Texas Watch: Paris, Texas (1984)

Watched:  07/04/2026

Format:  Criterion

Viewing:  First

Director:  Wim Wenders

As a forewarning, I really don't have anything new or novel to say about this movie.  It won Cannes in 1984 and is one of those movies that gets discussed *a lot*, I guess.  But I've avoided those discussions because I'd never seen the movie and was fundamentally avoiding spoilers.  

I haven't seen that many Wim Wenders movies, but of what I've seen - I've been a fan.  Paris, Texas (1984) should have been a slam-dunk for me, but I just never got to it until after our mid-day Fourth of July activities ended and before we put on fireworks from New York.  A couple of years ago,  I'd watched the beginning  - just the first 45 minutes of a lengthy runtime as Wenders movies tend to go, and had no idea where it was going.  Which - fair.  

Starring Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell and Natassja Kinski - it's a movie that reminds you that a deeply compelling movie doesn't need FX, a cut every two seconds, a needle-drop every ten minutes or fifteen subplots.  That's not to say Paris, Texas is representative of movies in 1984 - one of the years that defined the modern movie.  I'm not really sure it points to much more than what was happening in independent film in the 1980's that would inform indie movies for the next fifteen or twenty years.  Character driven, mood driven, and trying to show something about the human condition.

G Comics: Godzilla vs. Texas

Finally got around to actually reading IDW's Godzilla vs. America: Godzilla vs. Texas one-shot.  

Was I pleased?  You know I was.  

If I recently complained about a lack of local specificity in media where the story unfolds in Texas, I will not be repeating that here.  In fact, the bigger problem for this comic is that Texas is gigantic, and the stories themselves are pretty location-specific.  Even chronologically specific.  And Texas is too big for one slim comic.

Hallmark Texas Watch: Texas Two-Step (2026)

Watched:  06/14/2026

Viewing:  First

Format:  Hallmark Channel

Director:  Eva Tavares

Regional specificity is hard.   

I live in Austin, Texas which has, in the last two decades (and to my surprise), become a real tourist town.  People come here and drink, eat some barbecue and street tacos, feel they've lived authentically Austin/ Texas and go home.  And that's fine. 

It's not just at Christmas that Hallmark likes to make movies about country life's superiority to city life.  We do not require the yuletide season to insist that what you really need to do is give up your nice place in a city and your much-worked-for career track and do... something? in the country.  Not when you can boff the guy from high school who is roughly doing now what he did at age 17.  And, Hallmark -  occasionally - likes to make movies specifically about people doing this in Texas.  

While looking for World Cup Games, I saw Hallmark was debuting their latest "Texas" movie.  And I watched it so you don't have to.

Texas Two-Step (2026) is a movie about a woman who must go home to "Blue Creek" from Austin/Dallas to check in on her aging aunt and her roadhouse country bar and grill. 

Doc Watch: The Yogurt Shop Murders - Part 5 (2026)

Watched:  05/24/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Margaret Brown

Last year we watched the documentary series The Yogurt Shop Murders (2025), a multi-part doc that covered the unsolved murder of four teenage girls in a yogurt shop in Austin, Texas in 1991 and the 34 years of nightmare that followed for the families and for some of the accused.  

I'll let you read that post and why the doc was impactful.  And maybe a bit of why, as a local, it hit home.

Ironically - within about five weeks of the airing of the fourth and final episode, the City of Austin announced a positive ID on the murderer - Robert Eugene Brashers.  Brashers was a drifter of sorts and is best described as a serial killer.  Based on DNA evidence and ballistics evidence, it is pretty clear who committed the crime.

Chuck Norris Merges With The Infinite

Chuck Norris - sometime Texan, internet meme, ace martial artist, actor, star of B-movies and the long running Walker: Texas Ranger - has passed.

Signal Watch Reads: 1960's Austin Gangsters - Organized Crime That Rocked the Capital

Not too long ago, I read Jesse Sublett's follow up to this book, Last Gangster in Austin.  I enjoyed the book and determined to check out his first installment, 1960's Austin Gangsters: Organized Crime That Rocked the Capital.  

There's less of a clear narrative to this book than the follow-up.  That's not a product of poor writing or research with this first book - instead, there's a wider scope, more folks involved, and it takes place over a longer timeline.  All of that territory means you have to think in bullet points while adding some color.

In 1960's Austin Gangsters, Sublett charts the rise and fall of regional criminals in what was then the sleepy college and State Capital town of Austin, Texas.  

I listened to the audiobook version, which ran less than five hours.  Much to my delight, it was narrated by former Superman voice actor, George Newbern, who gets almost all of the Texas locations correct, minus one or two.*

Texas Noir Watch: The Houston Story (1956)

Watched:  01/25/2026

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  First

Director: William Castle

The funny thing about The Houston Story (1956) is that there's probably a good idea for a movie in here, somewhere between a less dumb and horny Landman and less intense There Will Be Blood, but the script is so phoned in, it's both a mess and a little too pat.  But it does make Della Street (aka: Barbara Hale) seem like a bombshell, so it has that going for it.

It took me a minute to realize this is the kind of movie where our lead is a true noir protagonist - he's not on the side of the angels, he's a guy who's seen an angle and he's pursuing it to the top.  I read Lee J. Cobb was originally slated to play the role, and I can see that completely.  Instead we get Gene Barry - who is good! - but who didn't give "morally ambiguous POV character" in the first ten minutes of the movie.

Essentially, Barry plays an oil-field worker.  He gets the attention of the Houston mob by identifying a corpse found beneath the "docks of Houston" as a woman he know in Oklahoma.  However - that isn't who it is.  Barry happens to know that the woman he's named is actually living in Houston under the name Zoe Crane and mixed up with a second-banana mobster.  

Neo-Noir Texas Watch: Lone Star (1996)

Watched:  01/09/2025

Format:  Criterion 4K

Viewing:  Unknown - likely 4th or 5th

Director:  John Sayles

I remember going to see this opening day in Austin at the Arbor 4 at, like, a 4:00 pm show, thinking "no one will be there.  It's John Sayles.  And, I'm going by myself, I can find a seat.".  

Y'all, it was so packed when I showed up, I wound up in the front row staring straight up at the screen for the duration.

And I loved it.  

At the time I was double-majoring in film and history at the University of Texas.  As part of my load, I took as much local and regional history as my degree plan would allow.  And, yes, the courses I took illuminated the material certain officials are currently screaming to the heavens about colleges teaching.*

Joe Ely Merges With The Infinite

Legendary Texas Musician Joe Ely has passed.  He was 78.

More here.

Ely was part of the Flatlanders and continued to perform up until very recently.  I saw him with my Cousin Sue and family a few years back at the Saxon Pub.  Ian McClagen was just sitting at the bar.  

Not too much longer after that, I was paying to park at a lot off Colorado with a bunch of people from out of town (I remember one dude was from Belgium), and there was Joe Ely at the kiosk, paying to park.  He heard me freaking out and saying "That's Joe Ely!  That's Joe Ely!" which was a fact I assume he knew.

Ely was a crucial figure in Texas music for decades, and a Texas legend.  He'll be missed.

Doc Watch: Selena y Los Dinos (2025)

Watched:  11/24/2025

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Isabel Castro

Living in Texas in the early 90's, if you had your head up at all, you heard about Selena.  While I didn't listen to Tejano or Cumbia, she'd become so big that a dumb Anglo kid like myself heard Bidi Bidi Bom Bom somewhere along the way, and I admit that I probably paid more attention to Selena because she was very pretty with a Colgate smile.

I could tell you pretty much exactly when I figured out who Selena was from the cover of her album Entre A Mi Mundo.  The cover art was everywhere.  

Candidly, in the 1990's and now, the names of most Tejano acts were just not known by Anglos and English speakers.  But Selena was rapidly breaking down that particular divide through sheer force of scale - she was selling out the Astrodome, something reserved for the biggest acts on the planet - and wildly popular local acts like ZZ Top.  

As a Texan whose first language was English, it seemed like Selena was about to cross-over to a larger audience the second she put out a record in English (see: Shakira).

But then, in 1995, at the age of 23, Selena was killed.  

As popular as she was at the time of her death, it's very hard to quantify the scope and duration of the public mourning that spilled out.

Doc Watch: The Yogurt Shop Murders (2025)

In addition to being very TL;DR, this post was difficult to write as this documentary covers horrific, very real deaths, and the aftermath, which - decades on - has no closure.  There is a lot of human pain involved, a lack of justice and no easy answers.  

In 1991, four girls were killed in the back of a yogurt shop in North Austin. Amy Ayers, Eliza Thomas, Jennifer Harbison and Sarah Harbison.  The store was then burned.

I don't have any particular insight into the events other than knowing North Austin in the 80's and 90's.  And my own opinions regarding several elements is probably bubbling over in the post.  

Like all cities, Austin is home to some notable crimes.  

In the 1880's, we were home to a serial killer known as The Servant Girl Annihilator.  I grew up and attended college in the shadow of the University of Texas Tower, from which Charles Whitman killed 15 people and injured 30 more.  

My sophomore year of high school I was living in North Houston/ Spring.  However, as a kid I spent six years living in Austin, from 1984 to 1990.  Formative years - 4th through 9th grade.

I retained friendships despite the move, and one evening - more than a year after I'd moved away - a friend called.  Without much prior chit-chat, she dove in and started telling me about four girls murdered in the Northcross area, a street of strip malls and a one-story shopping mall.  I had never been in that yogurt store, but I knew the area, certainly. 

Not to be too callous - but the murder rate of Austin was and is a fraction of what Houston sees any year., so at first I wasn't paying much attention.  But she began describing what occurred, and she wasn't sensationalizing anything.   The facts were enough, and required no dramatic flair.  I didn't know if she was scared or sad or both.  Or something else.  But she was affected.  And, of course, she was a teenage girl who worked in a shop, sometimes by herself.

And that's how I found out that four girls around my age had been murdered in the back of a yogurt shop in Austin.  

Waco Watch: Action USA (1989)

Watched:  07/12/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  John Stewart

After he'd recommended it to me twice, I took JAL up on his suggestion of this particular flick.  I meant to watch this for the 4th of July, but we got busy, so here you go.  My salute to America.

Action USA (1989) is probably the best high-action movie shot in Waco during the 1980's.

I very much remember Waco in the 1980s.  It was, aside from Baylor, a town that had seen its best days 30 years prior and was not yet recovered from the economic turns of the 1970's and 80's.  In a few short years, we'd have the Branch Davidian stand-off near here.  And then, much later, Joanna Gaines would convince people Waco was the shit, which... TV is a powerful drug, y'all.  Somehow, the second worst college town in Texas is now a tourist destination for people who like overpriced wooden spoons and mediocre football.

Anyway, it is always weird/ a delight seeing the landscape of my part of Texas in a movie.  And buildings that still stand that I am a bit familiar with from a job I had ten years ago when I was in Waco a lot.

Western Watch: Red River (1948)

Watched:  03/26/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Howard Hawks

Who knew the highly regarded American Classic film would be pretty good?

Red River (1948) is a Howard Hawks post-war epic, one of a dozen John Wayne classics, and features a good number of the A-list supporting players of the era who show up again and again in different configurations through the 1960's.  

The film is also curiously myth-building for Texas history, and it's curious to see a movie made about it 80 years after the fact, rather than the additional near-80 that have since passed.  John Wayne plays a gunman who joins a wagon train in the years just prior to the Civil War going southwest out of St. Louis.  Somewhere in what would become the Oklahoma Indian Territory, Wayne decides to peel off and head South, crossing the Red River into Texas.  There a girl who begs to go with him (Coleen Gray*) but he says he'll send for her.  He's heading out into hard land with his pal, Groot (Western staple Walter Brennan).  

George Foreman Merges With The Infinite

This man of God is gonna also put you down for a 10-count

Boxer, father of many Georges, enthusiastic grill monger, Olympian, minister and generally good guy, George Foreman has passed.

Back in the 1990's, former 2-time Heavyweight Champion boxer (back when boxing was something we all kind of followed), George Foreman, became a staple of television as he began to market the George Foreman Grill.  I doubt many folks could tell you about Foreman's more famous bouts, but everyone knew that the grill was reasonably priced, could be used indoors, and let the fat just drip right out of your food and into a washable plastic tray.

Did I have one?  You know I did, and I used it on the regular from circa 1999-2007.

Foreman's boxing career is extraordinary.  He earned the Heavyweight Title in the 1970's, retired, became a man in the community and became a minister.  In the 80's, he came back in his late 30's and in the early 90's secured the Heavyweight title again, whilst in his 40's.  

Foreman and Ali in Zaire

Y'all can read up on it, because it reads like a movie.  Not least of which was Foreman's near-death experience and immediate religious conversion.  He became a minister and made a lot of difference to folks in the Houston area and beyond.

George Foreman was a lot of personality, like a lot of boxers of his generation (see: Ali).   And in the 2000's-era, generally just a beloved figure.  

I'm genuinely sad he's gone.  

Western Watch: The Rare Breed (1966)

Watched:  03/08/2025

Format:  TCM

Viewing;  First

Director:  Andrew V. McClagen

A western-comedy-adventure movie fantasy about something weirdly specific - The Rare Breed (1966) is about the introduction of the Hereford steer to Texas.  Is this how it happened?  Most assuredly not. Do I care?  I do not.  

Because what the movie is about is really about dreams - who has them, how they can die or be put on ice, how we can find new ones, and how good does Maureen O'Hara look in green?*

Maureen O'Hara plays a British woman who was widowed en route to America, bringing a prize Hereford steer she plans to breed.  She and her husband planned to prove this type of steer could thrive in the US, and crossbreed well with local steer - but as he died she's now left to do it on her own.  So, O'Hara and her young-adult daughter, played by Juliet Mills (sister of Hayley), do what you did in the 19th century if you'd wound up here - they persevere.  

TV Watch: Landman (on Paramount+)

Curiously, not a superhero show.  Or, if it is, worst superhero ever.

I'd not watched any of the Yellowstone stuff by Taylor Sheridan.  By the time I heard it was watchable there were 23 seasons of it and a few spin-offs, and I couldn't be bothered to enter that particular multiverse.  

But when I saw Billy Bob Thornton, John Hamm, Demi Moore and Robyn Lively would be on a show, I was curious.  Then I saw it was about the energy industry and set in Texas, and my ears perked up.  I have lived the vast majority of my life in Texas, and my father worked for companies that produced instrumentation and valves for oil rigs, derricks, etc..  Anyway - like a lot of folks who grew up around oil, I have a passing interest in the industry.

What's curious is that during my youth, Texas was considered pumped dry.  There were oil fields, sure... but the fracking and all that came along later.  By the time I was in high school in the early 90's, if you saw an oil jack going, it was always worthy of comment.  and, yes, pump jacks could be anywhere and were.   

Someone figured out the fields were *not* dry, and fracking eventually happened, especially out in West Texas.   And when I travelled out that way for work, all of a sudden the hotels were full of guys off a hard shift, getting rest, uniformly polite but eyeing me with suspicion as I went by in my tie.  

Oil wise, things are definitely cooking in Texas.

Landman is, basically, a soap opera that sure feels like a modern spin on the dramas we used to watch, like Dallas.  There's a wide array of characters, oil is at the center of it, but only some are involved directly with the business.  And because it's TV, it's the lives and loves of those working around oil (read: men) that drive the show, and the women who love them.

Shelley Duvall Merges With The Infinite

Actress and producer Shelley Duvall has passed at the age of 75.

Most folks from my generation first saw Duvall in Popeye, before we stumbled upon other Robert Altman movies and, of course, Kubrick's The Shining.  Duvall also produced children's shows - I remember stumbling across them in high school, but she left Hollywood by 2000.  

Duvall was a fellow Texan, and grew up in the Houston area.  Most recently, she lived in Blanco County, which is a short drive west from Austin and due north of San Antonio up 281.  

In the last decade, Duvall had been known to have issues with mental illness, and was known to the folks of Blanco.  In recent years, it seemed she had received some help and appeared in a film in 2023.

We'll miss knowing Ms. Duvall is out there, either as an actress or just living in Blanco.  

Super Watch: "Superman: The Movie" (1978) in San Antonio w/ NathanC

Tollin, NathanC and yours truly

Watched:  07/02/2024

Format:  Theatrical/ Santikos/ TPR Cinema Tuesdays

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Richard Donner

For years, our own NathanC (the famed Nathan Cone of Texas Public Radio/ TPR's Cinema Tuesdays) has been trying to secure a print or digital copy of Superman: The Movie to include in the annual summer classics film series he hosts via TPR.   

Travel and other challenges have beset our ability to pull this off, but this year the stars aligned and Nathan was able to get WB to send a copy.  On July 2nd, 2024, I was able to attend the screening and help out.  Nathan asked that I help intro the film, and then stay for a Q&A.  You can visit the Q&A as both audio and transcript here on the TRP website.

Unsurprising to me is that Nathan is a great host; professional but warm and fun.  Clearly the crowd that came out is enthusiastic - they were there a good hour before curtain and buzzing.  The Santikos theater in Northwest San Antonio was nicely appointed and had primo seats with nice side tables for popcorn and - for me - to quickly jot some notes.

I was incredibly nervous about the Q&A as (a) I have a tendency to over-answer any given question, and (b) I was concerned I would not be able to answer a question thrown my way.  

Prior to showing up, Nathan mentioned that a former DC Comics staffer, Anthony Tollin, was going to be in attendance.  Anthony was at DC during a fascinating period of transition, when the original old guard was silver-haired but still around and the next generation was coming in and bringing new ideas to comics.  Folks like Kirby were mailing in work, but working for DC, you might see Siegel and Shuster come into the office.  He knew Julie Schwartz!  He colored Gil Kane!

To someone like me, this is like finding out that you're going to be talking to Gene Kranz or an equivalent.  Especially when I found out Mr. Tollin had been assigned to Christopher Reeve to shepherd him around DC Comics when Reeve came in to do some research.  

I couldn't help it, so I jumped the gun and immediately included Mr. Tollin in the Q&A, and, after, I asked him to sign some comics which he'd worked on.  As a side-note, Mr. Tollin also works on The Shadow novella reprint collections and has written a lot of those Smithsonian mini-books you may have seen associated with CD releases of radio programs.

As a point of Mr. Tollin being kinda extra cool, if you look at the first picture, he's wearing the rings worn by The Phantom in the comic strips.

The questions were insightful and on a level interested in narrative more than the technical achievements of the film - and maybe that worked well for me.  I have *thoughts* on Superman, and I think I was able to answer folks' queries - and loved one woman's questions about the nature of our secret heroism.  I wanted to high-five her so bad.

Anyway, thanks to Nathan and Texas Public Radio for such a great night.  And to Mr. Tollin for showing patience with a fanboy.  Oh, and I got to see San Antonio-based pal, Courtney M!  Always a delight.

Depending on a few factors, I really want to slip down to San Antonio for the screening of Pandora's Box starring Louise Brooks.  

Texas Watch: Dallas (1950)

Watched:  07/09/2024

Format:  Amazon 

Viewing:  First

Director:  Stuart Heisler

Full disclosure, I was just looking to see what else Ruth Roman was in, and this came up.  And, as a long-time Texan, I was curious how a movie about Dallas, the most Dallasy city in Texas, was going to work.  Plus, Gary Cooper.  And Steve Cochran in facial hair!

Dallas (1950) takes place shortly after the Civil War, so Dallas is a small, growing western town (it was founded in the early 1840's).  Gary Cooper plays a former Confederate colonel who is sought by the law.  A young Bostonian of means has become a US Marshall to impress his fiance, and come west to prove he's no shrinking violet.  He stumbles across Cooper - a fugitive, and after finding out the situation is not so clear as his orders suggested, he and Cooper ride to Dallas together.  Cooper hears three brothers are there, and he'd like to help take them down.  

There's some frankly unnecessary identity switching as the two enter town, and we learn that the Bostonian is engaged to the daughter of a local Don, which, yes, means Ruth Roman is playing a Mexican-American.   Which...  there's a lot of Hollywood history why this was probably true.  Is Roman, of Jewish-Lithuanian heritage, a good candidate for a Latina?  Uhhhhhhhh...  man, that's a loaded question I asked myself.  

On the flip side, I don't remember too many movies from this era that include Hispanic characters quite like this, shown to be very successful ranchers (or even more so, if these criminals weren't so busy being criminals at them and taking their cattle).

In a lot of ways, this is a pretty typical Western, where some shady dudes are going to take advantage of the lawless nature of the new town/ land and exploit that weakness to steal property and land from others, and the promise of civilization coming is welcomed.  It's also likely an early of an example of the mastermind bad-guy with the loose-canon sibling he's trying to wrangle (Cochran!).  

In the course of events, Roman's character falls for Cooper, who looks old enough to be her father (she's 27-28 and he's probably 49 here).  And, man, Hollywood.  They couldn't stop pairing Cooper with women who look way too young.

There's not much to actually report about this one - other than that the terrain and town look nothing like Dallas or North Texas, which IRL is hilariously flat and so visually uninteresting that Dallas architecture has been weird since the 1970s in an effort to combat this problem.  But this movie is shot in typical ranchland outside of LA, so... behold!  The rolling hill country of Ft. Worth!  The deep valleys outside of Dallas!

If you're looking for more Ruth Roman:  good news.  She's in this.  But I'm not sure this movie is terribly ground-breaking.  It is, however, fairly entertaining and a reminder how cool vaqueros looked in their jackets and on Mexican-style saddles.

80's Watch: Cloak & Dagger (1984)

Watched:  03/18/2024

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Richard Franklin

Selection:  Me

We recently spent a weekend in San Antonio on the Riverwalk, a famed tourist trap where you can get a margarita the size of a fishbowl and try not to fall in Texas' second grossest body of water (Buffalo Bayou of Houston taking first), a thin ribbon of the San Antonio River that runs near the Alamo (which is directly downtown SA), and is now flanked by innumerable restaurants and bars.  The running joke when someone asks you where to eat on the Riverwalk is to say "oh, the Mexican place with the umbrellas" of which there are about a dozen.

On our first night out, Jamie and I discussed Cloak & Dagger (1984), and realized it had been many years since either of us had seen the movie.  As a kid, in some ways, the movie really hit home.  I was 9 when the movie came out, I played tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons, had a budding interest in espionage-type movies and my family routinely went to San Antonio for local-ish vacations - So I knew some of what I saw in the movie very well.

Cloak & Dagger is essentially a Hitchcock thriller with a child protagonist standing in for a Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant.  Kid sees something he shouldn't, kid has a macguffin, kid is pursued by nameless, mysterious forces that will do him in if he can't stay one step ahead - and he might get people killed along the way.

E.T.'s Henry Thomas plays Davey, a kid who loves his espionage table-top RPG in which he plays as agent Jack Flack.  He loves all the spy stuff, and has an imaginary pal in Jack Flack (played by Dabney Coleman in one of two roles) who is constantly goading him into playing out the role of spy in every day life.  While sent on an errand by his pal (William Forsyth!) who owns a gaming store - both RPG's and videogames (there is nothing new under the sun), Davey sees a guy get killed.  The guy hands him an Atari 5200 game cartridge of Cloak & Dagger, which is also the tabletop game Davey loves.  

No one believes Davey saw what he saw, and he's soon pursued by the killers.  Up and down the Riverwalk and around San Antonio.