R.I.P. Eric Harrison -- Please help him rest in peace

For those of you who have always wanted to bury a film critic -- and you know who you are, so don't be coy about it -- please consider making a donation to the funeral fund for my late colleague and fellow founding member of the Houston Film Critics Society: Eric Harrison, formerly of the L.A. Times and more recently film critic for The Houston Chronicle.

What's this? Another posting tied to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Well, uh, yes...

Eric Harrison and I join forces, kinda-sorta, to preview the new Indy movie in The Houston Chronicle. If this goes over well, we'll try our luck as the next WWE tag team. Hmmmm. Maybe we could call ourselves Critical Mass?

Chronicling movies

Eric Harrison of The Houston Chronicle gets the story behind the story of The Great Debaters, which I review here. But wait, there's more: Eric also interviews artist-filmmaker (and former University of Houston student) Julian Schnabel, director of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Retro grit

Eric Harrison offers a sharp and insightful Houston Chronicle piece about the return of irony-free, '70s-style grit to contemporary cinema. Glad to see a savvy writer confirm what I saw coming (or, to be more precise, hoped I saw coming) here and there a couple years back.

'Killer of Sheep'

Charles Burnett's little-seen, much admired Killer of Sheep is finally getting some limited theatrical play -- thirty years after Burnett filmed the gritty indie drama as his UCLA graduate thesis project. Currently on view in Nashville at the Belcourt Theatre, Sheep next will graze at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, at 7 pm June 15-16 and 22-23. MFAH film goddess Marian Luntz speaks with Henry Gayle Sanders, the Houston-born star of the film, here. And the multitalented Eric Harrison interviews Sanders and Burnett in the Sunday Houston Chronicle.

BTW: Do not -- repeat, do not -- confuse Burnett's film with an upcoming New Zealand import.