LITTLE ROCK — A special screening of
Lee Isaac Chung's
Munyurangabo, a 2007 movie Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert has declared "a beautiful and powerful film - a masterpiece," will be held at the director's high school alma mater in the Northwest Arkansas town of Lincoln, on Sept. 19.
Chung, a first-generation Korean-American who grew up on a farm near Lincoln, shot the film in two weeks during the summer of 2006 while he was teaching a film making and photography class at a Christian relief camp in Rwanda. He employed a cast of nonprofessional actors made up mostly of refugee students, many of whom were orphaned by genocide. The story, comprised largely of improvised scenes, concerns the title character's quest to find the men who killed his father.
The screening is at 7 p.m. at Lincoln High School's Dr. Frank Holman Theater/Auditorium. The school is three blocks north of the Lincoln town square at the corner of Main and School streets. Lincoln is about 20 miles southwest of Fayetteville on U.S. 62. Ticket price is $8, and tickets are available at the door. The proceeds benefit the Lincoln High Beta Club.
For more information, call Ed Marshal at (479) 841-1487 or e-mail: lincolnbetaclub@yahoo.com.
The "Heifer Moo-Vies" series of free documentaries wraps up Sunday at
Heifer Village
on the Heifer International site in downtown Little Rock. The final film, Teachings of the Tree People, a documentary about Gerald Bruce Miller, the leader of the Skokomish Indians in the Pacific Northwest, will begin at 3 p.m. and be followed by a brief, moderated question-and-answer session.
For more information, visit heifer.org/heifervillage or call (877) 870-2697 outside Little Rock or (501) 907-8800 in central Arkansas.
Little Rock resident
Ray McKinnon
's 2007 comedy Randy and the Mob will be released on home video Tuesday.
McKinnon, who also wrote, directed, and was one of the producers of the film, stars in a double role, as the hard-charging small town go-getter Randy Pearson and his twin brother, gay curio shop owner Cecil. Overextended and in debt to the IRS and mobsters, Randy has no choice but to accept a shotgun partnership to the odd but effective mob fixer, Tino Armani (Walt Goggins), who's assigned to oversee Randy's various businesses.
The film, a farce that feels like something Billy Wilder might have made had he adapted one of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes shaggy dog stories for the screen, features some exceptional performances by McKinnon (who is especially affecting as Cecil) and his real-life wife and producing partner, Arkansas native Lisa Blount, as Randy's clinically depressed wife - a carpal tunnel-afflicted baton and tap teacher who prefers not to know too much about her husband's financial dealings.
The PG-rated film, distributed by Lightyear Entertainment through Vivendi Entertainment, and the DVD will be available nationwide through the usual outlets. The film will also be available on demand on Comcast, Time Warner, Cox Cable and Dish Network starting Oct. 1, and other video-on-demand venues starting later in October.
MovieStyle, Pages 37 on 08/28/2009