What Would Jesus Buy?This feature documentary follows the Christmas tour of Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir, a group that traveled the country to use humor, spirituality and song to get Americans to stop shopping. Through sing-ins and protests in colleges and …
Romantic DevastationA few weeks ago, I was in snowy Park City, Utah, at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. While there, I attended the premiere of "Ballast," a made-in-Mississippi movie that rallied the efforts of a 35-member Mississippi cast and a mostly …
Feast For The SensesThe Mississippi Symphony Orchestra hums in waiting, but not for long. "Boomers at the Ballpark," a musical good-bye to summer, rockets the 63rd season into fruition on Sept. 8 at Smith-Wills Stadium. This family-friendly event features food, fireworks and Gershwin's …
A Boy and His MailboxIn "Glorious Mail," Mississippi natives J.D. Evermore and co-writer/co-producer Alice Walker tell the story of Cesar Nutley Willingham IV, an antiques dealer, community theater actor and flamboyantly green-eyeshadowed homosexual from Sinnaville, Miss. Willingham's good friend and artist, Kymeleon Cockerham, has …
Summer Movies SizzleOne of the best things to do to avoid the Mississippi heat is to sit in an Antarctic-chilled movie theater in a bucket seat with a big, buttery, unhealthy bucket of popcorn and over-sized soda watching something blow up, a …
The Museum RebornWhen museum director Betsy Bradley walked me through the new Mississippi Museum of Art building in February, the mostly finished museum felt like a chrysalis—placid and even ordinary on the outside, but host to a dramatic metamorphosis within. Formerly the …
Venus EnvyTo see the toll that time exacts, consider two images of Peter O'Toole.
Crossroads Film Festival 2007: Some Sweet FlicksEvery April, Crossroads brings films to Jackson that we ordinarily would never have a chance to see. These are films made by masters and beginners, locals and outsiders. Some are just a few minutes long, while others are full-length features. …
The Sum Of Its PartsThe art in the 2007 Mississippi Invitational falls on both sides of the modernist/postmodernist ideological divide. Some artists relate to a modernist conception of art, which counsels that art is more than the sum of its contexts and that the …
Bard Of The BarstoolYou can't always tell an unrecognized genius from a deluded would-be artist. In the bleak but amusing film "Factotum," Matt Dillon plays Henry Chinaski, an aspiring writer, indifferent laborer and dedicated drunk. Frequently unemployed and inebriated, Chinaski seems identical to …
Tower of PowerHop-scotching across hemispheres, "Babel" considers cause and effect on a global scale. Two young brothers (Boubker Ait El Caid and Said Tarchani) play target practice with their new rifle in the Moroccan mountains. A bullet strikes a testy American couple …
Let's Do The Time Warp…Again!You remember 1973, don't you? Elvis was in concert in Hawaii, Nixon began his second term, the Watergate hearings were in full swing, the Vietnam War ended, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, Secretariat won the Triple Crown, and …
The Movie Cast: Where Are They Now?Um… dead (maybe this list shouldn't be in alphabetical order). Adams was a British actor who played a number of roles in British TV and Films, but is best known for his RHPS role. He died last year.
RHPS Virgin GuideIn RHPS parlance, a "virgin" is anyone who's never seen RHPS (that's "Rocky Horror Picture Show," the movie) in a theater. Seeing it on TV doesn't count (TV virgin), renting the DVD doesn't count (Video virgin), and not even seeing …
Shteyger and Films - Festival BeginsJackson is set to receive a fresh dose of Jewish culture this weekend, as the 5th annual Jackson Jewish Film Festival kicks off this Saturday. Thanks to the efforts of Jewish Cinema South, this year's festival should have something for …