Petrolia Spring Festival to raise money for VFD new rescue truck
WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — Petrolia is ringing in the spring on Saturday, March 29, with an event to raise money for its volunteer fire department's new rescue truck.
Cynthia Anderson, organizer of this event and creator of Texas Brew Radio, said that those attending will pitch in to help the Petrolia Volunteer Fire Department with a new rescue squad truck that will ensure they have everything needed for any emergencies in the area.
Southwest Regional Rabbit Show in downtown Wichita Falls
Anderson is no stranger to music. She's helped three artists get their names out across the globe and hopes to do the same for more local artists in the area.
'We are hoping to get enough community support to where we can open this venue full-time and have a community center where we do a family night Thursday and Friday, no alcohol,' Anderson said. 'Support a different vendor every week out of the concession area and just bring live music and new artists to the area, and a lot of them are targeting radio artists as well.'
Anderson is hoping her new venue inside Big Blue will help do just that: get local artists exposure.
'Music is medicine and all of the venues and stuff are requiring our artists to be puppets. And you do not get the healing property from music that you do when you're trying to copy something else. It comes from originality and passion and soul, and you don't get that in cover songs. And so our mission is to support it, to support music,' Anderson said.
Anderson is dedicated to helping local artists and is also helping the Petrolia Volunteer Fire Department obtain some much-needed emergency equipment.
'They need to raise $75,000 for a first responder vehicle. They already had the truck donated, but they have to box it in to where it can haul medical supplies steadily. And the town only has 515 people. So we literally created a care bear countdown of music. We have over 40 artists that have donated music, CDs, merch, stickers, whatever music related,' Anderson said.
There are 40 vendors, all coming together to help a community in need.
Click here for more information on the Petrolia Spring Festival event, to donate, or to set up a booth as a vendor.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Yahoo
7 hours ago
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How to Root for a Merciless Man, According to Wes Anderson
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. The Manhattan hotel at which I'm interviewing Wes Anderson has striking views of Central Park out of its windows. Looming a little more ominously, however, is the Trump International Hotel and Tower, one of the president's many jutting edifices dotted around the globe. I wouldn't have noted it, except that Anderson's new film, The Phoenician Scheme, is about a tycoon with hands in many pots: arms dealing, manufacturing, large-scale infrastructure projects. In conceiving the character—a businessman named Zsa-zsa Korda (played by Benicio del Toro)—the director told me that he was thinking of a more old-fashioned type of European magnate, in the vein of Aristotle Onassis or Gianni Agnelli. But 'I think that everything's filtering in,' he allowed with a chuckle. 'We're all reading the same newspapers.' Anderson has (unfairly) earned a reputation as a maker of fidgety little cinematic dioramas, meticulously designed but hermetically sealed off from reality. But his work is clearly responsive to modern life: His previous feature, the staggering Asteroid City, was a charming dramedy about a space-age desert town encountering aliens that also managed to capture the feeling of people going into lockdown in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Anderson wrote Asteroid City while in quarantine, an experience that appears to have directly informed its sense of anxiety and claustrophobia. ('Your imagination is responding to whatever the stimuli in the world is,' he told me.) The Phoenician Scheme, by comparison, is light and zany, as Korda embarks upon a madcap dash across the globe to save his dwindling fortune. As I noted to him, it also obviously seems to prod at the preening foolishness of today's mega-rich land barons. [Read: Only Wes Anderson could adapt Roald Dahl this way] I worried he'd deflect the comment—Anderson often talks about his screenwriting process as somewhat mysterious, in which he moves among scenarios in ways that surprise even himself. But he noted the strange manner in which more serious subjects were intersecting with his otherwise delightfully wacky tale. Much of the film finds Korda in transit, typically by airplane—even after surviving multiple crashes caused by would-be assassins, which stokes growing anxiety over how many times he can make it out alive. Korda's steadfast preference for flight travel, however, is meant to reflect his social status; airplanes, Anderson said, have become the ultimate symbol of wealth and power: 'Now,' he observed, in reference to the $400 million aircraft recently gifted to Donald Trump, 'we've got a 747 coming in from Qatar.' If reality is 'filtering in' to The Phoenician Scheme, it's transformed through the usual bundle of Andersonian layers. The film is cold-bloodedly whimsical, asking the audience to root for a merciless man who endeavors, ever so incrementally, to understand some deeper human truths. It follows Korda and his estranged daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a novitiate nun who insists on the immorality of her father's business interests, which starve and impoverish people worldwide. Korda professes disinterest in Liesl's concerns, but as he flies from country to country dodging assassination attempts and strong-arming fellow businessmen, Anderson allows his protagonist's heart to grow just the teeniest bit: 'My original impression of what I thought we were going to do was a ruthless, brutal, unkillable businessman who is just on his path, totally focused on his own mission and is going to do a lot of damage to not just the people around him, but the world at large, in his own interest,' he told me. Then he wrote the first scene and was surprised to find that it came out more farcical: a comical action set piece in which Korda's secretary is blown in half and Korda has to land a crashing plane by himself. 'I do feel a bit like you start writing a thing, you have your preconceptions,' Anderson said, 'and then it just starts to tell you what it wants to be.' The Phoenician Scheme thus became something funnier and stranger, in which Korda's cruelty is quietly moderated by his daughter and his unspoken fear of death. Every time he brushes close to expiration, Korda is zipped to a surreal, black-and-white netherworld where he's judged by otherworldly beings (including God, played by Bill Murray, wearing white robes and sporting a big beard). As he tries to convince other tycoons (played by other familiar members of the Anderson ensemble, such as Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, and Mathieu Amalric) to help him finance an ambitious infrastructure proposal, Korda begins to tap into a sense of fellowship he'd otherwise been missing. As he does with Korda, Anderson introduces each of these competing captains of industry under absurd circumstances—such as at a high-stakes basketball game and during a dramatic nightclub shootout—that are befitting their characters. 'These tycoon-y character people, they're cartoons,' Anderson said. 'They always have eccentricities and peculiarities because they can do anything they want.' But his inspiration, beyond famous faces like Onassis or the legendary oil middleman Calouste Gulbenkian, was his own father-in-law: Fouad Malouf, a Lebanese engineer to whom the film is dedicated. This bore out in both Korda's professional interests and his attempt to build a relationship with Liesl: At one point near the end of his life, Malouf produced a series of shoeboxes from his closet of effects gathered throughout his career, and explained their contents to his daughter. The Phoenician Scheme repeats that shoebox imagery. With even his most outlandish stories, Anderson said, 'it just becomes more personal without even me intending it to.' The most fascinating challenge of the film, at least to me, was keeping the screwball energy high while otherwise heeding Anderson's specific style. Each set is carefully assembled, with the blocking of each shot perfectly aligned, and Anderson's rat-a-tat dialogue is delivered exactly as written. Still, there's a spontaneity to the storytelling and the world it's moving through. Anderson's locations reference real places, but they always feel exciting and new, never derivative. [Read: The beauty and sadness of Isle of Dogs] The director's particular approach—one that eschews on-set trailers, keeps all of the cast together (including dining communally and staying at the same hotel), and moves from scene to scene quite quickly—is unusual for larger-scale filmmaking. But Anderson is clearly cheered by the enthusiasm his performers have for the process, and how well the newer members of his family of players have taken to it. Michael Cera (who is fantastic as a fussy Norwegian tutor in Korda's employ) and Riz Ahmed (as Prince Farouk, the heir to the fictional nation of Phoenicia, which is vital to the plot) were Anderson's two big additions this time around, and the filmmaker said that both actors dove in with aplomb. And it shows—they fit comfortably among the Anderson stalwarts, capturing the archness typical of the director's characters. Del Toro's performance is the most crucial component to The Phoenician Scheme; it's the first Anderson movie centered on a single lead since The Grand Budapest Hotel, starring Ralph Fiennes. Del Toro had been in Anderson's head as Korda from the start, so much that he informed the actor of the idea while they were promoting their prior collaboration, 2021's The French Dispatch. Anderson remembered his pitch being vague to a comedic, overblown degree: 'I told him there's some Buñuel aspect to it.'' As I tried to describe Del Toro's on-screen presence to Anderson, I ended up referencing his 'whatever' (American for je ne sais quoi). Del Toro's early roles (in 1990s cult films such as The Usual Suspects and Excess Baggage) smacked of knockoff Marlon Brando: all movement, mumbling charm, and giddy chaos. But with time, the actor has learned to communicate decades of regret and the darkest emotional headspace with barely a flicker of his face. That's the power of his presence, or, as Anderson agreed, his 'whatever.' This isn't the first time Anderson wrote with an actor in mind. As we spoke, he mentioned the late Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums. Hackman's character, Royal Tenenbaum, is another intense father figure who, like Korda, is both brilliant and terrible. But Anderson scripted him two decades ago, before he became a parent. I asked him if the intervening years had changed his investigations into the sins of fatherhood, and he nodded. 'Tenenbaums was completely from the point of view of looking up at the old man,' he said. Now, at age 56, the director is practically Korda's age; he also has a daughter, as do Del Toro and Anderson's frequent story collaborator Roman Coppola: 'I guess we're coming at it from the father's point of view, but, I will say, with a bit of the perspective of still thinking about our own fathers.' The Phoenician Scheme strikes that balance: It's wiser, and it has the looser silliness that comes with middle age—but it's looking up at those imposing father figures, tycoons or no, with awe and fear all the same. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
8 hours ago
- Atlantic
How to Root for a Merciless Man, According to Wes Anderson
The Manhattan hotel at which I'm interviewing Wes Anderson has striking views of Central Park out of its windows. Looming a little more ominously, however, is the Trump International Hotel and Tower, one of the president's many jutting edifices dotted around the globe. I wouldn't have noted it, except that Anderson's new film, The Phoenician Scheme, is about a tycoon with hands in many pots: arms dealing, manufacturing, large-scale infrastructure projects. In conceiving the character—a businessman named Zsa-zsa Korda (played by Benicio del Toro)—the director told me that he was thinking of a more old-fashioned type of European magnate, in the vein of Aristotle Onassis or Gianni Agnelli. But 'I think that everything's filtering in,' he allowed with a chuckle. 'We're all reading the same newspapers.' Anderson has (unfairly) earned a reputation as a maker of fidgety little cinematic dioramas, meticulously designed but hermetically sealed off from reality. But his work is clearly responsive to modern life: His previous feature, the staggering Asteroid City, was a charming dramedy about a space-age desert town encountering aliens that also managed to capture the feeling of people going into lockdown in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Anderson wrote Asteroid City while in quarantine, an experience that appears to have directly informed its sense of anxiety and claustrophobia. ('Your imagination is responding to whatever the stimuli in the world is,' he told me.) The Phoenician Scheme, by comparison, is light and zany, as Korda embarks upon a madcap dash across the globe to save his dwindling fortune. As I noted to him, it also obviously seems to prod at the preening foolishness of today's mega-rich land barons. I worried he'd deflect the comment—Anderson often talks about his screenwriting process as somewhat mysterious, in which he moves among scenarios in ways that surprise even himself. But he noted the strange manner in which more serious subjects were intersecting with his otherwise delightfully wacky tale. Much of the film finds Korda in transit, typically by airplane—even after surviving multiple crashes caused by would-be assassins, which stokes growing anxiety over how many times he can make it out alive. Korda's steadfast preference for flight travel, however, is meant to reflect his social status; airplanes, Anderson said, have become the ultimate symbol of wealth and power: 'Now,' he observed, in reference to the $400 million aircraft recently gifted to Donald Trump, 'we've got a 747 coming in from Qatar.' If reality is 'filtering in' to The Phoenician Scheme, it's transformed through the usual bundle of Andersonian layers. The film is cold-bloodedly whimsical, asking the audience to root for a merciless man who endeavors, ever so incrementally, to understand some deeper human truths. It follows Korda and his estranged daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a novitiate nun who insists on the immorality of her father's business interests, which starve and impoverish people worldwide. Korda professes disinterest in Liesl's concerns, but as he flies from country to country dodging assassination attempts and strong-arming fellow businessmen, Anderson allows his protagonist's heart to grow just the teeniest bit: 'My original impression of what I thought we were going to do was a ruthless, brutal, unkillable businessman who is just on his path, totally focused on his own mission and is going to do a lot of damage to not just the people around him, but the world at large, in his own interest,' he told me. Then he wrote the first scene and was surprised to find that it came out more farcical: a comical action set piece in which Korda's secretary is blown in half and Korda has to land a crashing plane by himself. 'I do feel a bit like you start writing a thing, you have your preconceptions,' Anderson said, 'and then it just starts to tell you what it wants to be.' The Phoenician Scheme thus became something funnier and stranger, in which Korda's cruelty is quietly moderated by his daughter and his unspoken fear of death. Every time he brushes close to expiration, Korda is zipped to a surreal, black-and-white netherworld where he's judged by otherworldly beings (including God, played by Bill Murray, wearing white robes and sporting a big beard). As he tries to convince other tycoons (played by other familiar members of the Anderson ensemble, such as Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, and Mathieu Amalric) to help him finance an ambitious infrastructure proposal, Korda begins to tap into a sense of fellowship he'd otherwise been missing. As he does with Korda, Anderson introduces each of these competing captains of industry under absurd circumstances—such as at a high-stakes basketball game and during a dramatic nightclub shootout—that are befitting their characters. 'These tycoon-y character people, they're cartoons,' Anderson said. 'They always have eccentricities and peculiarities because they can do anything they want.' But his inspiration, beyond famous faces like Onassis or the legendary oil middleman Calouste Gulbenkian, was his own father-in-law: Fouad Malouf, a Lebanese engineer to whom the film is dedicated. This bore out in both Korda's professional interests and his attempt to build a relationship with Liesl: At one point near the end of his life, Malouf produced a series of shoeboxes from his closet of effects gathered throughout his career, and explained their contents to his daughter. The Phoenician Scheme repeats that shoebox imagery. With even his most outlandish stories, Anderson said, 'it just becomes more personal without even me intending it to.' The most fascinating challenge of the film, at least to me, was keeping the screwball energy high while otherwise heeding Anderson's specific style. Each set is carefully assembled, with the blocking of each shot perfectly aligned, and Anderson's rat-a-tat dialogue is delivered exactly as written. Still, there's a spontaneity to the storytelling and the world it's moving through. Anderson's locations reference real places, but they always feel exciting and new, never derivative. The director's particular approach—one that eschews on-set trailers, keeps all of the cast together (including dining communally and staying at the same hotel), and moves from scene to scene quite quickly—is unusual for larger-scale filmmaking. But Anderson is clearly cheered by the enthusiasm his performers have for the process, and how well the newer members of his family of players have taken to it. Michael Cera (who is fantastic as a fussy Norwegian tutor in Korda's employ) and Riz Ahmed (as Prince Farouk, the heir to the fictional nation of Phoenicia, which is vital to the plot) were Anderson's two big additions this time around, and the filmmaker said that both actors dove in with aplomb. And it shows—they fit comfortably among the Anderson stalwarts, capturing the archness typical of the director's characters. Del Toro's performance is the most crucial component to The Phoenician Scheme; it's the first Anderson movie centered on a single lead since The Grand Budapest Hotel, starring Ralph Fiennes. Del Toro had been in Anderson's head as Korda from the start, so much that he informed the actor of the idea while they were promoting their prior collaboration, 2021's The French Dispatch. Anderson remembered his pitch being vague to a comedic, overblown degree: 'I told him there's some Buñuel aspect to it.'' As I tried to describe Del Toro's on-screen presence to Anderson, I ended up referencing his 'whatever' (American for je ne sais quoi). Del Toro's early roles (in 1990s cult films such as The Usual Suspects and Excess Baggage) smacked of knockoff Marlon Brando: all movement, mumbling charm, and giddy chaos. But with time, the actor has learned to communicate decades of regret and the darkest emotional headspace with barely a flicker of his face. That's the power of his presence, or, as Anderson agreed, his 'whatever.' This isn't the first time Anderson wrote with an actor in mind. As we spoke, he mentioned the late Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums. Hackman's character, Royal Tenenbaum, is another intense father figure who, like Korda, is both brilliant and terrible. But Anderson scripted him two decades ago, before he became a parent. I asked him if the intervening years had changed his investigations into the sins of fatherhood, and he nodded. ' Tenenbaums was completely from the point of view of looking up at the old man,' he said. Now, at age 56, the director is practically Korda's age; he also has a daughter, as do Del Toro and Anderson's frequent story collaborator Roman Coppola: 'I guess we're coming at it from the father's point of view, but, I will say, with a bit of the perspective of still thinking about our own fathers.' The Phoenician Scheme strikes that balance: It's wiser, and it has the looser silliness that comes with middle age—but it's looking up at those imposing father figures, tycoons or no, with awe and fear all the same.
Business Insider
11 hours ago
- Business Insider
'The Phoenician Scheme' has a star-studded cast — here's where else you might have seen them
Benicio Del Toro plays Zsa-Zsa Korda "The Phoenician Scheme" follows Zsa-zsa Korda, an arms dealer, as he tries to teach his daughter how to run his organization after a near-successful assassination attempt. Benicio Del Toro, who plays the character, who won an Oscar in 2001 for his supporting role in "Traffic." He previously worked with Anderson on his 2021 movie " The French Dispatch." Del Toro also appeared in three Marvel movies as the Collector, and starred in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," "Sicario," and "The Usual Suspects." Mia Threapleton as Liesl Liesl, Zsa-Zsa's eldest daughter, was raised in a convent away from her family's criminal enterprise. Although she wants to be a nun, her father wants her to be the heir to his estate, distracting her from her faith. Mia Threapleton, who plays Liesl, may seem familiar to fans even if they haven't seen her act before. That's because she's Kate Winslet's daughter. Threapleton made her acting debut at 13 with "A Little Chaos." Before "The Phoenician Scheme," her biggest role was playing Honoria Marable in the AppleTV+ series "The Buccaneers." Michael Cera plays Bjorn Bjorn joins Zsa-zsa and Liesl on their adventure as Zsa-zsa's personal tutor about insects. He is played by Michael Cera, who is best known for his roles in films such as "Barbie," "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World," "Juno" and "Superbad." Steve Park plays the pilot Early in the film, Steve Park appears as a pilot for Zsa-zsa. This is the third Anderson film Park has appeared after starring in "The French Dispatch" and "Asteroid City." Park has also starred in "Death of a Unicorn," "Mickey 17," "Do the Right Thing," and "Fargo." Rupert Friend plays Excalibur Excalibur leads the shady consortium attempting to sabotage Zsa-zsa's organization in the movie. Rupert Friend, who plays Excalibur, starred in Anderson's 2021 movie "The French Dispatch" and his 2024 short films "The Swan" and "The Rat Catcher." Friend also played Mr Wickham in the 2005 version of "Pride & Prejudice," and starred in the "Obi-Wan Kenobi" and "Anatomy of a Scandal" series. Riz Ahmed plays Prince Farouk Riz Ahmed stars as Prince Farouk, the son of the King of Lower Western Independent Phoenicia, who has partnered with Zsa-zsa to build a tunnel across the region. This is Ahmed's first Wes Anderson movie, but he has starred in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," "Venom," and "Sound of Metal." Tom Hanks plays Leland Leland is part of the Sacramento Consortium, which is in business with Zsa-Zsa and Prince Farouk to build the tunnel. Beloved American actor Tom Hanks plays Leland. Hanks starred in Anderson's 2023 movie "Asteroid City," but is better known for his older roles like "Forrest Gump," "Cast Away," and "Big." Bryan Cranston plays Reagan Reagan is Leland's brother, also part of the Sacramento Consortium. Bryan Cranston, who plays Reagan, has starred in two of Anderson's movies — "Asteroid City and "Isle of Dogs." Cranston is best known for starring in the TV drama "Breaking Bad" and "Malcolm in the Middle." Mathieu Amalric plays Marseille Bob Marseille Bob is a French nightclub owner and leader of the Savarin-Montrachet Gang. He is also part of Zsa-zsa's Phoenician business scheme. Mathieu Amalric, who starred in Anderson's "Isle of Dogs" and "The Grand Budapest Hotel," plays Marseille Bob. Amalric has also played a Bond villain, Dominic Greene, in 2008's "Quantum of Solace." Richard Ayoade plays Sergio Sergio is the leader of the Intercontinental Radical Freedom Militia Corp jungle unit, which attacks Marseille Bob's nightclub in the movie. Richard Ayoade, a British comedian, plays Sergio after starring in two of Anderson's short films, "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar" and "The Rat Catcher." Ayoade mainly has voice acting roles, but has appeared on-screen in the sitcom "The IT Crowd" and "Paddington 2." Jeffrey Wright plays Marty Marty is a shipping magnate and the leader of the Newark Syndicate gang. He is also in cahoots with Zsa-zsa. Jeffrey Wright plays Marty, making "The Phoenician Scheme" his third Anderson movie. He also starred in "Asteroid City" and "The French Dispatch." Wright has also starred in "American Fiction," "The Batman," "Quantum of Solace," and three "Hunger Games" movies. Scarlett Johansson plays Hilda Sussman-Korda Hilda Sussman-Korda is Zsa-zsa's second cousin and has an intimate relationship with him. She is also part of Zsa-zsa's business scheme because she is constructing a trans-basin hydroelectric embankment within her private utopian outpost in Phoenicia. Scarlett Johansson, who is best known for her roles in Marvel movies, "Her" and "Lost in Translation," plays Hilda. Johansson has worked with Anderson twice before, starring in "Asteroid City" and "Isle of Dogs." Benedict Cumberbatch plays Uncle Nubar Benedict Cumberbatch plays Zsa-zsa's brother, Uncle Nubar. Though Uncle Nubar is part of Zsa-zsa's business plan, the brothers often oppose each other. Benedict Cumberbatch, another Marvel star, plays Uncle Nubar. He starred in Anderson's 2024 short films "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar" and "Poison." Cumberbatch is also known for his roles in "Star Trek: Into Darkness," "The Imitation Game," and the "Sherlock" TV series. F. Murray Abraham, Willem Dafoe, Bill Murray, Hope Davis have small cameos in the movie Though they do not appear in the film's trailers, F. Murray Abraham, Willem Dafoe, and Bill Murray all have cameos in hallucination scenes. Abraham, who cameos as a prophet, has starred in Anderson's 2014 movie "The Grand Budapest Hotel," "Amadeus" and HBO drama "The White Lotus." Dafoe has brief appearance as a knave and has appeared in 4 of Anderson's films since starring in 2004's "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou." Dafoe has also starred in four "Spider-Man" movies, "Aquaman," "Poor Things," and "Nosferatu." Murray makes a cameo as god and has made appearances in 10 of Anderson's films, skipping only "Bottle Rocket" and "Asteroid City." Murray is best known for starring in "Lost in Translation," "Groundhog Day" and the "Ghostbusters" movies. Hope Davis, who makes a small appearance in the trailers, plays Mother Superior in the movie, Liesl's superior in her convent. She also appeared in Anderson's last feature "Asteroid City," "Captain America: Civil War" and the "Succession" TV series.
