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The Last Picture Show

Like Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, and The Graduate, The Last Picture Show is one of the signature films of the "New Hollywood" that emerged in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.

Based on the novel by Larry McMurtry and lovingly directed by Peter Bogdanovich (who co-wrote the script with McMurtry), this 1971 drama has been interpreted as an affectionate tribute to classic Hollywood filmmaking and the great directors (such as John Ford) that Bogdanovich so deeply admired. It’s also a eulogy for lost innocence and small-town life, so accurately rendered that critic Roger Ebert called it "the best film of 1951," referring to the movie’s one-year time frame, its black-and-white cinematography and its sparse but evocative visual style.

The story is set in the tiny, dying town of Anarene, Texas, where the main-street movie house is about to close for good, and where a pair of high-school football players are coming of age and struggling to define their uncertain futures. There’s little to do in Anarene, and while Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) engages in a passionless fling with his football coach’s wife (Cloris Leachman), his best friend Duane (Jeff Bridges) enlists for service in the Korean War. Both boys fall for a manipulative high-school beauty (Cybill Shepherd) who’s well aware of her sexual allure. But it’s not so much what happens in The Last Picture show as how it happens—and how Bogdanovich and his excellent cast so effectively capture the melancholy mood of a ghost town in the making. As Hank Williams sings on the film’s evocative soundtrack, The Last Picture Show looks, feels, and sounds like a sad but unforgettably precious moment out of time. amazon.com

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

"My intellectual, my spiritual awakening was in a way connected to Paleolithic cave paintings," German writer and director Werner Herzog has admitted. The Chauvet Cave in southern France was discovered by scientists in 1994 and estimated to be more than 30,000 years old. Inside they found hundreds of playful paintings from a period when Neanderthals were situated in France along with bison, bears, mammoths, and lions. The Cave had been sealed off by a fallen rock face which preserved a space as large as a football field.

Thanks to Herzog’s enthusiasm and intrepid spirit, the usually cautious French authorities gave him access to this crystal encrusted cave. He tries to convey the wonder and the beauty of the place which he calls "a frozen flash in a moment of time." In this meticulously directed documentary, he presents interviews with archaeologists, paleontologists, and other experts on art and history.

Herzog takes delight in the treasure-trove of artistic depictions of animals; he relishes the insights which come to mind as he ponders what the paintings tell us about human evolution; and he ends with a thought-provoking mediation about radioactive albino crocodiles….vintage Herzog. spiritualityandpractice.com

Sponsored in part by the Unsettled Gallery and Studio, The Mesquite Art Gallery, the Law Office of Beverly Singleman, M. Phillips Art Gallery, Blue Gate Gallery, and the MVS Studios and Gallery.