And we are going to give away $1500 worth of prizes to celebrate!

One of 16x SINGLE PASSES TO WATCH JUNGLE BEAT: THE MOVIE 

One of 16x PASSES TO WATCH ONE OF THE FILMS IN OUR "ENCORE" RANGE

One of 16x HOLY MOLY BUNDLES (5-6 episodes of great kid’s content!)

Simply head to (or back to) our COMPETITION FACEBOOK POST by clicking the image below and then:

2. In the COMMENTS tell us 3 THINGS you remember about being 16!

Here are some of the things WE remember about being SIXTEEN. Just to inspire you...

Midnight Oil’s ‘no-nuclear weapons’ concert!

Facebook and by extension the whole world knew my every thought

Can you tell we are all different ages at MOVIES CHANGE PEOPLE?

Winners will be randomly selected from the comments of the competition post (the one linked to this blog page) and drawn on Monday 24th July 4pm. We will put the winners names into the comments of the competition post as well as contacting them personally via Facebook Messenger.

We're Turning 16 and We Want to Celebrate!

LIVE EVENTS - ALL THE INFORMATION YOU NEED IS RIGHT HERE!

Just like we would if we were doing a 'red carpet opening weekend' in cinemas, we are having a 'red carpet, opening weekend' online! We'll be streaming live events through our Movies Change People Facebook page that will go alongside "group watching experiences" of the film - it means we can all come together and see stars and personalities in real time, both before and after we've all watched this incredible feel-good true story "together!"

Don't have a pass to see the film yet? Get one HERE.

Here's the line-up - some details still coming...!

29th May Friday 6pm - PREMIERE PRE-SHOW 


We'll be chatting to Major Brendan Nottle (and others) about the amazing work he and The Salvos do - especially Melbourne 614!

Join us for a pre-show chat with Andrew Hill, then get your access to SAME KIND OF DIFFERENT AS ME rolling via the website by 6:30pm so you can be done in time for the POST-SHOW PANEL!

30th May Saturday 8:30pm PREMIERE POST SHOW PANEL DISCUSSION

Join Russ Matthews from REEL DIALOGUE and panelists LAURA BENNET (Movie Reviewer and HOPE 103.2 Presenter) and RON HALL (author, movie producer, speaker) as they chat about the film and the real story behind it!

Ron Hall wrote the New York Times Best-selling book (based on the true story of his life) which was the foundation for the film. He has since raised over $100 million for homelessness and is an avid advocate for the homeless. He is also an engagingly honest storyteller. Did you know that he and Denver Moore (the movie tells the story of their friendship) lived together for ten years? And Ron definitely had some wonderfully funny and raw adventures during that time! 

Major Brendan Nottle oversees the operation of The Salvation Army in the City of Melbourne and has been an officer with The Salvation Army for over 26 years.   

He is the club Chaplain for the Collingwood Football Club and has been providing support to the club in a variety of aspects for 16 years.  In 2013 Brendan was awarded Melbournian of the year as well as anointed one of the monarchs of Moomba, Melbourne’s annual community festival. 

Brendan is a member of the Premier’s Ice Action Taskforce and the Housing Minister’s Rough Sleeping Round table and in 2017 he walked to Canberra to highlight the issue of homelessness, and to call on Federal Politicians to develop a multi-partisan national plan to address Australia’s homelessness crisis. 

Most recently he was a nominee for the 2020 Victorian Australian of the year.  He enjoys spending time with his family, reading and walking.

RON HALL wrote the best-selling memoir on which the film is based. It has sold over a million copies.

In brief: in 1998, millionaire art dealer Ron Hall, a Texan, father of two and an adulterer, promised he’d do anything to win back his wife Debbie. She gave him a challenge: help her feed the homeless at Fort Worth’s Union Gospel Mission and befriend the scariest man on the block, an ex-felon and murderer named Denver “Suicide” Moore.

What it’s not, Ron says, is a story about a wealthy “art dealer millionaire that saved this poor, African-American homeless man. Nothing could be further from the truth. This man saved me from myself.” Moore “became my mentor in life. He taught me the way to live, not the other way around. He saved me from being an arrogant, self-centered art dealer, to becoming someone who actually cares about the well-being of others.”

It started with the adultery that Debbie forgave. In return, her husband pledged to do anything she asked him to do. Debbie agreed to never again mention his infidelity, and, he says, “she was true to that promise.” For at least a decade, Debbie asked not a single thing of Hall — until she did. She awoke one night, telling him about a dream she had had, about “a poor man who’s wise, and through his wisdom, our lives and our city are changed forever.”

He and Debbie cruised the toughest streets of their town, looking for the man in her dream. They ended up at Union Gospel Mission, where Hall and his wife offered to serve food to the homeless and hungry waiting in line. “The smell,” Hall says, “just took me down. It was so nasty.” It's where he met Moore. The story of their relationship forms the backbone of the book and the movie.

Moore moved in with Hall in 2000, the year Debbie died of cancer. Moore gave the eulogy at her funeral. Hall calls it "one of the most beautiful, heartfelt speeches I've ever heard," saying it drew a prolonged standing ovation from a crowd of nearly 1,000.

In 2012, Moore died. "By then, he and I had become closer than brothers," Hall says. “When he moved in with me, he had nothing. But he gave me everything.” Together, he and Denver helped to raise $100 million for homeless shelters across the country—a remarkable harvest reaped from the seeds planted by his wife's simple-but-profound love.

It's easy! Simply go to the Movies Change People Facebook page - all the events will stream there. You'll need to jump in and out (because the movie itself doesn't stream there - it has its own website. If you've bought a ticket you'll be getting an email soon with instructions about how to watch it!) 

So, especially on the Saturday night, you'll need to be in Facebook to watch the pre-show, and then watch the film, and then jump back into Facebook for the post-show - it's going to be brilliant!

Yup! It's easy too! Since all the live events appear in the Movies Change People Facebook feed, they have the little share button right there. Just hit that and you can send it to your friends or blast it out on your own Facebook page!

Same Kind of Different As Me: PREMIERE PROGRAM

We’re doing a RED CARPET ...but come in your slippers!

Same Kind Of Different As Me | 2020 Official Trailer

Every pass sold supports THE RED SHIELD APPEAL

SAME KIND OF DIFFERENT AS ME, starring Academy Award-winner Renee Zellweger and Academy Award-nominee Greg Kinnear, will have a special event-filled 'online premiere.’ It’s something a lot of the bigger studios are doing in this season - premiering their big movies online, but the opening weekend for the richly moving and satisfying SAME KIND OF DIFFERENT AS ME will be extra special. With live Q&A events for pass holders and the thrill of being the first people in Australia and New Zealand to see the film, it’s not just your average “movie night.”

One of the Q&A sessions will be with Ron Hall, the Texan art dealer who not only wrote the New York Times bestselling book that the film is based on but has raised over $100million for homelessness through the book and film. He has a unique story, and a wonderfully funny and engaging way of telling it!

Opening weekend for the film is the 29th May to 31st May, but the film will be available online for the following two weeks (until 14th June) for those who can’t make the opening weekend. Premiere pass holders will watch it through a dedicated website, which will give them access to the film for 48 hours (much like rentals on iTunes and other online platforms).

Most importantly, every pass sold will contribute a donation towards The Salvation Army Red Shield Appeal. This means that people can support the Red Shield Appeal simply through choosing the film when they are deciding what to watch that weekend. There are also many fundraising options for people wishing to use the film to generate greater financial support for The Salvation Army - which we highly encourage!

We are especially excited that this film, which highlights and supports the cause of homelessness so strongly, will be able to benefit the cause so practically in our own nation. We believe people will be changed by watching this film—as well as having the satisfaction of knowing that they are assisting those less fortunate simply by choosing to watch the film.

There are plenty of options for purchasing passes - and therefore plenty of ways to see the film "together" (even if technically you're apart!

Individual Passes - perfect for one household wanting to watch the film in their living room.

Family Passes - gives you four "access codes" so that four households (or families, or friends, or groups of friends who live separately) can all watch the film (and for a lower price!) This means that not only do you still get to contribute to The Red Shield Appeal, but you can set up a "group movie night," where you keep in touch with your loved ones via Messenger or Zoom to create a "group" experience - even though you aren't watching the same TV!

Bulk Passes - these are perfect for churches, community groups of fundraising activities! Each access code in a bulk pass is heavily discounted, which means that you can pass them on to your beloved group members for the same discounted rate, or use them to fundraise for the cause closest to your heart (we recommend the Salvos!)

If you would like to join this special event (and support The Salvation Army Red Shield Appeal in the process) then checkout the SAME KIND OF DIFFERENT AS ME website! 

SAME KIND OF DIFFERENT AS ME: It's a RED CARPET EVENT... but come in your slippers!

SAME KIND OF DIFFERENT AS ME - AN INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY MORE TIMELY THAN EVER...

...And a Perfect Fit with The Red Shield Appeal

From the 29th to 31st May, the incredible true story of SAME KIND OF DIFFERENT AS ME, starring Renee Zellweger and Greg Kinnear, will have its ONLINE PREMIERE - three special screenings of the film with extra special events that will include a live Q&A with "the guy in the film," (who also wrote the New York Times bestselling book) Ron Hall, as well as members of the Salvation Army in Australia.

The film has, at its heart, the imperative to honour and bring change for the homeless. Not only was Ron Hall's own life richly transformed through his friendship with a homeless man, Denver Moore, and he has, through the book, raised over $100 million towards homelessness, but the making of the film itself brought transformation to a homeless community: part of the film's budget was devoted to the actual restoration and renovation of a real-life homeless shelter, which occurred during filming.

The film tells this transformation story —  how Ron, a successful businessman, and his wife, Deborah, discover a renewed sense of purpose when they begin to volunteer at a local mission in Fort Worth, Texas, and how their unlikely friendship with Denver Moore inspires them to save their struggling marriage.

Now, Heritage Films is partnering with The Salvation Army to continue this legacy. Every pass sold for the online premiere of the film will contribute to this year's "digital door-knock" of The Red Shield Appeal.

Couch-side "movie-goers" will be able to purchase a "premiere pass" which gives them access to this "red carpet experience"  - in individual, family, and bulk options. These different options allow for more people in a family or circle of friends (or church or community group) to access the film (at a discounted price). It also means that people who are separated in different houses or locations during quarantine can still plan a "movie night" - even though they are separated. For example, the purchase of a "family pass" provides four "access codes," meaning that four separate homes can watch the film... which is a great opportunity to plan something "together," perhaps staying in touch via social media while watching the film at the same time.

The "bulk pass" option also makes a great way for dedicated or fledgling fundraisers to raise larger amounts for the Red Shield Appeal, through their own personal networks. 

The True Story Behind the Film - And how it changed the area of Homelessness forever

The film is based on a best-selling memoir of the same name, co-written by Moore, Hall and Lynn Vincent, that has sold over a million copies.

What it’s not, Ron says, is a story about a wealthy “art dealer millionaire that saved this poor, African-American homeless man. Nothing could be further from the truth. This man saved me from myself.” Moore “became my mentor in life. He taught me the way to live, not the other way around. He saved me from being an arrogant, self-centred art dealer, to becoming someone who actually cares about the well-being of others.”

He and Debbie cruised the toughest streets of Cowtown, looking for the man in her dream. They ended up at Union Gospel Mission, where Hall and his wife offered to serve food to the homeless and hungry waiting in line. “The smell,” Hall says, “just took me down. It was so nasty.” It's where he met Moore. The story of their relationship forms the backbone of the book and the movie.

In 2012, Moore died. "By then, he and I had become closer than brothers," Hall says.  “When he moved in with me, he had nothing. But he gave me everything.” 

Together, he and Denver helped to raise a reported $100 million for homeless shelters across the country—a remarkable harvest reaped from the seeds planted by his wife's simple-but-profound love.

If you would like to support The Red Shield Appeal and support homelessness in Australia—head to the SAME KIND OF DIFFERENT AS ME website and check out how to get your premiere pass.

SAME KIND OF DIFFERENT AS ME - A perfect fit for The Red Shield Appeal!

Hacksaw Ridge (2016) Official Trailer – “Believe” - Andrew Garfield

This film is rated MA15+. Available through the HOPE at HOME Film Festival. 139 minutes.

The true story of Pfc. Desmond T. Doss (Andrew Garfield), who won the Congressional Medal of Honor despite refusing to bear arms during WWII on religious grounds. Doss was drafted and ostracized by fellow soldiers for his pacifist stance but went on to earn respect and adoration for his bravery, selflessness and compassion after he risked his life -- without firing a shot -- to save 75 men in the Battle of Okinawa.

Originally published in The New Yorker, October 31, 2016.

The Madness and Majesty of “Hacksaw Ridge”

Mel Gibson’s new film tells of a conscientious objector in the Second World War.

From the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, on the trail of the divine, comes Desmond Doss. We see him as a child, played by Darcy Bryce, scrapping with his brother and clouting him with a brick—the sole occasion, in “Hacksaw Ridge,” on which the hero harms another person. Quaking with guilt, and awaiting a whipping from his drunken father (Hugo Weaving), Desmond stares at a picture on the wall and reads the inscription: “Thou shalt not kill.”

Easier said than done, in a time of war. Yet such was the mission of Doss, a Seventh-Day Adventist, who was drafted in 1942 and joined the military as a conscientious objector. He served as a medic with the 307th Regiment, 77th Infantry Division, and was awarded the Medal of Honor for what the citation called “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action,” at Okinawa. Conspicuous is right; after the bulk of the regiment was forced to retreat, Doss, alone and exposed to continual enemy fire, went to the aid of some seventy-five injured comrades, lowering them, one by one, over an escarpment to safety. Only when there was no one else to rescue did he descend. No wonder he became a talisman to the troops; in “Hacksaw Ridge,” preparing for a renewed assault, they calmly delay until Doss has finished his prayers.

All this is a far cry from Doss’s rural home, where he and his brother are seen climbing a ridge not for combat but for fun and for the beautiful view. As a lanky youth, now played by Andrew Garfield, Desmond falls in love with a nurse (Teresa Palmer). He woos her with a gee-whiz grin and, in a benign foreshadowing of the horrors to come, donates blood. She, in turn, gives him a Bible before he goes off to basic training, at Fort Jackson. There a problem arises, for Doss refuses to hold a rifle: a stance that not even Gary Cooper, as the devout pacifist of “Sergeant York” (1941), could match. Such mulishness puts Doss at odds with the other recruits, like the strapping Smitty (Luke Bracey), and with their drill sergeant, played by Vince Vaughn, who equips the character not just with the standard snarl and bark but also with a twinge of genuine curiosity. What is driving Doss, this goofy kid, whose principles are as upstanding as his quiff? Only through the intervention of a loved one does he survive a court-martial, earning the right to enter the battlefield unarmed. He does use a rifle, but only once, as the handle for a homemade stretcher.

Courage of this order reaches beyond recklessness, and during the Okinawa scenes, which consume the final hour of the movie, Garfield’s boyish features are racked and seized in a kind of trance; the agonized effort to save others, we realize, entails a near-ecstasy of suffering. Here, in other words, is a movie directed by Mel Gibson. It has less in common with Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima” (2006), say, than with Gibson’s own “The Passion of the Christ” (2004), in which the scourging of Jesus goes on and on, until you can scarcely look, and then goes on again. Is this in line with traditional, if extreme, strains of Christian iconography—with the contorted limbs and the scarified skin of Grünewald’s “Crucifixion,” from the early sixteenth century? Or was the filmmaker at the mercy of a thoroughly modern fixation? More than any other living director, even a fellow-Catholic such as Martin Scorsese, Gibson seems to be gripped by the spiritual repercussions of pain. Within the bounds of his vision, it is quite natural to cut from Doss inside a church, polishing the stained-glass windows, to a nasty accident on the road outside and the impaling of a victim’s leg.

“Hacksaw Ridge” is the strangest release of the year: an implacably violent film about a man who wants no part of violence at all. Gibson asks us to observe the spectacle of spilled viscera, limbs in flight, rats feasting on mortal flesh, and one soldier using the sundered torso of another as a shield, so that we may better comprehend the faith that upholds Doss, inspiring him to bind the wounds of his friends (and even, in one stirring instance, his foe). He burrows down a tunnel as if harrowing Hell, and when, at last, he escapes from Hacksaw Ridge—the site of the climactic battle, its very name designed to bite deep—he is framed against the sun, pouring water over his half-naked figure to wash off the blood of other men. We are meant to imagine someone being baptized and born again. There are reasons to recoil from all this, and what private furies Gibson may be confronting, at the cost of more than forty million dollars, I hate to think. Yet the result, though corny at times, treads close to madness and majesty alike, and nobody but Gibson could have made it.

For more great movies head to www.movieschangepeople.com

Hacksaw Ridge - Reviews and Info

Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable - Official Trailer

This film is rated PG. Available through the HOPE at HOME Film Festival. 99 minutes.

One of the most accomplished athletes of her generation, Bethany Hamilton, became a surfing wunderkind when she returned to the sport following a devastating shark attack at age 13. As she continues to chase waves, she also now tackles motherhood.

Originally published in The Hollywood Reporter.

Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable is a feature-length tribute to the champion surfer who lost an arm to a tiger shark at age 13 and came back to thrive and conquer. Director Aaron Lieber, a surf specialist who shoots his own footage on the waves, followed Hamilton over four years, and weaves interviews with her family and friends alongside home-video and archival material, including a smattering of excerpts from Hamilton's appearances on Oprah and other talk shows during her teenage years.

Fans of the surfer's 2004 memoir Soul Surfer, made into a 2011 film of the same name with Helen Hunt and Dennis Quaid as Hamilton's parents, should appreciate the chance to check in, with Bethany now balancing marriage and motherhood with wild-card jaunts on the pro circuit.

Beginning with Bethany preparing to surf one of the world's monster big waves (nicknamed, somewhat ironically, "Jaws"), the doc cycles back to fill in the background on her childhood in Hawaii, where the youngster was coming up with Carissa Moore and other future stars on the local circuit. Barely into her teens and already sponsored by Rip Curl, the young Bethany is all shy smiles, while the adult version — one of a series of talking heads cut to by editor Carol Martori throughout — is full of praise for her parents, keen surfers who worked three jobs each to give their daughter and two sons an idyllic childhood on Kauai.

The closest we get to the shark that altered the course of Bethany's life is footage of a local turning over her chomped board after the attack, shaking his head in awestruck wonder. There's little in the way of reenactment besides impressionistic chumming of the water, and scant discussion of the incident itself, in which Hamilton was bitten while out paddling with lifelong best friend and future pro Alana Blanchard. Despite Blanchard's father using a surfboard leash as a tourniquet, Bethany lost over half her volume in blood. Call me a gore-hound, but some recounting of these facts might have filled in some details for Hamilton newbies.

Camcorder footage of Bethany in hospital, surrounded by family and fellow surfers, is quietly affecting, with the girl at pains to assure everybody else that's it no big deal. A moment later on, in which she recounts the recurring nightmare of trying to extricate her legs from the creature's jaws, makes her immediate determination to get back in the water all the more astounding. Training herself how to surf one-handed, and aided by a handle grafted onto her board by her father so that she can duck-dive, the now 15-year-old Bethany eventually returns to San Clemente, Calif., the site of the annual amateur national competition, and takes out first prize.

Her ambition to enter the pro circuit follows a less smoothly triumphant arc. Watching as the friends she came up with break onto the world stage, Hamilton grinds through the rigorous process to make it on tour, competing at events around the world only to fall at the last hurdle in a heat in which she's beaten by best friend Blanchard. Upset and increasingly overwhelmed by media obligations, Bethany finds solace in beau Adam Dirks, whom she marries mere months after meeting. Faith is a cornerstone of the couple's life, though it's emphasized less heavily here than in Becky Baumgartner's 2007 short doc Heart of a Soul Surfer.

Lieber ends things back in Fiji, with Bethany, now toting a baby boy, competing as a wild-card entrant alongside the best in the world at the Fiji Pro. Her success there, beating two world champs in heats only to fall to the eventual victor, gives the film a neatly rousing climax, though it's nicely shaded by the admitted skepticism of fellow pro surfers such as Moore, who admits that Bethany's name on the schedule had begun to induce eye-rolling. Fiji reminds everyone, including Hamilton herself, that she can cut it with the best, and the film's clear message is that Bethany would be a world champ by now if the accident had never happened, though not, perhaps, the person she is today.

The whole thing looks as glossy as any of the filmmaker's spots for Nike, and though surf competition is not exactly suspenseful (at least for the uninitiated), the many vivid sequences on the waves are enough to justify the pic's presence on the big screen.

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We're Turning 16 and We Want to Celebrate!

Same Kind of Different As Me: PREMIERE PROGRAM

SAME KIND OF DIFFERENT AS ME: It's a RED CARPET EVENT... but come in your slippers!

SAME KIND OF DIFFERENT AS ME - A perfect fit for The Red Shield Appeal!

Hacksaw Ridge - Reviews and Info

Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable - Reviews and Info

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