(Photo credit: Mike Devries/The Capital Times)
The Capital Times’ Rob Thomas on the six Four Star Video Heaven employees who started an Indiegogo campaign to turn the famous video store into a co-op:
“The new owners want to tap into both the current base of Madison customers as well as movie fans who may have moved away, but remember Four Star fondly. Brennan recalls getting an email recently from a formerly closeted gay man who said watching movies he rented at Four Star helped him explore and finally accept his sexuality.”
Tone Deaf’s Al Newstead on a brief history of Butch Vig, his Madison-based recording space Smart Studios, and a potential documentary in the works:
“For nearly three decades the Midwestern facility eked out its legend as the likes of Smashing Pumpkins, Against Me!, Fall Out Boy, Everclear, Death Cab For Cutie, Jimmy Eat World, Archers Of Loaf, L7, Killdozer, Tar Babies, and of course Garbage and Nirvana (who recorded demos for Nevermind), passed through its doors before Vig and Marker eventually closed the studio in 2010.”
GLAAD has an interview with UW-Madison graduate Jason Cohen, whose documentary short “Facing Fear” is up for an Oscar at this year’s Academy Awards:
“Being immersed in this film for almost 2 years certainly has had an effect on me. It’s impossible not think how Matthew & Tim’s story relates to relationships in my own life. I look differently at small disputes with family members or friends even though it may be significantly less severe circumstances. It really forces you to examine how you handle conflict and moreover how I might have reacted if I was in Matthew’s or Tim’s shoes. I honestly don’t know if I could forgive someone who had almost beaten me to death because I’ve learned through all this that it is such an individual journey and experience. It is all determined by everything in your own history and all the societal factors that may have played into your own psyche to deal with it.”
There’s a Woody Allen series afoot at Union South, and WUD Film Committee director Bess Donoghue has something to say:
“The timing of this series and the resurgence of the Woody Allen scandal is entirely coincidental. Each year, WUD Film allows students to propose a series around a theme/filmmaker/genre of their choice. The series selected this year revolved around showcasing the less popular films of Woody Allen. Around one month after the selection, Woody Allen was recognized at the Golden Globes, receiving the Cecil B. DeMille award, and with an open letter from Dylan Farrow on the New York Times blog, the 20-year old scandal was brought back to attention.”
In honor of Harold Ramis, who passed away Monday Morning, The Isthmus’ Kenneth Burns on revisiting Groundhog Day in 2007:
“I recently revisited the film for the first time since it was in theaters, and I found myself moved beyond proportion. Directed by Harold Ramis, a director far more spiritually minded than he is usually given credit for, Groundhog Day is a meditation on boredom, greed, lust, ambition and despair, a lovely poem about how we humans never can be quite happy with the familiar, or satisfied by the new.”