Screen gems

By LEVI AGEE TO THE DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Posted: February 5, 2010 at 2:19 a.m.

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LITTLE ROCK — Market Street Cinema is coming after you cultists with The Big Lebowski, one of the biggest cult sensations of the ’90s. The art-house theater off Merrill Drive in Little Rock will host the 2010 Little Rock Big Lebowski Festival on Feb. 12-15 with screenings of the Coen Brothers’ film each night as well as costume and trivia contests with prize giveaways. The event is sponsored by Millennium Bowl in Maumelle, which makes sense, considering that “The Dude,” played by Jeff Bridges, and his buddies (John Goodman and Steve Buscemi) spend much of the film in a bowling alley.

Tickets for the screenings are $5 and showtimes for screenings can be found on their Web site www.marketstreetcinema.net. For more information, e-mail: lrlebowski@gmail.com.

Those looking for a more highbrow cinema experience (sorry El Duderinos) can head to Jonesboro to check out the free public lecture “How Hollywood Portrays Arkansas - The Three Most Representative Films” by historian Meir Z. Ribalow at 7 p.m. Feb. 18 at Arkansas State University’s Drama Theater in the Fowler Center. Ribalow, artist-in-residence at Fordham University in New York, is widely regarded for his work in theater as well as his course Movies and the American Experience. Ribalow will have additional presentations at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Feb. 19 in the Reng Student Services Center. For more details contact Clyde Milner, director of the Heritage Studies program, at cmilner@astate.edu or go to: asunews.astate.edu/ newspage.htm.

Gerry Bruno, director of the award-winning 48 Hour Film Festival short Fortunate and the recently premiered Web series The Bloodstone Diaries, is organizing a Filmmakers Forum for the local film community. Bruno hopes the event will be a place where aspiring and struggling filmmakers can meet face to face to discuss projects and receive support from other artists. The forum, open to all local filmmakers, will be 5.30-7:30 p.m.Feb. 17 at the Star Bar, 1900 W.

Third St., Little Rock.

The Oxford American on Tuesday announced that Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman will attend the magazine’s inaugural Best of the South Gala in Little Rock on April 3. Tickets begin at $500 for the gala, which will be at the Capital Hotel. For more information see oxford american.org.

The 2010 Sundance Film Festival ended Saturday in Park City, Utah, with the Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Dramatic Competition going to Winter’s Bone, shot on location in the Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri.

Another prize-winning Sundance film has a local connection. Diane Bell’s Obselidia, about a man writing an encyclopedia about all things obsolete, took the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize as well as an Excellence in Cinematography Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition.

Two Little Rock men worked on the movie: John-Michael Powell was the film’s editor and Russ Galusha was the digital technician during production. Galusha also designed the film’s poster and promotional material for Sundance, including postcards and stickers.

Galusha says that about a year ago, his then-roommate Powell applied for the line producer job on Craigslist. Six months later Bell called, saying she needed an editor. Powell and Bell hit it off over their mutual appreciation of French New Wave, Galusha said. Powell later introduced Galusha to Bell and the film’s producers and, “next thing I knew I had my first job on an indie feature,” he said.

Obselidia has yet to secure distribution, but Galusha says we should save the film in our Netflix queues to give it a better chance of being made available by the online subscription service. Done and done.

Levi Agee is a programmer for the Little Rock Film Festival, and the founder and host of Cameras on the Radio. E-mail him at:

levifilm@gmail.com

MovieStyle, Pages 38 on 02/05/2010

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