The phrase “new access to accountability” sounds confusing at first but makes sense in the documentary Page One as the means to an end of traditional journalism versus new media. The purpose of a newspaper in a free society is mainly to question authority and Page One: Inside the New York Times (the film’s full title) goes a long way in establishing that the paper of record has a valid if ever decreasing role in today’s brave new world. One of the Times reporters, David Carr, carries the moral spine of this movie on his back as he’s on-screen much ... Read More »

By Alex Wukman Yesterday morning I went down and hung out with Debra Duncan on Great Day Houston to talk about Eleanor Tinsley and the Free Press. Check it out and see if you can spot the plug. FPH on GDH] nolink] [video Read More »

The Debt just explodes before your eyes. It’s a movie that combines espionage, time dynamics, and star turn performances amped up to a satisfying degree. The Debt starts in the late 90s with Helen Mirren attending the debut event of her daughter’s new book, a tome that describes in detail her mother’s part in apprehending a Nazi war criminal 1960s East Berlin. Mom was a covert agent in Mossad along with two other characters played by Ciaran Hinds and Tom Wilkinson. The story shifts to East Berlin with the three older thesps now played as young adults by Jessica Chastain, ... Read More »

This week’s FPH podcast tackles Food Trucks, cuts in Planned Parenthood’s funding, and what it is like to drink beer with pickles in it. Musical Guest is Craig Kinsey. Subscribe to FPH’s weekly podcast via iTunes or directly through any RSS reader, or download now. Read More »

SXSW Scrapbook: People and Places that Went Before (Essex Press, distributed by University of Texas Press) provides an exhaustive and comprehensive overview of the last 25 years of the ever-expanding music festival and convention. Talk about dense and studded with pics and quotes, the 256-page book has a year-by-year tally of events starting in 1987, and additionally features an A to Z list of over 14,700 bands and performers who played at the festival. I recall earlier at this year’s SXSW talking with some guys at a gas station that’d just arrived in their tour bus (a reconverted school bus) ... Read More »

By:Amanda Hart It is expensive to be born with a vagina. Tampons alone at times are a commodity (ladies, let me introduce you to your new best friend: The Diva Cup. Your “shit, i guess I’ll just use toilet paper” days are over). And tampons are just one of the many items our vagina’s demand that we sometimes can’t afford. However, i would have to say that above all the other items we need to function in our society the one closer to the top of the list is some form of birth control. I would like to think that ... Read More »

Senna fascinates the viewer with a combination of archival footage and a well-structured story. Ayrton Senna was a Brazilian Formula 1 racecar driver who won three world championships before meeting his maker while doing the thing he loved most. I missed this exciting and at times emotional documentary when it played at SXSW and was only too glad to see it in its current engagement at the Studio 30. It’s not important to know much if anything at all about this level of sport. I know practically nothing for instance and that’s didn’t prevent me from enjoying Senna or for ... Read More »

Back in the 90s when the Weinstein Brothers owned and ran Miramax they rarely let me down. Now that they release films under the banner of Weinstein Films I always know that I will at least respect their product if not fall in love with same. When Miramax was theirs they had Dimension as the sub-unit, which distributed horror and genre films. Nowadays the Weinstein Brothers combine all their efforts under the same roof soOur Idiot Brother has the same label as Scream 57 or Apollo 18. On a side note Miramax continues as a separate distribution entity of Disney ... Read More »

By Alex Wukman Dallas area street/graffiti artist Evero was recently sentenced to six months in jail and given a job offer from Dallas’ “graffiti czar,”attorney John Barr. Barr is known throughout the DFW area as something of an anti-graffiti crusader. In an era when walls painted by celebrity London street artist Banksy can sell for  around $400,000 and cities across the globe are working to protect street art by creating legal graffiti spaces, sentencing a street artist to jail seemed a little old fashioned. It also seems strange that, in a time of severe budget shortages, cities keep spending money ... Read More »

Colombiana comes from the mind of Luc Besson and while in his heyday the dude could knock out La Femme Nikita, Colombiana is no femme Nikita. Besson writes and produces and the director is Olivier Megaton. His last name should tell you all you need to know about the subtlety of Colombiana. Sometimes these larger than life, impossible in the realm of physics action thriller work, sometimes not. Some recent examples of the sub-genre would include Hanna (which I liked) and Fast Five (nix on that). But Colombiana bears more resemblance to the Transporter series and Zoe Saldana is a ... Read More »