An art gallery finds new space, with a goal of creating a 'destination' district near a Salt Lake City overpass

Diane Stewart has big plans for the area around 700 West and 400 South, in the shadow of an overpass on the west edge of downtown Salt Lake City.

Stewart, an art collector and owner of the Modern West Fine Art gallery, has moved into spacious new digs on this block. The building also houses a co-working space for artists, several artists studios, a printmaking studio and a coffee shop. She hope the area will become a “destination” art district, similar to areas now thriving in Seattle, Portland, Austin and Atlanta.

Read my feature in sltrib.com about Stewart’s relocated gallery, and her plans for its future.

Utah filmmaker Savannah Ostler has big plans, and her self-made movie 'Twice the Dream' is just the start

Savannah Ostler started working on her first screenplay when she was 14, growing up in Alpine, Utah. Fifteen years later, with a stint in Hollywood in between, she has premiered that movie, “Twice the Dream” — a follow-your-bliss drama that she also directed and starred in — in theaters across Utah and Idaho.

Here, from sltrib.com, is my interview with Ostler, in which she talks about the challenges of making a self-produced local movie, and her goal of being “the female version of Walt Disney.”

‘The Public,’ Emilio Estevez’s new movie, and the real library that inspired it

In 2007, Chip Ward, ending his career in libraries after 30 years, wrote an essay about what he was seeing happen at the Salt Lake City Library, where he worked.

In the essay, Ward described how libraries had become a place of refuge for homeless people, a daytime shelter in fact if not in name. And librarians were not equipped to be social workers or mental health professionals that these people needed.

Among those who read the essay was the actor and filmmaker Emilio Estevez, who acquired the film rights to Ward’s essay and made a movie, “The Public,” which opened in theaters this past weekend.

Here is my Salt Lake Tribune article about how that happened, and what today’s Salt Lake City Library is doing to help the city’s homeless, both practically and emotionally.

A nearly 2,000-year-old tattoo needle discovered among artifacts unearthed from Bears Ears archaeological dig

What’s believed to be the oldest tattoo needle ever found in western North America has been identified in artifacts from a dig at southeast Utah’s Bears Ears area.

The discovery, made by an archaeology doctoral candidate at Washington State University, extends what we know about the history of tattooing and body alteration among ancient indigenous people — and points out the value of preserving the much-argued-about Bears Ears area.

Read the full story at sltrib.com.

Here are my predictions of who will win Oscar gold on Sunday

The 91st Academy Awards will be handed out Sunday night at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Until then, the question on everyone’s mind: Who does a movie critic in Salt Lake City think will win the golden statuettes?

Wonder no more. Click here to my predictions in all 24 categories, courtesy of The Salt Lake Tribune and sltrib.com (to which you all should totally subscribe).

The best movies of 2018 — and the worst

In compiling my list of the top 10 movies of 2018, I found the lines between what’s big and what’s important becoming blurred.

Blockbusters featuring superheroes stood side by side with challenging indies from the Sundance Film Festival. The films, regardless of budget, blended humor and excitement with deep thoughts about divisions by race, culture and class, exploring the traumas of adolescence, domestic abuse, police violence, and the unjust imprisonment of a Peruvian bear.

Read my list of the top 10 movies of 2018 at sltrib.com.

From 'The Nutcracker' to Dickens, the holidays are festive, and lucrative, for Utah arts groups

The holidays are a busy time for so many people — including the people who perform in and manage Utah’s arts groups.

The Christmas season is a chance for groups like Ballet West, Utah Symphony, Hale Centre Theatre and others to roll out their traditional end-of-year fare — including “The Nutcracker” and “A Christmas Carol.” Shows like this bring in lots of revenue, and help the groups build audiences year round.

Read the full story at sltrib.com.

Musical 'Come From Away' reaches back to 9/11, and happier days in U.S.-Canada relations

When Canada’s Consul General, Stephane Lessard says relations between his country and the United States “haven’t always been the smoothest,” that’s as harsh as a diplomat usually gets. But despite what tensions there are between Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and the American president, Donald Trump, the bond between the people of those North American countries is strong.

Take as just one example the story told in the Broadway musical “Come From Away” — whose touring production lands for six days at the Eccles Theater in Salt Lake City, starting Tuesday. The Tony-winning musical tells of what happened after the 9/11 attacks, when 38 jetliners had to land at an unused airstrip in Gander, Newfoundland — and how the locals welcomed the passengers into their homes while waiting for the all-clear to re-enter U.S. airspace.

Read my preview of the production, on sltrib.com.

Teen suicide is a problem. How can teaching 'Romeo & Juliet' to high-schoolers help?

The most beloved love story in all of literature is also a story about two lovesick teen-agers who kill themselves — he with gut-churning poison, she with a dagger to the heart.

That’s the ending to Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet,” taught to high-school kids for ages. But in an era in which parents and educators are worried about teen suicide and copycatting kids see in the media, how can teachers and arts groups (like Utah Opera, which premieres Charles Gounod’s 1888 adaptation) use the star-cross’d lovers as an object lesson for suicide prevention?

Read the full article at sltrib.com.

Robert Redford talks about retirement, and going out on 'The Old Man & the Gun'

Robert Redford says his final movie as an actor, “The Old Man & the Gun,” was a lot of fun to make — but that the media onslaught about him announcing his retirement from acting has detracted from the movie itself.

I’ve interviewed Redford many times over the last 25 years, and every time has been fascinating. This time, I asked him about the movie, his retirement, and what the future of his Sundance Institute might look like.

Read the full story at sltrib.com.