Actress and Oscar winner Tilda Swinton will moderate screenings of two films Sunday afternoon at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in conjunction with the Cinema Arts Film Festival. At 1 p.m. Swinton will host the screening of Derek a documentary she wrote about filmmaker Derek Jarman. At 3:30 p.m. Swinton and director Lynn Hershman Leeson will present Teknolust. Both screenings take place at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's Brown Auditorium. Additionally Swinton hosts a Sunday night screening at 6 p.m. of The Red Shoes in downtown's Discovery Green park. The latter film is free and open to the public.
Native Houstonian and popular actor Sean Patrick Flanery will host a Q&A during a screening of his current film Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day. Flanery is perhaps best known for his role as television's Young Indiana Jones in the 90s. Flanery grew up in Sugarland. The film is a sequel to the 1999 Boondock Saints, which itself has developed a cult following over the last decade. The Q&A will take place tonight at the 7:50 pm screening of Boondock Saints II at the Edwards Marq*E Theater.
Director Aviva Kempner calls Gertrude Berg the "most famous woman you've never heard of." Speaking to Free Press Houston by phone from New York City, Kempner mused on the turn of events that led to the smash success of the 1949 television show The Goldbergs, and its subsequent cancellation despite high ratings in the wake of the communist witch hunt and entertainment blacklist that rocked the nation at that time. Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg looks at the life of Berg from her humble youth to a fabulous career first in radio from the early 30s and the successful transition of The Goldbergs from radio to early television. Yet even being lead in the ratings didn't prevent politics from intervening when network execs and advertising concerns wanted the show's co-star Philip Loeb canned because of his left leaning advocacy. Loeb sponsored items like performer's rights in the new medium of television and was considered a red agitator in the parlance of the times. Kempner finds interesting parallels between some of the events of Berg's time and our own. While dominant as a radio personality other voices on the air in the 30s included Father Coughlin who espoused hatred in his rants not unlike say Rush Limbaugh. "When things go bad, economics go south, people listen to demagogues,"Kempner lamented. I realize talking to Kempner that the reason I've heard of Coughlin was because his broadcasts had been covered in her previous documentary The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg. The film charts the rising popularity of the radio show (which itself debuted the week after the 1929 Wall Street crash) to other trends of that era. By the time the show transcends to television Berg's not just another star but the second most influential woman in America after Eleanor Roosevelt. There's so much in Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg that rings a bell of recognition. Berg was the first woman to win an Emmy Award. The blacklist eventually drove Loeb to suicide, an event fictionalized in the 1976 movie The Front. No irony is lost when the show that replaces The Goldberg's on the CBS lineup is I Love Lucy. All these facts and more are brought to life through Kempner's tireless editing of archival footage. Researching to find this footage was "the hardest work," of the film states Kempner "and clearing the rights at over $300,000, it's biggest expenditure." Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg opens in an exclusive engagement at the River Oaks Three.
The Houston Cinema Arts Society and the Aurora Picture Show present a sneak preview of the independent video documentary, What If, Why Not?: Underground Adventures with Ant Farm. The film unrolls Thursday (11/12) at 7 p.m. at the University of Houston College of Architecture Underground Adventures with Ant Farm is the first film to delve into the work of the renegade 1970s art/architecture collective Ant Farm, best known for its iconic land-art piece Cadillac Ranch. The screening features a Q&A with Ant Farm founders Chip Lord and Curtis Schreier along with directors Laura Harrison and Beth Federici, plus a reception amidst the College of Architecture student-designed/Ant Farm-inspired inflatables in the Architecture School atrium.
You get extra credit if you pronounce the name of director Olatunde Osunsanmi correctly. The Fourth Kind attempts a sort of reality movie experience that goes beyond films like Blair Witch, Cloverfield or the current Paranormal Activity. And the movie plays its trump card with style. We're supposed to believe that the movie has actual recorded sessions with people who were abducted by other entities (we're beyond aliens and into dimensional oddities and perhaps white owls with no apologies to Where the Wild Things Are). Other than the lead character Dr. Abigail Tyler (Milla Jovovich) all of the players have false names. But the name Abbie Tyler is itself just part of The Fourth Kind's viral marketing. Throughout the film various video recordings are seen split-screen while the action plays out. These are supposed to represent the actual reality that the film is based upon. It's a good ploy and occasionally makes for some effective cinematic jolts. Like when the guy levitates, screaming and possessed. Of course at the most crucial moments of suspense the video (in the film) turns to static. The Fourth Kind takes its title from a non-fiction book from the mid-90s, Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind. That book dealt with case histories of people who'd been abducted by aliens. The Fourth Kind throws in Sumerian religion and redneck sheriffs to make it feel real, but it just makes it look fake. Elias Koteas and Will Patton lend credible support.
There's obviously a lot of 2012 hype in the pipeline much of it fueled by the upcoming release of Roland Emmerich's aptly titled 2012. The DVD Doomsday 2012, produced by the History Channel wavers as it reveals some interesting facts mixed with doom and gloom. The date of December 21, 2012 is given the occult eye in this produced for cable vehicle. When the science rings true the story is amazing. For instance, a background check in Delphic oracles and the I Ching draw your attention. The actual meaning of the Mayan calendar staggers the imagination. But then the doc piles on the doomsday scenario in a pandering way with a greatest hits clips of explosions and tsunamis. This doc is fun to watch if you can weed past all the propaganda. Insight occurs with regards to the status quo on things like the history of Earth's magnetic pole shifts or the cultural history of the Mayans. It's just that the nihilism of cable television requires putting our collective intelligence on hold to let conspiracy theories fly.
