance on paintings, sound, vocal ability and camera movement is a countercultural “celebration” of human artistry, particularly today.
“It still felt to me like this incredible act of revolution to take the beauty of these hand-painted oil paintings and bring them to life through story and sound and camera movements,” she said, calling the result something “unique and singular” that she had never seen before.
Watching the paintings move across the screen, she added, feels like sitting around a fire listening to a story while images unfold in the imagination.
“This is what human art does,” she said. “We lived this story as a species. It has our collective blood in it, and it is told by human hands through human imagination and human heart.”
For Lilly, the film, which has already won four Israeli Academy Awards and recently opened in the U.S., also provided an opportunity to highlight a little-known biblical story. Queen Berenice appears briefly in the Book of Acts (Acts 25–26) alongside her brother, King Agrippa II, and Lilly said she was fascinated by the real-life woman who wielded significant influence in a male-dominated world.
“She was still a woman caught in the middle of all of these warring male egos and all of this warring male power,” Lilly said.
The film depicts Berenice facing an agonizing conflict between preserving the Temple, and with it her religious and familial heritage, while also protecting her own political position and survival.
“She has to decide: Will I live, and will I survive, or will my people and the Temple?” Lilly said. “It’s a real impossible situation that she’s put in, and it tests her to her full limit.”
Lilly said she has long been fascinated by biblical women and has a passion for delving into their stories. She pointed to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah, whose story in Genesis is largely remembered through the violence committed against her.
“I find the same about Berenice,” Lilly said. “It was fun to have somebody fill out that picture. Who would she have been, and what would her life have been like, and what were the things she was wrestling with every day?”
Lilly shared how her own name carries a connection to her faith. She revealed how, as she became increasingly serious about her faith over the years, she researched the meaning of her name: Nicole Evangeline Lilly.
“It wasn’t until I became really passionately … dedicated to my faith that I was like, ‘I want to know what that name means,’” she recalled. “I found out it meant ‘victorious Evangelical bride of Christ,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s a big responsibility.’”
Before working on “Legend of Destruction,” Lilly said she knew little about the destruction of the Second Temple or the broader Jewish history surrounding the event. But after researching the film, the actress said she was particularly struck by the proximity of the events to Jesus’ life and crucifixion.
“Underneath every spiritual story in the Bible is always a political story,” Lilly said. “In this film, you get to see how those two things converged in the worst possible way. … In this story, there’s so much eye for an eye, and in the end, everyone winds up blind.”
Lilly added that “Legend of Destruction” serves as a warning about what can happen when ideology becomes more important than recognizing the humanity of the person on the other side.
“We’re living in a time where our ideologies and our ideas are coming before our humanity and our ability to see the other person as worthy of love, worthy of God’s love, worthy of our love,” she said.
“We choose to be divided, and it always ends in destruction,” she added. “We could catch ourselves now before … that sort of ship has sailed, and it’s gone too far. … We’re all so exhausted from the hatred and the division and the pain and the suffering and the death and the war that is going on all over the world. I think we all long for a different path, for a different solution.”
“We don’t have to keep going down the path of destruction,” Lilly said. “We can choose another way.”
After more than 20 years in Hollywood, the Hawaii resident said she no longer feels compelled by the “rat race” of proving herself or seeking affirmation. These days, she focuses on writing, study, reading and projects aligned more closely with her passions.
“The most wonderful gift of getting older is finally being able to give your time to really what matters to you,” she said.
“The rat race of trying to make it in the world, trying to prove yourself, trying to show everyone how great you are and get that affirmation that you’re looking for, which is an important part of the first half of life, is done,” she continued. “And now it’s time really to nourish and nurture your community and the world. … I call myself an elder in training right now because I’m middle-aged. I take that really seriously. It’s important that I devote my time now to things that really, really matter to me.”
“Legend of Destruction,” she said, is that kind of worthwhile project. She emphasized that through the film, she wants viewers to recognize something uncomfortable about themselves in its characters and understand the power of extending grace.
“Every single person in the film believed they were right, and every single person in the film did something very wrong, believing the whole time that what they were doing was righteous and good,” she said.
“We all think we are right, and we know, and the other person’s wrong, and they’re evil,” she said. “We’re human and flawed, and we [mess] up, and we’re going to do things wrong. … It is only by grace that the world has kept turning and humanity has survived. And so, just to remember that grace that is given to us should be passed on to our neighbor and our enemy.”
Sources:Christianpost
ചലച്ചിത്രകാരൻ നാനാ പടേക്കർ അന്തരിച്ചു. 75 വയസായിരുന്നു. ഗോവയിലെ വീട്ടിൽ വച്ച് ഹൃദയാഘാതത്തെ തുടർന്നാണ് അന്ത്യം. 3 തവണ ദേശീയ പുരസ്കാരം നേടിയ ചലച്ചിത്രകാരനാണ് നാനാ പടേക്കര്. 2013ൽ രാജ്യം പത്മശ്രീ നൽകി അദ്ദേഹത്തെ ആദരിച്ചിരുന്നു.
പുലർച്ചെ 5.20നാണ് മരണം സ്ഥിരീകരിച്ചത്. ആശുപത്രിയിലെത്തിച്ച ശേഷം ഏകദേശം 45 മിനിറ്റോളം ഡോക്ടർമാർ തുടർച്ചയായി ഹൃദയ-ശ്വാസകോശ പുനരുജ്ജീവന ശ്രമങ്ങൾ നടത്തിയെങ്കിലും പ്രതികരണമുണ്ടായില്ലെന്ന് മണിപ്പാൽ ആശുപത്രിയിലെ ഡോ. ഷേഖർ സാൽക്കർ വാർത്താ ഏജൻസിയായ എഎൻഐയോട് പറഞ്ഞു. മരണവുമായി ബന്ധപ്പെട്ട് മെഡിക്കോ-ലീഗൽ കേസ് രജിസ്റ്റർ ചെയ്തിട്ടുണ്ടെന്നും പോസ്റ്റ്മോർട്ടം നടത്തുമെന്നും അദ്ദേഹം വ്യക്തമാക്കി.
ഹിന്ദി, മറാത്തി സിനിമകളിൽ പതിറ്റാണ്ടുകൾ നീണ്ട അഭിനയജീവിതത്തിലൂടെ തന്റേതായ ഇടം കണ്ടെത്തിയ താരമായിരുന്നു നാനാ പടേക്കർ. ശക്തമായ കഥാപാത്രങ്ങളിലൂടെയും വേറിട്ട അഭിനയശൈലിയിലൂടെയും ഇന്ത്യൻ സിനിമയിൽ ശ്രദ്ധേയനായ അദ്ദേഹം അഭിനേതാവിന് പുറമെ സംവിധായകനായും എഴുത്തുകാരനായും പ്രവർത്തിച്ചു.
‘പരിന്ദ’, ‘ക്രാന്തിവീർ’, ‘അബ് തക് ഛപ്പൻ’, ‘വെൽക്കം’ തുടങ്ങിയ ചിത്രങ്ങളിലെ പ്രകടനങ്ങൾ നാനാ പടേക്കറിന് വലിയ ജനപ്രീതി നേടിക്കൊടുത്തു. ‘പരിന്ദ’യിലെ പ്രകടനത്തിന് മികച്ച സഹനടനുള്ള ദേശീയ ചലച്ചിത്ര പുരസ്കാരവും ‘ക്രാന്തിവീർ’ എന്ന ചിത്രത്തിലെ അഭിനയത്തിന് മികച്ച നടനുള്ള ദേശീയ പുരസ്കാരവും അദ്ദേഹം നേടിയിട്ടുണ്ട്.
നാടകവേദിയിലൂടെയാണ് നാനാ പടേക്കർ അഭിനയരംഗത്തേക്ക് എത്തിയത്. പിന്നീട് സിനിമയിലും സ്വന്തം അഭിനയശൈലിയിലൂടെ ശക്തമായ സാന്നിധ്യമായി മാറുകയായിരുന്നു. ഹിന്ദിക്കും മറാത്തിക്കും പുറമെ വിവിധ ഭാഷകളിലെ ചിത്രങ്ങളിലും അദ്ദേഹം ശ്രദ്ധേയമായ വേഷങ്ങൾ അവതരിപ്പിച്ചു.
അഭിനയത്തിലെ തീവ്രതയും സംഭാഷണങ്ങളിലെ വ്യത്യസ്തമായ അവതരണശൈലിയും നാനാ പടേക്കറിനെ മറ്റു താരങ്ങളിൽനിന്ന് വേറിട്ടുനിർത്തി. ‘നട്സമ്രാട്ട്’ ഉൾപ്പെടെയുള്ള മറാത്തി ചിത്രങ്ങളിലും ശ്രദ്ധേയമായ പ്രകടനങ്ങൾ അദ്ദേഹം കാഴ്ചവച്ചു.
നിരവധി തലമുറകളിലെ പ്രേക്ഷകരെ സ്വാധീനിച്ച കരിയറിന് ശേഷമാണ് നാനാ പടേക്കറുടെ വിടവാങ്ങൽ. ഇന്ത്യൻ സിനിമയിലെ ശ്രദ്ധേയനായ മുതിർന്ന അഭിനേതാവിന്റെ വിയോഗം സിനിമാലോകത്തിന് വലിയ നഷ്ടമാണ്.
http://theendtimeradio.com
Veteran actor Nana Patekar has died at the age of 75 after suffering a severe cardiac arrest at his residence in Goa. The actor was found unconscious at his home and was rushed to a nearby hospital, where doctors attempted to revive him for around 45 minutes.
According to hospital sources, Patekar was declared dead at 5:20 am on Thursday, October 8. Preliminary analysis indicated that he had suffered a severe cardiac arrest. Despite continuous CPR, doctors could not revive him.
Dr Shekhar Salkar, Chief of Oncology Department at Manipal Hospital, told news agency ANI that Patekar could not be revived despite 45 minutes of CPR. A medico-legal case has been registered and a post-mortem will be conducted, according to the report.
A detailed statement from Patekar’s family and authorities is awaited.
Nana Patekar found unconscious at Goa residence
Patekar was reportedly found unconscious at his Goa home before being taken to hospital for emergency treatment.
The actor’s death was reported on Thursday morning at 5:20 am after doctors spent around 45 minutes attempting to revive him.
The precise circumstances surrounding his death are yet to be officially detailed. While the preliminary hospital assessment points to severe cardiac arrest, the post-mortem is expected to provide further information.
Nana Patekar’s career in Hindi and Marathi cinema
Born Vishwanath Patekar, Nana Patekar built a career spanning several decades across Hindi and Marathi cinema. He became known for an intense screen presence and a distinctive style of dialogue delivery, taking on roles that ranged from volatile and morally complex characters to comic parts.
His breakthrough came with films such as Gaman and Salaam Bombay!, before he went on to deliver acclaimed performances in movies including Parinda, Krantiveer, Agni Sakshi, Ab Tak Chhappan and Apaharan.
Patekar won the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor for Parinda and later received the National Film Award for Best Actor for Krantiveer. He was also awarded the Padma Shri in 2013 for his contribution to Indian cinema.
He found a new generation of audiences through commercial films including Welcome, in which his portrayal of the gangster Uday Shetty became one of his most recognisable comic performances.
Nana Patekar’s work across Marathi cinema
Although widely recognised for his Hindi films, Patekar remained closely associated with Marathi cinema and theatre.
His work in Marathi films included Natsamrat, Aapla Maanus and Natsamrat, among other projects. His performances often moved between mainstream cinema and more serious, character-driven stories.
In recent years, Patekar continued to work across films and other projects. He was last seen in the web series Sankalp, with the end also hinting at a sequel. His death marks the end of a career that saw him move between theatre, Marathi cinema and Bollywood over several decades.
Further details about his last rites and the circumstances surrounding his death are awaited.
http://theendtimeradio.com
Movie
‘I Know God’s Power’: Dallas Jenkins Reacts Moments After Filming Last-Ever ‘The Chosen’ Scene
“The Chosen” creator Dallas Jenkins was filled with gratitude last Thursday night just moments after filming the final scene of his popular biblical series.
Jenkins, who exclusively invited CBN News on set in Texas to witness those last moments, expressed his profound gratitude for how the show is coming to an end.
“I feel awesome because there’s no more days hanging over my head, no more seasons hanging over my head, we’ve done the work that we set out to go,” he said. “God provided everything that we needed.”
The last scene, which featured the disciples on a boat, was memorable because the vessel used in filming was the same seen in the first season of the show. The scene offered a literal and figurative full-circle moment.
“God has met us here in the waters so often,” Jenkins said. “I have nothing but gratitude.”
Ultimately, Jenkins said the mission behind the show has never changed, even as the audience has swelled to over 100 million people.
“We haven’t changed,” he said. “We’re still trying to do the work for God. We’re still humbled, we’re still surrendered, we’re still grinding.”
As for how the seven-season journey changed Jenkins, he said it offered him insight into God’s character and relationship with mankind.
“I’ve been a believer as long as I can remember,” he said. “I know God’s power. … I don’t think I knew quite as much as I do now from doing this show how intimate of a God He is, how personal of a God he is.”
Sources:faithwire
For more than 70 years, Christians throughout the world have enjoyed C.S. Lewis’ epic seven-volume masterpiece, The Chronicles of Narnia. The story, set against the backdrop of the mythical and magical land of Narnia, is meant to be a Christian “supposal” of sorts, a clear parable of the Gospel told in a way that children can understand.
At the center of all of it is the hero, the great lion Aslan. Aslan is the “Son of the Emperor Beyond the Sea,” the creator and savior of Narnia. Aslan gives his life to save Narnia (and the children who discover it) and comes back to life to defeat the evil White Witch and restore the people. Lewis describes Aslan as more than just a representation of Jesus Christ. He is a “supposal” of our Lord, what Lewis imagines the Biblical Jesus would be like if there were such a place with talking beasts and magical creatures.
In the age of film and movies, there have been several attempts to bring Lewis’ masterpiece to life on screen, but each with little success. The most recent and celebrated attempt came in the early 2000s, when Walden Media (in partnership with a pre-woke Disney) put “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” on the big screen with incredible box-office success. They then made a valiant but ultimately doomed attempt to do the same with all seven Narnia books, stopping production after “Prince Caspian” and “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” each failed to repeat the success of the first movie.
Fast forward to today: Netflix, armed with director Greta Gerwig and the movie rights to Narnia, stepped in and made Aslan transgender. Yes, you read that right.
Critics will argue that I am speaking out of bias. But the proof is in the pudding. Just recently, Empire magazine confirmed that Aslan, the Jesus figure of Narnia, would be played by Hollywood icon Meryl Streep. To add insult to injury, the magazine released a first look at the King of the Whole Wood, complete with rainbow-colored whiskers, multicolored feminized eyes and shades of rainbow in “his” mane.
This is a well-known ploy of the enemies of God, to subvert and destroy symbols of Christianity in an effort to win a war of attrition for the heart of the culture. It is not just an attack on Lewis or Narnia. It is an attack on our faith, no matter how subliminal it seems.
Lewis portrayed the Narnians to be archetypes of Christians. They are the people of Aslan, as we are the people of Christ. And when they remembered the “old stories,” the truth about their creator and savior, they prospered. When they did not remember, disaster soon followed.
In the final Narnia installment, The Last Battle, Lewis ironically and unintentionally gave us an unsettling foreshadowing of what Netflix would do a mere 70 years later. In that tale, in the “last days of Narnia,” a donkey named Puzzle appears in the land and wears a lion suit at the behest of a conniving ape named Shift. Puzzle dons the Aslan skinsuit; the people are deceived. The downfall of Narnia follows shortly thereafter.
Netflix is simply doing what Shift the ape already tried.
Friends, we need to remember our Creator. We need to know Him for who He is, and we need to follow Him to the very end. Let’s cling to the old stories and fight for the glory of our King, who created us and died for us and rose again to save us.
For all of us, my hope and prayer is that you will never even consider investing in the stock of a company such as this. For many of us, it may also mean canceling the account and not giving them another cent of your patronage dollars.
But no matter what you do, there is a lesson for all of us, and it is this: We need to know and worship the King of kings as He is glorified in the Bible, not some pretend Jesus that fits into whatever the godless culture around us desires him to be.
He is the mighty King of kings and Lord of lords. May we honor Him as such in our hearts.
Sources: Breaking Christian News
1,000 Christian Leaders Gather in Israel to Honor Oct 7 Victims, Stand With Survivors
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Televangelist Jim Bakker, a longtime Christian broadcaster and founder of the PTL television ministry, has died at 86, according to...
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