HomeEvents, Updates & Discussion
Screenland Crown Center Theatre, KC – EXTENDED to April 11
Update: the movie will continue to play at the Screenland Crown Center through Sunday, April 11. Go here for show times and other details.
“What’s the Matter with Kansas?” will move over to the Screenland Crown Center Theater in Kansas City, MO starting Friday, March 26.
The 7:00 pm Friday show will be immediately followed by [...]
Thomas Frank and David Frum agree: Tea Parties made for TV
Thomas Frank attended the Tea Party rally in Washington, D.C. last Saturday, on the eve of the House vote to approve the health care bill. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum is calling the bill a Waterloo — for the Republicans.
Frum writes:
A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans [...]
Kansas City run EXTENDED
Due to overwhelming demand, “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” will continue its run at the Tivoli Cinemas through Thursday, March 25, 2010 (then it moves to the Screenland Crown Center.) Opening night sold out completely (see picture below) and lively discussions ensued afterwards.
A special shout-out is due to area organizations who contributed to the [...]
Thomas Frank: don’t mess with the Texas Board of Ed.
The Kansas Board of Education is, of course, famous for debating the teaching of evolution in public schools. As recently as 2005, the Board decreed that schools must include Creationism or Intelligent Design in their science curriculum– only to be overruled again in 2007.
The Culture Wars continue to play out in public education, now most [...]
Win free tickets on our Facebook page
Starting today, we will be giving away pairs of free tickets to see “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” at the E Street Cinema in Washington, D.C. Become a fan on Facebook, and you’ll get the contests in your news feed, and can also find them on our fan page.
“What’s the Matter with Kansas?” will screen [...]
Thomas Frank: “We are all Kansans now”
A few weeks ago, I was reading an account of the tea party movement in the NYT which pointed out that many of the movement’s recruits had suffered in some way during the recent crash and recession. A different account of the surprise Republican victory in the Massachusetts Senate race ascribed it to a huge [...]
The Coffee Party
Recently, LiberalArtsDude tipped us off to a fast-growing popular movement, The Coffee Party, which appears to be a liberal response to the Tea Party Movement.
Maryland-based documentary filmmaker Annabel Park founded the movement earlier this year getting a big response to this Facebook post: let’s start a coffee party . . . smoothie party. red bull [...]
What’s the Matter with Democrats?
Thomas Frank has a notion of what’s wrong with the Democratic Party – why it repeatedly snatches defeat from the jaws of victory:
The answer to the riddle is as plain as the caviar on a lobbyist’s spoon. Democrats don’t speak to angry, working-class people because a lot of them can’t speak to angry, working-class people. [...]
A genuine documentary film on the Tea Party movement?
Vadim Rizov laments on the IFC Blog that we probably shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for a “real” (i.e. non-partisan) documentary film on the Tea Party movement:
American political documentaries tend to either center around campaigns (“Primary” and its many heirs), specific issue-focused activism, preaching to the choir (Michael Moore and Robert Greenwald) or retroactive explanations [...]
Time for a sequel?
LiberalArtsDude has posted a thoughtful review of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” in which he gives the movie a solid 4/5 star recommendation but is left wanting more:
Fast forward to 2010 where conservative activism is explicitly angrier, economically populist and increasingly organized as in the rise of the Tea Party movement. I go back to [...]
Mother Jones: “A timely exploration”
Josh Harkinson of the venerable lefty outlet Mother Jones weighs in on “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”
In his 2004 book, What’s the Matter With Kansas?, Thomas Frank probed the psyches of Midwestern “values voters” to explain why blue-collar Americans abandoned economic self-interest to vote for George W. Bush. This eponymous documentary begins as a retelling [...]