?Thank you for this day, Daddy. I hope I lived right and if I see you one day that I make you proud.? I first saw Katie Says Goodbye at the 2017 Newport Beach Film Festival, where I ranked it among my favorites. The film won jury awards for Best Actress (Olivia Cooke) and Best…
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, ?Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is,…
?Artist is not a profession. You don?t work from 9 to 5. To the artist, you are all the time artist. There is no moment you are not artist.? The artist Christo is known worldwide for his very large scale temporary art projects. But after the death of his wife and collaborator Jeanne-Claude, he made…
?It?s not Hamnet you mourn; it?s yourself.? Kenneth Branagh has always had an affinity for Shakespeare?s works. He has appeared in, written, and/or directed several screen adaptations of Shakespeare?s plays. Now, in All Is True, he portrays William Shakespeare in his years of retirement. To be sure, there is a great amount of conjecture in…
?Failure is not the end. Failure is actually the beginning? In the early 1990s a group of Apple employees left the company to try to take computing to the next step?a handheld computer that people can carry around. And they did. Except the company they started failed. But failure isn?t always failure. General Magic documents…
For my final day at the 2019 Newport Beach Film Festival presented by Pacific Sales, I took in a pair of documentaries. But before I get to those movies, I want to thank the festival for providing me with tickets to see the films I saw, and especially thank the hundreds of volunteers without whom…
He was called ?the Conscience of the Nation.? He was the advisor and friend of Presidents of both parties from Dwight Eisenhower to Ronald Reagan. He served (and eventually chaired) the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. And around the Notre Dame campus (where he was President for 35 years) he was Father Ted. Father Theodore Hesburgh…
I mentioned in one of my earlier reports that I?m stingy with my ratings of Excellent on the Audience Award ballots we are given for each film. The choices are Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor. My default is Good. To get an Excellent, a film needs to rise above the other films in some way….
The Newport Beach Film Festival presented by Pacific Sales continues to bring interesting films that may never make it to a wide distribution, but that doesn?t mean the films aren?t worthy of being seen. That is one of the values of film festivals. I would encourage everyone to look for film festivals near you. (Note…
Welcome back to the Newport Beach Film Festival presented by Pacific Sales. It was a full day for me, as you?ll see when you see the nine films I have to talk about. Okay, I?ll admit that six of them were shorts, but that still seems like a full day to me. Note that I?m…
