
Since 1980 and Urban Cowboy through Lonesome Dove and No Country for Old Men, Barry Corbin has been cast as the ultimate movie Texan. This Texas native comes by his typecasting naturally, and it's hardly happenstance that he plays the sheriff's uncle in No Country for Old Men in a sequence near the end of the movie that possibly alters our entire understanding of has just occurred. No Country for Old Men was the Chronicle's film reviewers' No. 1 pick for the best film of 2007, and you can sample some of our justifications here. No Country for Old Men screens on Monday, February 27, 7pm at the Alamo Drafthouse Lamar.
Meat Loaf, you ask? Well apart from being born in Texas, Meat Loaf was the star of the 1980 film Roadie, which was primarily filmed in and around Austin. Meat Loaf plays the title character, Travis W. Redfish, a roadie for a traveling rock & roll show. The film was co-written by Chronicle columnist Michael Ventura and fellow Austin Sun writer Big Boy Medlin, who created the Redfish character in his regular column for the Sun. The story idea had been suggested by director Alan Rudolph and producer Zalman King (who died just a couple weeks ago). Although Ventura has some issues with the finished film, he wrote movingly about the movie in a "Letters at 3AM" column a couple of years ago, "Roadie: 30 Years Later." The screening is on Monday, March 5, 7pm, at the Alamo Drafthouse Lamar. The screening will be hosted by the Chronicle and former Sun writer Margaret Moser and longtime Austin actor Sonny Carl Davis, both of whom appear in Roadie.
Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards, Texas Film Hall of Fame, Infamous, No Country for Old Men, Roadie, Douglas McGrath, Barry Corbin, Meat Loaf, Christine Vachon, Austin Sun, Austin Film Society