CineMatinee at the Fountain
A unique blend of movies, past and present, often with an emphasis on life in the west - which could mean the new west,
the old west, or anything in between- and ‘movies that missed us’- films that are notable but never had a lot of publicity- the
CineMatinee series is designed to show area residents that film is a form of art as well as entertainment! At least one film a
month for this series has a ‘New Mexico Connection’, drawing from the vast pool of movies made in the state or perhaps featuring
a star/story from New Mexico talent.
Unless otherwise noted, screening time is 1.30 PM, and admission is $4 for everyone except film society members who are admitted for
$1. The theatre is located one half block of the Mesilla Plaza. For more information, please call (575) 524-8287.
The Fountain Theatre is located at 2469 Calle de Guadalupe, one block south
of the plaza.
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August 22-Back to God’s Country (1919, 73 minutes, not rated- silent)
Nell Shipman stars in this handsomely mounted but rarely seen silent
film, as Dolores LeBeau, a child of nature on a voyage to the Arctic Circle with her new husband, Peter Burke. En route, she discovers to
her horror that the Captain, Rydal is none other than the escaped prisoner who killed her father. Rydal threatens the girl to silence
and then causes an "accident" that seriously injures Peter. Arriving at their destination, Dolores learns from trader Blake Rydal’s accomplice,
that the nearest doctor is at Fort Confidence, miles away across the inhospitable barrens. Dolores, however, demands a team of dogs and the
villains give in, secretly concocting a scheme to separate husband and wife along the route. "So that only the woman will return -- for you!"
as Blake puts it in an inter-title. But Dolores manages to get a minor head start by shooting the trader, racing into the white wilderness
with Rydal in hot pursuit. The killer is soon closing in on the fugitive…will she make it, and just who or what is Wapi? Find out when we
have our annual celebration of silent film. (Added attraction, two very short silent films)
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August 29…10.00 AM…A special screening of Long Gun New Mexico, a locally shot western made by lifelong learners and first time
filmmakers, Ray Lopeman, 77 and Jim Essick, 72. This 75 minute film was shot on location in southern New Mexico, with Lopeman starring
as a retired sheriff who is out for revenge against the 5 men who killed his family. Lopeman and Essick will be our guests, admission
is $4 for all.
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August 29 –Around the Bend (2004, 85 minutes, rated PG-13, made in New Mexico)
Director Jordan Roberts’ feature debut pulls off the dizzying
high-wire act of being both a misty-eyed glimpse into four generations of the men in the Lair family and a steely meditation on manhood,
parenting, and the pitfalls thereof.
Michael Caine plays the elder Lair, Henry, who as the film begins is in the process of dying with all the crusty wit he can muster (which
is plenty). He shares the family home with his grandson Jason ( Josh Lucas) and his great-grandson Zach and all his memories and mementos
until a grimacing, wire-haired wraith appears at the front door one evening and turns everything around.
That wraith is Jason’s long-estranged father Turner ( Christopher Walken), who walked out on his son and his father some 30 years before,
following the death of his wife (and the maiming of his son) in an automobile accident. Jason is less than thrilled at this possibly malignant
returner, a former heroin addict and professional sneak thief, but Henry is exultant, and he takes the lot of them to the local KFC for a final
meal and then pens a last will and testament that takes the surviving trio on a road trip across the country,.
The men head cross-country, stopping here and there at various KFCs to read another Post-It note instruction and a revelation or two. This
sort of thing rarely works these days – it’s just too difficult to steer the modern audience through the treacherous twin perils of brimstone
and treacle without capsizing your craft amid gales of laughter – but somehow Roberts manages to make it work, against all odds.
Caine, of course, owns the screen every second he’s on it, but after his character exits the scene, it’s up to Lucas and Walken to battle
it out, and battle they do. There’s an exquisite ‘fine-tunedness’ to the screenplay (thank you Mr. Redford) that belies the occasional
gush of sentimentality, and a final grace note that will, yes, mist the eyes of all but the most cynical in the audience. A fine, familial
elixir to remedy despair and soften hardened hearts, Around the Bend is likely just the first of many feathers in Roberts’s shiny, new directorial cap.
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Sept 5- Bound for Glory (1975, 140 minutes, rated PG) Speaking out for freedom, celebrating life, proclaiming the dignity and
rights of the underdog — Woody Guthrie communicated through his folks songs. This crusty and creative wanderer was not afraid to express
his opinions. Above all else, he was a humanist who never got out of touch with people.
In his fifty-five year lifetime, Woody Guthrie wrote over 1000 songs. He sang about Dust Bowl refugees, love and hate, migrant workers,
children, peace and war, hoboes, work and play, unions, bad times and good times. Through all his tunes runs a basic respect for the mystery
and glory of the human adventure.
Pampa, Texas. 1936. Hard times during the Depression. Woody Guthrie (David Carradine), his wife Mary (Melinda Dillon), and their two small
children hardly have enough money to get by. Woody's one marketable skill is sign painting but he enjoys music more. And just being with
people. Occasionally, he plays dance halls and bars. For a while, Woody even sets up a practice as a fortune teller, helping out a dispirited
widow and a social outcast from a nearby town.
Confident that better things are to be found out West, Woody leaves a note — "Gone to California — will send for you all" — and hits
the open road.
Woody meets Ozark Bule (part time NM resident Ronny Cox), a radio performer who gets him an audition. Before long he's got a steady job
singing on the radio. In his spare time, Ozark tries to organize the farm workers into camps. But whereas he can separate his career from
his politics, Woody can't; he gets in trouble with the station when he refuses to submit to censorship of his protest songs about the Dust
Bowl refugees. Woody's commitment to these impoverished folk also wrecks his romantic relationship with a wealthy volunteer worker.
The film pays homage to its folksinger's social conscience but does not cover up his flaws: he was an irresponsible husband and a poor
father. Director Hal Ashby (Shampoo, The Last Detail, Harold and Maude) translates this story of Guthrie's early years with a sharp eye
for details and a vibrant aestheticism
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Sept 12- Universal Signs (2008, 108 minutes, not rated) PLEASE NOTE- This is a new kind of ‘silent film’.
By that, we mean that the dialogue is entirely in American Sign Language, making this film the first ever to do so. It is completely subtitled
for the hearing and does have a musical score!) Universal Signs, a groundbreaking "silent" film, presented in mesmerizing American Sign Language
(ASL) with English subtitles, touches the hearts and minds of hearing and Deaf audiences alike.
Andrew’s (Anthony Natale) journey is indeed told through the perspective of a deaf man. No ambient noises. Dialogue is either filtered through
sign language or the closed captioning made available for the sign-impaired. The only time Andrew apparently can hear sound is within his own
dreams and aside from that the only collinear tonality comes from the harmonies of Joe Renzetti’s constant score. As a supervisor at work,
Andrew’s no-nonsense demands of work-now/talk-later usually draw him scorn and mocking with hidden lips. This particular morning with a
missing wallet has hardly brightened his mood but he soon gets into a friendly tech support exchange by e-mail with the college’s new
librarian, Mary. When they meet face-to-face, Andrew is not only lucky enough to see that she resembles Sabrina Lloyd but that her own
family has some deaf history and she’s pretty fluent in signing. So what if she occasionally mixes up “beer” with “bitch?”
Andrew and Mary have another chance encounter and strike up an obvious attraction to one another. Their first evening together doesn’t
go quite as smoothly and Andrew continues to be haunted by the nightmares of a previous relationship with obvious tragic implications.
After a brief bout at trying to keep Mary at a distance, he eventually opens his eyes to more than just the obvious perfections of her
personality and communication skills and the pair begins a romance built upon the foundations of faith and forgiveness.
The underlying themes of communication never overburden the central connection we’re making along with Andrew and Mary. There’s
subtlety in the pair of apologetic e-mails that are never sent, thus emphasizing society’s overreliance on mechanization over human contact.
Calamia’s affection for both Modern Times and City Lights wisely become wedged in instead of inviting a direct and unfair comparison.
The closing moments where the instrumental is finally joined by lyrics is a beautiful touch (with just the right song) in encapsulating
Andrew and Mary’s romance and a perfect reminder that a well-timed word, whether spoken or unspoken can be all you need to fall
in love. Just as you are likely to be by the end of Universal Signs.
The original score by Academy Award® winner Joseph Renzetti propels the story along with stellar supporting performances from El
Paso native, Lupe Ontiveros, Margot Kidder (Superman), Robert Picardo (Star Trek: Voyager), and Ashlyn Sanchez (Crash) make this
one very unique motion picture.
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Sept 19- DOUBLE FEATURE! A fundraiser for Alma d’ Arte Charter School, featuring two feature films directed by Hillsboro resident and special
guest, Rod McCall!
At 10.00 AM- Paper Hearts (1993, 88 minutes, rated R, made entirely in NM) McCall wrote and directed this slice-of-life melodrama about a woman
in a mid-life crisis who struggles to preserve her home and family. Sally Kirkland stars as Jenny, who must deal with a serious problem involving
her errant husband Henry (James Brolin) as she prepares for the wedding of her youngest daughter Kat (Renee Estevez). Henry has taken off for
New Mexico with his most recent lover and business associate Patsy (Laura Johnson), where they plan to pay off Jenny's mortgage, sell the
property and split the money. Meanwhile, Jenny's other daughter Samantha (Pamela Gidley) arrives at the wedding with her life in an uproar
-- she is undecided whether to stay in New York City and pursue her classical music career or head back home and marry handsome cowboy Bill
(Michael Moore). Henry arrives at the wedding only to be slapped by Jenny for his callousness. Afterwards, Patsy, tired of all the
internecine family squabbles, denounces Henry for his cavalier ways and threatens to keep their proposed business deal (an auto dealership)
all to herself. But heading in the same direction is Jenny and Samantha, with Jenny chaffing at the bit, preparing to let Henry have it in
a final cathartic confrontation.
At 1.30 PM, Becoming Eduardo (2008, 85 minutes, made entirely in NM) Eddie Corazón (Julian Alcaraz), a 16-year-old juvenile delinquent and
secret reader, who attends an alternative high school in rural New Mexico, now walks the thin line between tragedy and glory as he searches
for his place in the world. A long-time “gangster” buddy, T.J. Ritchie (Mike Dunay), pushes Eddie to deal drugs. Encouraging Eddie to develop
his intellect, an unorthodox teacher inadvertently gets him to enroll in a ballroom dance class, where he meets college-bound beauty, Lupe
Garcia (Elizabeth Blanco), and is struck down by love. Desperate to impress Lupe, Eddie tries his hand at poetry. Pulled in opposite
directions by T.J. and Lupe, Eddie realizes that hilife is, indeed, up to him.
Becoming Eduardo is writer, director, producer and New Mexico resident Rod McCall’s latest feature film.
In the tradition of two of his other films, Cheatin’ Hearts and Lewis & Clark & George (both Sundance Film Festival
official world premieres),
Rod McCall has produced yet another film in Southern New Mexico. Becoming Eduardo was shot in the summer of 2008 in Hillsboro and
Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.
The film is based on “Alternative Ed,” a novella by LouAnne Johnson (the author of the book the film “Dangerous Minds” was based on).
The film stars newcomers Julian Alcaraz, Elizabeth Blanco and Mike Dunay, with support from film and TV veterans--A Martinez,
Holly Riddle, Josh Cruze, Gary Perez and Elizabeth Peña (Lone Star, The Incredibles).
Becoming Eduardo was produced in association with The Creative Media Institute at New Mexico State University, where McCall is an
instructor. A number of McCall’s film students were production assistants on the film.
Becoming Eduardo also includes rookie actors, Mariah Talent and Adrien Gloria from Alma d’Arte, the Las Cruces High School for
the Arts in Las Cruces. The director of Alma d’Arte, Irene Oliver-Lewis, is also in the film.
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Sept 26- - Geronimo: An American Legend (1993, 115 minutes, rated PG-13- Rescheduled from July 25 screening, which had to be postponed.)
Walter Hill's revisionist, albeit historically inaccurate take on the American cavalry's campaign to capture Chiricahua Apache
warrior the New Mexico born, Goyathlay (known as Geronimo in Mexico) (played by Wes Studi, a resident of Santa Fe) is, like Clint Eastwood's
Unforgiven, a tale that both celebrates and critiques myths of the American West.
Hill's film about the famous Apache moves with a stately self-assurance, a confidence that seems eerie, unfamiliar. The movie's serenity feels
strange only because it has been so long since anyone has dared to make a Western in the ample, leisurely, classical style of John Ford. The
screenplay, by John Milius and Larry Gross, is unambiguously sympathetic to the suffering of the Indians, but it doesn't oversell the case by
presenting the Apaches as an idyllic community of spiritually superior innocents and the Army as an aggregation of bloodthirsty racists.
The carefully developed narrative, detailing the intricate dance of suspicion and misunderstanding between the Army and Geronimo's band of
warriors, is studded with breathtakingly edited action sequences; the cinematography, by Lloyd Ahern, is ravishing; and Studi gives a
terrific performance in the title role. Hill uses the conventions of the Western genre lovingly; like his hero, he's a defiant traditionalist.
Despite its title, Geronimo is really about the American cavalry officers who undertake the responsibility of recapturing the warrior, in
particular the young narrator Lt. Charles Gatewood (Jason Patric), who respects the great Geronimo and brokers a treaty with the Chiricahua,
only to see it collapse when the army kills the tribal medicine man. New Mexico resident Gene Hackman plays Gen. George Crook, the proud but
sympathetic officer charged with bringing in the renegades who take to hills after the killing.
Matt Damon co-stars as a young lieutenant, who finds himself battling his assumptions of the Apache people.
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Oct 3 - Glissando (2002, 75 minutes, not rated, partially shot in NM) -
Mr. Robert Boswell, the author of the story on which this film is
based, will be our guest. His most recent book, "The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards", recently received a splendid review in the New York
Times Book Review and was chosen by 'Oprah' as a 'must read' for her noted Summer Reading list. There will also be a book signing by Mr.
Boswell after the film.
Director Chip Hourihan’s Glissando opens in a desiccated town in Arizona, where a middle-aged man (Ned Van Zandt) has come
to identify
the body of his father, found in a dumpster behind a motel. The young woman his father lived with gives him a shoebox full of photos and
other memorabilia that evokes a colorful store of memories.
Based on a story by NMSU Creative Writing Instructor and novelist Robert Boswell, Glissando tells the story of Jimmy
and his father
as they try to make the best of their lives. Jimmy’s father has difficulty acknowledging weakness, and their life together is a hodgepodge
of denial and pseudo-playful mischief. Jimmy’s mother left soon after he was born, and his father seems never to have gotten over the loss.
His life is a sham, as tedious and empty as the wasteland nowhere town where he works the day shift as a motel clerk. Eventually, Jimmy’s
father finds a woman to care for -- Alida (Petra Wright), closer to Jimmy’s age than his own -- who has unfaithfulness written all over her.
She loafs around on the sofa all day, watching TV and tugging Jimmy’s heartstrings. The days go by, aimlessly.
And though Glissando for a time seems to proceed as purposelessly as its protagonists’ lives, the film has a direction, one that
isn’t apparent until it springs upon you. Glissando subtly portrays a broken man, caught up in his own self-deceptions, and the son
who becomes equally ensnared in his father’s pattern of self-deceit, at first begrudgingly and later of his own free, malicious will.
Chip Hourihan has created a powerful, chilling work, one that will stick with you for a long time.
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Oct 10- Not Columbus Day! Thunderheart (1992, 120 minutes, rated R)
While this film is fictional, the credits indicate that its screenplay is based on a number of incidents that happened in South Dakota
in the 1970s. That was the period in which AIM, the American Indian Movement (thinly disguised as A.R.M. in the film) and other activist
groups were fighting for Indian rights and the restoration of traditional Indian ways of life against U.S. government agencies and against
other Indians whose politics were more assimilationist.
"Thunderheart" is the story of what happens when a gung- ho young FBI agent Ray Le Voy (played by New Mexico resident Val Kilmer) is sent
from Washington to join a legendary FBI veteran (former NM resident Sam Shepard) on an assignment to capture the murderer of a Lakota tribal
council member; ARM activists are presumed to be the guilty parties.
Le Voy has been touted by the FBI as being "one of their own" because he happens to have had an Indian father; but his father died when he
was seven and he was adopted by white parents and raised middle- class and conservative. He rejects the notion of the Lakota being "his
people" just as much as the Lakota reject him as a "Washington Redskin."
But in this film hardly anything is what it seems and Ray is no exception. As he meets the Indian inhabitants and these encounters have
their effect on him, he gradually begins to change. Among those he meets is a tribal policeman on a Harley-Davidson who's a kind of
trickster and a very astute law enforcement officer (played by Graham Greene) a young woman schoolteacher and ARM activist, and a very
old medicine man who does him out of his Ray-Bans and Rolex but who gives him the clues he needs to solve the murder and save his life.
Gradually he begins to change his perception of himself and of Indians: in the course of a ceremony he remembers his father and
eventually he even joins in the collective memories of his people by means of a vision. And, of course, he works to solve the murder
in an unexpected manner
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Oct 17- The Dark Wind (1993, 111 minutes, rated R-partially shot in New Mexico, based on a Tony Hillerman novel)
Noted documentary filmmaker Errol Morris made his dramatic feature debut with this story about murder and other dirty dealings on an American Indian
reservation. Recent college graduate Jim Chee (Lou Diamond Phillips) has just taken a job with the Navajo Reservation Police in Arizona,
where he helps keep the peace with his superior Joe Leaphorn (Fred Ward) on land earmarked for joint use by Navajo and Hopi tribes.
Cowboy Dashee (Gary Farmer), a sheriff from the Hopi law enforcement group, discovers a decaying and unidentified body in the desert,
an event he thinks may be linked to a recent robbery at the reservation's trading post. The shop's Hopi manager, Jake West (John Karlen),
is convinced that Joe Musket, a Navajo drug dealer and ne'er-do-well, is responsible, and as Chee and Leaphorn investigate the murder,
the robbery, and a mysterious plane crash, they find themselves drawn into a web of corruption, prejudice, and deceit.
Bonus! There
will be a drawing for a first edition copy of the Hillerman book that this film is based on.
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Oct 24- Used Cars (1980, 113 minutes, rated R)
Egged on by the jaunty brass and whistles of
John Philip Sousa, a two-bit salesman readies his lot for the business day in the opening moments of Robert Zemeckis' savagely funny
1980 comedy Used Cars.
With a swift twist of the pliers, he rolls an odometer from 99,000 miles to a youthful 31,000, then welds a sagging bumper with a thick
wad of bubble gum, sprays vehicle interiors with "new-car smell," and welcomes a shipment of yellow cabs glazed in a thin coat of blue
paint. Inspired by the whipcrack timing of Golden Age slapstick and the over-the-top scope of comedies like It's A Mad, Mad, Mad,
Mad World, Used Cars starts with the premise that all politicians are salesmen, all salesmen are liars, and the best believe their own
lies with stirring conviction.
Kurt Russell brings greasy charisma to the role of a plaid-suited salesman at New Deal Used Cars, a cut-rate sinkhole that competes
with the much slicker Auto Emporium across the street. In an early scene, Russell literally lures away business by baiting a fishing
rod with a $10 bill and reeling a customer through six lanes of oncoming traffic. When Russell's straight-arrow boss (Jack Warden)
dies of a heart attack, his brother and unscrupulous rival at Auto Emporium (also played by Warden) swoops in to claim New Deal as his inheritance.
But in his mad bid to raise enough money for a state-senate run, Russell buries his former boss in a '59 Edsel and pretends he's
taking a long vacation in Miami Beach. No matter how low Russell stoops for a quick dollar, whether wrangling customers with kickbacks,
live strippers, or short cons, he's still the classic American hero, a dreamer and underdog fighting hard against heavy odds.
The happiest suckers of all, of course, are the viewers, who are conned into embracing a character who would step on their necks
for an extra buck
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Oct 31- The Thing from Another World (1951, 87 minutes, not rated)
Back by popular demand is El Paso’s premiere science fiction film historian, Jay Duncan, to present a special screening of the original
version of The Thing, just in time for Halloween!
What's most remarkable about The Thing is its continued ability to function as both a taut science-fiction thriller and a telling snapshot
of the Cold War paranoia beginning to sweep the country in post-WWII America.
The story, about the battle between a group of stranded military personnel and an alien creature fueled by human blood, is a model of
economic storytelling. A group of soldiers led by no-nonsense Captain Patrick Hendry travel to the North Pole to examine an aircraft
crash located near a scientific outpost. What they discover is a flying saucer and a sole extraterrestrial pilot, whom they bring back
to the lab, frozen in a block of ice, for further study. It's not long before the Thing (James Arness)—essentially a super-intelligent
vegetable man with the ability to both regenerate lost limbs and reproduce through spreading seeds—thaws out and begins to wreak havoc,
although tension is wisely maintained by keeping the creature hidden from view and focusing on the clash between mad scientist Dr. Arthur
Carrington and Hendry. Carrington deduces that the Thing feels no emotional or sexual pleasure and, thus, is "our superior in every way,"
while Captain Hendry sees the visitor as merely a monster bent on harvesting the planet for mankind's blood.
The conflict between Hendry and Carrington is one between Force and Reason, and represents a debate over whether America should cope
with its Soviet adversaries through military confrontation or intellectual and diplomatic study. Given the '50s political climate,
it's no surprise that the film's climax answers such a question …come and see how!
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