The Women Texas Film Festival announced today that Studio Movie Grill (SMG) will be the presenting sponsor for this year’s edition of the critically acclaimed film festival. WTxFF also announced that film festival and film production veteran Vanessa Cook has come onboard as the festival’s Executive Director.
that attention to detail and/or the prioritization as to where that attention to detail should be focused routinely comes from the top. And this is where I have to give a big nod to Executive Director David Schillhammer, Programming Director Matthew Curtis, and Programming Coordinator Tim Anderson. Those positions are fraught with epic headache-inducing crises and tough judgment calls, and thankless task after thankless task. And David, Matthew, and Tim, managed to both do whatever they had to do to command their film festival ship and heard the cats that are the filmmakers, jury members, patrons, sponsors, film fans, etc. quite obviously have good film programming chops, and also display poise befitting Mr. Roarke from “Fantasy Island.”
Three-time Academy Award winner Robert Benton was the guest of honor with one of the film’s iconic stars, Faye Dunaway (due to be feted the very next night) in attendance to celebrate with Benton as he received the Dallas Star Award and discussed his incredible writing and filmmaking career.
While discussing the films in XX, praise was evenly distributed among THE BOX, BIRTHDAY PARTY, and HER ONLY LIVING SON for various reasons, but the biggest laugh of the night came from the diminutive Niki Pence, when she explained her preference of DON’T FALL by explaining that the film connected with her since throughout her life, she has been “full of rage.”
If you look him up on IMDb, you’ll see the biography that I wrote for him five years ago. It’s a bio pushing how much promise he had, with The Ben Stiller Show appearances, a Tom Arnold series, and a ton of commercials in a short period of time. It talks about the two short films he directed which both won a lot of awards in film fests in the San Diego area (he wasn’t that savvy about the film fest circuit to take them farther). And that’s where it pretty much ends.
Damien Chazelle ’s LA LA LAND, MOONLIGHT, THE HANDMAIDEN, top the list: Directors of Dallas
