FREE FILM SERIES DEBUTS TONIGHT: The Free Films on First Thursdays series continues tonight at the Nasher Sculpture Center with a screening of 1967’s The Graduate. The series kicked off last month during the AFI Dallas International Film Festival with The Last Picture Show and proved to be very entertaining as director Peter Bogdanovich told one behind-the-scenes tale after another. I can’t promise you Mike Nichols tonight for The Graduate, but I can promise you a post-film discussion with a couple of guys who are authorities on film history in this town. Rick Worland is a professor of cinema and television at SMU and the author of The Horror Film: An Introduction. Philip Wuntch is the former movie critic of The Dallas Morning News who I had the pleasure of editing when I was the movies editor there. I can’t think of someone I’d rather talk about movies with (especially old ones). All films in the series are adapted from books; upcoming selections include M*A*S*H on June 4 and Jaws on July 2. I’m not sure if the panelists are set in stone for those films, but I can tell you that yours truly will join AFI Dallas senior programmer James Faust to discuss The Grapes of Wrath on Aug. 6. Here’s hoping that that one’s actually less relevant by then than it is now.

Find more videos like this on The Scoop

STUDY UP: If you can’t make it out tomorrow to catch Carmen during the second weekend of the Fort Worth Opera Festival, definitely check out the videos on the company’s Scoop blog. Dr. Punch Shaw gives a pre-performance lecture that lasts 15 minutes or so, and the Opera taped last week’s talk for the video embedded above. Dr. Shaw’s lecture on Cinderella is also on the site, though I can’t seem to find one on Dead Man Walking. No matter – if you visit the blog, you’ll just get caught up watching the Lego Carmen videos anyway.

ART 251 ON THE TRINITY: While purusing my usual local blog spots, I noticed this bit of news on the art251blog. It appears the Keller gallery has set up a second location in the Trinity River Audubon Center in Dallas.  The store stocks “age-appropriate gifts, fine art and souvenirs” that “emphasize local, green products in concert with Audubon’s educational strategy.” That nugget gives me all the excuse I need to direct your attention to KERA’s Living with the Trinity project. Living with the Trinity is a multimedia public broadcasting project that offers an environmental and cultural history of the most highly populated watershed in the state of Texas. You can argue that that river is responsible for Dallas and Fort Worth’s very existance. If you’ve never stopped to consider it, be sure to spend some time on the site.