The Waco Independent Film Festival
Plus more film suggestions for this week and indie artists as film composers
Greetings all,
I hope you're staying cool in this really hot summer. I will be traveling in the next two weeks. This week, I'll be heading to Waco for the Waco Independent Film Festival, where my film “Rocking Film Rolling History, Al Maysles Captures the Beatles” will be playing. Then the week after that, I will be in Prairie View, Texas, at the University Film and Video Association conference. But, I will still be writing the newsletter; I'll just be out of town.
The Asian Film Festival in Dallas will be July 24-27. There is info on it here.
And I will have suggestions next week.
Something to put into your calendar. On Saturday, August 2, once again we will be co-sponsoring the Cat Film Festival. For some strange reason, this cat festival is playing at multiple theaters on the same day. We will be co-sponsoring the event at the Texas Theatre. If you're a cat person, love cat movies, or just want to hang out with cool cats, come on down to our screening on August 2 at 2:30pm at the Texas Theatre. Just write it in your calendar right now.
On Tuesday night, yes, this very Tuesday (I hope the newsletter gets to you in time for Tuesday evening),there is a great screening of the film. “A Poem is a Naked Person.” You wouldn't know it from the title of the film, but this is a documentary about Leon Russell. It was made by Les Blank, and his son, Harrod, says that Les thought this was his best film.
If you're not familiar with Les Blank’s work, he was an incredible filmmaker who made a lot of music docs and a lot of docs about culture. His son Harrod, who will be here with the film (unfortunately, Les passed away in 2013), remastered this film and fought for years to get the rights to show it. For a long time, it was only allowed to be shown if Les was there, and if it was done for a nonprofit organization, and if it was done for no money. But now we can see this remastered with the rights cleared at the Texas Theatre.
While this film is about, and was financed by Leon Russell, but it's also a film about the culture around Leon Russell. When Les made it, he stayed near where Leon Russell was working, and they hung around and shot all kinds of things that had nothing to do with the music, but a lot about the universe for which Leon was working. It's a very unique. Look at what a music documentary could be. And it's really worth seeing.
If you can come to the movie theater on Tuesday night to see this film, you'll enjoy the experience. And Harrod, who will be there at the film. I have travelled to China with him, and he is an incredibly fascinating character who you will enjoy meeting as well. He is a larger than life figure in more ways than one. And he makes films about Art Cars.
Now, for those of you who are out of town, you can see this new version of this very important film on the Criterion Channel. This is another reason yet to have Criterion, which has just more good movies than any other channel. Just in the last few weeks, I've seen “Monterey Pop”, which is wonderful to rewatch. I've watched a whole bunch of Kurosawa films, and “Chungking Express.” It has just been a joy in this hot summer to watch a good movie and to be inspired instead of, say, “Superman.”
Friday, July 18 and Saturday, July 19, at the Texas Theatre you can see a doc about the making of “Apocalypse Now,” “Hearts of Darkness, a Filmmaker's Apocalypse,” on Friday at 7pm, and The Final Cut of “Apocalypse Now” on Saturday at 3pm.
Also, Texas Theatre has Dallas Ambient Music Nights on Saturday at 9pm.
You might enjoy listening to a podcast recorded at the Austin Film Society Party at SXSW. You can hear it here.
If you missed the film we had last week about Charmin, you can see it here.
Here is a tease for those who are still here at the end of my part.
Get your calendar and reserve November 22nd.
Have a great week!
-Bart
Howdy,
I’ve been utterly obsessed this past week with a new song by the artist Jerskin Fendrix. If that sounds completely made up, it’s because his real name is Joscelin Dent-Pooley, kind of an off-joke without any real explanatory meaning behind it. In 2020, he released an album called “Winterreise” that got some glowing reviews. His newest single is called “Beth’s Farm” filled with plucky synths, some sweeping vocals and a bit of nonsensical lyrics (“your eye’s shine like two oats” “the tractor is big but my heart is large” etc).
The song is pretty and cinematic, rightfully so because Fendrix was nominated for an Oscar a few years ago for his first ever film score, the soundtrack to “Poor Things.” In the films iconic dance scene, he even makes a cameo as a cellist, a nod to his classical music training at Cambridge. He continued to work with director Yorgos Lanthimos for “Kinds of Kindess” and is scoring his new sci-fi film “Bugonia” which releases later this year.
It’s obviously not the first time an indie artist has easily transitioned to composing for film. My first thought was Daniel Blumberg, the Brit who won the Oscar for “The Brutalist” just earlier this year. And luckily the NY Times published a piece last month profiling a few of the most prominent rockers turned composers in the pipeline, most notably Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross from Nine Inch Nails, who had one of the best scores last year for “Challengers” and then again for “Queer” both from Luca Guadanino. In the upcoming third “Tron” movie, they are replacing the band Daft Punk, who’s previous “Tron” soundtrack is on so many music lists for best of all time.
Another list of all-timer collabs is those between my favorite Wes Anderson and composer Alexandre Desplat, who again returned to score his most recent film “The Phoenician Scheme.” In case you missed it in theaters last month (Focus Features has very short theatrical windows) we are screening it at the Modern this Friday at 4pm, 6pm, and 8pm and again on Sunday at 12pm, 2pm, and 4pm. This will probably be the last chance to see it on the big screen for a while. Check out the trailer below and have a great week.
-Elijah