March 13th, 2019
Bonafide modern classic “Napoleon Dynamite” celebrates fifteen years of sweet jumps with a victory tour featuring stars Jon Heder and Efren Ramirez. As part of the 2019 Fargo Film Festival, Jade Presents will bring the film to the Fargo Theatre on Thursday, March 21. Heder and Ramirez will participate in an on-stage discussion following the movie.
Ramirez spoke to High Plains Reader film editor Greg Carlson about becoming an accidental icon.
HPR: You were born in Los Angeles and got…
March 6th, 2019
Almost relegated to the trashcan of history and the file drawer marked for popular cultural ephemera, the audio and/or video recordings of the industrial musical are properly dusted off and polished to a state of splendor in Dava Whisenant’s “Bathtubs Over Broadway.” The first-time feature director, who earned the Albert Maysles Award for Best New Documentary Filmmaker at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival, follows longtime David Letterman staff writer Steve Young on his dogged…
February 13th, 2019
Documentarian Penny Lane adds another entertaining movie to her filmography with an inside look at the recent rise of the Satanic Temple. As a movie experience, “Hail Satan?” often lives deliciously. The film might even turn out to be a prime recruitment video for the organization co-founded in 2013 by onscreen imp/spokesperson Lucien Greaves. TST is the perfect subject for the witty and insightful Lane, who detonates truth bomb after truth bomb in a campaign to highlight the…
February 6th, 2019
While his Fred Rogers documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” arguably captured more attention than any nonfiction feature released in 2018, Morgan Neville’s other big project, “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead,” deserves careful examination by anyone who loves movie history. A companion piece to the posthumous release of Orson Welles’ notorious “The Other Side of the Wind,” Neville’s film uses, among other sources, Josh Karp’s 2015 book “Orson Welles’s Last…
January 30th, 2019
“Shirkers” is title to both an uncompleted Singapore-based road movie starring Sandi Tan that was shot in the summer of 1992 and the autobiographical nonfiction examination of that lost film. With the benefit of time, Tan looks back on her own experiences, constructing a reflective bildungsroman with the requisite excitement, heartache, friendship, loss, and pain one expects from any great coming-of-age tale. As a 19-year-old on the island nation known more to outsiders for being…
January 23rd, 2019
Another stunning work of perfectly placed ellipses and calculated restraint, Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Cold War” is a film filled with images as iconic and austere as its blunt title. A haunting experience of history by suggestion, the movie traces a tragic romance across years and landscapes, relying as heavily on Lukasz Zal’s arresting, monochromatic, Academy ratio cinematography as it does on the sharp editing by Jaroslaw Kominski. Pawlikowski collaborated with both of those…
January 16th, 2019
Compared to the Betsy West and Julie Cohen documentary “RBG,” Mimi Leder’s period biographical slice “On the Basis of Sex” is nowhere near as notorious as one might hope, but the hagiographic reverence for Ruth Bader Ginsburg is tempered by enough heart and humor to overcome some of the film’s more predictable adherence to its genre. Like a good law student, Leder focuses on a presentation of the factual and procedural. That choice, similar to Reginald Hudlin’s time- and…
January 9th, 2019
The sensational Claire Denis adds another wonderful work to her impressive filmography with “Let the Sunshine In.” An ode to many things, including restless hearts, the frustrations of romantic freedom versus security, the impossibility, and ridiculousness of the fantasy sold by the Hollywood romantic comedy, the anxieties of middle age, and several more, “Let the Sunshine In” is foremost a showcase for radiant superstar Juliette Binoche. As the unlucky-in-love Isabelle, a Paris…
December 19th, 2018
Veteran filmmaker Jennifer Fox’s “The Tale” addresses child rape in as straightforward and clear-eyed a manner as any film ever made on the painful subject. Fox’s background in nonfiction storytelling informs the movie’s magnetic investigative structure, which arranges and rearranges details both large and small as the adult Jennifer Fox (played brilliantly by Laura Dern) rethinks a sexual “relationship” she shared with two grown-ups when she was only thirteen years old.…
December 12th, 2018
“The Diary of a Teenage Girl” director Marielle Heller beautifully translates another personal autobiography to excellent results. “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” is based on the confessional 2008 memoir of literary forger Lee Israel, and Heller’s movie pulls off the impressive feat of bringing visual urgency to the typically uncinematic process of writing. Heller’s cast is uniformly excellent, but her collaboration with central pair Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant will…
__293px-wide.jpg)
By Winona LaDukewinona@winonaladuke.com The business of Indian Hating is a lucrative one. It’s historically been designed to dehumanize Native people so that it’s easier to take their land. ‘Kill the Indian, save the man,”…
By Johnathan Campbell history@nd.gov Since Halloween is just around the corner, I thought I’d share three mysterious — and mildly creepy folktales — that have been shared about the Former Governors' Mansion State Historic Site,…
Thursday, November 7, 8 p.m.The Aquarium above Dempsey’s, FargoThe Minneapolis indie rock duo Bad Bad Hats hits the Fargo stage promoting their brand new, self-produced album titled “Bad Bad Hats.” Their name came from a song…
By Jim Fugliejimfuglie920@gmail.com As a political columnist, I know I should be writing an election preview for the issue of this paper that comes out just a couple weeks before what is being labeled, once again, as “the most…
By Ed Raymondfargogadfly@gmail.comWill We Ever Recover from the Trump Virus of Universal Hate?Just a month ago, the primary doctor of 336 million U.S Americans,U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, issued an advisory on the mental…
By Rick Gionrickgion@gmail.com Holiday wine shopping shouldn’t have to be complicated. But unfortunately it can cause unneeded anxiety due to an overabundance of choices. Don’t fret my friends, we once again have you covered…
By Rick Gionrickgion@gmail.com In this land of hotdish and ham, the knoephla soup of German-Russian heritage seems to reign supreme. In my opinion though, the French have the superior soup. With a cheesy top layer, toasted baguette…
__300x100.jpg)
By John Showalterjohn.d.showalter@gmail.com Local band Zero Place has been making quite a name for itself locally and regionally in the last few years. Despite getting its start during a time it seemed the whole world was coming to…
By Greg Carlsongregcarlson1@gmail.com Writer-director Nicole Riegel’s sophomore feature “Dandelion” is now playing in theaters following a world premiere at South by Southwest in March. The movie stars KiKi Layne as the…
By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.com Ted Martin, retired educator and western North Dakota native, currently has his art on view at Mind Virus Counter-Culture Books and Media. The exhibition features Martin’s colorful ink drawings…
By John Showalterjohn.d.showalter@gmail.comHigh Plains Reader had the opportunity to interview two mysterious new game show hosts named Milt and Bradley Barker about an upcoming event they will be putting on at Brewhalla. What…
By Annie Prafckeannieprafcke@gmail.com AUSTIN, Texas – As a Chinese-American, connecting to my culture through food is essential, and no dish brings me back to my mother’s kitchen quite like hotdish. Yes, you heard me right –…
By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.comNew Jamestown Brewery Serves up Local FlavorThere’s something delicious brewing out here on the prairie and it just so happens to be the newest brewery west of the Red River and east of the…
By John Showalter john.d.showalter@gmail.comThey sell fentanyl test strips and kits to harm-reduction organizations and…
Rynn WillgohsJanuary 25, 1972-October 8, 2024 Rynn Azerial Willgohs, age 52, of Vantaa, Finland, died by suicide on October 8, 2024. Rynn became her true-self March 31, 2020. She immediately became a vocal and involved activist…
By Dina Butcherdina.wtba@midconetwork.com In 1938, when my parents were living in Germany, my father — along with 30,000 other Jewish men — was rounded up by Nazi Stormtroopers during an event known as Kristallnacht. He was taken…
