Rewind: Some Previous Posts Still Interesting

"Z-Channel" was among our favorite films at this year's "Full Frame Documentary Festival." You can find our coverage in our April posts. Theresa Russell, left, starred with Art Garfunkel in Nick Roeg's "Bad Timing," which the director of "Z-Channel," the talented Xan Cassavetes, daughter of film-maker and actor John Cassavetes, first saw on the famed Los Angeles cable channel of the 80s.

April is a big month in NC Film Festivaldom. This year Martin Scorsese, a board member for the Full Frame Docufest showed up and we were there to get shots of him at his press conference. But we also got a nice shot of the aging but still charismatic Cliff Robertson at RiverRun in Winston-Salem. We also caught the wonky, weird and incomparable "Naked Monster" at RiverRun, and saw a sign for our Pennsylvania home town on the wall of the bar where they showed the film. We blogged that, too. Not to mention introducing the prolific Monroe, NC writer John Kenneth Muir, who's penned books on "Evil Dead" and "Spiderman" director Sam Rami, and one of our favorites, the irreverent and wildly funny "Silent Bob" himself, Kevin Smith of "Clerks" and "Dogma," fame and others.

This year's Full Frame also gave us a look at Indie Producer John Pierson in Steve James portrait of his family's year in Bali showing films for free to the natives, which is more dramatic than it sounds. This got some press on Indie Wire recently and will be showing up in theatres and IFC.

"Z-Channel," which has been running on IFC, was part of a set of movies about movies and movie makers and showing movies that formed an unbilled sub-theme at Full Frame and RiverRun this year. IFC even did a one-day showing of films that many saw first on that legendary Los Angeles "Z-Channel," including Russell in "Bad Timing." That one gets us charged up, especially the steamy stairway scene.

Check all this out in our April posts.

"Dual," a satiric and suspenseful takeoff on Steven Spielberg's TV Movie "Duel," which jump-started his career, is a lot of fun, although some over at Atom films, where it resides, disagree. Give it a look. The link is on our original post: DUAL