Dateline: Austin, Texas – A BRAND-NEW MOVIE TAKES ON a beloved 52-year old classic. That notion was enough to pique my interest.

And sure enough, I settled in for a determined contest of purpose. I was at the legendary, and beautiful, Paramount Theater where most of the South By South-West movie festival’s world-premieres take place, amid wholly appropriate anticipation and hulllaballoo.   Continue reading “Re-telling a Classic Tale with a Whole New Purpose” »

Dateline: Austin, Texas  –   IT’S NOT TOO GREAT an exaggeration to say I was nearly trampled to death. My near-tramplers were the hordes desperate to see the newishly-elected US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (below right), making one of her appearances here at this year’s South By South West (SXSW) conference and festivals.

Also here from the leftish portion of the political spectrum has been a sizable clutch of other prominent Democrats. I’ve counted an extraordinary total of NINE aspirant presidential candidates, including frontline Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar – as well as Georgia’s Stacy Abrams who so nearly made it to Governor, but is – so far – not aiming at the Presidency.     Continue reading “Gross-Out Gags Sometimes – But Also Sharp, Smart Humor at SXSW Geek-Fest” »

A REMARKABLE FILM – one that strikingly reconciles potentially warring interests – is now being showcased at a remarkable venue.

The film is a portrait of a unique American habitat, the eerily beautiful scrubland of south-central Florida, where the painstaking science that’s essential to protecting our environment is being successfully interwoven with the hard-nosed (and, according to some critics, ecologically harmful) business of cattle-ranching.The movie is titled, with simple pointedness: Cowboys and Scientists. Continue reading “Film’s Sumptuous Scenes Show Eco-Collaboration” »

MANAGING PRESS RELATIONS in government these days means, horribile dictu, operating within the overall coarsening of our nation’s discourse – of which the President’s unending assaults on the country’s essential institutions are often the most salient examples.     Continue reading “Response to Online Bigotry; Muslim Judge in Profile” »

SELF-HARMING has at times featured in popular culture, occasionally to some point, but too often as just a facile piece of personality-sketching. I’m thinking right now of Secretary, the 2002 movie that first introduced the ever-affecting Maggie Gyllenhaal to most of us.

It’s a good and intriguingly unsettling movie – but not especially for its treatment of self-harming, which seems a fairly perfunctory element. As a youngster Gyllenhaal’s character develops a habit of cutting or burning her thighs, but filmically this functions largely as a prelude to examining more fully her relationship with her boss (James Spader) in which sado-masochism plays a part. By contrast, I’ve been struck much, much more powerfully by a brand-new documentary – “Cracked Up”, directed and produced by Michelle Esrick, and focusing eagle-eyed on self-harm.    Continue reading “A Damaged Star: Portrayed for the Rescuing of Children Like Him” »