Oliver Stone in Dallas and "Mega-flop-olis"
Hi all,
We are basking in the glow of a great Kovacs Weekend. Thanks to all of you who came and so many people who helped make this an amazing experience. I am so grateful.
The big screening news of the week is that Oliver Stone is in town at the Texas Theatre. He will be at screenings of “JFK,” “Natural Born Killers,” “Talk Radio,” and “Born on the Fourth of July.” I believe Matt Zoller Seitz will be doing the Q&A with Oliver Stone. If you are like me, you have not seen these films in a while, and it is time for a re-evaluation. I am excited to see them all, especially “JFK.” Seeing these films together will allow us to reevaluate these films and see how these politically oriented films resonate in a different political era. I really wish that “Wall Street” was among those shows this weekend, but that is a rant for a different day.
This month, the Angelika Theater will be doing the Hitch-tober thing again. YEA! I showed the “39 Steps” in class, and my students applauded at the end, which made me happy. This Thursday, they are showing “North by Northwest.”
This weekend is the inaugural FullDome Film Festival presented by the HP Digitarium at the Pierce Planetarium and the team at the Moody Innovation Institute.
Working closely with Paris-based Diversion Cinema, which oversaw the first immersive competition at the Cannes Film Festival this past May, we curated the selection of nine extraordinary full-dome short films by award-winning international artists.
These immersive films explore themes including dreams and memories and the intricacies of sudden shifts within life trajectories. The combination of amazing visuals with original soundscapes and music creates highly personal experiences within the viewer.
This four-day film festival incorporates performances by noted poets along with HPHS musicians. This is a unique opportunity to see what a different immersive cinema might be. For those of you outside of the Dallas area, there might be something like this for you to see, so seek it out.
Another new way to look at media is at the Eisemann Center this weekend call “See Me,” which is an immersive theatrical experience; the production is inspired by the stories of young people across North Texas, bringing their voices to life using cutting-edge technology, projections, and holograms. Exploring how existing in a hyper-connected world impacts the human condition, this show offers a poignant dialogue between technology and the arts. You can get free tickets here.
While this is not cinema, you do not often get a chance to see the Ring Cycle, which is coming to Dallas.
Also this week marks the Jewish new year, so for all of you, have a great new year. Let’s hope we have a great year, we all need it.
-Bart
Howdy,
We had a great show this past weekend at the Texas, with an excellent turnout for the “DEVO” doc and the Kovacs ceremony. Thank you all for coming out, it was great to meet everyone who enjoys reading the newsletter weekly.
“Megalopolis” had a much worse turnout than even box office prognosticators expected. Making only $4 million in the US on a $136 million budget, Francis Ford Coppola’s last film will probably go down in history as one of the biggest flops for any big budget film- “Mega-flop-olis” has been brandished about. I saw the movie in IMAX last week and its unfortunately just really bad. You can almost see the vision, an older filmmaker reflecting on art and his legacy, but it never quite executes. There’s some really miserable looking CGI moments and weirdly stilted line deliveries that seem to be the fault of direction and not the fault of the actors. When it leans into some of the mob-related government corruption its fun, it’s just not coming together.
The big blockbuster coming out this weekend is the follow up to the very successful “Joker” movie that won Joaquin Phoenix his first Oscar. The sequel “Folie à Deux” pairs Phoenix up with Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel, a kind of pre-villain Harley Quinn. This new one cost over $200 million and is a musical that takes place inside Arkham Asylum. The tracking has been dropping, dropping as reviews for the film comes in. It seems like it doesn’t really hit for fans who enjoyed the dark nature of the first movie, nor Gaga fans looking for an over-the-top musical experience.
There’s a lot of movies opening in smaller releases throughout the country. Sebastian Stan stars in “The Apprentice” as a young Donald Trump and as an actor who goes through a visual transformation in “A Different Man.” Also going through a transformation is Demi Moore in “The Substance,” a body horror film about an aging actress. Also out in limited release is “Saturday Night” a comedy celebrating the 50th anniversary of SNL, which casts a bunch of young actors as iconic comedians from Chevy Chase to Kovacs recipient Al Franken. At the Modern this weekend, they are showing “The Outrun” starring Saoirse Ronan as a young woman who “attempts to come to terms with her troubled past. She returns to the wild beauty of Scotland’s Orkney Islands, where she grew up, hoping to heal.”
-Elijah