Published from 1937 to 1954, 44 Western Magazine was a popular pulp that featured stories about gunslingers, horse rustlers, and the women who loved them. Each cover promised the best in western excitement.
Here’s a small sampling of the covers of 44!
by Ernest “Darcy” Chiriacka
by Ernest “Darcy” Chiriacka
by Ernest “Darcy” Chiriacka
by Ernest “Darcy” Chiriacka
by John Walter Scott
by Albin Henning
Unknown Artist
Unknown Artist
Unknown Artist
Unknown Artist
Today’s scene comes from Apollo 13.
In this scene, Gene Kranz (Ed Harris) and the engineers of NASA try to figure out how they can bring Apollo 13 back down to Earth. There’s a lot of questions about what can and should be done but one thing is made clear. Failure is not an option.
That’s an attitude that we could use more of nowadays.
As a Texan who loves movie, I have to say that 2025 will always be a special year for me. 2025 was the year that Richard Linklater, the godfather of modern Texas filmmaking, was responsible for directing two of the best films of the year.
Blue Moon opens with famed American lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) collapsing in an alley and cursing under his breath as he dies. The film then flashes back a few weeks to Hart arriving at Sardi’s and waiting for the crowd to arrive from the Broadway premiere of Oklahoma! Hart is dismissive of Oklahoma!, largely because it’s the product of a collaboration between his former partner, Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) and Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney). Hart dismisses it as being simplistic, a crowd pleaser with no depth. But as Hart speaks, it’s easy to see that his disdain has more to do with his own hurt feelings than the actual show.
(That said, he’s still right about Oklahoma!)
Hart talks. He talks a lot. Perhaps the simplest way to describe Blue Moon would be to say that it’s a film about one man who won’t stop talking to the people around him. Bobby Cannavale plays the friendly bartender who has obviously heard all of Hart’s stories before. Patrick Kennedy (not the former Congressman) plays author E.B. White, who politely listens as Hart pours his heart out and takes note when Hart talks about a mouse named Stuart. Margaret Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, a twenty year-old acting student who Hart feels might be the love of his life despite the fact it soon becomes obvious that Elizabeth is smitten with a student her own age and that she views Hart as being just a potential mentor. Hart is the type who will talk nonstop, even if no one is actually listening. The only time that Hart stop speaking is when he’s alone with Elizabeth.
Blue Moon largely plays out in real time. It’s essentially a theatrical piece, with Ethan Hawke delivering what amounts to a monologue in which he portrays Lorenz Hart as being witty, self-destructive, and ultimately painfully lonely. Everyone he talks to appreciates his talent but it’s obvious that they’ve had their fill of his addictions and his fragile ego. Even when Hart is at his most vulnerable, it’s obvious that he’s burned too many bridges to ever make it back to where he once was.
Hawke gives a wonderful performance as Hart, playing him as being a natural performer. Like all great actors, Hawke is willing to be annoying. Hart can be witty but he can also be corrosive. There’s a mean-streak behind some of his comments But your heart still breaks for him when he begs Rodgers to collaborate on a new show or when he talks about the people from his past who loved him but “not in that way.” The film definitely has a stagey feel to it but, as a director, Linklater has the confidence to allow his actors to truly dig into their characters. The end result is a rather touching movie about a talented man who could not get out of his own way.
In 2025, Linklater also gave us Nouvelle Vague, a French-language film about the early days of the French New Wave. Featuring gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, Nouvelle Vague follows Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) as he directs Breathless and changes cinema forever. Aubry Dullin plays Jean-Paul Belmondo while Zoey Deutch plays Jean Seberg. Nouvelle Vague is a both a tribute to and an homage to the French New Wave. It’s also a film about the joy of creation and the excitement of working on a film. Nouvelle Vague may be about the shooting of Breathless but it’s also Linklater’s Day For Night.
It’s a fun movie to watch, especially if you know about the history of the French New Wave. (This film helpfully includes title cards to let us know who is who. Everyone from Roberto Rossellini to Francois Truffaut to Agnes Varda to Claude Chabrol and Jean Cocteau makes an appearance.) If Blue Moon was about the tendency towards self-destruction that haunts so many artists, Nouvelle Vague is a celebration of creativity, cinematic revolution, and being young and idealistic enough to break all of the established rules without a second thought. Linklater keeps the story moving and he directs with a clear eye for detail. Zoey Deutch is perfect as Seberg, playing her as a Hollywood survivor who is alternately thrilled and annoyed with Godard’s unorthodox style of directing.
I have to admit that I did get a little bit sad as I watched the movie. In real life, Seberg committed suicide in 1979 and Godard followed over forty years later. While Godard and Seberg both made good films after Breathless, none of them were quite as transformative as their one collaboration. No other director seemed to understand Seberg’s unique persona quite as well as Godard did. Godard, meanwhile, fell into the trap of placing ideology before creativity. At least Jean-Paul Belmondo seemed to go on to have a happy life.
Blue Moon received Oscar nominations for Ethan Hawke and its screenplay. Nouvelle Vague was ignored by the Academy but Richard Linklater did become the first Texan to win the Cesar Award for Best Director and for that, I certainly applaud him. Getting the French to honor someone from Texas? That takes talent!
Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague, two of the best films of 2025, can currently be found on Netflix.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly watch parties. On Twitter, I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday and I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday. On Mastodon, I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 10 pm et, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix! The movie? 1980’s Xanadu!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, find Xanadu on Prime, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! I’ll be there happily tweeting. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
See you there!
Case Wright
This is greatest saddest song ever. Sometimes the people we are attracted to the most are the WORST choices for us.
by George Gross
This cover is from 1948. Everyone needs a day job.
This video was directed by a familiar name. Alex Proyas got his start directing music videos for groups like INXS and this one but he is today better-remembered for directing such influential films as The Crow and Dark City.
The music video was a hit, picking up the award for Best New Artist at the MTV Music Video awards. Don’t Dream It’s Over has gone on to become one of those songs that epitomizes an era.
Enjoy!
Woodstock ’94 is the forgotten Woodstock.
Taking place in a field in Saugerties, New York, Woodstock ’94 opened on August 12 and it ended two days later. Officially, it was held to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original Woodstock and it was produced and promoted largely by the same people who were behind the original festival. They were hoping to actually make some money this time but that plan failed when the fence surrounding the concert area was torn down by people who wanted to see the bands and hear the music without having to pay an exorbitant amount of money for tickets. In all, 164,000 tickets were sold for Woodstock ’94 but it’s estimated that 350,000 attended. To be honest, that sounds like a good example of the Woodstock spirit to me. The people in charge of the festival disagreed, which is what led to the disaster that was Woodstock ’99.
Woodstock ’94 tends to be overlooked, precisely because it was neither the spontaneous celebration of the first Woodstock nor the epic trainwreck of the third Woodstock. Instead, the second Woodstock was a largely peaceful festival that featured a good mix of older and, at the time, newer acts. The original Woodstock featured open love and the third Woodstock featured random acts of arson. The second Woodstock, on the other hand, featured a lot of rain. Apparently, Green Day got pelted with mud. Maybe a time traveler went back to 1994 and told everyone about American Idiot before the band started playing. It makes sense if you think about it.
The first Woodstock lives forever as an epic documentary. The third Woodstock has inspired at least two docuseries, both of which examine the festival with the grim weariness of a true crime recreation. Earlier today, I discovered that the second Woodstock actually was filmed as well, though apparently Bruce Gowers’s Woodstock ’94 was never released in theaters and instead went straight to video. It’s a sign of how forgotten Woodstock ’94 is that the film has never even been released on DVD or Blu-ray. That said, after I learned of the film’s existence, I really did want to see it. (I’m a completist at heart.) I discovered that, fortunately, it’s been uploaded to YouTube.
From the start, Woodstock ’94 sets out to duplicate the style of the first Woodstock. There’s plenty of split screens. We open with people working hard to get the festival grounds ready. There are interviews with concert goers. There’s an interview with a guy selling food. We get a few random announcements from the stage. There’s a hint of nudity, though nowhere near as much as in the first film. Probably the funniest moment in the documentary is when we see a sign telling us that a certain area has been reserved for those wanting to watch the concert nude. During the first Woodstock, the nudity was spontaneous. For the second one, it was prepared for. The main thing that I noticed was how pleasant everyone seemed to be. There was none of the anger that defined Woodstock ’99. There was none of the bad brown acid that inspired so many warnings at the first Woodstock. Instead, everyone appeared to be having a good time. Even with Green Day getting pelted with mud, the Woodstock ’94 audience appeared to be rather mild-mannered. Most of them seemed like they probably play golf now.
The majority of the documentary is devoted to the music. We see tightly edited performances from, amongst others, Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow, Aerosmith, Crosby Still Nash & Young, Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, The Cranberries, Green Day (though we don’t really get to see the incident with the mud, which is a shame), and Primus. The festival had a good lineup. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are a bit on the dull side but Primus more than makes up for it. My only real complaint is that we only get to hear one song from each featured group.
Woodstock ’94 was surprisingly pleasant. It’s too bad that, five years later, the whole idea of Woodstock fell apart.
There’s been a Death At The Dinner Party!
This Lifetime film has a title that makes it sound like it should be one of those British murder mysteries, set in the 1920s and featuring a Scotland Yard inspector limping around a mansion while trying to figure out who killed the notorious ne’er-do-well, Freddy Gibbs. (The Inspector would limp because of the wound he received while fighting in the Great War.) Was it the maid? Was it the groundskeeper? Was it the flighty flapper or the grand dame with the mysterious past? Or was the murderer the shadowy visitor from America, the one who is rumored to be connected to bootleggers in Toronto. Fear not! Stanley of the Yard is on the case!
Where was I? Oh yeah, I was creating a different movie in my head. Anyway, let’s talk about the movie that I actually watched….
Andrea Gibbs (Candice Lidstone) is visiting her son, Ethan (Cameron Brodeur). Ethan is a somewhat nerdy college student who is rooming with a platonic female friend who he is obviously in love with. Andrea can tell that Ethan has been friend zoned and sweetly asks his roommate to let him down gently. Ethan’s roommate later ends up dead at a dinner party that is attended by Ethan and Andrea. The dinner party’s host is a psychology professor, Alan Jackson (Mark Day). Jackson posts his fascistic lectures online and he has a loyal following of all-male students. Gee, can you guess who was actually behind the murder?
(Last summer, Erin and I watched several episodes of an old show that featured Jim Hutton as Ellery Queen. We loved it whenever Hutton would suddenly look at the camera and say, “Well, I’ve figured this one out! Have you!?” I have to admit that usually, I had not. Erin was much better at figuring out who the murderer was than I was. But, in the case of this film, I think Ellery probably would have looked straight at the camera before the murder even happened.)
There’s nothing particularly subtle about Death At The Dinner Party. The film’s portrayal of dangerous, right-wing college professors gives the whole thing a dated feel, as if it should have aired ten years earlier than it did. The film could have just as easily have been called Murder On The Intellectual Dark Web or Death At Evergreen College. Today, I imagine that members of the angry dishrag brigade are a more realistic danger than a fight club of psych majors. But the lack of subtlety and even the dated premise give this film a certain charm. It’s over-the-top and it embraces the melodrama, just as every Lifetime film should.
Though she only appears to be a few years older than the actor playing her son, Candice Lidstone does a good job playing the mother who is rightly concerned about what her child is learning in college. Indeed, the mother-child relationship was this film’s secret weapon. When I was in college, I never would have had the courage to invite my mom to a dinner party with any of my professors. Then again, at my college, dinner with a professor usually meant a lot more alcohol and definitely a lot more weed. However, there was also significantly less murder so everything evened out in the end.
Bruce Dern has made so many great movies that it was pretty tough for me to pick out just 4 shots from 4 films. I ended up picking out the movies that he’s been in that have affected me the most personally, for a variety of reasons. I’ve noticed that Bruce isn’t the “star” of these movies, but each film benefits greatly from his presence. While he has had his share of starring roles over the course of his 6-decade (and counting) career, many of his best performances have come in supporting roles. The man just makes everything he’s in better.
Today, I celebrate the work of a living legend, Bruce Dern!
Through the Shattered Lens 