March 20th, 2019
With the 19th annual Fargo Film Festival underway this week, film lovers and filmmakers are flocking to the Fargo Theatre to catch screenings. One local filmmaker, Steven Warkel, got to see the short film that he wrote and directed, “Small Talk,” come to life on the big screen.
“Small Talk,” which was produced last spring as a student film for MSUM’s film production program, follows a young man through turbulent emotions as he processes the hospitalization and potential death…
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.…
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Press release Celebrate Dinosaur Day on Thursday, Oct. 16 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum (612 E Boulevard Ave. in Bismarck). This free, family-friendly program is open to all ages. A…
By Michael M. Millermichael.miller@ndsu.edu The Northwest Blade, from Eureka, South Dakota, published a wonderful story in August 2020. It’s called “Granddaughter keeps Grandmother’s precious chamomile seeds,” by Cindy…
Sunday, October 19, 10 a.m.Buffalo River State Park, 565 155th St. S., Glyndon, MNHosted by the Red River Valley Chapter of Herbalists Without Borders at Buffalo River State Park for a fun fall day full of flora. (Say that three…
By John Strandjas@hpr1.com Yes, we know, everywhere you look, the world situation is mental. It’s almost inescapable just how tenuous life’s circumstances are. And how they are mostly — pretty much entirely — out of our…
By Ed Raymondfargogadfly@gmail.comWill we be banging or whimpering at the end of the American empire?T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” accurately portrays the end of most empires in his first lines: “We are the hollow men/…
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 Gion and Nichole Hensenrickgion@gmail.com The wait is finally over. Those who have visited Nichole’s Fine Pastry & Cafe lately know about the recent major additions and renovations that have taken place over the past…
By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.com Dakotah Faye is a hip-hop artist from Minot, North Dakota, and he’s had a busy year. He’s released two albums. This summer he opened for Tech N9ne in Sturgis and will be opening for Bone…
By Greg Carlsongregcarlson1@gmail.com The multiple meanings of the title location in Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s “Bone Lake” cover the sex and death spectrum that will flummox Diego (Marco Pigossi) and Sage (Maddie Hasson) as…
By HPR staffsubmit@hpr1.com Mark the first weekend of October on your calendar. It’s the weekend of the Studio Crawl, which takes us all on a wonderful, metro-wide tour of our talented (and often wacky) arts community. On October…
Press release“Shakespeare with a sharpened edge.” To launch its 2025 – 2026 season, Theatre NDSU is thrilled to team up with Moorhead-based organization Theatre B to perform a co-production of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and…
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…
Press Release As Breast Cancer Awareness Month begins, Essentia Health is highlighting an innovative — and recently expanded — program that brings early breast cancer detection services to rural communities. Essentia’s mobile…
By Alicia Underlee NelsonProtests against President Trump’s policies and the cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are planned across North Dakota and western Minnesota Friday, April 4 and…
By Vern Thompsonvern.thompson@rocketmail.comMoral accountability and the crisis of leadership As a recovering person living one day at a time for the last 35 years, I have learned not to judge others because I have not walked in…
