Movies: No Md FilmFest til '24; 'Wakanda' & other year-end flicks

Today, we begin the hour with another installment of Midday at the Movies, our monthly convo about films and filmmaking. Tom's guest is one of our favorite film aficionados: Jed Dietz, the founder and former director of the Maryland Film Festival and Parkway Theater, who joins us on Zoom. (Our other regular movie maven, Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday, was unable to join us today, but she'll return next month.) The Maryland Film Festival was in the news last month for reasons that have disappointed movie fans who look forward to the annual long weekend of screenings every spring. The Board of Directors of the festival announced on the festival website that the 2023 event will not take place until 2024, saving the organization some money, and giving time for the board and staff to do some thinking about the best way to adjust to the realities of a pandemic-impacted movie industry that has not recovered from the collective hit to the solar-plexus that COVID 19 comprised. We’ve talked a lot on this show about how movie-going habits have changed; streaming is having an obvious effect, and competition remains fierce. Join our conversation. We’d like to know your reaction to the news that the Maryland Film Festival has been postponed until 2024. What’s your take on deciding whether to go to a theater or to stream the films you want to see?... And we'll also be talking about some of the many new films — from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and the #MeToo movement docudrama, She Said, to director Steven Spielberg's semi-autobiographical The Fabelmans — that are being released by year's end so they can be considered for the Oscars. Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.