One of the films in this year’s Lone Star International Film Festival is going to be quite a treat for Fort Worthians. They Came to Play is a documentary filmed here in Fort Worth covering the events of The 2007 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs.

Even better, there will be a preview showing of the film hosted by LSIFF this Thursday at The Modern (tickets available here), including live performances by some of the contestants featured in the film, a cocktail reception, and a question and answer session with the filmmakers.

Clark Griffith, third place winner of the competition in the film, just happens to be my next door neighbor, so I wanted to share my own experience getting to know the man in the movie…

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Tune in to the first podcast in a LONG time for an interview with Alec Jhangiani and Dennis Bishop of the Lone Star Film Society. We talk about how great last year’s Lone Star International Film Festival was and how this year is going to be even better.

 

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Photo of Fort Worth Police Officers at Mayfest 2007 by Stephen Witherden

The one thing that struck me the most about my Mayfest experience (aside from the near-TOTAL lack of environmentalism themed booths and activities), was the heightened security atmosphere. There were uniformed police officers at every step of the entry process, from the road leading into the park all the way through to the ticket booths. And according to my PR escort, there were an equal number of plainclothes officers milling around in the crowd.
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In case you missed the ad that’s been running in our sidebar for the last few days, there’s a new independent film series starting up at The Modern tonight.

The series is has been put together by Kinetiq HD, a local production company. One of the guiding forces of the series is local filmmaker Andrew Disney, who screened his short “Frank’s Last Shot” at the Lone Star International Film Festival back in November.

The show starts at 7:30 tonight at The Modern. Get your tickets here, then get your butt out there!

This week on the show:

• Discussion of the recent events at the Lone Star Film Society, as well as our coverage of the possible effects on the Lone Star Film Festival.
• The Stock Show is going on downtown. Pete took some awesome pictures, and the Star-Telegram is providing some excellent coverage. Think of them as the play-by-play and us as the color commentary.
• Budget Travel magazine writes up the 25 things they love about Fort Worth, MSNBC picks it up, and while we like some of it, we’re all bothered by the fact that our WORLD-CLASS museums (how many times do we have to say that before people take notice?) come in at number 8.
• Steve sat down with Darren Woods, Managing Director of the Fort Worth Opera, to talk about the upcoming season and where he thinks the Opera in Fort Worth is headed. Look for his writeup on that interview later this week. Also, I commit to going to one of the shows with Steve, despite my general avoidance of all things opera.

We had a good time recording this one, we hope you enjoy it, and thanks for listening!

 

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After a successful 2007 run, can the success of the Lone Star International Film Festival be duplicated? Or will recent developments at the Lone Star Film Society threaten the existence of a festival in 2008?

In case you missed it (and you probably did), there was a pretty big deal of an International Film Festival right here in Fort Worth back in November. For four days, a bunch of people you’d recognize from TV and film were wandering around the streets of our city, participating in panel discussions, screening films, and partying as if what happens here stays here. If you’re curious about what you missed (and you totally should be), go back and read and listen to our coverage of the festival. Don’t bother to search back issues of the FW Weekly or the Star-Telegram, they rarely bothered to show up.

Considering the success of 2007’s event, (a remarkable performance considering that for nearly everyone involved it was their first film festival) most people would expect that the team charged with putting it together would be kept on, to make 2008 just as successful, right?

Wrong.

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All good things must come to an end, and when they do, there’s nothing else to do but talk about it some more.

Join PeteG, Bernie, Steve-O, and me as we go over the things we liked and other highlights of the first annual Lone Star International Film Festival.

 

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Sunday was the last day of the 1st annual Lone Star International Film Festival. Yes, it’s taken me two full days to recover from this experience and to gather my thoughts enough to write intelligibly about it.

Sunday morning started off with me hungover (again) and the awards brunch.  Due to my hangover, I was late for the awards brunch, but I think I caught most of it. Steve has already posted the list of winners, so I won’t go into that. Pete G was there taking the included photos.

Martin Sheen and Keith Carradine say hello in the buffet line.

A couple of highlights for me were:

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Saturday was the biggest day by far of the entire festival. This was the day that the big names were scheduled to be on panels discussing their craft, and that the who’s who of the festival would be in attendance. As it turns out, MOST of the big names made it to their panels.

Jeff Tremaine and Rick Kosick at the “Jackass” panel discussion.

After our interview, Jay Chandrasekhar and Paul Soter had just enough time to have lunch at 8.0 and to beat feet down to UTA for their panel, “Directing My First Feature.” Jay was the moderator, and Paul Soter, Jason Sinclair Long, D/FW filmmaker Blake Calhoun, and Fred Durst were scheduled to attend. Fred Durst didn’t make it, and no one is really sure where he was.

Blake Calhoun brought a local perspective to the “Directing My First Feature” panel discussion.

Jay Chandrashekar moderates the “Directing My First Feature” panel discussion.

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So the big buzz amongst festival-goers was for Fred Durst’s directorial debut The Education of Charlie Banks. Never a fan of Limp Bizkit or the associated music videos, I was kinda like “meh” about seeing the movie. But everyone kept talking about how good it was and like Pete W, I too was worried that this was some artificially created Hollywood buzz.

Ah, heck…I was standing right there at the red carpet, so after shooting the following pics I followed the talent in and watched the thing.

Fred Durst

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