6:45 p.m. at James D. Ryan Middle School

Catch it you can: Thunder Soul moves again at Cinema Arts Festival

You can't catch thunder — and it's becoming almost as hard to corral Thunder Soul at the Cinema Arts Festival.

The screening of the acclaimed documentary about the 1970s school jazz band from Houston's own Kashmere High School is moving for the second time. Now, Thunder Soul won't be shown at Discovery Green at all — instead it will play at 6:45 p.m. Saturday in the James D. Ryan Middle School auditorium, a venue that's big enough to still allow the Kashmere Reunion Stage Band to perform live after the movie.

A combination of "low temperatures and wet ground conditions" caused Cinema Arts Festival officials to elect to move the show indoors. The plan had been for Thunder Soul to be screened in the fresh air of Discovery Green at 6:45 p.m. tonight (this after rain and actual thunder postponed the originally-planned Thursday night showing at Discovery Green).

Mark Landsman's documentary is probably worth tracking down. Thunder Soul won the audience award at the Los Angeles Film Festival and it has already been packed up for national distribution (meaning you could be paying to see it in the theaters in spring of 2011). Tonight's screening at James D. Ryan, in contrast, is still a completely free event.

But seating will be limited to the first 600 due to the junior high auditorium's size.

The Cinema Arts Festival is the only festival in the United States devoted solely to films by and about visual, performing and literary artists For more information on the Festival, the full schedule or to purchase tickets, go to cinemaartsociety.org.

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No Wallet Required

Texas grocer H-E-B finally rolls out digital tap-to-pay services

Photo courtesy of H-E-B

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Texas' favorite grocery store has some good news for shoppers who have a habit of forgetting their wallets. H-E-B is starting a phased rollout for digital tap-to-pay services, starting in San Antonio before spreading to the rest of the chain's stores.

The rollout began Monday, October 7. A release says it'll take "about a week" to spread to all stores in the region before making it ways across Texas. Although it is not known which stores will add the service on what date, the rollout includes all H-E-B stores, including Mi Tienda, H-E-B's Mexican grocery store that has locations in Houston.

With tap to pay, shoppers will finally be able to use smartphone-based systems such as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay, as well as tapping a physical card.

Payments can be made with those apps, or "digital wallets," at cash registers and self-checkout lanes, as well as restaurants and pharmacies within H-E-B stores. They won't be accepted right away at H-E-B fuel pumps, but customers can use them to pay for gas if they bring their phones to the fuel station payment window.

This isn't exactly cutting-edge technology; Google Wallet launched in 2011, leading the market, and was followed by Apple Pay in 2014. But it's not ubiquitous either. In 2023, a poll by Forbes Advisor found that barely more than half of respondents used digital wallets more than traditional forms of payment.

H-E-B is on a bit of a payment revolutionizing kick, also launching a debit card in 2022 and a partnership in August of 2024 with the H-E-B-owned delivery service Favor for its fastest order fulfillment yet. Central Market and Joe V’s Smart Shop, two other H-E-B brands, also recently launched tap to pay.

“At H-E-B, we’re always exploring a broad range of technologies to enhance how customers shop and pay for products,” H-E-B vice president Ashwin Nathan said in a statement. “This has been one of the most requested services we have received from our customers and partners, and we are excited to now make this popular technology available at all our H-E-B locations.”

More information about H-E-B is available at heb.com.

h-e-b grocery technology