Kansas City News Blog

​About a week ago, Paul Burns' face was slashed in an argument with a man over parking.

Fox 4 interviewed Burns, who showed off his scar and said he needed 150 stitches to sew his face back together again.

Now, Burns has medical bills.

Lucky for him, his friends are trying to help him pay them off, starting with a staged reading of the Quentin Tarantino classic Reservoir Dogs tonight (Monday) at the Westport Flea Market.

The show starts at 7:30 p.m. with a suggested donation of $5. 

So if you can't remember what fate befell the six, colorfully named diamond thieves, drop in.

​ For all you DIY-Herzogs out there, it's time to get cracking in the editing bay. The deadline for submission to the Kansas City FilmFest is almost here.

The contest started accepting shorts and features in August, but with every passing deadline the entry fee goes higher. The next deadline, which costs under $40 in most categories, is November 15, and the final cut-off for entries is less than a month away -- December 1.

Entry fees vary by project length and category, and can be found at the fest's Web site, kcjubilee.org.

Screeners should be sent in a region 1 DVD format, with a fee and entry form, to:
KC Jubilee
4826 W. 77th Terrace
Prairie Village, KS 66208-4321

The festival itself will be held April 14-18, 2010 at the AMC Mainstreet. The jury and visiting filmmakers have yet to be announced.

And not to dirty art with commerce, but this is a nice chance to win some cash, too. The festival's given out more than $200,000 in cash and prizes for award winners, and you know that  would buy you a much nicer camera for the documentary you've always wanted to about poverty or hunger or social injustice. Make society open its eyes, man! 

My colleague, Casey Lyons, told me about this trailer for an upcoming horror movie set in Kansas City. The plot is familiar. An idealistic couple played by Nikki and Dennis Dupont move here only to have their dreams destroyed and sink into despair and mediocrity. Happy Halloween, folks!

Alison Lohman in Drag Me to Hell

​When the last pinky-sized 100 Grand bar is gone and the porch light goes out, how will you reckon with the waning hours of October 31? With an extra hour available, thanks to the end of daylight-saving time, there's no going wrong with the shut-in creepfest double feature. But what to watch?

Our sister paper the San Francisco Weekly offers critic Brian Miller's handy guide, which rightly positions Onion AV Club and Kansas City Public Library favorite They Live near the top of the Halloween heap.

And across the aisle, local freelance writer Gil James Baven cautions against a host of really, really stinky movies that were supposed to be scary. He also finds a few to love, even going out on a limb to champion the Keanu Reeves mumbler sleeper Constantine -- and its novelization. Now that's scary.

​
The trailer for James Cameron's long-anticipated sci-fi flick Avatar hits theaters today. Slash Film reports that the trailer is three-and-a-half minutes long and has more high res photos of the flick.

A local guy is putting together an online archive of articles about the film prior to its December 18 release. T.F. Powell runs the unofficial fan site AvatarMovieZone.com, which has even landed him in the pages of The New York Times.

Powell told The Pitch that he's putting together the archive because "Avatar is being considered a milestone movie. There's talk that it could redefine modern cinema."

Powell is talking about the 3-D technology that Cameron used to make the film and which Powell dissects, scrutinizes and analyzes on his site. And don't forget, this is the directorial return of James Cameron.

"People tend to forget that this is a director who in the '90s was an A-list director," Powell said. "It just felt good to be watching a Cameron story again. The 3-D tech and the special effects kind of took a backseat."

That's what Powell took away from the 16-minute trailer he watched on "Avatar Day" in August.

"You actually do get immersed into the visual in front of you. ... With this 3-D experience, it's like your surroundings just black out," Powell said. "I think it's going to be one of those great old sci-fi adventures that you don't see too often."

​
The Kansas International Film Festival wraps up tonight at the Glenwood Theatre (9575 Metcalf Ave., Overland Park). One of the final films closing the fest is Left Field, a goofy and touching documentary about kickball -- the playground game that in recent years has been co-opted by twenty- to thirty-something jocks, hipsters and geeks.

A couple of guys with local ties -- Chris Batte (producer) and Ben Steger (director) -- collaborated on Left Field, their first feature-length film, which plays at 5:20.

Left Field is less about kickball games and wins and losses. The focus is more on the people who play the game.

"As we got more and more into it, we realized that there was this really amazing community of people -- artists, musicians, there's lawyers, architects," Batte says. "The kickball was fun and interesting, but we didn't think it was going to be interesting enough for a film. But we thought these people's lives were much more interesting."

Batte tells The Pitch that he always wanted to make a film but didn't know how. He had several friends who played in a kickball league at a park near his Chicago home. After two years of prodding, Batte finally checked out a game.

"When I got out there, it was a lot of hilarity," Batte says. "A lot of drunken shit talking, and everybody kind of shed any kind of social inhibitions and just went out and had fun. I just laughed the whole time I was out there."

He and Steger, who met at the University of Kansas and both now live in Chicago, decided to make a short film about a kickball team's "rise to fame and glory." They quickly cobbled together footage of games and player interviews, but before they could start editing the footage someone broke into Steger's apartment and stole the footage.

The two reassessed and decided that they were, Batte says, "a lot more committed to this project than just a short film." They decided to make a feature-length film about not just one team but the entire league. 

"Three years later, here we are," Batte says.

Warning: Spoiler alert!

Flickr: 0595

​ 1. Ogle some very buff, mostly naked men. Chippendales dance at VooDoo Lounge tonight.

2. Sniff out a good-for-nothin' train robber. Hold Up on Dead Man's Creek is an interactive murder mystery in production at the Hollywood Room downtown every Thursday, Friday and Saturday through Halloween.

3. Experience the steampunk version of Alice in Wonderland. Bellenwhissle Productions has put a trendy twist on its theatrical production of the Lewis Carroll classic, opening tonight at the Off Center Theatre in Crown Center.

4. Witness the percussive mastery of Tool drummer Danny Carey. He's participating in a drum clinic sponsored by Explorers Percussion at Shawnee Mission South High School on Saturday afternoon.



5. Take in an old movie. Gary Cooper stars in Sergeant York, screening for free at the National World War One Museum at 1 p.m. Saturday.

6. Appreciate the prettiest insects. There's butterfly festival happening at the Mr. and Mrs. F.L. Schlagle Environmental Library all weekend.

7. Get hot for burlesque dancers. The Kansas City Society of Burlesque performs Saturday night at West Bottoms bar Korruption.

8. Be a big spender -- for a good cause. Plaza Pzazz, the annual fundraiser for Ronald McDonald House features food, music and evening wear at Country Club Plaza on Sunday from 6 to 10 p.m. Tickets are $75.

For more ways to spend your weekend, see the online Pitch calendar.

Matt Damon in The Informant!

​In Steven Soderbergh's new movie The Informant!, Matt Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a bio-chemist at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) who sets off an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation into allegations of price-fixing at the agricultural industry giant. Whitacre suffers from delusions of grandeur (among other things) and is all too eager to make the feds' case by recording insider conversations. He imagines that when it's all over, his grateful bosses will promote him to the top of ADM. The movie is based on a true story, in which local FBI agent Bob Herndon is played by actor Joel McHale (most recognizable as the host of E!'s "The Soup").

After the jump, nine questions with Special Agent Herndon, a 23-year veteran of the FBI who works in the FBI's Kansas City Division. Warning: spoilers ahead!

​Patrick Swayze died yesterday at age 57 after a nearly two-year struggle with pancreatic cancer. A lot of tributes to Swayze will laud his roles in Dirty Dancing and Ghost. But my favorite Swayze flick is the one sandwiched between the two: Road House (although Red Dawn is an '80s wet dream for G.I. Joe-loving prepubescent boys).

In Road House, Swayze played Dalton, a professional bouncer from Los Angeles hired to clean up a small town bar, the Double Deuce, in Jasper, Missouri.

Jasper is real, and about a two-hour-and-twenty-minute drive from here. But there's no Double Deuce.

Road House was such a quirky pleasure that I watched it whenever I saw it on TBS or whatever cable channel always played it. In 2004, I read a piece by Chuck Klosterman in Esquire summing up the flick's odd greatness:

Outside the genre of sci-fi, I can't think of any film less plausible than Road House. Every element of the story is wholly preposterous: the idea of Swayze being a nationally famous bouncer (with a degree in philosophy), the concept of such a superviolent bar having such an attractive clientele, the likelihood of a tiny Kansas town having such a sophisticated hospital, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Every single scene includes at least one detail that could never happen in real life. So does that make Road House bad? No. It makes Road House perfect. Because Road House exists in a parallel reality that is more fanciful (and more watchable) than The Lord of the Rings. The characters in Road House live within the mythology of rural legend while grappling with exaggerated moral dilemmas and neoclassical archetypes. I don't feel guilty for liking any of that. Road House also includes a monster truck. I don't feel guilty for liking that, either.

Klosterman is right about all but one thing: The movie was set in Missouri.

Road House is fantastical but perfect -- even when Dalton rips a guy's throat out with his bare hands -- and it's because of Swayze. I can't imagine another actor in the role. Swayze, while cut, wasn't as big as the action heroes of the '80s (though he was prettier). The filmmakers worked Swayze's size difference into the dialogue, which includes some of the most memorable quotes of my childhood. Mainly, "pain don't hurt."



Hopefully, Swayze's pain don't hurt no more.

​Tom Kane must have been a tough kid to sit next to in the sixth grade. Loud, boisterous, bouncing off the walls. Once, a teacher tied him to his desk chair with jump ropes.
"Today if I was a kid in grade school, they'd have me on Ritalin up to my eyeballs," the 47-year-old Kane says.

Luckily for Kane, no one tried to put him on mood stabilizers. More than 30 years later, he gets paid for the same things that drove his teachers crazy. Capital-P Paid.

Just turn on your television and wait 10 minutes or so until an ad for the new animated movie 9 pops up. That's when you'll hear a bit of Kane's voice.

​Kevin Smith's next film might just be his horror flick inspired by Topeka's anti-gay preacher Fred Phelps.

In an interview with Sci-Fi Wire, Smith says his long-anticipated first horror film Red State might just be up next. Sounds like there was a communication breakdown between Smith and producer Jon Gordon. Smith wanted to secure the money for the film first. But Gordon wanted to get the cast first.

"I keep saying we don't have the money yet," Smith said. "Jon Gordon's just like, 'We haven't even asked anybody.' So I don't know, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. Long story short, hopefully the money turns up very soon and we go. Failing that, I'm going to pursue my hockey movie next."

Smith first teased Red State in a 2007 interview with Rotten Tomatoes in which the Clerks director revealed his fascination with Phelps and his influence on the film's script.

"It's certainly not Phelps himself but it's very much inspired by a Phelps figure," Smith told Rotten Tomatoes. "And to me, too, the notion of using a Phelps-like character as a villain, as horrifying and scary as that guy can be, there's even something more insidious than him that lurks out there in as much as a public or a government that allows it and that's the other thing that I'm trying to examine in a big, big way."

Bet Shirley Phelps-Roper already has her "Fag director" sign made for the premiere. 

Via Worst Previews.

If you have an hour today, tomorrow or whenever, I recommend watching Brian Schodorf's documentary Greensburg, about the tiny Kansas town that was pretty much wiped off the map by "the most destructive tornado in history" on May 4, 2007.

"Greensburg" Documentary from Harran Productions on Vimeo.

It takes a gutsy reporter to ask an interviewee if he's sleeping with other women while he's sending money back to his wife and three kids in Guatemala. Sammy Loren is wired that way.

The Kansas filmmaker was attending Loyola University in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, gutting not only the city infrastructure but draining the local employment pool. "Most of the population was gone," he said. "The traditional underclass was dispersed across the U.S. A lot of jobs were filled immediately by Latinos."

Loren stumbled upon just such a work crew in his neighborhood -- a group of men from Central America working on a house just one block from a bar the filmmaker frequented in the Irish Channel district. He was already interested in a film project about this new workforce and how they integrated into an unknown city, cut off from their families and familiar settings.

Last night, the Loyola grad screened Nueva Orleans for a packed house at the Crossroads Infoshop and Radical Bookstore.

I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but the reviews for this week's video game release ​Batman: Arkham Asylum have convinced me the game's worth shelling out $60 to be the Dark Knight. The game's undeniably cool conceit -- you have to fight your way through Batman's rogues gallery and escape a booby-trapped Arkham Asylum- - is alone enough to get me interested. And now that I know Commissioner Gordon is voiced by a metro native, maybe I can write it off as a work expense? Just in case any of my bosses are reading this.

1. Do the time warp. Rocky Horror Picture Show is screening for free at City Market Friday night.

2. Cut it out. Comedian Dave Coulier (aka Uncle Joey to Full House fans) shares the laughs at Stanford's Comedy Club Friday night and Saturday.

3. Walk the dog. On Saturday morning, there's a charity dog-walking event called Too Cool to Drool happening at Frontier Park.

4. Embrace your inner geek. Lenexa Community Center is hosting the MO-KAN Comic Con all day Saturday and Sunday.

5. Breathe in the bacon. The salty smell of it, plus culinary and musical adoration of it will permeate the West Bottoms during Bacon-Fest on Saturday.

6. Eat for cheap in the Power & Light District. Sunday is the final day of District Restaurant Week, during which diners get discounted meals and go home with gift cards at the end of their meal.

1. Ogle a young Jake Gyllenhall. Donnie Darko screens at the Central Branch of the Kansas City, Missouri, Public Library tonight.

2. Ogle some urban fashion. The styles of local designer Clevon Jones will be on display tonight at America's Pub.

3. Look up. Trick planes will be overhead Saturday and Sunday during the Kansas City Aviation Fair and Expo.

4. Hang on the edge of your seat Saturday night at Municipal Auditorium as the Kansas City Roller Warriors do battle.

5. Learn how to live better during Greenfest 2009 at the Uptown Shoppes all day Saturday and Sunday.

6. Listen to a rock and roll poet. Charly "The City Mouse" Fasano reads aloud at Prospero's on Sunday night.

Here's what we think you should do this weekend:

1. Wander aimlessly around the Crossroads because it's First Friday. As usual, there'll be tons of art to gawk at. Plus, there's a fashion show by Lovesick Clothing happening at Blue Bouquet.

2. Honor a decade of Anodyne Records. Tonight, Czar Bar is the site of the rockin' anniversary show, featuring Valley Arena, Roman Numerals and Little Brazil.

3. Take in a movie at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. There's a free screening of the super sexy Mississippi Masala, starring Denzel Washington, on Saturday afternoon.

4. Party like it's 1955. There's a Sock Hop happening at the Brick on Saturday night.

​ This lowrider rolled up for last year's Wild West Showdown.

5. Hang out with some lowriders. The second annual Wild West Showdown -- a block party and car show -- hits the West Bottoms, on Union Avenue between Mulberry and Santa Fe, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $1 or free if you bring a canned good.

We'd like to leave you today with a little information to protect yourselves as you head for the weekend. Maybe you're out and you've had a few and you meet a pretty girl or a cute boy and you think, "Hey, what the hell? I'm only young once." Well stop! This video, made by the Kansas Board of Health, follows the tragic story of two young lovers who, after having what looks like the worst sex ever, discover they might have syphilis. Here are a few representative quotes. "I've got some sort of sore.. down there." "Do you think those girls from the city might've had anything?" "One day you go insane. You've had syphilis all along."

Enjoy.

 

What is it about Kansas City and G.I. Joe? First, there was the news that we're hosting the national convention next weekend. Hey, fantastic, we could use the cash. But in a ​more dubious development, an Associated Press story ran today noting that Kansas City is one of three key marketing areas for the upcoming movie.

That's interesting because Paramount isn't screening the film for critics before its release. For a big budget summer action pic with a lot to lose if it bombs and a rabidly nerdy fanbase of nostalgia addicts, that's not a good sign. Still. it seems silly. Transformers got terrible reviews and made a shitload of cash.

So why is it that Paramount is concentrating on Kansas City - not exactly a big media market - of all places to build a buzz around this two-hour toy commercial? The only reasonable answer is that they see us as easily led fools who bonk each other on the heads with mallets for fun.

Shawn Edwards, I'm looking at you.... 

Please don't see this movie. The guys from Paramount are dicks.

​Right before the John Dillinger biopic Public Enemies opened, we noted that without Kansas City and the Union Station Massacre, things would've gone a lot differently for the charismatic bank robber. For all the poorly attended museums we have around here celebrating the city's history, we don't know why there isn't an organized crime museum. Seriously, that seems like it'd be an earner. Way cooler than the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Oooo, you just saw Slash's guitar? Well I got to play with Pretty Boy Floyd's tommy gun.

Our dreams were given hope when we got the latest release from the National Archives at Kansas City. Hoping to latch on to some of that sweet Johnny Depp love, the Archives wants you to know that you can get a better appreciation for Public Enemies if you step through its doors. Their people have found pages of files on Dillinger's girlfriend, Billie Frechette (played in the movie by Marion Cotillard). Apparently, Frechette was a member of the Menominee tribe and grew up on a reservation near Green Bay, Wisconsin. Her father died when she was young, and she became one of the reservation's poorest members. Which for a reservation is pretty damn poor.

If you want to know more, maybe you should go visit the Archives at 400 West Pershing Road. They're not holding an exhibit or anything, they just wanted you to know.

See, we've got cool stuff like this lying around all over and we do nothing with it. We're telling you - gangster museum. You're welcome Kansas City.

Writer, director and recent UMKC grad Jordan Kerfeld's four-minute short film Fingers played at the Echotrope New Media Festival in Omaha over the weekend.

Last week, Kerfeld uploaded the four-minute short -- about a guy dealing with the loss of his index finger and the memories of using the finger -- to Vimeo.

Watched it Sunday, and it's intense. Love how everything pops off the screen. If you haven't seen it, here it is.

1. Get to know a man-eating plant. Friday night at 9 p.m., there's a free, outdoor screening of the Little Shop of Horrors at 9 p.m. at City Market.

2. Hot it up. Starting Friday night at 8 p.m., Summer Salsa Fever at Harrah's VooDoo Lounge features some heavy hitters from the world of salsa music.

3. Reflect upon the art, life and legacy of wacky author William S. Burroughs. An exhibition of his artwork opens for one night only Saturday at Lawrence's DotDotDot Art Space. Another Burroughs-centric show opens Sunday at the Bourgeois Pig.

4. Check out some roller derby action. The KC Roller Warriors get brutal starting at 7 p.m. Saturday at Hale Arena.

5. Support Susan G. Komen for the Cure and rock out to Softee and others at Mammapalooza Saturday night at Crossroads Live behind Grinders. The show starts at 7 p.m. and a whopping 100 percent of ticket sales go to the charity to fight breast cancer.

For more ideas of how to waste your weekend (or at least get wasted), see The Pitch calendar of events.

 This weekend, area film-making types team up for 48 hours of hyper-speed action, 'cept with less Nolte and Murphy.

This is KC's second year hosting the 48 Hour Film Project, in which teams of 10 or 11 directors, writers, actors and other assorted production personnel draw a genre from a hat and then work like fiends to integrate the competition's required character, prop and line of dialog (last year's was "The whole thing was a mess") into a 4-7 minute film. It's sort of like improv, but with more technical skills. Sort of like this one titled Israeli Jones by filmmaker Jeremy Wood:

The winning team goes up against winners from other states, then nations for the ultimate prize of a screening at the Cannes Film Festival -- and perhaps a chance to see Vince, Turtle, E and Drama on the warpath.

Registration costs $155 and ends at 6 p.m. on Friday, July 31. Not coincidentally, that's the same time the festival begins. Organizers have plans for four different screenings for all completed films -- but only those submitted by deadline will be judged.

Laugh out loud at hillbilly jokes. Comedian Jon Reep performs at Stanford and Sons Comedy Club at the Legends tonight and Saturday.

See how some local actors compare with Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler. The musical theater adaptation of The Wedding Singer opens tonight at Theatre in the Park in Shawnee.

Munch on some tasty sweet corn. On Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Powell Gardens is having a Sweet Corn Fest.

On Saturday night, head downtown to Crosstown Station for some rock and roll and burlesque. The Ex Post Facto Show features Cretin 66, Rocket to Saturn and Two Gun Tease Burlesque.

Or, put the fishnets on yourself and watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show on Saturday night at Screenland.

On Sunday, hang out by the shuttlecock and watch a good, old-fashioned puppet show, presented by the StoneLion Puppet Theater, on the lawn of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

Guess who makes a cameo in Sacha Baron Cohen's latest ambush comedy, Brüno? None other than Topeka's favorite sons and daughters, the Westboro Baptist Church. Salon has an interesting story on why Brüno lacks the kick in the balls of Borat because no one in the film -- aside from a brief passing with Fred Phelps' flock -- is outright homophobic, which is good for gays but bad for Brüno's boxoffice.

If Morgan Spurlock hadn't gorged himself into obesity by eating Big Macs every day for his cinematic experiment, Super Size Me, Robert Kenner might never have delved into the industrial food system to trigger Americans' gag reflex on a far more disturbing level.

Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Kenner, who has directed a number of films about war and American history, was inspired after reading Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser's investigation into how corporate giants like McDonald's have drastically altered our eating landscape far beyond the drive-thru. 

"But then Super Size Me came out and I thought, I don't want to do a film just about fast food," he says. "I want to do a film about all our food, what's in it, how is it grown?"

Sound boring? It isn't. The result of Kenner's probing is Food Inc., a film that's easy on the eyes and hard on the stomach.

Bruno

The New York Post spoiled the surprise for a victim of Bruno aka Sacha Baron Cohen. The Post talked with Paul Cameron, the chairman of the Family Research Institute, who isn't a fan of homosexuality and appears in Cohen's latest guerrilla comedy, Bruno, which opens this Friday. The scene goes this way: A very gay Bruno doesn't want to be gay anymore, so he rendezvous with Cameron in Kansas City. Cameron is supposed to turn Bruno straight.

Here's how Cameron described his tango in KC with Bruno:

"I did a German thing a year ago. Is that this? I wondered what had happened to that. I'm in this bloody film? Well, I'll be jiggered. I guess you never can believe when people are in distress.

"I had to go to Kansas City. I was told that this chap was a homosexual in Germany, had a popular TV program in Germany, was perhaps suicidal and wanted to [become straight]. And I was supposed to see if I could help him in some way.

"His producer was telling people what to do. He'd say, 'Here's the setting. This will be your office. He'll come in, give him the kinds of advice that will be useful for him.' It took about two and a half, three hours. To put it mildly, a few of his questions seemed strange. When he tried to sit by me and he wanted to give me a blow job, that kind of stuff pushed it.

"If it's a gag, it was pretty well staged. I'll be another laughing stock. Oh, well."

Yep, we'll all be jiggered.

This weekend the highly anticipated film Public Enemies opens. It's the story of outlaw John Dillinger and stars Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, so you know it'll probably

make a shit-ton of cash. Plus, it was directed by Michael Mann, and that guy knows his way around cops and robbers and bullets (ahem, Heat, everyone?).

But without Kansas City, there'd be no badass shootouts to film.

I don't think it's a spoiler to tell you that John Dillinger was shot to death by federal agents as he was leaving a Chicago movie theater. That was 1934. The trailer for Public Enemies shows a lot of cool Tommy-gun action, so it's a safe bet that besides Dillinger's death, someone's going to be trading lead. And of course that's going to be a big part of the movie's fun.

Here's why Kansas City is important. FBI agents weren't actually allowed to carry guns or make arrests until the Kansas City Massacre in 1933 at Union Station. Beyond that, Agent Melvin Purvis - portrayed by Bale in the movie - went after gangster Pretty Boy Floyd because of Floyd's suspected involvement in the massacre.  

There you go. No KC, no Union Station? No FBI agents, no guns, no thrilling cinematic gunfights. You're welcome, America.

Ascot J. Smith

If a talking potato from the future had visited in time, we might have mentioned this sooner, but tonight marks the premiere of the film Last Man of Idaho, in which a talking potato from the future figures prominently.

Ascot J. Smith's experimental movie, a La Jetée-style collage of still images (including the one on the right), screens at 7 tonight at Kurruption (1717 West Ninth Street, in the West Bottoms). Tickets cost $5 at the door, and the event is only for those 21 and older. Besides the movie, expect a silent auction of production art, stuff from B-Bop Comics for sale, and food (potato-themed appetizers).

Smith's site calls his film "grandiose and absurd" and explains it this way:

Writer, director and star Ascot J. Smith finds a talking potato from the future. The two travel through time to re-imagine the artist's life. Highlights include robbery and cryogenic slumber.

The limits of choice and human beings' navigation toward the inevitable end are interpreted by Smith and his fantastic vegetable cohort. The result simultaneously embraces and mocks cinematic seriousness.

What, you have something better to see before the Transformers sequel?

The upcoming documentary What's the Matter With Kansas? features an eerie interview with George Tiller and footage from 1991's so-called "Summer of Mercy." The film, like the book it's based on, looks at the country's conservatives. Here's a bit of the doctor, discussing the intimidation and violence he's encountered, which would eventually claim his life: