Frame of Mind on Tonight and More to See
Hi all,
I'm having a great time in Corpus Christi doing a mobile filmmaking workshop and a film fest workshop. I met some great filmmakers, and a big thanks to Gabe Duran and Lydia Garza from the Corpus Film Commission for hosting.
We have two events this week for you to enjoy and the first one you don't need to leave the house for. On Tuesday, April 15, at 8pm (I hope you got your taxes in), we have an episode of our TV show on KERA. In this episode we are showing "Horton Foote: The Road to Home."
“Horton Foote: The Road To Home” is a documentary that chronicles the creative journey of acclaimed Texas writer Horton Foote through his own eyes and voice at the end of his life. Foote, who was born and raised in Wharton, Texas, went on to become a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, the winner of two Academy Awards for screenwriting, an Emmy Award for television writing, and was recipient of the National Medal of Arts among numerous other theatrical and literary prizes. His long and successful 70-year career of writing consisted primarily of stories set in the small town of Harrison, Texas, a fictitious version of Wharton. Horton was known for his subtle yet deeply-layered and profound storytelling -- about family, human connections, struggles, resilience and redemption.
The filmmakers followed Foote around with a camera for the last three years of his life. At the time, Foote was in his early 90s but still very active and working on two different theater projects. The director/producer was Anne Rapp, who had been friends with Horton and the Foote family since 1981 after she worked as a script supervisor on his award-winning film Tender Mercies. Joe Dishner, one of Rapp's producing partners, had known him as well since 1984 when he worked as a location manager on the film 1918, and later The Trip to Bountiful. Those relationships with Foote allowed the filmmakers to capture a much more personal and inside view of his life and work, and also capture the connection between his hometown and that successful body of work in more intimate detail.
This is a great film, and you should see it on Tuesday or record it for later on your DVR.
Then, on Thursday, April 17, at 7pm at the Violet Crown Theater, we have the annual North Texas Universities Film Festival. This free program features the best student films from the University of North Texas, the University of Texas at Arlington, and Southern Methodist University. It is a great way to see the work of and meet the best student filmmakers in town. There will be a lively Q&A after the film.
In addition to all that, we have three film festivals coming to town soon. In Denton, there is the Thin Line Festival (a festival of documentary films), the Dallas International Film Festival, and the USA Film Festival.
This week, "Black Mirror" is back! The series by Charlie Brooker is now in its seventh season. It started in 2011 on Channel 4 in England and became a hit on Netflix after a few years. There are 33 episodes to watch if you want to binge it. This is a series where every episode is a new story, like "The Twilight Zone" was. Each episode of "Black Mirror" shows a dark way in which technology will affect us. Watching the show is both depressing and exciting. What new technology that we have not thought about will show up? In 2018, the episode titled "Bandersnatch" was interactive, meaning you could watch it in a different order each time.
In series 6, the first episode, "Joan is Awful," takes shots at a streaming service very much like Netflix.
I have only watched three episodes, and I recommend you watch them.
-Bart
Bill Maher has never won an Emmy as host of either ABC’s long canceled “Politically Incorrect” or his ongoing “Real Time,” now in its 23rd year on HBO. It’s no capital crime. But in my view it’s a major and unfortunate omission because Maher’s closing “New Rules” segments alone have been the best and most biting comedy segments anywhere on TV. So what gives? Simply put, Maher just isn’t “correct” enough, which has been the whole point from the start of both shows. He’s an equal opportunity offender, and for several years now has chided or flat-out attacked the left for being “woke” to the point of absurdity. That doesn’t sit well in the traditional Hollywood liberal community or with many TV critics for that matter. His weekly tear-downs of Donald Trump aren’t deemed enough to offset the other “baggage.”
Maher likely didn’t help himself on Friday’s show by having the loathsome Steve Bannon as his opening guest after recounting a March 31st White House dinner with Trump brokered by Kid Rock, who had been a previous “Real Time” guest. To his surprise, Maher said, he found Trump to be gracious and fully capable of laughing at himself. The President even autographed a sheet with some 60 insults he’d lobbed at Trump during “Real Time” segments. Maher brandished it on air.
“A crazy person doesn’t live in the White House,” he deduced. “A person who plays a crazy person on TV a lot lives there.” Perhaps Maher was all too easily seduced. But he’s not going to apologize for making this particular pilgrimage in pursuit of reasoned discourse between political opposites. Nor should he, no matter what the price his shows pay at awards times.
-Ed
Howdy,
The number one movie in the world right now is "A Minecraft Movie" from Jared Hess, director of cult classics "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Nacho Libre." I of course saw the movie in 3D because I will see anything I can with those glasses on my face, and it actually might be one of the worst films I've ever seen. It could have been cute, but everything is so ugly and looks like it was made on a green screen even though they built a ton of practical sets and props.
Just like the gentle-minions meme propelled "Minions: The Rise of Gru" into the box office stratosphere, the "chicken jockey" meme from this film has certainly helped it already hit the $500 million mark. If you are not quite on the Minecraft corner of the internet, the basic premise is shouting "chicken jockey" at the screen when the chicken jockey character shows up. This has led to some viral videos of kids going wild, flinging popcorn at the screen, and causing the cops to get called.
Luckily for Warner Bros., this will probably end up being one of the top films of the year, and they needed the win after a rough start with "Mickey 17" and "The Alto Nights" both performing poorly on large budgets.
Substack (the platform we use for this newsletter) added some new statistics charts to our writer dashboard. The most interesting one to you all might be this "Audience location" map. The subscriber base for our posts is primarily focused in the US, with subscribers in 21 other countries. 72 percent of our readers are in Texas, which makes sense, since we mostly focus on films and events in the state.
And if you are in Texas, there are four different films showing at The Modern in Fort Worth this week. On Wednesday at 2pm, we are screening the 1967 French film "Playtime." I've always seen the iconic image of Monsieur Hulot looking over a futuristic office setting, but I never realized this is a sequel to "Mon Oncle" where writer/director Jacques Tati plays a bumbling Mr. Bean-type character who is always surprised at the marvels of modern living. This is the 4K restoration.
On Thursday, the Lone Star Film Festival will be screening a new documentary "The Strike."
"The Strike" is a feature-length documentary that tells the story of a generation of men who endured solitary confinement, often for a decade or more, at California's high-security Pelican Bay prison. Against all odds, the men launched the largest hunger strike in U.S. history, in which 30,000 incarcerated people across California prisons sought to abolish indefinite isolation.
On Saturday, Reel House/The Fort Worth Film Club are showing the Disney film "Big Hero 6" at noon. These screenings are free for kids and families, so it's a good chance to stop by the museum. Usually they have some free tickets to the museum afterwards as well. "Big Hero 6" is based on a Marvel comic and is probably the best film based on the comics. It takes place in San Fransokyo, a future city with some cool robot tech and, most importantly, Baymax, one of the cutest animated characters to ever exist.
For our regular weekend showing is the film "The Teacher" about a Palestinian schoolteacher in the West Bank figuring out resistance in Israel. I'm sure this might be a divisive movie for some, but it actually was made before the Hamas attack in Israel, so it will be interesting to see its relevance as the conflict carries on.
-Elijah
Nice! I got to write music for the Horton doc. Thanks for promoting!