Budget breakdown

State House kills funding for Texas Commission on the Arts; director hopes forSenate reprieve

Courtesy photo
Gary Gibbs, executive director, Texas Commission on the Arts

On late Sunday evening, the Texas House of Representatives passed an austere $164.5 billion budget, which included an amendment that slashes $3.5 million in contributions to the Texas Commission on the Arts (TCA) and transfers the monies to the Department of Aging and Disability Services. If approved by the Senate and a joint conference committee, the TCA would lose all general revenue funds.

However, TCA executive director Gary Gibbs is hopeful that the Texas Senate will continue to support the agency and that some compromise with the House can be reached.

"The amendment, which was narrowly passed, would make it difficult for this agency to continue to operate. We hope that once the Senate's budget passes, the conference committee will hold us up," said Gibbs, whose career in the arts includes an 18-year stint as director of education and outreach at Houston Grand Opera.

Texas' current spending on the arts is already in an embarrassing state. In a report by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, arts appropriation averages a mere 25 cents per person, ranking it 44 out of the 50 state arts agencies.

"Texas just has small government," Gibbs said in a February interview when the proposed budget cuts first attracted attention. "The budget is much lower across the board: education, health and human services, criminal justice. It has traditionally been a small government philosophy."

Despite the grave state of the arts, Gibbs is working to secure the TCA's viability. "We hope that we'll be preserved so that when times are better, we'll still be intact to continue to do what we do," he said.

The state legislature's final budget decision likely won't be reached until the end of the session on May 30. Until then, Gibbs encourages Texans to contact their state representatives and ask that they advocate for the Texas Commission on the Arts.

Read previous CultureMap coverage of the TCA's impact on Houston art groups here.

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Movie Review

Action-packed Kraven the Hunter showcases gritty Marvel antihero

Photo by Jay Maidment

Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Kraven the Hunter.

One of the oddest things about the blockbuster era we live in is that while Disney owns the rights to the majority of Marvel comic book characters, Sony Pictures owns the rights to Spider-Man and any affiliated characters. Since they’re sharing Spider-Man himself with Disney, Sony has been trying to capitalize on those rights by making stand-alone films using niche characters that only comic book fanatics would know.

Having exhausted Venom and whiffed on attempts with Morbius and Madame Web, they’re trying again with Kraven the Hunter. Also known as Sergei Kravinoff, Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is a self-styled vigilante who, as the film tells it, travels the world exacting vengeance on the truly bad people of the world. He’s the son of Nikolai (Russell Crowe), a hard-edged Russian oligarch, and brother to Dmitri (Fred Hechinger), who is relatively weak compared to the rest of his family.

The origin story has Kraven gaining his animal-like powers - including super-strength, speed, and jumping abilities - as a teenager from a mysterious serum given to him by a girl named Calypso (played as an adult by Ariana DeBose) after he was mauled by a lion. The two maintain a tenuous partnership as adults, with Calypso helping him hunt down other villains like Aleksei Sytsevich (Alessandro Nivola) and The Foreigner (Christopher Abbott).

Directed by J.C. Chandor and written by Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway, the film looks and feels enormously lazy, something made merely to hold on to potentially valuable intellectual property. Other than the tense family dynamic between the Kravinovs, little makes sense in the story. Kraven has an indecipherable moral code that has him going after poachers - because he’s part lion? - in addition to other high-powered criminals, with no clear goal except to … get back at his father?

The laziness extends to the action scenes, which feature Kraven being mostly impervious to any damage, whether it’s hand-to-hand combat, knives, or guns. The CGI-heavy scenes don’t even allow moviegoers to enjoy an R-rated bloody free-for-all, as all of the blood splatter is computer-generated, too. Since apparently one Spider-Man villain is not enough, three others make appearances with abilities that are under-explained and CGI that is poorly done.

That’s not even counting Calypso, another Spider-Man villain whose purpose in this film is nebulous at best. Her early connection with Kraven is so coincidental as to be laughable, and her continued reasons for helping him as an adult strain credulity as well. The only saving grace of her presence is that the filmmakers don’t try to shoehorn romance into the plot; perhaps they’re saving that for the (inevitable?) sequel.

Taylor-Johnson has had one of the most prolific-yet-anonymous careers in modern Hollywood, with appearances in big films like The Fall Guy, Bullet Train, and Tenet that have made very little impact. Even as the star here, he fails to hold your attention, with the story and visuals doing him no favors. DeBose has followed up her Oscar win for West Side Story with schlock like I.S.S., Argylle, and this, which doesn’t bode well for her career. At least Crowe gets to chew the scenery.

With a contractual inability to mention the name “Spider-Man,” movies like Kraven the Hunter exist in a weird area that forces filmmakers to make up stories for characters to which most people have no attachment. And just like Sony’s previous efforts, it is a very poor way to spend two hours in a movie theater; avoid at all costs.

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Kraven the Hunter opens in theaters on December 13.

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