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    Cinema Arts Festival Schedule

    Film lovers delight: Houston Cinema Arts Fest packed with movie stars, major directors & great movies

    Joe Leydon
    Oct 15, 2013 | 6:00 pm

    Will Forte, Thomas Haden Church, and Houston-born filmmaker Richard Linklater will be among the luminaries lending their star power to the 2013 Houston Cinema Arts Festival. But wait: There’s more.

     

    Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts (August: Osage County), legendary experimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas, veteran producer Ron Yerxa (Cold Mountain, Little Miss Sunshine) and acclaimed violinist Alicia Svigals, founder of the Grammy Award-winning ensemble The Klezmatics, are some of the other notables expected to be on hand for the Nov. 6-10 event.

     

    HCAF officials announced the festival’s full 2013 line-up of feature films, installations, live performances and celebrity guests Tuesday evening during a launch party at the Sam Houston Hotel.

     

    The opening-night attraction: Cutie and the Boxer, Houston-born filmmaker Zachary Heinzerling’s critically hailed documentary about the individual achievements and 40-year marriage of boxing painter Ushio Shinohara and artist Noriko Shinohara, both of whom will join Heinzerling for the Nov. 6 HCAF screening at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

     

    Other festival highlights include:

     

     Nebraska

     

    The latest idiosyncratic dramedy from director Alexander Payne (Sideways, The Descendants) focuses on an eventful Montana-to-Nebraska road trip taken by a boozy golden-ager (Bruce Dern) who’s convinced he has won $1 million in a Publishers Clearing House-like sweepstakes. Also along for the ride: The cantankerous coot’s estranged son (Will Forte), who joins his father largely to take a vacation from his own dead-end life. Forte will be on hand for the HCAF screening, along with the film’s producer, Ron Yerxa, who’s being honored by the festival with special tribute screenings of his latest two movies.

     

     Dazed and Confused

     

    Wow, dudes. Can it really be two decades since Richard Linklater followed up his breakthrough indie Slacker with this free-wheelingly funny comedy – his first major studio release! – about music, marijuana and misadventures on the last day before summer vacation at an Austin high school? Well, yes. But that’s not the only reason why HCAF has slotted a special 20th-anniversary screening of the flick featuring such then-rising stars as Matthew McConaughey, Milla Jovovich, Ben Affleck and Renée Zellweger. Linklater will be this year’s recipient of the festival’s prestigious Levantine Cinema Arts Award, a prize that last year went to Robert Redford.

     

     Thomas Haden Church and TBA

     

    The Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated actor will be at the Houston Cinema Arts Festival with one of his two new movies currently awaiting theatrical release. Trouble is, HCAF spokespeople claim they can’t yet tell us which one it will be, because of the festival’s non-disclosure agreement with the film’s distributor. All they’ll tell us is that Church will be accompanied by the film’s director – Megan Griffith, who won an audience award for narrative feature at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival with her harrowing indie drama, Eden – and producer/co-writer Emily Wachtel. Of course, any reasonably sentient human being could do a cross-check of those names on IMDB.com if they really were curious. Or they could, you know, just search “Thomas Haden Church” on Variety.com, and come up with this.

     

     Charlie Countryman

     

    The other Ron Yerxa production in the HCAF lineup is an offbeat comedy-drama featuring Shia LaBeouf as a hapless Chicagoan who falls in love with the beautiful ex-wife (Evan Rachel Wood) of a brutish crime boss (Mads Mikkelsen) while adrift in Romania. Director Frederik Bond will be at the festival to introduce his indie feature, which recently was picked up for release by Millennium Entertainment.

     

     Jonas Mekas

     

    At the ripe young age of 90, Mekas – a.k.a. The Godfather of American Avant-Garde Cinema – shows no signs of slowing down. Indeed, he won’t be content to simply screen his latest feature – Sleepless Nights Stories, a visual diary in which he rubs shoulders with Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, Harmony Korine and other artist friends – at HCAF 2013. No, Mekas also intends to conduct a tour of his exhibition Life Goes On… I Keep Singing at the Deborah Colton Gallery during the festival. Maybe while he’s here in H-Town, he’ll be offering health tips on how to remain eternally youthful? I mean, does this dude bathe in the blood of virgins every full moon, or what?

     

     The Yellow Ticket

     

    In this most famous of several silent-era movies based on playwright Michael Morton’s 1914 Broadway play, the great Pola Negri stars as a young Jewish woman in Czarist Russia who’s forced to degrade herself by obtaining a “yellow passport” usually reserved for prostitutes so she can travel freely to visit her ailing father in St. Petersburg. The Houston Cinema Arts Festival will screen film historian Kevin Brownlow’s restored version of the 1918 classic Nov. 7 at MFAH with live musical accompaniment by klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals and jazz pianist virtuoso Marilyn Lerner. (Music lovers and film buffs, take note: Svigals also will take part in a festival-sponsored event, Meet the Makers: Scoring for Silent Film, at 1 p.m. Nov. 8 at HCAF Headquarters, 1201 Main St.)

     

     Paris, Texas

     

    After programming Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction, Sophie Huber’s tribute to the venerated character actor, and Shepard & Dark, Treva Wurmfeld’s study of the friendship between playwright Sam Shepard and actor Johnny Dark, the HCAF movers and shakers decided, hey, let’s go for the gusto and make it a triple bill. Which is why the festival will follow those two documentaries at the Sundance Cinemas with a special revival screening of Paris, Texas, Wim Wenders’ 1984 masterwork -- partly filmed right here in Houston -- starring Stanton in the performance of a lifetime as a dazed drifter in search of redemption and co-written (with L.M. Kit Carson) by Shepard. Good choice.

     

     Tracy Letts

     

    As we reported Monday, HCAF will present the H-Town premiere of August: Osage County as part of its 2013 festivities. What we didn’t report then – because we didn’t know yet – is that playwright/screenwriter Tracy Letts will be here to introduce director John Wells’ star-studded adaptation of his award-winning play about the singularly strong-willed women of an Oklahoma family.

     

    A family, Letts freely admits, that’s a lot like his own.

     

    “I’ve never shied away from discussing openly that it’s based on true family history,” Letts told me after the film’s premiere last month at the Toronto Film Festival. “My grandfather committed suicide by drowning when I was 10 years old. My grandmother then descended into years of downer addiction. And both of these things had great resonance in my family. Not only then, 38 years ago, but it has ripples in my family even to this day.

     

    “But the truth is, we’ve all got some dark patches in our family history. And anybody who says they don’t – they’re either lying, or they just haven’t been paying attention. Because those things are there.

     

    “So, yes, the play is drawn from autobiographical elements. But it’s certainly not my autobiography. This is a recognizable family to me in some ways. But in other ways, it’s very different from my actual family. You pick and choose the things that are helpful to you: Actual things from real life, totally made up things, things from other people’s families.”

     

     Complete details about 2013 Houston Cinema Arts Festival attractions and presentation venues can be obtained at the festival’s website. 

    Richard Linklater, from left, Thomas Haden Church and Will Forte are among the luminaries to lend star power to the 2013 Houston Cinema Arts Festival.

    Richard Linklater, from left, Thomas Haden Church and Will Forte
      
    Courtesy photos
    Richard Linklater, from left, Thomas Haden Church and Will Forte are among the luminaries to lend star power to the 2013 Houston Cinema Arts Festival.
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    news/entertainment

    Movie review

    New movie Eddington confronts the chaos of early pandemic life

    Alex Bentley
    Jul 18, 2025 | 3:30 pm
    Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal in Eddington
    Photo courtesy of A24
    Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal in Eddington.

    The coronavirus pandemic had a profound impact on the entire world, one that has been shown in various ways by movies and TV shows. However, even though a number of productions have attempted to show what life was like during the early days of the pandemic, few have tried to truly reckon with the way lockdowns and restrictions changed people.

    Filmmaker provocateur Ari Aster does just that in Eddington, set in a fictional small town in New Mexico in early 2020 that proves to be a microcosm of the debates taking place worldwide at that time. Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) is not a fan of mask mandates or other restrictions imposed by the government, while mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) tries to lead by example in an effort to keep his community safe.

    The men butt heads not just on how to deal with the pandemic, but also over a personal history involving Joe’s wife, Louise (Emma Stone). When news of the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota makes its way to town, it starts a slow simmer among the town’s youth population, putting even more stress on Joe and his small department. Conspiracy theories, white guilt, partisan politics, cults, and more combine to make the community into a powder keg that threatens to explode at the slightest provocation.

    Aster (Midsommar, Beau is Afraid) takes aim at all sides in a film that’s part satire and part thriller. No matter how each viewer reacted to the pandemic, the film offers at least a character or two that will come close to representing their viewpoint. Although opinions may differ, it seems clear that Aster is not portraying one side as “right” or more righteous than the other. What he is doing is demonstrating just how much was happening in a short period of time, and how those things could negatively affect anyone.

    On the flip side, the film also challenges viewers with viewpoints that may not match their own, which can make for an uncomfortable experience at times. The reactions various characters have to certain events range from rational to wholly unexpected, and Aster seems to delight in keeping the audience on their toes the entire time. This is especially true when violence rears its ugly head, resulting in some intense and upsetting scenes.

    Not everything in the film lands, though. A subplot involving Louise and Vernon (Austin Butler), a cult leader who preys on her fears, feels tacked on, with no relation to the film as a whole. In fact, the character of Louise is a misfire in general, one whose purpose makes little sense. Aster also lets (asks?) some actors speak in almost inaudible tones at various points in the film, a frustrating experience in a film as dialogue-heavy as this one.

    Phoenix loves to dig into off-kilter characters, and this one ranks high on that scale. Even if you don’t enjoy what his character does, it’s hard to fault the performance that brings him to life. Most of Pascal’s scenes are with Phoenix, and while he matches Phoenix’s energy, the lower key nature of his character leaves him overshadowed. The nature of the film means few others make an impact, although Deidre O’Connell as Joe’s passive-aggressive mother-in-law and William Belleau as Officer Jiminiz Butterfly stand out in their scenes.

    Few of us would volunteer to go back to the baffling days of early 2020, but Eddington does a great job of examining what was happening at the time and how events united some and divided others. It’s not a feel-good film, but it is one that will make viewers re-examine their reactions at the time and how those influenced the current reality.

    ---

    Eddington is now playing in theaters.

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