This week on The Score – the 31st annual Virginia Film Festival approaches. Canada joins Mexico and the United States in a trade deal. Fifth District congressional candidates debate. A look at population shrinkage, from the archives.
http://bearingdrift.com/wp-content/uploads/TheScore-Oct06-2018-fullhour.mp3 [1]2018 Virginia Film Festival
Autumn brings falling leaves, candidate debates, and – in Charlottesville – the Virginia Film Festival [2]. Election day is less than a month away but the film festival is even closer.
This past week, I spoke with the director of the Virginia Film Festival, Jody Kielbasa [3], who is also vice provost for the arts at the University of Virginia, and Wesley Harris [3], the film festival’s chief programmer. They gave us a preview of the 31st annual Virginia Film Festival, which will take place at multiple venues in Charlottesville on the weekend of November 1-4.
Special guests [4] at this year’s festival include Peter Bogdanovich [5], Martin Luther King III, Ben Mankiewicz [6], Harry Chotiner [7], Joe Fab [8], and Mitch Levine [9], among others.
Films on the program include the documentaries 1968: The Year That Changed America [10], Charlottesville [11] (about the events of August 11 and 12, 2017), Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes [12], and Studio 54 [13]; classic films like Bride of Frankenstein [14], Night of the Living Dead [15] (50th anniversary!), and Menace II Society [16]; comedies, dramas, experimental films, and family fare like Coco [17] and Science Fair [18].
Over the next few weeks, we will have more interviews with filmmakers and scholars about the movies at the Virginia Film Festival.
North American Trade
Earlier this week, Canada joined the United States and Mexico in a successor to the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. The new trade deal will be called the USMCA, according to President Trump. Over the telephone, I asked trade policy specialist Daniel Griswold at the Mercatus Center about the new agreement.
Griswold has previously appeared [19] as an expert guest on The Score. He is author of Mad About Trade: Why Main Street America should Embrace Globalization [20] (2009), The Trade-Balance Creed: Debunking the Belief that Imports and Trade Deficits Are a “Drag on Growth” [21] (2011), and co-editor (with Solveig Singleton) of Economic Casualties: How U.S. Foreign Policy Undermines Trade, Growth and Liberty [22] (1999).
Cockburn vs. Riggleman
Just after the deadline for last week’s episode of The Score, two candidates for Congress in Virginia’s Fifth District faced off in a cordially civil debate [23] at the University of Virginia, hosted by the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. In this excerpt from the end of the 90-minute debate, Democrat Leslie Cockburn and Republican Denver Riggleman answer a question about questions, and then make their closing statements.
As a bonus for our podcast listeners, I had a chance to speak with Denver Riggleman after the debate. I asked him just two short questions about campaign contributors and congressional term limits.
Is Demography Destiny?
Our From the Archives segment this week features a telephone interview from February 2013, six years ago, when I spoke to Jonathan V. Last of The Weekly Standard about his then new book, What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster [24]. Last is also the editor of The Weekly Standard and the Nerds: Superheroes, Jedi, Hobbits and more [25] (2015), The Christmas Virtues: A Treasury of Conservative Tales for the Holidays [26] (2016), The Seven Deadly Virtues: 18 Conservative Writers on Why the Virtuous Life is Funny as Hell [27] (2014), and The Dadly Virtues: Adventures from the Worst Job You’ll Ever Love [28] (2015).
The Score will be back next week with more news, reviews, and interviews. In addition to their home on Bearing Drift, some earlier episodes of The Score can be found on SoundCloud [29]. Here, there, or on WINC-AM&FM in Winchester, be sure to check us out.