I like cold water.

Musings on movies, music, culture, by Nathan Cone.

[jogastills]

L'avventura (1960)

Michelangelo Antonioni

[nathancone]

This week's Cinema Tuesdays feature is one of my favorites, L'AVVENTURA. Come to the show: http://tprcinema.org

[nathancone]

Academy announces major overhaul to rules

The new rules focus on areas such as AI protections for writers and actors and expanded eligibility for international films.

No Oscars for AI performances or scripts

[littlehorrorshop]

Anna May Wong in Drifting (1923)

[nathancone]

I am nowhere near as good as the professional photographers that I follow on Instagram for inspiration, but I am kind of proud of these shots I took at La Semana Alegre, a Fiesta San Antonio event that took place on April 23, 2026 and featured '80s acts like Tommy Tutone, Men Without Hats, and A Flock of Seagulls on one stage, and local/regional acts like Joe 'King' Carrasco, King Pelican, and Girl in a Coma on another.

It was a great event, not too crowded, but buzzing just enough to make things exciting. Please enjoy the photos... encouraging words are welcomed as I go along my photo practice journey!

[nasa]

What is the Habitable Zone?

We’re on the hunt for worlds that can sustain life! But how can we identify them from trillions of miles away?

We start the search within the habitable, or “Goldilocks,” zone around other stars – the not too hot, not too cold region where liquid surface water could exist on orbiting planets.

This artist’s impression shows a star with several planets within its habitable zone.

It sounds simple enough, but it’s surprisingly complicated. For one thing, the size and location of a habitable zone varies from star to star, mainly depending on how big and hot it is. It’s like standing near a bonfire; the smaller the flames, the closer you have to be to feel the heat.

This visualization of our solar system shows the rough location of the Sun’s habitable zone. Earth is nestled comfortably in the middle, and Venus and Mars fall within it as well. But since other factors also influence habitability, Mars and Venus are significantly less habitable than Earth.

Our Sun is a pretty average star with a mid-size habitable zone that extends from around Venus’s distance from the Sun to a bit past Mars.

Larger stars (which are more scarce) have wider habitable zones located farther from the star. But the stellar heavyweights burn through their nuclear fuel very quickly, so they die much younger –– maybe too soon for advanced life to have a chance to form on orbiting planets, even if they’re in the habitable zone.

This infographic compares the characteristics of three classes of stars in our galaxy: Sunlike stars are classified as G-type stars; stars less massive and cooler than our Sun are K dwarfs; and the very faintest and coolest stars are the reddish M dwarfs. The habitable zones, potentially capable of hosting life-bearing planets, are wider for hotter stars, which have shorter longevity. Planets in the habitable zones of the smallest stars are subject to the most radiation, which could make it difficult or impossible for life to thrive.

Smaller stars are far more common, with the littlest three types (shown above) adding up to around 90% of all the stars in our galaxy! They have habitable zones that are not only tiny but also very close in. 

That’s a problem because the smallest stars often have the biggest tempers, lashing out with X-ray and ultraviolet radiation that could sterilize nearby worlds. And those planets tend to be tidally locked, like the Moon is to Earth, which means the same side always faces the star. Can you imagine living on a planet with eternal daylight on one side and an endless night on the other? That would make for some extremely weird weather!

This illustration shows one way that planet TOI-715 b –– a tidally locked super-Earth in the habitable zone around its star –– might appear to a nearby observer.

Out of more than 6,000 exoplanets discovered so far, around 150 are known to orbit within the habitable zone. Is Earth 2.0 among them?

This collage visualizes some of the more than 6,000 exoplanets confirmed to date.

Maybe! But it takes several more ingredients to truly make a world habitable for life as we know it. (Life as we don’t know it may exist, but we hunt for the familiar because we know it worked at least once –– on Earth –– and it gives us a solid starting point for our search).

Based on what we’ve observed in our own solar system, large, gaseous worlds like Jupiter seem far less likely to offer habitable conditions. Smaller rocky planets seem to offer gentler environments that would be more conducive to life.

This artist’s impression visualizes a variety of terrestrial planets.

And even for Earth-like worlds in the habitable zone of an average star, life would be tough without an atmosphere. An atmosphere acts as a security blanket that provides breathable air, regulates temperature, shields against harmful solar radiation, and helps any surface water remain stable for long periods of time. That’s one reason that Mars, with its barely there atmosphere, is much less friendly to life even though it’s in the Sun’s habitable zone.

This artist’s concept shows what the surface of a planet called TRAPPIST-1f may look like. It’s one of seven Earth-size planets in the system.

NASA missions kicked off the hunt for habitable worlds and will soon take them to the next level. Our now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope helped confirm the first known star system with seven Earth-sized exoplanets, Trappist-1, and studied rocky worlds. Then our Kepler space telescope, which is also now retired, showed that planets are even more common than stars in our galaxy, and proved that Earth-size worlds are abundant among them. 

The Hubble Space Telescope kicked off the direct study of exoplanet atmospheres, which our James Webb Space Telescope now does in even more detail. And our TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) is busily scouring the skies for nearby Earth-size planets, identifying the best targets for follow-up atmospheric studies.

In the coming decades, two more major missions will enter the scene: NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and Habitable Worlds Observatory. Roman will survey the stars to find planets like those in our solar system, which other telescopes typically struggle to find, and showcase technology to directly photograph Jupiter-like exoplanets. That will provide a crucial stepping stone for the Habitable Worlds Observatory to photograph Earth-like planets for the first time ever. It will also look for signs of life called biosignatures by measuring atmospheric gases like oxygen and ozone that could signal the presence of living things.

By narrowing the search for habitable worlds, we keep moving ever closer to finding Earth 2.0! Follow along with NASA’s exoplanet discoveries here: https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanets/.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[nathancone]

Buttercup's new album is 'an homage to friendship'

"Right now, in an environment that's so cruel and highly polarized, we need kindness and we need friendship and we need neighbors," says Eri

I've known this band for nearly 25 years, Erik and odie. even longer. It's always a joy to hear new music from them.

[nathancone]

Even Tony Kushner Warned Steven Spielberg About Making ‘Munich’

Kushner—who cowrote the screenplay for Spielberg’s controversial, eerily prescient film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—recalls telli

This is a really good interview about one of Steven Spielberg's toughest, best, most overlooked and controversial films.

[nathancone]

Interview: Reena Esmail, composer

At last week's Texas Music Educators Association convention and clinic, composer Reena Esmail was present to share a new band arrangement of one of her popular pieces, "Tuttarana." Being both a fan and classical radio host, I was pleased that she had a few minutes to sit down with me for a short interview about her work! This interview was conducted on Feb. 13, 2026.

Nathan Cone: I've enjoyed listening to your music for quite some time now, so I'm glad to meet you here in person! Here you are in Texas, in San Antonio, at the Texas Music Educators Association convention. So what brings you here?

Reena Esmail: I'm here actually because so many groups are performing my music--and it's been a few years--that people have performed my music at this convention, and I've never been before! It's my first time, and it's been amazing to just come and watch these students who are so talented, band, choir, orchestra, string orchestra, to hear all of them actually engage with my music, some of them for the first time.

And what do you feel about the whole vibe of the event itself here, and all this musical chaos?

I love it. I mean, it's huge, and it's so overwhelming. But it's also just amazing to see how seriously people take music and how much they love being here. And you can tell that people are here meeting people who they haven't seen in years. I myself have seen people I haven't seen in years that I wasn't expecting to see here. So it feels like just a very joyful coming together, and it's really cool to be a part of it.

Tell me about the piece that's going to be performed by the 6A band.

So the piece is called “Tuttarana,” and it started as a piece for treble choir, believe it or not. And it was a piece where, you know, a lot of music that's written for treble choir is just very, you know, pretty and, you know, light and stuff... and that's, that's not all of it nowadays, but when I was writing this piece, the conductor who I wrote it for was like, "Hey, I want something that's not just pretty and about flowers and trees. I want the exact opposite of that." And so “Tuttarana” was the exact opposite of it. So it's a really kind of a fast piece. It comes in very hot. It has Indian classical syllables. The choral version starts like [vocalizes]... and so you can imagine a band playing that, it's even louder, it's more raucous! It's really a wild piece.

Do you do your arrangements then, for moving it from the choral to the band? And what was that like?

It’s interesting because when I started out, if you had asked me when I was like, 18, what I was going to be as a composer, I would have told you 100% I would be a chamber music composer. So that's like my training. Then I started writing more for orchestra, and all my schooling taught me how to do that. Then I graduated from school, started writing for choir, and got, like, very popular in the choral world. And then I started getting popular in the band world just a couple years ago! So for me, I've done a combination of original work for band and then transcriptions of my other work, so I can kind of understand what the animal of the band is, how it all works and fits together, how the different levels work, you know? It's interesting, because band has something in common with choir and that you're pushing air through instruments, but it's just a little bit different because you're using that air in different ways. And so it has a lot in common, for sure, with choir. And so sometimes those choral pieces translate over very well, but then there's a lot of additional challenges, like, there's so many instruments that I really have not written for before these last few years, like even saxophones and, you know, euphonium and things that I just didn't really have a venue to write for before now.

You mentioned that your music has gotten picked up in the past couple of years with conferences like this, and one of the things that I find so delightful at listening to the recordings and the performances that come out of TMEA is that the repertoire that they're performing has gotten younger and newer and more diverse. And so I think it's really, I mean, are you kind of seeing that as a benefit? I mean, that they're really hungry for new stuff?

I guess I wouldn't have known what [the convention] was before… I feel like I've just been the beneficiary of seeing this influx in this kind of repertoire change. But I think also, on the other hand, the Indian population is growing in Texas. There's a lot of people who have moved here and they want their kids to do well in Western classical music. They also want their kids to do well in Indian classical music. I'm kind of from a previous generation where there was none of that either, you know? And so we were just taught to assimilate and become, you know, doctors and engineers and all that. And I mean, still, there's nothing wrong with being a doctor or an engineer, but I think the idea that doing music is a really serious pursuit at whatever level you do it at is just becoming more prevalent in the Indian community, and that writing music that actually addresses that and allows young South Asian people to be able to express their own identity is really cool.

Do you get a lot of people coming to you for commissions? And what do they ask for?

I get so many offers for commissions. Actually, I probably can only take about 10% of the offers that come my way. And I work at all levels, right? I wrote a massive Concerto for Gil and Orli Shaham that's going up at the Kennedy Center in a couple of weeks. I'm writing for Philadelphia and San Francisco's symphonies, you know, I'm doing all of that, but then I'm also working in the educational world, and I think I try to take commissions where I can learn something. So I think, especially for the band world, I'm still learning a lot. I'm not trained to write band music, and it's really fun to have those challenges. I love writing music that's very simple for students. I love writing music that's very, very complex for professionals, and I love just kind of finding that continuum.

And how is it being a composer in the world of social media?

Ooh, it's interesting, because I guess one of the great things is that I'm able to find my audience more than I would have otherwise. Because, look, everyone has a song that is like that song picks you up off the ground when you're down, or, you know, whatever, the song when you're so joyful, it helps you feel that joy. And I think that we weren't able to tell the composer that that was our song before, whereas so many people have found me online and reached out to me via DM and said, you know, "Your music has meant so much to me," and it's amazing as a composer to actually feel that you're writing music that's making a difference in people's lives. And you know, it's tough. You're alone a lot with just your own thoughts and the piano, and you're hoping that things make sense. And then when someone tells you that your music has profoundly affected them... it really matters.

Lastly, you're here in Texas, in San Antonio, what have you gotten to eat and what have you enjoyed?

I just got here yesterday, so I definitely haven't eaten much yet, but I have walked along the River Walk, and that is so beautiful. Oh my goodness, it's such a live city. I was walking last night back to my hotel, and there's just like, all these bands playing and people playing outdoors, and it's far south enough that the temperature is really nice at this time of year. So I've been enjoying it. It's such a fun town.

[nathancone]

Robert Duvall's cinematic ties to Texas

The late Robert Duvall was made an honorary Texas Ranger following the release of "Lonesome Dove," and shot more than a half-dozen films in

The late Robert Duvall was made an honorary Texas Ranger following the release of "Lonesome Dove," and shot more than a half-dozen films in the Lone Star State, including his Oscar-winning role as Mac Sledge in "Tender Mercies."

“A lot of people in New York don’t know what goes on beyond the South Jersey Shore. To try and show that there’s something out there besides New York and L.A., that justifies good emphasis," he said to me during a 2015 interview.

[nathancone]

Cows, 2025. Shot on Ektar 100 film and photo-adjusted with Snapseed.

[manderley]

SANDRA dir. Luchino Visconti (1965)

[nathancone]

Two views of the Burleson County Courthouse in Caldwell, Texas. Designed by J.M. Glover, constructed in 1927. Shot in summer 2025 on Kodak Ektar 100 film.

[nathancone]

When the first authentic western movies were shot in San Antonio

Before there was a film industry in Hollywood, there was the Star Movie Ranch in San Antonio. At the dawn of cinema, a group of motion pictu

Before there was a film industry in Hollywood, there was the Star Film Ranch in San Antonio. TPR's David Martin Davies shares how at the dawn of cinema, a group of motion picture pioneers came to the Alamo City to produce the first authentic westerns. @texaspublicradio-blog

[nathancone]

The Stanley Theater opened in Luling, TX in 1948 with a Gene Autry double feature. It not longer shows movies. In the early 2000s it housed an antique mall; I think a church meets there on Sundays now. I love the mid-century futuristic space antenna on the sign.

Shot in July, 2025 on Kodak Ektar 100.

[nathancone]

2025, A Year in Movies

Since 1999, I’ve logged every movie I’ve seen, in the theater, online, or at home on video. In 2025 my total went down even further, and I think I need to turn my cinephile card in. I watched only 56 movies, down 18 from 2024. I did spend more time practicing piano, and working out at the gym. (I can actually see some results there, which is good.) But I've also just felt a little more distracted than normal this year, unable to concentrate on longform reading and media. And I guess I've been a little uninspired, too. So that kept me from accomplishing my movie-watching goals. Fifteen of the movies were new releases viewed at the theater (that was up by 2 from last year), another dozen or so were big screen classics at TPR’s Cinema Tuesdays. My favorite new movie in the theater was “Sinners.” My favorite new-to-me movie from a previous year that I watched was "Past Lives," which I watched on an airplane and still connected with, despite the uncomfortable setting. The oldest movie I watched was "Girl Shy," a Harold Lloyd comedy that is now over a century old, and still hilarious.

Oh, this year I also started using the Letterboxd account I created a long time ago, so if you want to connect, I'm here: https://letterboxd.com/nathancone/

Hot-linked films will take you to articles I’ve written about the movie.

The Impossible Zappa  Carry On Flow The Thing From Another World Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl Heat Lightning Texasville Paddington in Peru Deadpool & Wolverine Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Tall Story Barry Lyndon Past Lives Paris, Texas Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope  Pee-wee’s Big Adventure Sinners Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning An American in Paris  Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould Sky High (1922) Él The Fugitive The Sugarland Express The Annihilation of Fish Superman (2025) Runaway Radio Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension Seven Samurai The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone Weapons The Fantastic Four: First Steps Wayne’s World Rock ‘N’ Roll High School La Piscine Highest 2 Lowest Lawyer Man Bringing Up Baby Fantasia 2000 Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale The Long Walk Citizen Kane   One Battle After Another Elemental Tron: Ares His Master’s Voice Girl Shy To Kill a Mockingbird Wicked: For Good Zootopia 2 Wake Up Dead Man Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Avatar: Fire and Ash The Producers

[nathancone]

2025: A Personal Year in Review

TPR's Nathan Cone's annual look back on moments from his past year, including music, movies, [TPR] members, and a memorial.

Time for my annual look back on things I did this year.

[nathancone]

Merry Christmas from Miley.