What to do in Oklahoma on Sept. 30, 2012: Hear Pistol Annies at Riverwind Casino
Today’s featured event:
NORMAN — Listen to country trio Pistol Annies, featuring superstar Tishomingo resident Miranda Lambert, at 7 p.m. today at Riverwind Casino, 1544 W State Highway 9. Information: 322-6464 or www.riverwind.com.
For more events, go to www.wimgo.com.
-BAM
What to do in Oklahoma on Sept. 29, 2012: Hear Wade Bowen and Hudson Moore in Davis
Wade Bowen
Hudson Moore
Today’s featured event:
DAVIS – Hear Wade Bowen and special guest Hudson Moore at 8:30 tonight at the Arbuckle Ballroom, Interstate 35 and Highway 7.
For more information, go to www.ticketstorm.com.
For more events, go to www.wimgo.com.
-BAM
Romy Owens named Skirvin Hilton Hotel’s first artist in residence
Oklahoma City artist Romy Owens. (Photo by Leslie Spears)
The Skirvin Hilton Hotel, in partnership with the Paseo Arts Association, has named Romy Owens its first artist in residence.
Owens, an Oklahoma City-based artist, will create original artwork in the hotel’s studio space overlooking Broadway this month and remain at the hotel for one year, according to a news release.
The Skirvin’s new artist-in-residence program is an exciting development for Oklahoma City’s visual arts community. While artist residencies—places that provide creative space and time to artists of all disciplines—have been growing in popularity throughout the country, this partnership represents the first of its kind for the state of Oklahoma, according to the release. It is an opportunity that has valuable potential for Owens, the Skirvin Hilton Hotel, and the Oklahoma City community at large.
Not only will Owens have the opportunity to visit with guests as she creates her renowned original artwork, she will also be able to fully involve hundreds of hotel visitors, guests, and employees in her work through her interactive Photobooth series. For more on Owens’ art, go to www.romyowens.com.
“We’re thrilled to welcome our first artist to the program,” said Martin van der Laan, general manager of The Skirvin Hilton Hotel, in the release. “The program is poised to gain both local and national attention and we’re proud it has attracted talent such as local artist Romy Owens. Owens was one of three finalists chosen by our selection committee, consisting of leaders in the local art community, the Paseo Art Association and the Skirvin Hilton. The juried panel was impressed with her creative skills, engaging personality and unique point of view. We are very eager to introduce Owens and her work to our guests and residents of the city.”
Owens’ distinctive work combines photography and sewing to create richly textured surfaces that make playful use of color and line. Earning her master of arts in photography from Oklahoma City University in 2005, she has spent the past few years actively involved in the local arts community as both an artist and curator. Her work has gained local and regional acclaim, and her artwork is included in numerous public and private collections.
“I am so thrilled, and so grateful, for this opportunity,” says Owens in the release. “I have a full year of exhibitions ahead of me, and I look forward to creating my work in this unique space. I can’t wait to see how this residency will impact my process, and to display my work for visitors from around the city, state, and world.”
“I believe that Romy Owens is an excellent choice as the inaugural artist for this program,” adds Jennifer Barron, Executive Director of the Paseo Arts Association, in the release. “She is one of the most disciplined and professional artists I’ve had the pleasure to work with, and her process is incredible to watch. She is also an engaging and gracious person, and I have no doubt that she will connect easily with guests at the Skirvin. Hopefully, visitors to her studio will come away with a greater understanding of the creative work of a full-time artist.”
Art lovers have two prime opportunities to see samples of Owens’ work this weekend. Owens’ hand-stitched photos in her “The Keanus” series — each photo is named after a Keanu Reeves movie character — are on view through Sunday at as part of Photofest 2012 at JRB Art at the Elms in the Paseo. For more information, go to http://jrbartgallery.com.
Also, Owens is among the 150 Oklahoma artists to contribute a 12-inch-by-12-inch work to the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s 12×12 Art Fundraiser, which is 7 tonight at 50 Penn Place. For more information on the 12×12 event, click here.
For her 12×12 entry, the Oklahoma City artist took an otherworldly Hipstamatic cell phone still of Marco Brambilla’s “Civilization,” a video artwork installed in the elevator of the Standard Hotel in New York City, and had it acrylic mounted. Here is the video, just to give you an idea of what she was working with to create her striking photo:
-BAM
Oklahoma’s artistic diversity on view at 12×12 Art Fundraiser tonight at 50 Penn Place
Romy Owen's "Elevator" is featured in the Oklahoma Visual Art's Coalition's 2012 12x12 Fundraiser.
A version of this column appears in Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Oklahoma’s artistic diversity on view at 12×12
Column: Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s 23rd annual fundraising event will auction off small works by 150 state artists tonight at 50 Penn Place
A cluster of craggy peaks shoves up to meet a gathering tempest within a small, square framework showcased on a wide wall of 50 Penn Place.
Bryan Cook’s tight black-and-white photograph of the “Morning Storm on the Cathedral Group” stands out among the diverse range of 12-inch-by-12-inch artworks collected in the former space occupied by Talbot’s.
“These are the Grand Tetons but you wouldn’t really notice it because it’s not the typical view of the Tetons. … This is just a small slice of everything that’s around you. And I’m never going to be able to recreate what it’s like to stand there in that moment. Ever. But it’s the hope that somebody kind of says, ‘Oh, wow, I want to go do that. I want to go look at that,’” said the Oklahoma City landscape photographer.
“The camera’s sort of my license to go to these places, to go backpacking and go out in the middle of nowhere and be by myself. It’s a different experience. You experience yourself differently, you experience nature differently.”
The Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s 12×12 Art Fundraiser offers a prime opportunity to see the state’s art scene differently, too. Part of the 23rd annual art show and auction, Cook’s painterly photo is exhibited on the same wall as one of Michi Susan’s elegant mixed-media painting-poems and Trent Lawson’s formal portrait of “Star Trek” hero Mr. Spock beautifully rendered on black velvet.
“That’s the way it should be. I think you get to see all the variety of what Oklahoma has to offer just on one wall,” Cook said Monday as the show was being installed.
“It’s really cool. I think this is one of the better shows in Oklahoma City, just because a lot of people work great with the constraints and some people find it a challenge. But I think everybody does a good job with it.”
Trent Lawson's "Live Long and Prosper" is featured in the Oklahoma Visual Art's Coalition's 2012 12x12 Fundraiser.
Artistic fundraiser
Featuring small works from 150 top Oklahoma artists, 12×12 is the only annual fundraiser for OVAC, a nonprofit organization that supports visual artists living and working in the state.
“Something that our committee is really mindful of when they are inviting the artists is to keep it very diverse as far as media, styles, artists from all over the state. We’ve got people from all corners of the state represented here. So it really is kind of a good sampling of what artists are making in Oklahoma,” said OVAC Associate Director Kelsey Karper.
This year’s 12×12 is set for 7 p.m. Friday (today) in the ground-floor space inside 50 Penn Place. The one-night-only event will include live music from Brent Blount Jazz Trio and Miss Brown to You, food from 25 local restaurants and a raffle for prize packs. But the main attraction will be the blind and silent auction of the array of specifically sized artworks.
As the event’s name indicates, each work must be no larger than 12 inches by 12 inches, or for three-dimensional pieces, 12 inches high, wide and deep. Bids for each piece begin at the relatively affordable $168.
“Artists take this challenge of having to work within this confined space in different ways: Some artists look at it as ‘OK, I have a relatively small canvas to experiment with something new, and this is a nice way to sort of test something different than I’m normally known for.’ Other artists see it as a way of concentrating something that they’re already working on in a smaller way. But for some artists like myself, 12-by-12 is actually pretty large,” Karper said with a laugh.
To create her whimsical seascape “Pursued by an Octopus,” Karper cut aquatic illustrations out of old children’s educational books, reassembled them into a three-dimensional diorama and photographed it in black and white.
“It’s sort like you’re taking one instant out of an imaginary story … and you have to figure it out for yourself what the rest of the story is,” Karper said.
Kelsey Karper's "Pursued by an Octopus" is featured in the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition's 2012 12x12 Fundraiser.
Opportunity for risks
The story with Romy Owens’ 12×12 submission is that it isn’t at all typical of her usual work, which involves shooting digital photographs, cutting them up and then hand-sewing them back together.
For her 12×12 entry, though, the Oklahoma City artist took an otherworldly Hipstamatic cell phone still of Marco Brambilla’s “Civilization,” a video artwork installed in the elevator of the Standard Hotel in New York City, and had it acrylic mounted.
“My work is incredibly time-consuming, so it’s nice to be able to do something … that is a little bit more instant gratification. And it is radically different imagery. This is a whole different aesthetic,” said Owens, who is participating in her fifth 12×12. “It is nice to be able to do something that is different. This is a safe environment to do that in, which is great.”
Last year’s 12×12 raised more than $65,000, which went primarily to OVAC’s grants and awards programs. Owens received a grant earlier this year to frame the 29 hand-stitched photos in her “The Keanus” series — each photo is named after a Keanu Reeves movie character — on view through Sunday at JRB Art at the Elms.
“It’s a way to give back and support the organization that helps individual visual artists more than anybody else in the entire state,” Owens said. “And it’s the show to be in.”
GOING ON
Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition’s 12×12 Art Fundraiser
When: 7 p.m. Friday.
Where: Ground floor, 50 Penn Place, 1900 Northwest Expressway.
Information and tickets: 879-2400 or www.12x12okc.org.
-BAM
Video: Oklahoma City Museum of Art opens new exhibit “American Moderns, 1910–1960: From O’Keeffe to Rockwell”
The Oklahoma City Museum of Art is celebrating the opening this week of its new special exhibition “American Moderns, 1910–1960: From O’Keeffe to Rockwell,” and NewsOK host Angi Bruss takes a look at the traveling exhibit in this NewsOK video.
“American Moderns” includes work from Norman Rockwell, Georgia O’Keeffe, Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses and other U.S. artists who have become household names.
“In keeping with the title, there’s four works by O’Keeffe in the exhibition, so you can really get a sense of her work in a way that you can’t with just one painting. They’re all very different, from the aerial view that’s very abstracted … to this painting (of a fishhook) that she did in Hawaii, which is really fascinating,” Alison Amick, the museum’s curator of collections, told me. “And it’s a typical Rockwell in terms of using humor as a way to make a really serious comment about society.”
“American Moderns” showcases works representing a wide range of artistic styles, media and influences. The traveling exhibit features 53 paintings and four sculptures from the Brooklyn Museum’s collection.
“While all the works are from Brooklyn’s collection, it’s not really a linear survey of everything that was happening in American art from 1910 to 1960. It’s really a nice thematic exploration, taking different themes the artists would have been looking at — the influence of cubism, still life, nature, different personalities or characters as they call them, urban life — and really looking just broadly at how during this period artists were addressing these themes artistically,” Amick said of “American Moderns.” “That explains why each section that you have in this exhibition is so broad and so diverse.”
To read more of my feature on “American Moderns” and the busy fall the museum is planning, click here.
-BAM
Oklahoma City Museum of Art celebrates opening of “American Moderns,” special fall events
George Wesley Bellow's 1917 painting "The Sand Cart" is part of the "American Moderns" exhibit now on view at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman. To take a NewsOK video tour of the exhibit, click here.
Oklahoma City Museum of Art celebrates opening of “American Moderns,” special fall events
With its yearlong 10-year anniversary celebration drawing to a close, staffers at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art are expecting an array of famous artists, special events and even draft beers to make for a busy autumn.
The museum is celebrating the opening this week of its new special exhibition “American Moderns, 1910–1960: From O’Keeffe to Rockwell” while preparing to close another visiting exhibit, “The Art of Golf,” on Oct. 7.
Both exhibits feature well-known artists, with “The Art of Golf” spotlighting canvases by Rembrandt, Andy Warhol and Norman Rockwell. “American Moderns” includes work from Rockwell, Georgia O’Keeffe, Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses and other U.S. artists who have become household names.
“In keeping with the title, there’s four works by O’Keeffe in the exhibition, so you can really get a sense of her work in a way that you can’t with just one painting. They’re all very different, from the aerial view that’s very abstracted … to this painting (of a fishhook) that she did in Hawaii, which is really fascinating,” said Alison Amick, the museum’s curator of collections, about “American Moderns.” “And it’s a typical Rockwell in terms of using humor as a way to make a really serious comment about society.”
Georgia O'Keeffe's 1928 painting "2 Yellow Leaves (Yellow Leaves)" is part of the "American Moderns" exhibit now on view at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
Acclaimed artists
Like “The Art of Golf,” “American Moderns” showcases works representing a wide range of artistic styles, media and influences. The traveling exhibit features 53 paintings and four sculptures from the Brooklyn Museum’s collection.
“While all the works are from Brooklyn’s collection, it’s not really a linear survey of everything that was happening in American art from 1910 to 1960. It’s really a nice thematic exploration, taking different themes the artists would have been looking at — the influence of cubism, still life, nature, different personalities or characters as they call them, urban life — and really looking just broadly at how during this period artists were addressing these themes artistically,” Amick said of “American Moderns.” “That explains why each section that you have in this exhibition is so broad and so diverse.”
In that time period, many artists were exploring the questions of “what is really America, what is unique and what is our artistic heritage,” Amick said.
“If you think about the 1950s, this is post-World War II and the Korean War is starting up. So, people have been dealing with a lot of global conflict for a lot of years. They’re looking to do images like this because it’s escapism. I mean, it’s like how they’re getting away from what’s happening in the real world,” added Chandra Boyd, the museum’s education curator, pointing out the exhibit’s Grandma Moses painting.
“You have the first transcontinental phone call, you have the Model T, you just have rapid industrialization and change.”
Along with the Rockwell paintings, works by George Wesley Bellows and Yasuo Kuniyoshi are featured in both “The Art of Golf” and “American Moderns.” Plus, a few of the artists showcased in “American Moderns” also are represented in the museum’s permanent collection, including Reginald Marsh, Bellows and O’Keeffe.
"Synchromy No. 3," a 1917 work by Stanton Macdonald-Wright, is part of the "American Moderns" exhibit.
Special events
The museum is planning a busy slate of special activities in conjunction with the two traveling exhibits. On Thursday night, the museum will celebrate “Last Call” for “The Art of Golf.” The event will include performances by the Oklahoma Scottish Pipes and Drums and red dirt singer-songwriter Susan Herndon, “Wii Golf” contests and a Quote-Along screening of “Caddyshack” during which fans of the 1980 comedy can shout out their favorite lines.
On Oct. 5, the museum will host its ninth annual ARTonTAP beer-tasting event. More than 80 different beers will be on tap and served up with food from local restaurants and live music from Born in November. The event, which raises money to support the museum, will be in the Stella Artois Roof Terrace Beer Garden.
To mark “American Moderns” the museum has partnered with the Arts Council of Oklahoma’s Art Moves lunchtime arts program. This fall, the museum will showcase several local musicians performing jazz, bebop and other American music from the exhibit’s timeframe.
“We try to do as many local collaborations as we can,” Boyd said. “It’s a great diverse range of performances.”
ON VIEW
‘THE ART OF GOLF’
When: Through Oct. 7.
‘AMERICAN MODERNS, 1910–1960: FROM O’KEEFFE TO ROCKWELL’
When: Through Jan. 6.
Where: Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 415 Couch Drive.
Information: 236-3100 or www.okcmoa.com.
See a full list of fall activities at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art after the break.
Plaza District Festival celebrates Oklahoma art, music, food and progress Saturday
Payton Wolfe, 5, paints a rainbow during the 2011 Plaza District Festival in Oklahoma City. Photo by Sarah Phipps, The Oklahoman Archives
A version of this story appears in Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Plaza District Festival celebrates Oklahoma art, music and food
The once-blighted, now-bustling area also will showcase its growth during Saturday’s event.
The annual Plaza District Festival will celebrate Oklahoma art, entertainment and food from noon to 10 p.m. Saturday in the once-blighted, now-bustling arts, commercial and residential district in the 1700 block of NW 16, just west of N Classen.
“It’s really a day to showcase what we have in the district and the progress that we’ve made as well as highlighting local creativity,” said Kristen Vails, executive director of the Plaza District Association.
Admission and activities are free at the festival, which will include 40 visual arts exhibiting in tents along NW 16, a vast children’s interactive zone, live music and dance performances in three outdoor areas, a Bigfoot Calling Contest and more. Local food trucks will park in the Plaza, and district restaurants, galleries and businesses are planning special activities.
An estimated 4,000 patrons attended the 2011 festival. About 5,000 are expected this year.
“Last year’s was just packed the whole day. Our businesses had like double-record sales and triple-record sales that day. It was definitely the biggest year,” Vails said.
Festival-goers look at art during the 2011 Plaza District Festival. Photo by Maria Dru.
Growing the district
In the 1930s, the Plaza District was a thriving commercial area featuring shops, restaurants, bars and the landmark Plaza Theatre. Decades later, the declining district was plagued with crime and urban decay. In the past few years, Lyric Theatre’s renovation of the Plaza Theatre, a streetscape paid by a city bond issue and the opening of several studios, galleries and businesses have transformed the once-decrepit neighborhood into a city hot spot.
“It’s just such a sense of community. … There’s a huge sense of pride from all those folks. They’re really excited to see some of their hard work pay off,” said Jonathan Fowler, general manager of Fowler Volkswagen of Norman, the festival’s presenting sponsor. “The culture down there is so DIY that they can do so much with just a little bit of help.”
The festival started as a modest neighborhood block party but has bloomed into a full-blown celebration as the district has blossomed, Vails said. Monthly Live on the Plaza art walks have established the district as a cool place to be.
This year, the festival will showcase more musicians as the event shifts from a single, central stage to three outdoor performance areas. While Everything Goes Dance Studio will provide an actual stage for its performers, who will dance in an array of styles from ballet and tap to hip-hop and flamenco, the musical acts will play at crowd level.
The east performance area at NW 16 and Blackwelder will showcase singer-songwriters, while the west area outside the Coin Laundry will spotlight full band performances. Music lovers won’t find a formal stage in either spot.
“The stage, in the past, it’s just kind of become background to everything else that’s going on, and that’s not fair to the performers,” Vails said. “So why not bring them out into the crowd a little more where it’s a little more intimate? That’s what we decided to go with. … We’ve got all these wide sidewalks, we might as well use them.”
Bad Granny’s Bazaar will host live music inside its backroom, Velvet Monkey Salon will have an outdoor fashion show, and the global Before I Die Project will let people share their hopes, dreams and bucket list goals on a giant chalkboard.
Leslie Fast paints during the 2011 Plaza District Festival in Oklahoma City. Photo by Sarah Phipps, The Oklahoman Archives
Calling festival-goers
For the second year, the Fowler VW Tent will invite festival-goers of all ages to let loose their wild side with a Bigfoot Calling Contest. Participants can watch the 1987 film “Harry and the Hendersons” for inspiration or devise an original Bigfoot call.
“I think the Bigfoot call really is more in spirit than it is a specific call. I think it’s a feel that’s given off by the caller, you could say,” Fowler said playfully, adding that the allegedly mythical creature again will be lurking at this year’s festival.
“Last year, the call actually brought him out. So I will say that if somebody gets the call right, he’s probably gonna pop up.”
Plus, the festival’s Kidapalooza will feature the Oklahoma City Philharmonic’s musical instrument playground, interactive art activities by Norman’s Firehouse Art Center, Metro Library System activities, a photo booth, face painting and sidewalk chalk. Children will get to contribute to a community mural that artist Dusty Gilpin has designed as a sort of giant coloring book, Vails said.
“The festival’s really our opportunity to provide lots of art activities for the neighborhood and for anyone who comes down,” she said. “It’s just like a big party. And it’s fun, every year there are new businesses to highlight.”
Showing off new businesses
This year, an artisan sandwich shop known as The Mule will be among the newcomers. Another district restaurant, Urban Wineworks opened for the 2011 festival, but executive chef Jonathan Turney didn’t come to the neighborhood until July. He has been working an outdoor grill in front of the restaurant during the past few Live on the Plaza events, and he looks forward to getting outside to share his passion for pork, produce and other locally sourced food during the festival.
“My first Live on the Plaza, the first thing I saw was all these kids running around with chalk and making our sidewalks beautiful with their art,” Turney said. “I love the district here. … I’m all about developing this district and watching it grow.”
GOING ON
Plaza District Festival
When: Noon to 10 p.m. Saturday.
Where: Plaza District, NW 16 between Indiana and Blackwelder.
Admission: Free.
Street closings: NW 16 and some of the side streets through the district will be closed during the festival.
Information: www.plazadistrict.org.
See the full music and performance schedule for the festival after the break
CD review: Chris Knight “Little Victories”
A version of this review appears in Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Alt-country
Chris Knight “Little Victories” (Drifter’s Church)
“Hard edges hide the tender heart/silent as a midnight prayer/hard edges hide the sweetest part/’til you never know it’s there” Chris Knight croons on “Hard Edges,” a mournful, banjo-inflected ode to shattered dreams featured on his new album, “Little Victories.”
The chorus could just as easily apply to the acclaimed alt-country singer-songwriter’s stark, gritty storytelling style. His first album of new material in four years, “Little Victories” has plenty of hard edges, but Knight isn’t engaging in the kind of swaggering macho posturing that dominates the country charts these days. Rather, his eighth album relates vivid, almost cinematic tales of tough folks dealing with tough times.
While rural anthems are trendy on mainstream country radio these days, Knight’s “Little Victories” accomplishes an authenticity that no slickly produced tribute to cane pole fishing and sweet tea sipping could ever achieve. His unflinching small-town stories are about coping with the socio-economic woes of his hometown of Slaughters, Ky., population 200, where circumstances were hard enough before the recession and got even harder when an ice storm devastated the coal mining hamlet two years ago.
When Knight, 52, growlingly recommends growing a garden patch, getting a shotgun and preparing to “shoot somethin’ and drag it home” because “I’m pretty sure that the government ain’t gonna save you” on the album opener “In the Mean Time,” you never doubt it he is singing with the voice of experience. His blue collar doesn’t seem put on as much as bred into him on the genuine title track, a harmonica-tinged story-song about being content with bologna, Little Debbies and Mountain Dew and a worn-out 4-by-4 pickup still able to haul a load of lumber. “Little Victories” even features his musical hero John Prine on supporting vocals.
Whether he is excoriating an unfaithful lover on “You Lie When You Call My Name,” which he co-wrote with Grammy winner Lee Ann Womack, or chronicling the self-inflicted hard luck of a wandering road warrior with “Low Down Ramblin’ Blues,” which punctuates every episode with a blistering electric guitar, Knight never fails to attain unpolished honesty. And that’s definitely a victory.
Knight will play a full-band show Nov. 1 at Tulsa’s Mercury Lounge. For more information, go to www.mercurylounge918.com. or www.chrisknight.net.
— BAM
“Won’t Back Down” is a movie on a mission
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
‘Won’t Back Down’ takes a firm stance on education reform
“Won’t Back Down” is a movie on a mission.
Whatever your politics or views on the hot-button issue of education reform, director Daniel Barnz (“Beastly,” “Penelope in Wonderland”), who co-wrote the film with Brin Hill (“Ball Don’t Lie”), chooses a side and takes a firm stance.
Billed as inspired by true events, the fictional drama clearly supports “parent trigger laws,” which provide mechanisms for parents to intervene if their child’s school underperforms. Such laws are on the books in seven states and are under consideration in many more.
Barnz recruited an A+ cast to carry his inspirational tale. Oscar nominee Maggie Gyllenhaal (“Crazy Heart”) stars as Jamie Fitzpatrick, a single mom who is working two jobs but just can’t keep paying private-school tuition for her 8-year-old daughter Malia (Emily Alyn Lind), who has dyslexia. Jamie has no other choice than to enroll her child in Adams Elementary, their Pittsburgh inner-city neighborhood’s public school, which has a long history of churning out pupils who can’t read, write or add.
Malia ends up struggling under the tutelage of the school’s worst teacher (Nancy Bach), who spends her days lazily texting and online shopping rather than actually instructing the children. Across the hall, Nona Alberts (fellow Oscar nominee Viola Davis, “The Help”) tries hard to engage the students in her equally overcrowded classroom, but it’s apparent that decades of failure have worn away her idealism. With her marriage to her social-climbing husband Charles (Lance Reddick) crumbling and her third-grade son Cody (Dante Brown) struggling with bad grades and bullies, Nona feels too overwhelmed to become the model teacher her late mother was back in the day.
Jamie and Nona cross paths when both enter their children in the lottery for a high-achieving charter school. Neither Malia nor Cody is picked, but Jamie takes the firebrand principal’s (Ving Rhames) speech about fighting for your child’s education to heart. “You know those mothers that lift one-ton trucks off their babies? They’re nothing compared to me,” she warns Adams’ status quo-preserving principal (Bill Nunn).
The status quo, and the bureaucracy that protects it, emerge as the villains of “Won’t Back Down.” As the world-weary school board president (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) warns them, Jamie and Nona first must get the necessary number of parents and teachers behind their proposal, which must be detailed in a 400-page form. Then, they will have to secure an appointment for a hearing to get another hearing in front of the board, whose members will scour it for typos and look for a reason to vote no in between enrolling their own kids in tony private academies.
As the title suggests, though, Jamie “Won’t Back Down,” and once she restores Nona’s idealism, neither will the teacher, who begins the change with her own attitude and in her own classroom.
While teachers’ unions have already taken a strong stand against the film, Barnz, a self-described “Jewish liberal Democrat” who is a union member and comes from a family of teachers and professors, takes care not to make the unions the main bad guy of “Won’t Back Down,” although he certainly doesn’t give them a thumbs-up, either. Bach’s union-protected bad teacher and Arthur Gould’s strident union president who is willing to play dirty to keep Jamie and Nona from setting a precedent are offset by Oscar Isaac’s turn as a talented young music teacher whose personal history makes him a loyal union supporter and Oscar winner Holly Hunter’s small role as a union leader who initially tries to bribe Jamie into quitting her quest but later begins to question the union’s motives.
“Won’t Back Down” is full of characters and subplots and is designed to get people talking and thinking about the vital issue of education reform, whether they agree or disagree with the filmmakers’ stance or conclusions.
Editor’s Note: Walden Media, the producer of “Won’t Back Down,” is a division of The Anschutz Corp., which owns The Oklahoma Publishing Co., publisher of The Oklahoman. Entertainment Writer Brandy McDonnell attended a special preview of the movie for this story.
-BAM
Best Bets for Sept. 28-30, 2012: Pistol Annies, “Day Out With Thomas,” Zoo Amphitheatre’s Family Jam, Oklahoma Regatta Festival
United States 1 team of Olivia Coffey and Grace Luczak compete in the women's World Challenge 2000m race during the Oklahoma Regatta Festival at the Oklahoma River on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2011, in Oklahoma City, Okla. Photo by Chris Landsberger, The Oklahoman Archives
1. NORMAN — Listen to country trio Pistol Annies, featuring superstar Tishomingo resident Miranda Lambert, at 7 p.m. Sunday at Riverwind Casino, 1544 W State Highway 9. Information: 322-6464 or www.riverwind.com.
2. Go for a ride with Thomas the Tank Engine when “Day Out With Thomas: Mystery on the Rails Tour 2012” chugs into the Oklahoma Railway Museum, 3400 NE Grand Blvd., from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday-Sunday and Oct. 5-7. Information: 424-8222 or www.oklahomarailwaymuseum.org.
3. Hear Brantley Gilbert, Uncle Kracker, Casey Donahew and more at the 2012 Family Jam at 5:45 p.m. Saturday at the Zoo Amphitheatre, 2101 NE 50. Gates open at 4:30 p.m. Information: 364-3700 or www.zooamp.com.
4. Check out the fun on water and land during the Oklahoma Regatta Festival in the Boathouse District on the Oklahoma River. Hours are from 6 to 10 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and 8 a.m. to noon Sunday. Information: 552-4040 or www.oklahomariverevents.org.
-BAM
