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James Faust has spent the last year watching 400 features and short films, which he and his team winnowed down to the 145 films that will run from April 25 to May 2 as part of the Dallas International Film Festival. Last year, DIFF made its triumphant post-COVID return to the Violet Crown theater in the West Village. But this year has an even more pronounced feeling of what Faust described as “we’re back-ness,” which includes major premieres, opening night at the Majestic Theater, and a Texas music showcase at the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff.

We met James at DIFF sponsor Four Corners Brewing to chat about this year’s edition of DIFF. Below the player, I’ve included some more information about the films we discussed..

Protesters Cited for Blocking Road in West Dallas. Janie Cisneros, whose Singleton United/Unidos has led the fight to force the shingle factory GAF to vacate her neighborhood, got a ticket along with four other protesters for blocking access to the plant. The five demonstrators tied their protest to Earth Day, raising awareness of what they say is too slow a timeline to vacate the neighborhood. GAF says it plans to relocate the plant by 2029. The official citations were for “pedestrians in [the] roadway.”

Man Arrested in Connection With Fatal Party Shooting. Christopher Jones, 28, was charged with deadly conduct and possession of methamphetamine days after a shooting at a party on Collins Avenue killed a 21-year-old woman and wounded another eight people. Cops were called a little before midnight, but the party broke up. Shots rang out after 1:35 a.m. after their departure. Police are investigating their response.

Plano Bans Short-Term Rentals. Existing Airbnb and VRBO operations are grandfathered into the city’s new regulations, but new rentals are no longer allowed. The Plano City Council has been debating the ordinance for over two years, which was prompted by the same concerns and frustration as in Dallas last year. Dallas was sued after failing to grandfather existing operators into its plan.

Stars Drop Game 1 to Knights. The 4-3 loss means that the Stars give up their home-ice advantage against the reigning Stanley Cup Champions. It took less than two minutes for the Las Vegas Golden Knights to notch a goal, and they never lost their aggression. Mike and the team will have more on StrongSide today. Game 2 is tomorrow at 8:30 p.m. (The Mavs tip off in their second game tonight at 9 p.m.)

James Harden (above photo) is wearing a PE (player edition) of his own signature shoe, the Adidas Harden Vol. 8. I didn’t see that this had its own name so I’m going to call it the Harden Vol. 8 “Barney,” because it is puffy and purple, and I was instantly sick of seeing it and him and kind of basketball in general. Maybe this colorway is a nod to his time in Houston and some of its residents’ proclivity for purple drank? Probably not. But maybe? Might also call these the Rob Liefelds after the Deadpool comic artist who couldn’t draw feet.

Tim Hardaway Jr. is wearing a PE version of the Jordan Tatum 1s, the Jordan Brand signature for Boston’s Jayson Tatum. As near as I can tell, they take at least some of their inspiration from the early 1990s colorways of the Nike Air Raid, the shoe his dad was the face (the foot?) of, starring in Spike Lee-directed commercials and so on. This continues THJ’s late-season tribute to his pop, in which he has been playing every game as if he is a 57-year-old. I’m going to call this colorway the Jordan Tatum 1 “Ordell Robbie” (for the scene in Jackie Brown in which Samuel Jackson’s character asks Luis, his friend and former literal partner in crime, “What happened to you, man? Your ass used to be beautiful.”).

Today marks the start of early voting for the May 4 election, and if history is any indicator, very few of the city’s registered voters will make it to the polls.

Last May, when all 14 city council seats and the mayor’s seat were on the ballot, roughly 6.6 percent of the city’s 650,607 voters visited the polls. Portland State University’s Who Votes for Mayor site gives further insight as to who is voting in May elections in Dallas: last year, the average voter was 62 years old. The median age in Dallas is 33.

This election may not have mayors and council members to vote for, but it is still no exception when it comes to important items on the ballot. Ten propositions for a $1.25 billion bond will attempt to address the most urgent of what city staffers say is $17 billion worth of unmet needs. We’ll provide a straightforward explainer on the bond tomorrow.

There are also three new Dallas Central Appraisal District board seats to vote for—Ekambar Kumar Singrikonda and P. Wylie Burge will vie for place 1, while Kendall Scudder and Alexandra Stewart are running unopposed for places two and three. In its second special session last summer, the Texas legislature passed Senate Bill 2, which created three new at-large elected appraisal board seats in every county with a population of 75,000 or greater. 

Mavs Lose Series-Opening Game to Clippers. L.A. was playing without Kawhi Leonard, but it hardly seemed to matter, as Dallas had a 30-point first half (!), which included just eight (8) in the second quarter. They outscored the Clips in the second half, but they never really got that close. They probably didn’t need the week off after closing the season so strongly. I’m not too worried (yet). Much more on StrongSide shortly.

Puck Drops On Stars and Golden Knights Game 1 Tonight. Can Jake Oettinger and Co. win this rematch of the 2023 Western Conference Finals? Sean Shapiro has you covered on StrongSide.

Weekend Rain Sets Record. The new April 20 daily maximum rainfall at DFW Airport is 2.34 inches, breaking an 82-year-old mark. Other areas got as much as 4 inches. Today, it’s cool and dry and sunny. And, seriously, guys. It’s just one game. Mavs are gonna be fine. I’m sure whatever Iztok is posting on StrongSide won’t contradict that.

City Council May Vote Wednesday to Try to Lure Dallas Wings to Dallas. Specifically, to a renovated Dallas Memorial Auditorium, part of the convention center, which should be ready in 2026. The proposal calls for a 15-year lease. Also, Wednesday we will be looking back on Tuesday night’s Game 2, in which the Mavs evened their first-round series.

In 1980, Cullen Davis, the richest person to ever be tried for murder, was back in his Fort Worth mansion after two years in prison. His highly publicized trial, in which he was charged with killing his 12-year-old stepdaughter during a home invasion, had ended with a verdict of not guilty following the wizardry of famed attorney Richard “Racehorse” Haynes, whose cross examination of Davis’ ex-wife, Priscilla, was so stirring that legal observers knew a conviction wouldn’t happen even though another 10 weeks of testimony remained.   

Two years prior brought an allegation that Davis attempted to hire a hitman to kill the judge presiding over his divorce. He was facing a wrongful death lawsuit from Priscilla, who had been wounded in the shooting, and prosecutors hadn’t tried him for the murder of his ex-wife’s new partner, Stan Farr.

That’s a lot to process. And so when he and his third wife, Karen, walked to the front of First Baptist Church of Euless to formally accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior, it was not a surprise to everyone. The longtime legal reporter Allen Pusey in 1980 got curious about this new chapter of his life, how a man who famously once screened Deep Throat during the Colonial Invitational Golf Tournament and was known for lavish parties and late nights decided to lay down his life for God.

His story, “The Conversion of Cullen,” is one of our 50 greatest, a companion piece of sorts to Tom Stephenson’s 1977 chronicle of the murders, “Is Priscilla Davis’ Story True?” The conversion was the work of the evangelical televangelist James Robison, an imposing 37-year-old preacher who had ambitions of his own Billy Graham-style enterprise. His rhetoric from nearly half a century ago may have been novel then, but is now part of our body politic: government has overstepped and forgotten God, creating space for “the radicals, the communists, the feminists, the gays,” as he once said.

In Cullen, he saw opportunity. “God has a task for you,” he once told his wealthy parishioner. “I think you could be extremely helpful in His work.” (Here’s where Cullen is today.)

Pusey doesn’t suggest that Cullen’s conversion was false, but he lays out how it happened and what happened after it did. Robison was certainly onto something. In 1981, Texas Monthly profiled the preacher it called “God’s Angry Man.”

Johnny Cash calls him a man of destiny. W. A. Criswell, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, describes him as “a new star in the galaxy of God’s flaming, shining lights who point men to Christ.” Jerry Falwell proclaims him to be “the prophet of God for this day.” And the late H. L. Hunt called him “the most effective communicator I have ever heard.”

Almost twenty years ago James Robison set himself a course that many felt would eventually enable him to fill the gap left in the hearts, minds, and stadiums of America when Billy Graham passed from the scene. His blunt, sometimes crude forthrightness probably makes that expectation unrealistic, but this same quality has helped propel him to a position of public leadership second only to Falwell’s in what has come to be called the Evangelical New Right.

Pusey’s piece follows Cullen and establishes the foundation for this movement. It’s one of the greatest stories we’ve ever published, and you can read it here.

Last summer, I paid a visit to the Lakewood home of dentist and Renaissance man John Zotos and his wife, Raquel. They have an excellent collection of works by North Texas artists from what I would describe as Dallas’ golden period—about 1997 to 2012—complemented by works from farther afield. He had two early paintings by Raychael Stine from her 2007 debut solo show at Road Agent, a short-lived (but exceptional) Dallas gallery owned by my then wife, Christina Rees. I hadn’t seen the paintings by my long-lost friend since that show. They blew me away.

So it was with great joy that I went to see the opening of her current exhibition at Cris Worley Fine Arts, on view through May 4, a gallery with which I’ve had a working relationship for several years. And now, this Saturday, April 20, Raychael will return to Dallas, the city that launched her career, where we will reunite in an artist’s talk about her current show and an opportunity for all to ponder whether I’m right in saying this exhibition is Raychael’s finest yet and a time portal back to that golden period in the city.

Her newest paintings are wonderfully sumptuous, exuberant, and emotional. Neither expressly abstract nor figurative, they can appear simultaneously like invented interiors, landscapes, and figures. Vivid and alive, the paintings thrum with energy bursting forward as if they’re in motion; the diaphanous color and the large gestures feel musically expressive, as if at times you’re almost seeing sounds. They’re complex without being fiddly and have a supreme emotional joy that makes viewers feel as if they’re painting along with her.

There are worlds within worlds. The paintings are packed with eclectic influences: from other painters, from the natural and unnatural worlds, but never worn heavily as self-conscious post-modern references but instead as original and confident modern art. Standing in front of them, you find yourself getting sucked into the painting space, examining what exactly is going on in this “Wonder Dawn,” the title of her show. Are her paintings cosmic? Did taking off for the New Mexican desert in 2013 make her go a bit woo-woo, this once teenaged prodigy from Ohio who grew up in New Jersey and then the suburbs of Dallas? The paintings often have the look of an electrically back-lit computer screen—not self-consciously digital but merely containing their own power and light source, as if they’re permanently switched on. 

A cool thing about working in an archive are the discoveries revealed through customer requests. While looking for a photograph of a cemetery, I stumbled across photographs related to the funeral of Mildred Noble. She was the wife of a well-known Dallas gambler from the 1940s named Herbert “The Cat” Noble, who was the intended target of the car bomb that took her life. While I was aware of Noble, this aspect of his story, that his wife was killed instead of him, is one of the many rabbit holes one can go down in the Dallas Public Library archives.

Herbert Noble did eventually die on August 7, 1951, ending a feud with then-Dallas gambling kingpin Lester “Benny” Binion that began in 1946 after Noble refused to pay an increased percentage of his gambling profits demanded by Binion for “protection.” Noble survived at least 10 attempts on his life including multiple shootings in which he was wounded several times and two car bombs in 1949. Ultimately, it was an explosive in his driveway that killed him while he was retrieving mail. His death was featured in Time magazine a week later.

What else happened that year of poor Mildred’s unfortunate demise? I found many fascinating 75-year-old images, all from 1949, which cover a wide range of events. There were other photographs related to organized crime in Dallas, such as a series that shows authorities conducting a police raid on a policy game gambling operation in December 1949. A policy game operates like a lottery, in that people bet on numbers with the intent that their selection is chosen in a drawing. The illegal policy ring was operated in part by the Urban Distribution Company and none other than Benny Binion.

Details Emerge About Rev. Haynes’ Exit from Rainbow PUSH. Roland Martin is a journalist and the CEO of Black Star Network. He says that Rev. Frederick Hanyes III’s abrupt departure from leading Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition was because he didn’t have full autonomy in the role. Martin told a CBS affiliate that “Jackson hadn’t really fully ceded control of the organization he founded in 1971,” but said there was no “bad blood” or “anger” between the two men.

Murders, Violent Crime Continue Declining. There were fewer violent crimes in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the prior year, a trend accelerated by a steep drop in total murders. Violent crime has fallen nearly 20 percent compared to 2023, and there have been almost 30 percent fewer murders. Members of the City Council praise the chief’s violent crime plan, but there’s still concern about the seemingly annual summer increase.

Dallas Stars Draw Las Vegas Knights in First Round. The Stars are the best team in the Western conference, but they’ll have to go through the Stanley Cup champions to get to the second round. Vegas topped Dallas in 2023’s Western Conference Finals, so it’ll be the Stars’ chance to avenge last year’s ending. The series begins Monday at 8:30 p.m. The Mavericks, meanwhile, tip off in their first round series against the Clippers at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday.

“Oh my god,” a friend texted me Monday morning. “Have you seen the DCAD appraisals yet?” A few minutes later, I got another message on Facebook: “These appraisals are insane.”

And so I looked at mine. Casa Erickson is in North Dallas, just off of Forest and Marsh. For the last two years, the valuation of our three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,900-square-foot home built in 1961 has been exactly the same. This year, it increased by more than $85,000, or 26 percent over last year.

“WTF is DCAD’s deal?” another friend asked. Indeed.

So I asked around. A coworker in Oak Cliff’s Elmwood neighborhood didn’t see any increase, but a friend who lives just three blocks north saw her market value go up by almost $71,000, with most of the increase attributed to land value. My land value didn’t go up at all—the increase is solely in the home itself, which hasn’t seen any substantive improvements since last year. 

I’ve talked to people throughout Dallas who saw their property values go up substantially. A homeowner in Old East Dallas saw her home’s improvement value go up by $64,000 and the land by $95,000, but she says in reality, “My house is falling apart around me.” Another who lives off of Westmoreland and Jefferson in Oak Cliff says after her protest was denied last year, she made about $8,000 in repairs and saw her market value go up by $102,000 over last year. A homeowner in Capella Park in southwest Dallas says that homes “are not selling” but says his valuation went up by $212,000. Another property in South Oak Cliff jumped from $117,000 to $230,000. 

And it wasn’t just single-family homes, either. A condo-dweller near Mockingbird Station saw her valuation increase by 18 percent. Bisnow reported that commercial property valuations in Dallas County increased by an average of 21 percent, despite the fact that transactions were down by almost 60 percent last year.  Multifamily property valuations were up 20 percent, retail was up about 10 percent, and industrial properties were up a whopping 50 percent. Offices, which have stagnated the most among these non-residential uses, rose between 5 percent and 10 percent.

So why such large increases?

Prepare to Pay $$ to See Caitlin Clark. Fresh off the NCAA tournament and the WNBA draft, Caitlin Clark’s debut with the Indiana Fever will happen May 3 in Arlington against the Wings. Tickets went on sale today, and season ticketholders got first dibs on that preseason opener. The Wings-Fever game will be subject to dynamic pricing, which means that tickets are already going for more than $120. 

Fruitcake Happening, Probably. A movie based on the Texas Monthly story about the erstwhile Collin Street Bakery accountant who embezzled millions will now star Jennifer Garner. Filming will start this summer in North Texas.

Weather Will Get Very Weathery. We’re due for storms starting this afternoon, and they won’t really go away until Sunday. Hope you mowed your lawn yesterday, and don’t forget to turn off your sprinklers.