People used to gather around the “electric fireplace” at this time of year for Christmas variety shows. These boasted sing-along medleys, unlikely collaborations, corny jokes and often over-the-top clothes and décor. The format didn’t really survive through the 1980s, but in that decade a few Christmas music videos appeared and “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” did a [...]
This Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston is showcasing the artistry of filmmakers Stephen and Timothy Quay with a special series including six films spanning 25 years– from their early puppet animation masterpiece Street of Crocodiles to the Houston premiere of their latest film, Through The Weeping Glass. I remember–back before [...]
OK, well, the Houston Cinema Arts Festival has begun, so its a little late for me to still be slicing up the programming. But I’ve got one more. My final cut of the fest here focuses on the homegrown. There are various Texas connections sprinkled throughout this year’s program, from docs on Texas artists past [...]
I mentioned in my last post that arts documentaries are arguably the heart of the Cinema Arts Festival (running this evening through Sunday). These films, at their best, illuminate the work and lives of visionary shapers of our culture. They connect the inspirations, impulses, and impacts. They remind us of the importance of that funny, [...]
The Houston Cinema Arts Festival is back with an eclectic program celebrating film both as art and as art document. It opens this Wednesday and runs through Sunday. As always, the fest features some great programming. And, as always, it’s a little difficult to decipher and plan for. In reality, the HCAF is a few [...]
“Everything is being spoiled in this world. …Know what? When everything is being spoiled, we’ll be spoiled too!” So proclaim two teenage girls–both named Marie–before embarking on a romp of epic consumption and gleeful havok-wreaking. There is no film on the planet like Vera Chytilová’s 1966 Daisies. An explosive concoction of New Wave cinema, Dadaist [...]
Celebrating the legendary de Menil years of the Rice Museum and Rice Media Center. The Menil Collection’s 25th anniversary this year has had me thinking a lot about its importance in my life and in the cultural landscape of this city. It has also made me think about the much-longer-than-25-years history of John and Dominique [...]
The Aurora Picture Show’s 9th annual Media Archeology Festival (Thursday through Saturday, Sept. 21-23) premieres a host of unique films and live audiovisual performances that transform everything from magnetic fields to cardiac rhythms to landmark film abstractions. When the Media Archeology Festival began nearly a decade ago, it was primarily focused on artists’ repurposing of [...]
Experimental Eye and The Sounds of Silence. The next 6 weeks bring Houstonians rare opportunities to see some of the most dynamic experimental films in history- many shown on delicious 16mm film! Four upcoming film screenings–one presented by the Aurora Picture Show, and three co-presented by the Menil Collection and Rice Media Center–showcase a diversity [...]
Robert Frank’s 1950s at the MFAH The new exhibition, American Made: 250 Years of American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston opens next weekend. The show will feature an extremely wide variety of both fine art and decorative works from the museum’s collection, made between the 18th and 20th centuries. They’re boasting an [...]
I’ve been meaning to write something here about film scores for a while. You know, some kind of analysis of the role of music in movies, with interesting, specific examples and nods to Bernard Hermann. Well, this ain’t that. This is just me letting you in on the guilty pleasure of a cinephile. Around this [...]
Vital film document, Come Back, Africa screens at the MFAH. “This film was made secretly in order to portray the true conditions of life in South Africa today. There are no professional actors in this drama of the fate of a man and his country.” So begins Lionel Rogosin’s fascinating 1959 film, Come Back, Africa. [...]
It’s easy to remember only the sweet, cheery and teary moments of Director Frank Capra’s 1946 film, It’s A Wonderful Life, and forget that it takes us through the depths of despair to get us there. Since the early 1970s (when the film’s copyright lapsed and television stations could air it repeatedly around Christmastime without [...]
The best movie to see alone and/or stoned this Thanksgiving weekend is Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 existential Sci-Fi oddity, The Man Who Fell To Earth. A new film print of the original cut is screening Friday-Sunday at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. The movie is based on a 1963 novel by Walter Tevis, who called [...]
The new Sundance Cinemas open this Wednesday, in time for the long holiday weekend. Located Downtown at Bayou Place, Sundance promises to more than fill the gap left by the closing of the Angelica a little more than a year ago. They’ll be showing independent and foreign films alongside Hollywood blockbusters. They’ll also host special [...]
I want to call attention to one film in the Cinema Arts Fest that, while nestled quietly and rather buzzless in the schedule between exciting premieres, audiovisual performances, and parties, is a truly amazing work of grand cinematic spectacle, and one of the festival’s rare opportunities. The 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi, showing tonight at 7:30 the [...]
This Wednesday evening, the third annual Cinema Arts Festival Houston launches five days of film screenings, multimedia performances, video installations, and artist talks in venues around the city. CAFH is unique in the film festival world because it’s not so much a celebration of movies as it is an exploration of film’s relationships with all [...]
It. Is. On! A heated battle is brewing on the big screen as two big, new dance films come to Houston theaters. In one corner, the new remake of ‘80s classic Footloose, which opened here and around the country this past Friday. In the other corner is Pina, director Wim Wenders’ new 3-D film honoring [...]
Phillip K. Dick meets Jean-Luc Godard in the fever dream of a vintage collector! OK, that was my quick attempt at a simple and catchy, hyperbolic hook for Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s mostly unknown 1973 film, World on a Wire. Maybe not the best tagline, but not completely off the mark either. This brilliant oddity was [...]
