Haunts on horseback

Film critic Sean Axmaker has selected The Ten Best Horror Westerns of all time, a list that includes Curse of the Undead (a 1959 vampire yarn with Rawhide star Eric Fleming) and Clint Eastwood's supernatural-themed High Plains Drifter (1973). Curiously enough, however, neither Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula nor Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter made the final cut.

Nashville Film Festival: Another audience embraces That Evening Sun

First, That Evening Sun picked up the Audience Award for Best Feature at the SXSW Film Festival. Then, the exceptional indie drama (starring Hal Holbrook, pictured here with some shameless stargazer) received the Audience Award for Best Feature at the Sarasota Film Festival. And now, it's three-for-three, with yet another Audience Award for Evening Sun at the Nashville Film Festival. Do I spot a trend here?

Nashville Film Festival salutes "adopted" Tennessean Hal Holbrook

For veteran actor Hal Holbrook, visiting the Nashville Film Festival this past weekend marked something of a homecoming: He actually maintains a home in McLemoreseville, Tennesee, with his actress wife, McLemoreseville native Dixie Carter. It’s a small town – “Two gas pumps and a cannon,” as he affectionately describes it – but “it’s a place far away from Los Angeles” that “gives us a whole different view of life when we’re able to come here and enjoy the wonderful, wonderful kind of people that live here.”

Unfortunately, his wife couldn’t be with him Saturday night when he was honored with a NaFF Lifetime Achievement award before a festival screening of That Evening Sun, the filmed-in-Tennessee drama in which Holbrook gives a career-highlight performance as an aging farmer who won’t give up his pride or his property.

“Dixie’s off filming a TV pilot, which we both hope will work out,” Holbrook explained. Still, she clearly was there in spirit as Holbrook delivered a brief but heartfelt acceptance speech: “I’m so happy that we were able to make this film in Tennessee – a home that I have adopted, where I have been adopted into a family, a real family, the best family I’ve ever known in my life, the Carter family out of McLemoreseville.”

As for the film itself, “Hopefully, That Evening Sun gives us a picture of people that you might be familiar with here in Nashville, but maybe someone in New York City won’t have any prior experience with. So it’ll give people a chance, maybe, to sort of broaden their brains a little bit about the big country we’re living in, with all the different kinds of people living in it.”

Nolan Ryan rides tall

It's official: Strike-out king Nolan Ryan now is a member of cowboy royalty. The MLB Hall-of-Famer -- now president of the Texas Rangers baseball team -- was honored Saturday for his "experience with and passion for” the Beefmaster cattle industry at the Western Heritage Awards banquet of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. Ryan -- who has raised Beefeater cattle on his Texas ranches since 1972 -- was given the Chester A. Reynolds Memorial Award, signifying that museum board members feel the legendary Major Leaguer embodies the finest traits of the American West. The ceremony also included Ryan's induction into three halls of fame at the museum. Info on the evening's other honorees is available here.

Lee Ann Womack gets real for Noble Things

The lovely and talented Country music star Lee Ann Womack is almost unrecognizable as a dowdy and dutiful deputy sheriff in Noble Things, the moody filmed-in-Texas drama presented Saturday at the Nashville Film Festival. “Yes, it was quite a change for me,” Lee Ann joked during a pre-screening chat. “Usually, I’m a girl who likes to go around in five-inch heels.” But she knew she needed a deglamorized look to be convincing in the indie feature, the tale of a career-stalled Country singer (Brett Moses) who returns to his home town to deal with a dying father and an imprisoned brother. Producer Ruben Neubauer was impressed by her professionalism: “Lee Ann really did an amazing job. And we’ve gotten some terrific feedback on her performance.”

Noble Things marks Lee Ann’s movie debut – she previously did a guest spot on the TV series The District – and in her view, portraying a character before a camera isn’t all that different from conveying an emotion in a song. “Actually,” Lee Ann said, “it was Willie Nelson who taught me that. I was talking with him about acting when I was out on tour with him. And he said, ‘When you act, you memorize the lines in a script, and you play the part as believably as you can. When you sing, you memorize the lyrics to a song, and you get up there and you try your best to convey that message in a believable way to your audience.’

“The only way I feel you really can do that as a singer is if you are really able to get inside that lyric. In other words, you really can’t sing about pain if you haven’t ever really felt it. And I think it’s the same way about acting. Mind you, I never studied acting, and I don't know everything about it — except just drawing on my own experiences, and trying to convey that emotion."

Meanwhile, back at Val Kilmer's ranch...

According to the Associated Press, Tombstone star actor Val Kilmer -- who's reportedly considering a run for governor of New Mexico -- is selling his nearly 6,000-acre ranch near Santa Fe. The AP reports: "A buyer would get almost six miles of Pecos River frontage, a fishery and wildlife habitat including bears and bobcats. The ranch has a Southwest-style main house of nearly 5,600 square feet and a smaller caretaker's home, as well as other guest homes, barns, garages and outbuildings." And it can be all yours for the (current) asking price of $33 million.

Star Trek talk at NaFF

To the surprise of absolutely no one -- including, judging by his expression when he received the query, William Shatner himself -- the very first question directed at the actor during a post-screening Q&A following the Nashville Film Festival's Friday evening world premiere of William Shatner's Gonzo Ballet had to do with.... Star Trek. Specifically: "What do you think of the new Star Trek movie?"

Boldly going where he's gone many, many times before, Shatner seriocomically replied: "I haven’t seen it. And I’m appalled that I’m not in it. I’ve had a fun time with the director, J.J. Abrams, cussing him out on the websites and in interviews. But we’re buddies. And I called him three or four weeks ago and told him about this charity horse show that I’m putting on in Los Angeles – the Priceline.com Hollywood Charity Horse Show. Hey, they’re the big sponsors, so we’ve got to get their name out there. And so I invited J.J. And he said, ‘Oh, I’ll take a whole table.’ And I said, ‘Great. But, you know, you should bring the cast, because there’ll be a lot of press there…’ And he said, ‘I’ll take two tables.’ So J.J. Abrams and the cast of the new Star Trek movie are coming, and we’ll make a big to-do.

"But deep down," Shatner added, struggling manfully to maintain his straight face, "I’m still appalled.