2. You know what’s sad? Not being able to dream anymore. That’s the position 15-year-old Christian Williams is in today because the “I Have A Dream” Foundation’s after-school center has been shut down. The program’s only backer has pulled out funding. I guess we could be mad at David Disiere, the millionaire philanthropist who single-handedly funded the program. But then again, for five years he has single-handedly funded the program.

3. The new one-day-a-week garbage / recycling pickup has kicked in, and some Dallas residents who used to get alley pickup now have to move their garbage cans to the curb. Guess what? They’re mad.

4. You know who should be mad? Johnny Depp. But he’s not. That’s one of the problems with Alice in Wonderland.

UPDATE: The tickets are gone. I was fishing for Ivan Cooper, the subject of Greengrass’ film about Bloody Sunday, and the leader of the march on January 30, 1972. Some good Irish names popped up in my inbox (guesses and contestants).  Some included Bernadette Devlin, who didn’t lead the march, but clocked a British MP over it, and Eamonn McCann, the journalist, who was also there that Sunday.

I’ve passed the stinkin’ arm-rest-test. And still, the lady asks me to get up and come with her off the plane. I get up without a fuss at all, quietly grab my bag, make eye contact with a fellow Fatty who was praying he’d pass, and leave.

Southwest Airlines apologized but stood by its “customer of size” policy.

Now it’s time for Kevin Smith to apologize to me for Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

“THE VIOLENT KIND” AND “LOVERS OF HATE” PRODUCERS UNVEIL “STRIPPED” TEASE

PARK CITY, UT (January 27, 2010)—Jeffrey Allard (THE VIOLENT KIND, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE) and Adam Donaghey (LOVERS OF HATE, ST. NICK) announced plans to produce the horror feature STRIPPED with Tiffany Shepis (THE VIOLENT KIND, NIGHTMARE MAN) confirmed for the cast.

Written by Justina Walford and John Wildman, the film will mark Wildman’s feature directorial debut after recently departing AFI as the Head of Press and Public Relations.

Described as post-feminist horror, STRIPPED follows the events surrounding a birthday outing with two brothers and a friend which turns into a horrific fight for survival after theybecome trapped in a house with a “family” of malevolent women.

Along with Shepis, negotiations are also underway with Samrat Chakrabarti (FINDING GRACELAND, KISSING COUSINS) to join the cast. Financed independently, filming is set to begin in Dallas, Texas in late May following Wildman’s work as the PR Director for the DALLAS International Film Festival (April 8-18).

“Adam and I have been looking for the right project to team up on,” said Allard, “And this script immediately got my attention. It’s exciting that this has all come together at the same time we both have films at Sundance.”
Donaghey agreed, adding, “Justina and John have not only created some iconic female genre characters that jump off the page, but Jeffrey and I were also impressed with John’s directorial approach to the material.”

President and founder of Indie Entertainment LLC, a film finance and production company formed in 2002 and located in the SF Bay Area, Allard produced THE VIOLENT KIND with Producers Malek Akkad (HALLOWEEN II, HALLOWEEN), Andy Gould (HALLOWEEN II, HALLOWEEN, HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES) and Directors Mitchell Altieri and PhilFlores aka The Butcher Brothers (THE HAMILTONS, APRIL FOOLS DAY). The film made its world premiere Monday at the Sundance Film Festival. He executive produced (with Michael Bay) THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING.
Upcoming projects from Allard include A DARKER REALITY, starring Daniel Baldwin with several projects in development including GROO THE WANDERER, an animated feature film with Marc Toberoff (PIRANHA, BOTTLE SHOCK, I SPY) and THE PRODIGAL, a SF based dramatic thriller with Paul Zaentz (THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, GOYA’S GHOST) and Brad King (TECHNOLUST).
President and founder of Zero Trans Fat Productions, Donaghey produced Bryan Poyser’s LOVERS OF HATE and Clay Liford’s short, MY MOM SMOKES WEED, both of which screened at the Sundance Film Festival, with LOVERS OF HATE making its world premiere on Sunday. Previous projects include David Lowery’s ST. NICK, a Grand Jury Prize for Texas Filmmaking at AFI Dallas, and Francisco Diaz’ EL REGRESO WAY.

Donaghey’s upcoming releases include Frank V. Ross’ AUDREY THE TRAINWRECK and Liford’s EARTHLING. Donaghey is a film columnist for Houston Bay Area’s SCENE Magazine and produces the Houston, Dallas and Austin Film Races.

Wildman currently serves as the Director of PR for the DALLAS International Film Festival, the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles and the Feel Good Film Festival (Los Angeles). He is also part of the film festival consultation group FESTWORKS (along with former AFI FEST top liners Rose Kuo, Robert Koehler and David Rogers) that was recently announced at the Sundance Film Festival. In addition, he writes about film and film festivals for outlets such as Movie City News, Moving Pictures Magazine.com and Envy Magazine, as well as his popular blog at wildworx.wordpress.com.

After watching animator Mo Willems’ short film “Knuffle Bunny,” my two-year-old found an old stuffed bunny that had been shoved in the bottom of a toy bin, renamed it “Knuffle Bunny,” and hasn’t let go of it since. It was also a hit with the four-year-old. She loves to nag to watch movies (I call the TV the “turn-off button,” the way my wife and I find a few minutes of calm and get a few things done). Her nagging started with The Wizard of Oz, and has alternated between Finding Nemo, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Wallace and Gromit: The Case of the Ware Rabbit. Now it’s “Knuffle Bunny.” There is something so endearing and honest about Mo Willems’ characters. The Knuffle series focuses on a father and his daughter Trixie. The two-year-old Trixie looses her stuffed bunny (Knuffle Bunny) at the Laundromat, and yet she can’t yet talk, so she can only tell her father that it is lost with a last-ditch temper tantrum at the foot of the stoop of their Brooklyn brownstone. Parental panic ensues. In “Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity,” an older Trixie inadvertently swaps stuffed bunnies with another girl during the first day of school. Neither girl notices the mistake until 3 a.m. that night. Again, parental panic ensues.

Willems’ charm comes from his characterizations – softly developed, simply wrought, and immediately recognizable and identifiable. I struggle to think of a children’s story that gets at the idiosyncrasies of child behavior – their mannerisms, modes of thought and argument, patterns of speech – in such a simple, unencumbered way. A few weeks ago, I asked the four-year-old why she likes watching movies. “Because you can pretend that you are the person in the movie,” she responded. I think this is why my two daughters took to the Willems’ stories so quickly. Here were characters so like themselves it didn’t take much to extend their own imaginations into the stories. Plus, Willems is funny, and unlike much children’s movies as of late, the jokes are aimed and children and their parents. I enjoy the multi-layered humor of the Pixar fare, but sometimes it is nice to share a sense of humor. In “Knuffle Bunny,” we can laugh on the same page, though I probably appreciated the following classic line more than the kids. When Trixie wakes up in the middle of the night crying about her lost Knuffle Bunny, her father (the narrator) dryly says: “that is when I tried to explain to her what 3 a.m. means.”

As I mentioned, Wallace and Gromit gets its fair share of playtime in our home, though the four-year-old didn’t like the short “A Matter of Loaf and Death,” that is part of the Aardman Animations Tribute. Wallace and Gromit is aimed at an older audience, though I sometimes wonder if the real audience are the adults who can get all of the silly, bawdy humor that is threaded throughout. It’s present in the Case of the Ware-Rabbit, but in that movie the four-year-old likes the bunnies, the chase sequences, and general vegetable silliness. In “Loaf and Death,” she could tell the villain, a big-boobed white bread ad-girl turned serial killer, was “rude” (her word) in a way that wasn’t endearing or funny for her. The kids weren’t interested, but I had a rather good time peeping through all the double entendre and distinctively British body-humor.

The Secret of Kells, a feature-length animated film about a the nephew of a monk learning the art of illuminated manuscripts during the era of Viking invasions, was way too scary for my two kids. The KidFilm program says six and up, and they are probably right. I shut off the movie before the two and four-year-olds got too scared and ruined a good night’s sleep. The movie, however, was phenomenal. What’s lost in the proliferation of digital animation is the art of animation as hand-craft – the painterliness of animation. There are some old Disney films that really exploited the beauty of this form (I’m thinking of The Fox and the Hound), where the backgrounds and scenery are more than just a representation of the film’s world, but a play of abstracts that profoundly and delightfully affect mood and tone. The Secret of Kells is about the art of illuminated manuscripts, and the very fabric of the movie is enveloped in this style.

Brendan is a young orphan who is sent to live with his uncle, an abbot of a monastery. The abbot is obsessed with building a wall to fortify the monastery against the Viking invasions. Brendan is more interested in the work of the brothers who are illuminating the sacred scriptures. When Ireland’s most famous master illuminator arrives, Brendan becomes his pupil against his uncle’s will. As the abbot prepares to guard the future of the monastery’s physical survival, Brenden becomes the only hope for the survival of the art of illumination.

Brendan’s apprenticeship becomes a quest and it takes him into fantastical illustrated worlds of dark forces, as he searches for a secret crystal that is the aid of the artist. The story is exciting and compelling, but it is the sheer beauty and originality of the animation that makes The Secret of Kells such an engrossing watch. Even if you don’t have kids, this is probably one the best films playing in local theaters this weekend.