Cover Me—Closet Cinema, the organization behind Albuquerque's annual Gay and Lesbian Film Festival is looking for original art that can be used on the poster and the program cover for this year's festival. If your artwork is selected, you're guaranteed a few goodies and some great recognition. The 2004 Southwest Gay and Lesbian Film Festival will take place Sept. 9-12. Deadline for submitting poster art is June 25, so get on the ball. For more information about the contest or the festival, go to www.closetcinema.org.

Art house theater goes dark, but there is a ray of hope

In June of 2002, Madstone Theaters opened for business in Albuquerque's Northeast Heights. It is some sort of fitting symmetry that in June, 2004, the movie theater has shut down. The eight-screen venue, built on the location of the old San Mateo 8, specialized mostly in art films and foreign cinema. It was there that countless Albuquerque viewers caught their first glimpse of films like Y Tu Mamá También, Bowling for Columbine, Nowhere in Africa, Whale Rider, City of God and countless others. In two short years, Madstone made a discernible mark on the our city's arts community, and many local viewers were shocked to hear of its sudden, unexpected demise.

NBC's “Must Fill a Hole TV”

If there was any lingering doubt whether or not NBC's late, lamented “Must See TV” lineup is dead and gone, I submit to you “Come to Papa.” The show is NBC's latest attempt to fill one of many holes in its bullet-riddled Thursday night schedule. With “Friends” gone, “Scrubs” pulling a double shift on Tuesdays and Thursdays and “The Apprentice” frantically working to come up with a second season, NBC is actually taking the radical step of debuting a new sitcom during the notoriously ratings-deficient summer season. Of course, the move doesn't demonstrate the greatest of confidence in the show. If “Papa” manages to catch on and survive until the fall season, it will be a TV miracle roughly equivalent to the second coming of Gilligan.

Week in Sloth

The Week in Sloth

Mutilated and mistreated, this martial arts fantasy is still a kick in the grass.

The Weinstein brothers, the heavyweights behind Miramax films, have been steadfast supporters of the independent film scene for decades. Recently, when backed against a wall by their mouse-eared overlords, they purchased the rights to Michael Moore's incendiary documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 out of their own pockets. The film will now hit theaters later this summer thanks to several movie studios who are collaborating to release it independent of the Bush-fearing Disney corporation ... all of which makes Miramax's longtime treatment of foreign films all the more puzzling. For the self-appointed saviors of independent cinema, Miramax has treated its overseas acquisitions with a mixture of shameful neglect and outright abuse. Take, for example, the Hong Kong action comedy Shaolin Soccer.