Dust Devil Dreams and Visions

  ANDREW W. GRIFFIN   |   JANUARY 15, 2018 CATEGORY:  DUST DEVIL DREAMS OKLAHOMA CITY – It was exactly five years ago on this date – Jan. 15, 2013 –  I wrote a review of the 2012 psychological thriller film  Sound of My Voice , directed by Zal Batmanglij and starring Brit Marling as “Maggie,” a time-traveling cult leader in present-day Los Angeles who may or may not be who she claims to be. It’s an amazing film, dealing with numerous themes, including psychology, faith, identity and more. As I wrote in my 2013 review of  Sound of My Voice : “ The small cult soon learns from Maggie that she is a time traveler from the year 2054 and that in her time life is much different. There has been a civil war, strife and lean times. Food is grown at home and, when asked to sing a song from her time by a cult member, Maggie begins to sing the opening lyrics  to the 1993 song “Dreams” by the Cranberries. The Cranberries?!? Yes, that gets one young man named Lam...

  ANDREW W. GRIFFIN   |   DECEMBER 2, 2015 CATEGORY:  DUST DEVIL DREAMS OKLAHOMA CITY – During the six-and-a-half years I spent working as a newspaper reporter in Alexandria, Louisiana, I wrote about all sorts of strange things, from Bigfoot sightings to UFO reports to small-town corruption that always seemed to remain covered up – much to my chagrin. But there were some really weird stories. There was the strange case of John Fred Fontenot Jr., an Evangeline Parish man whose beaten body was found floating in remote Millers Lake after disappearing in late 1998. Official report was that Fontenot drowned. Family members and others disagreed. Rumors of drug dealing and more were bandied about at the time. It was a story I put a lot of time and effort into in the summer of 2001, the story appearing on the front page of  The Town Talk  on Sept. 2, 2001. I have been thinking about those days – between 1999 and 2005 – before  Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ...