Main Street
UND and Wind Turbine Recycling; Matt and the movie MaXXXine; Dave's News Review
Support for Prairie Public is provided by Basin Electric Power Cooperative, headquartered in Bismarck, serving 3 million consumers in 9 states with electricity from wind, natural gas, coal, and hydro. Welcome to Thursday's edition of Main Street on Prairie Public. I'm your host, Craig Blumenshine. Today, we'll review the week's news with Prairie Public's News Director, Dave Thompson. Madeline will also join us with his weekly movie review, focusing on Maxine, the third in the X trilogy. Our listeners know that Matt hasn't been fond of the last two films he's reviewed, so it will be interesting to hear his thoughts on this one. But we'll start today's show by delving into the challenges of recycling wind turbines. It's an international issue, and the University of North Dakota has secured a $3.7 million grant to help tackle the problem. We'll explore what this means to the future of wind energy and recycling efforts. University of North Dakota professor of mechanical engineering, Dr. J. Gupta has been awarded a $3.7 million grant to study the feasibility of recycling wind turbine blades, certainly a topic of increasing importance with the rise in wind development. Dr. Gupta, welcome to Main Street. Thank you. Thank you for enlightening me. It's a pleasure. You're so welcome. This is a topic that is very interesting to me. I forwarded you a picture last week of a Wyoming landfill that was just lined with wind turbine blades. And it's been used that picture has really across the country about why we shouldn't consider wind power, almost like we can't do this recycling part of it. So you're working on that. So give us an overview of what you would of this grant that you've been awarded to help in recycling wind turbine blades. Yeah, thank you. It's a very exciting grant for us. As a background, my research group here at UND, we like to work on key problems which are facing us. So for us, it's a very tough engineering problem. So in general, these turbines are made with a special type of polymer called thermosets. And thermosets, because of cross-linking, is very difficult to recycle. It means you cannot recycle it. So that's why they end up going to land fuel and other ways of disposing it, which is not there. So that's why as a part of this grant, we are trying to explore ways of recycling it. Nothing is done yet. It's a grant which is going to give us funding to do that. So we are embarking on that process. We are going to work with the national lab as well as I have my co-workers. Professor Junji, Professor Bette, as well as Professor Chelmo. They are going to work with me here at UND with the group of students. So we are very excited about the project. Give us a scope of this problem. If you could, Dr. Gupta, what's the lifespan of a typical wind turbine blade? Why do we even need to recycle them in the first place? So it's a very good question. Essentially wind turbine blades, as you can see, they are used in different conditions. There can be offshore also. So when you use polymeric materials like them, they are exposed to UV atmosphere daily, day-to-day wear. So over a course of time, they tend to wear down after 15 to 20 years. So that's when you have to replace them. And there are quite a few up here in North Dakota, which needs to be replaced. So that's why it's a tough problem getting them replaced because recycling them is a problem and there are not many ways of recycling them. Recently, there are some thermoplastic base resins which are coming up. But the problem is that the turbines which are already there up there with thermosets, we have to do something with them. What's the current state of recycling? Is it just a matter of tossing them into landfills? Are there any methods out there that are also trying to recycle these wind turbine blades? That's a very good question. So they end up going to landfill. So the Wyoming picture, which you sent me, those blades have also ended up in landfill. But there are many regulations now which actually restrict them from going to landfill. So it's imperative that we kind of recycle them. There are some methods out there, but they are very destructive and it defeats the purpose. For example, you can do a process called paralysis, which is almost commercialized. There are a couple of companies out there I know of. They try to recycle the fibers out of it, but they end up burning away the polymer part for energy or oil. Or they are not able to use it effectively. So that's why as a part of this project, we will try to recycle both the polymeric and the fiber component of it. So it's a tough problem and we cannot promise that we will solve it, but we will try our best. We have a strong team up here. I'm going to talk to you more about exactly how you're going to attack it in just a moment, but has this discussion led to different ways to manufacture these blades? Or even blades today that are being manufactured are going to also need to be recycled, potentially using research that you develop. That's a very good question. Like I mentioned in the previous question that new lessons are coming up, thermoplastic based. So they are under research and may be deployed soon. But like I said nevertheless that the blades which are being used, they are mainly thermoset based, which are very difficult to recycle. You cannot melt them and use them again because they don't have sharp melting point. So that's why you need to find ways of recycling it. So the one which has been manufactured and which is still being manufactured, they need to be recycled. And it's a very interesting engineering problem for us. This is a three year project as it's outlined and you did say earlier you're planning to work with the Idaho National Laboratory. What do you see that collaboration looking like? That's a very good question. So the point is that you can have the world's best technology, but you always have to look at the carbon footprint, whether it's sustainable, it's environmental friendly. So that's why the collaboration with Idaho National Lab is very pivotal for this project as we are going to collaborate on life's health analysis. So they are not going to do any experimental part. They are going to help us with modeling the process design, some of the new processes which we are working on developing. So they are going to help us to analyze the life cycle of that, whether it's environmental friendly or not. You're also partnering with local companies. Give us an example specifically, I'm aware of your hope to work with singularity, energy technologies in Grand Forks. Yes, yes. So that company is headed by Dr. Nikhil Patel, who is the president of that company. And an city will lead a consortium of companies, which include Tri-Steel, MDM, as well as other stakeholders. So they will work with us in terms of finding ways of recycling it. What are the milestones that you've kind of outlined in your head, Dr. Gupta, relative to this grant? In other words, the first year we would like to do X, the second year Y and the third year Z. Yeah, that's a very good question. So we are calling our process as a smart process because we are using an all-hand-on-deck approach. So what it means is that instead of just focusing on one recycling process, we have proposed like a systematic way we are going to try different proprietary technologies. A couple of technologies we have developed in my lab at UND. We are in the process of developing them further. So because of that, I cannot go really deep into that. Maybe next year, I can explain more about those processes. If we are successful, like you said in the second and third year, we will scale up the process. DOE works with a system called TRL, technology readiness level. So when you have a concept in your lab, it's at a TRL-2-3 kind of level. And our proposal is that by the end of the three year, we will take our technology which we are developing in our lab at UND to do a TRL-5 level. So it means that we will have pilot plant. UND has a satellite facility, Dracula. So we are planning to set a pilot plant there. But again, like you correctly said, it depends on the success of the year one, year two, before we can go to that regime. In addition, the consortium led by SCT, they have a proprietary technology by which they can do gasification of really tough starting materials. So they are also going to work on that aspect, whether for example, if the blade is badly damaged, then we can directly convert it into syngas and other energy. So long story short, we are proposing a combination of different type of proprietary processes by which we can potentially recycle it. Again, it's a work in progress. Certainly important, nonetheless, we are enjoying our conversation with University of North Dakota professor of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Jeet Gupta. He and his team have been awarded a $3.7 million grant to study the feasibility of recycling wind turbine blades, and they are partnering with the Idaho National Laboratory and other local companies to work through that process. So Dr. Gupta, you take this huge blade, do you slice it up into 17 or 60 different smaller components to start seeing if you can make progress with this recycling question? That's a very good question. And what we have proposed is that during the first year, we are going to do a proof of concept at like 100 grams, 10 grams kind of scale. And then towards the end of the project, we are going to scale it up like, for example, our partners, they want to scale it up like one ton per day kind of facility, and we would like to also go to like kilograms batch level. So the idea here is that initially we want to try small batch where we will cut them. For example, it doesn't need to be cut also because many of these plants, they have their own waste generation, and those are already not into the blade itself. So the idea here is that those components can be recycled and can be potentially feed into the manufacturing process, and it doesn't need to be blades because they have like strict protocol, it can be in construction and other businesses as well. So, so, so that is the idea. So we want to start small, and we are ambitious and gradually we want to go higher up. And yes, you're correct. Ultimately, the dream is that if you can make a reactor, then you can the entire blade in that reactor and then maybe recycle different components of it, but like room was not built in a day. There must be, I'm guessing, thousands are maybe tens of thousands of blades that are right now needing to be recycled. Is that your understanding of the scope here? Absolutely, absolutely. And it's not even a statewide problem. It's a worldwide problem means it's all over the world. And when energy is something which is sustainable, and the idea here is that you can have like host of technologies serving mankind and as engineers, our goal is to solve those problems. That's why there are blades out there, and our dream is from engineering point of view, whether we can recycle them effectively. It is a more of a scientific problem. To envision like the national center for recycling of wind turbine blades being developed. I mean, this is so massive. I can't imagine that there are going to be lots and lots of places that can use any technology, regardless of how successful it is. Yeah, that's a fair point. And eventually I think if it works out, that's the pathway. Tell me how you incorporate post doctorate students, PhD level students, even undergraduates in this research, Dr. Gupta. Yeah, that's why I was saying that this is an excellent opportunity for us here at UND, because we want to train students across different spectrum. So every students they have their own need. For example, undergrads, they are just starting up their career. I have students who are in there. So for more junior here. And the idea here is that if you can get them into research, it actually stimulates them, and they want to go for higher studies, or for example, they get trained really well, and they stay here, help build the local economy itself. So that's one spectrum of students where we want to train undergrads in hands-on research activities, so that they understand the importance of this kind of high impact research. And eventually the future, they can go into the market, they can start their own company, or maybe they can go for advanced degree and then go from there. And then the next layer after that, they are the grad students. We want them to work with us in terms of developing and working on their degree. So as a part of their masters, PhD, they have to work on thesis. So it's a win-win situation for them. They will get a high quality thesis. In addition, they will do high quality research with us, which may end up being patented, or you will have a publication out of it. And they will get trained to, for example, to join the workforce as scientists, professors, or many, many times folks end up going to national labs or starting up their company itself. And the layer after that is the postdoctoral and the research scientists. So they are actually going to work with us in terms of mentoring the undergraduate and graduate students, as well as working on the hypothesis and solving the problem and taking it to the next level. So it's like a hierarchical approach where we have like an entire group of students at different stage of learning. I myself is learning also working with the students, which always motivates me. And this ecosystem actually helps in building a very strong research foundation. And the great news about this particular project in particular is that they will get an early exposure to work with industrials. So that's going to help them. Dr. Gupta, you mentioned earlier that this is a worldwide problem. Are there other countries that are maybe also doing well in their advancement of research to make the recycling of these turban blades a possibility? That's a very good question. And if you look at the scientific papers coming out, there is a lot of research going on in that area all over the world. But the success has been very limited. And like I was saying that part of the reason is that these are thermosets, very, very difficult molecules or structure to work with. So although research has been going on all over the world, there have not been many pathways which can successfully recycle them commercially. They are like enzymatic degradation, solvent and stuff like that. But those are very difficult to commercialize very expensive processes. And in addition, you have like paralysis, which is actually breaking down the entire polymer structure. It is out there. It can recycle fibers out of it, but not the polymer part. So it's a tough problem. A lot of scientific groups are working on. So hopefully we'll get a solution. Now that you've been awarded the grant, when does the grant start? In other words, when does your research for this grant begin? Actually, we got this grant way back in November last year. But we went through a negotiation process with DOE, which everyone who wins a grant, they have to go over it. We have something which is known as project objective, so poor and stuff like that. So you need to make sure that the funding agency, university, all the PIs, they are on board with the file program. So we got approved and everything and the project got started in early May. And we are in our couple of months done. So we are starting. We are now off and running, so to speak. Exactly. Dr. Jeet Gupta. He's a University of North Dakota professor in mechanical engineering. And his group has been awarded a $3.7 million grant to study the feasibility of recycling wind turbine blades. Dr. Gupta, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for joining us on Main Street. Thank you for inviting me. I think we'll look forward to maybe taking you up on your offer to tour your lab. I think that will be very exciting. Best wishes. Thank you. Main Street continues on this Thursday. I'm Craig Blumenshine. Controlling disruptive plants from far away places has become a non-stop part of the job for many Midwest ranchers, park workers and homeowners. From the podcast Up from Dust. Celia Yopeast-Jepsen reports for harvest public media on policy changes meant to help. Each spring, workers at Shawnee Mission Park grab chainsaws and machete's, climb into off-road vehicles and scour hundreds of acres in search of white flowers. I'd assume about 35 years ago someone decided that this would be a gorgeous, you know, blooming species to plant along the entry to the theater. Matt Garrett is the natural resource manager for Johnson County Park and Recreation District. He's been fighting this fight for years. I first met up with him in 2022 while he and his crew searched for invasive calorie pear trees, aka Bradford Pears. We drove past dozens of stumps, big trees that the crew had already killed and searched for sapling, which park worker Matt Deere wounded with a machete, just enough to squirt some herbicide into them. I'd say in a couple weeks to a month or two that tree will eventually die. Many non-native plants will not go rogue. But the small percentage that do make endless headaches for landowners. Calorie pears don't die unless you poison them. Another massive hassle, the brush species, Serecia lespedisa. Strong city rancher Daniel Mushrush said it annoys Flint Hills landowners to no end as they try to keep it out of tall grass prairie. It should be right up a heroin and cocaine. You mean it should be banned? Yeah, he shouldn't be able to have it. It's really a problem. Kansas already restricts it, but he noted Missouri doesn't. Invasive plants have become widespread in every corner of Kansas, rural and urban. Fighting them takes time, money, and its own toll on the environment, like when herbicide is involved. But a number of invasive species form stands of such dense vegetation that they smother native plants displacing livestock forage or making it harder for native wildlife to feed and to reproduce. Native plants sustain the food web. And people like Gerardo Zapata of Kansas City, Kansas, want to see more of them. My favorite native plant for Kansas is the butterfly milkweed. We planted so many in our lots, I see tons and tons of butterflies, like just warming around the area. One of my colleagues caught up with Zapata and other Kaseke high schoolers a few summers ago while they worked for the green team. Part of a nonprofit called the Groundwork Northeast Revitalization Group. Public concern about the environment has fueled a growing appreciation of native plants and a frustration with the invasive ones transforming natural areas. Here's fellow green team member Oliver Faulkner. I don't know, when I was a kid, I thought a pony circle was like nice. And then I found out it's killing all these other plants, and I was like dang! Bush honeysuckle shades out wildflowers and its widespread around Kansas and Missouri cities. Calorie pear now grows unchecked all over Missouri and much of Kansas. When the Kansas Department of Agriculture announced it was considering rules against the pears, hundreds of people wrote in, more than 90% in favor of the idea. Carol Baldwin testified publicly in January. She's a rangeland management specialist at Kansas State University. If you look across the state line in Oklahoma, you can see the absolute devastating damage that these trees have done to native rage lands. Starting in 2027, no one is allowed to bring the species to Kansas or move it within the state. In Missouri, the legislature held recent hearings on stopping the sale of several invasive plants, including calorie pears and sericeal espedisa. That would frustrate businesses that grow and sell these products, which has fueled some opposition. The proposal includes a grace period to let the industry sell current inventory and adjust. For Harvest Public Media, I'm Celia Yopis-Jeffson. This story comes to us from Harvest Public Media from the Kansas News Service and the Up from Dust podcast. After the break, our News Director here at Prairie Public, Dave Thompson, and I review this week's news, and Matt Olien reviews the movie Maxine. It's the third in the X trilogy. That's after this. ♪ I've been listening to you show on the radio ♪ ♪ And you seem like a friend to me ♪ You're listening to Prairie Public right now, so I bet you're a bit of a news junkie, right? But do you also like music? I bet you do. Prairie Public is the place for that too. Did you know that we have a guy named Mike Olson who spends adult album alternative music during the week? ♪ There goes the last DJ ♪ ♪ Who plays when he wants to play ♪ He's got an endless library, limitless musical knowledge, and a clever way of handcrafting sets of songs. You can listen to Prairie Public's Ruth Rockin' Jazz Tree on an app where smart speaker pretty much anywhere, and on an HD radio anywhere in the region. Check out Mike Olson on Prairie Public weekdays from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m., and noon to 6 p.m. ♪ Love's out, love's that DJ ♪ ♪ Won't you play me something slow ♪ [MUSIC] And there's our lead in to our weekly discussion with our news director here at Prairie Public Dave Thompson. We're going to review the news. Dave, how are you? I'm doing fine, Craig, how are you? I am doing very well, Dave. Interesting time last night for North Dakota's Governor Doug Burgum, right? He emphasized energy a lot, and his speech, I should remind our listeners, was to the Republican National Convention. Dave, what was your takeaway? A couple of things, number one, yeah, he did talk about energy, and he used the Theodore Roosevelt thing about, you know, speaks softly and carry a big stick, and he said, "The big stick is going to be energy." Which makes me start to think that maybe he might be energy secretary, who knows? There's been speculation that or speculation that it's going to be secretary of the interior in the Trump administration, second Trump administration. The one thing that is a little different, he did not get prime time, but he did get, you know, convention time, which is a good thing. Dave, the North Dakota University System Chancellor Mark Hagerut is honoring the departing Dickinson State University President Steve Easton, but there's been some pressure on Easton as well. Give us the background. Let's start about why he called him a turnaround leader, because Easton was hired as we had the COVID pandemic. And, you know, college enrollments took a bit of a beating, but Dickinson's enrollment has grown, and the foundation, which was basically broke, is now back and fully funded and things like that. So they give Easton a lot of credit for that, where Easton got a little sideways with some faculty, was number one changing tenure, and there was a bill in the legislature to do that. And at one point, the entire nursing faculty at Dickinson State University resigned, and Easton just decided, "I don't need to deal with this. I'm going to retire." And now there are other negotiations with the Board of Nursing to see what's going to happen now. Dave, is he thought of by students and faculty now to have been that president that was asked to be the turnaround leader, or is it, "Okay, we need to turn the page, turn the chapter in our science books now and do something different?" I think there's a lot of differing opinions on this. It depends on who you talk to. If you talk to some of the faculty and staff, they think he was a good at turning the institution around. But of course, as you know, Craig, we all know change is hard, and sometimes change needs to be approached a different way. In other words, there were some issues, but I'm going to say this, you know, it's higher education. There's always a little bit of turmoil. Dave North Dakota's oil production numbers dropped more than anticipated in May. This is interesting why in May, because you think of May, we've got the snowstorms behind us, but remember April was pretty wet. And you've got to get these big rigs and these trucks out to get drilling accomplished, and as oil well starts dropping oil production, natural gas goes up. It's that odd ratio, that oil and gas ratio, or what they call OGR. So it dropped by 3.9% because they couldn't get a lot of oil wells finished that were finished waiting on completion. I think fracking trucks also can't move around quite easily when there's muddy roads and things like that. So there were road restrictions on roads in May. They think June's going to rebound, so we'll see what happens on that. Dave North Dakota's Department of Public Instruction has now become the first to receive a national accreditation from a national, I guess, nonprofit that looks to promote school of improvements in over 90 countries. Is this an important deal? It is because DPI becomes the first state in the union to do this, in the first state agency to do this, and it basically is an illustration according to the DPI folks. It's an illustration that North Dakota is continuing working on improving what it does. There's been an improvement program, you don't want to call it an improvement program necessarily, but there's been some upgrades and this whole thing, choice ready education, whether you're going to be ready for higher education for the job market or the military, they want students to graduate choice ready. So it's all a part of this in this whole attempt, so let's put it out. There's the whole attempt to bring education up a little bit and more suited to what the workforce needs and what military needs. Speaking of military, Dave, Senator Holven has now weighed in again, I guess, on the Sentinel Project, which is of course upgrading our nuclear force at Minot Air Force Base. What's he had to say? Well, the funny thing is, and I think you've done a story on Sentinel, haven't you? I've done a story about Minot Air Force Base, and we did discuss the Sentinel Project. Well, Sentinel's huge, it's a trillion plus dollar project, and what we're doing is we're modernizing, especially the nuclear missiles, the at-launch missiles. And it's funny, you should mention that, just as an aside, this past weekend, I went to Cooperstown and I toured the Oscar Zero missile site that the State Historical Society now runs. And here I go, a couple days later, I'm in Minot listening to the discussion, and when Sentinel was laid out, they laid it out that there were three bases involved in Wyoming. I'm in Wyoming, sure. And you've got Miles from Montana and Minot. Minot was supposed to be the last on the list. Well, they had a report and they had a review, and they said things are on budget, but we're hoping that Northrop Grumman, who's going to be doing the project, is hoping to find some cost-saving solutions. So some of the things they're talking about is, maybe instead of constructing these three things at different times, get them all done at once, because you might save on construction inflation. And that might help bring things down. Minot and their Project 21 is talking about, we can do this, we will do it. We've been through the oil boom, we know about workers' needs for housing, needs for good streets, good schools. So they're going to be working, you know, pretty much full-time now, I think, on seeing if they can convince the Air Force and Northrop Grumman, let's build all these three things together. I know that EPI Warren in Cheyenne was kind of designated to be the first to go here. Right. And with the engineering, et cetera, that is applied to that project, it's a multi-billion dollar injection into the southeast Wyoming economy. The same would be the case here in North Dakota. Absolutely. Long-term care now is potentially even more at risk because staffing rules could lead to nursing home closures here in our state. Right. Now the rule that causes the most concern is have each nursing home should have one, a registered nurse available 24/7 on-site. What nursing homes were doing, basically because of, you know, staffing issues, and staffing issues are really common in a lot of fields, but they're saying that we could have on-call people, but that's not good enough for the rules. So what they're saying is if they go to a 24/7 requirement, that's going to further hurt the workforce, and that means some nursing homes might have to close. And is this a Medicaid rule, Dave, that's driving this? Centers for Medicaid and Medicare, the CMS. And, you know, just one thing, and I didn't bring this up in the Cheyenne, I should have, since COVID-6 nursing homes have closed in North Dakota because of staffing issues. Yeah, it's a nationwide issue. I don't know that our country does a great job of caring for seniors in nursing homes. I guess I hope they come to resolution, certainly, to allow these nursing homes to flourish and do well. Dave, what's coming up from your news group? Well, we're going to be heading to the experiment station south of Mandan, where USDA is doing some research. It is Northern neighbors' day for them. And I'm going to go down and talk to them about, you know, for somebody who hasn't been down to the Mandan Research Center, what are they doing? What kind of research are they into? So I've been talking about that. And then there's something I'm going to look into a little bit further, and you remember the whole thing with FAFSA, the student loan program with the program? I'm very happy that our kids are not in college anymore. Yes, Dave. Absolutely. But you know that they've been working to correct the problem, and I'm working on a story. Just find out how North Dakota is. Are we lagging behind earlier years because of the FAFSA issues? Dave, is there anything that we should be conscious of at this point here in North Dakota relative to the upcoming general election where we will elect a new governor? And there'll be many questions on local ballots, too. Anything that's really on top of your list? What's on top of my list is a big issue, and that's the property tax issue. What's going to happen with that? Also, legalization of marijuana. Yeah, we've talked about both of those issues, Dave. There'll be lots for you to cover, for sure. Absolutely. [music] Dave Thompson visits with us here at Main Street each and every week to review the state's news. Dave, it's always great to talk to you. Oh, thank you, Craig. Madeline is next. He's going to review Maxine, the third movie in the X Trilogy. Wonder if he finally likes a movie? Stay tuned. Support for Prairie Public is provided by Ted X Fargo 2024. Journey into the enigmatic terrain of the unknown where if beckons the curious, the daring, and the dreamers. July 25th at the Fargo Civic Center. Information available at TedXFargo.com. [music] We play that panfare once a week. That means it's time for us to go to the movies with Matt O'Lean, our movie reviewer. Matt, how are you? I'm good, Craig. Welcome back to Main Street, Matt. Here's the movie we're going to take a look at today. So, Maxine, your agent tells us you're quite a popular name in adult film and entertainment. Is that correct? I'm curious. Did you always want to be in that line of work? I always wanted to be famous. [cheering] If you need to read up the sides, we gave you just go ahead, all right? I don't know that. She turns to the camera and, through her trauma, addresses the lens directly. [music] All right, Matt. You know what's Maxine is what we're going to review today. You've been kind of lukewarm or worse for our last two movie reviews. How's Maxine? This is good, and if you look at the title of the movie, Craig, it's Maxine with three Xs, and they're all capitalized. So, yes, our heroine, Maxine Max, is now working in the porn industry in LA in 1985, and this is the third of a trilogy by writer/director Ty West with his star, Mia Goth, who's amazing. It started with the film X, which is like this, you know, they're shooting this porno in late '70s, you know, down south in Texas, and the strange older couple lives there, and then came Pearl, which was the back story of the old lady. In X, also played by Mia Goth. I don't think this movie is quite as good as X and Pearl. Pearl's my favorite of the three. It had this kind of weird wizard of Oz, cinematography quality. It takes place around World War I, and then X has this kind of like you're watching a '70s porn film, not that you and I sit around and do that, but it was shot on film. You know, porn movies used to be shot on film, and then eventually they switched to video, so it kind of has that late '70s kind of muddy film feel. This one takes place in LA 1985. Little more of a high gloss here. Now that these are successful movies, we have bigger stars. Kevin Bacon plays a private investigator who choose the scenery in his performance. He's trying to find Maxine for a client. We kind of know who that client is. You have to go see the movie. Bobby Cannaval, Michelle Monahan are detectives in LA trying to solve the Night Stalker murders, which are going on at the same time where young women are being murdered. So a little more high gloss look now, bigger stars, but again, Mia Goth is the focus. She is a porn actress who wants to do legitimate movies, and through a series of breaks, she gets a chance to audition for a horror movie. But the plot involves the Night Stalker murders. There's women being murdered. There's acquaintances of acquaintances of Maxine being murdered. How does she navigate this? How does she stay alive? How does she take matters into her own hands? Even though I think it's the weakest of the three, it's still very entertaining. The slasher moments that happen specifically involving one with Maxine and a guy who's kind of stalking her in Hollywood is pretty gruesome. So slasher fans will enjoy that. Even though I think it's the weakest of the three, I did find it entertaining. Mia Goth is great. Again, as Maxine who wants to be a star at all costs. And I think too, what specifically X and Pearl and now this is done, they've taken a character who kills people. I mean, we saw X, right? She kills people in that movie. She's a porn actress, but yet the audience kind of cheers for her. So it becomes kind of a bizarre female empowerment movie around this porn star who has killed people. So it's kind of an interesting audience manipulation, but you end up kind of cheering for her and cheering for her ambition to be a big star. So like it, I think it's the weakest of the three, but I do it. If you've seen X and Pearl, you got to go see this. Will there be more in the series, Matt? That's a good question. I have not heard that Ty West and Mia Goth want to do a fourth one. They certainly could. There's room here at the end. Once you go see it and see what I'm talking about to have a fourth film. I'm not sure if that's what they're going to do or not. I will say a nice supporting performance. Elizabeth DeBicke, British actress, who plays the horror director Elizabeth Bender, who kind of, you know, Maxine auditions for this horror movie to try to get out of the porn industry. That's a really good performance too. A lot of good things going on in this movie. You feel like you're in LA in the mid 80s, you know, kind of the soundtrack. All of that works as well. So I do recommend this. Didn't love it, but I think it's good. Pearl, I loved. I think it's the best of the three. And if you're going to see these and you haven't seen them yet, watch X first, then Pearl, then go to Maxine in the theater. Maxine still is in the theater as we speak today. It is. All right, Matt, we want to reflect backwards a little bit. You and I talked about a Kevin Costner series just a week or two ago. You made a not so bold, but very, very accurate prediction. Bring us up to date. So Horizon in American Saga, as I reviewed it, it's a mess. It's a mess of a movie. It's three hours. It's a tough sip. And it was part one of what was supposed to be four parts to this kind of Kevin Costner's tribute to the move West, the American West, kind of his tribute to the movie How the West was won, which was heavily, which heavily impacted him as a kid when he saw it in 1963. But the film didn't make a lot of money. The ending of the film is confusing. The film is a mess. There's too many characters. And now we are learning that part two, which was set to be released in August, has been pulled from theaters. It's already shot and edited. Can you imagine the money that was spent to finish and shoot this movie? And now it's not going to be in theaters. So this is going to go down as Kevin Costner's folly. I think he misread the room, misread what people are willing to go see in a theater these days. It probably should have been a TV series. He wanted it on the big screen. And I had a friend on Facebook who is a film friend who said, "Oh, this is bad news because people need to see this stuff in theater." And I said, "True." But it's also on Kevin Costner. It's his responsibility to put out a good product. And he did not do that. He put out a confusing, messy movie. And this is going to go down as Kevin Costner's folly for sure. I didn't like the first film. I think my instincts were right to trash it, that it was a mess. And I think that the film industry and the people who saw it also think it's a mess. Because there's no audience for it. What happens now? Does this get repackaged and stream thin to try to rescue a little bit of fiscal accountability here? I don't know. And parts three and four, which had not been shot yet, mercifully for Kevin Costner, he put a lot of his own money into this too. So I think this is a cautionary tale for, I admire his ambition to be an O-tour and to try to put his vision on the screen. But it's also a cautionary tale. You got to read the room. And in a post-COVID environment, it's a tough sell to have people go to four straight, three-hour Western movies without being able to see them back-to-back. Like you can when you're streaming a TV series. And I'm a movie guy. I'm not a TV guy. I'm a movie guy to this day. But this was a huge misfire on his part. And I was, when it, when it first announced that he was going to do this, I thought... You don't have John Wayne and this is 2024, not 1964, you know? The Duke is no longer with us. No, he's not. Alright, Matt, what else are we working on this summer? Well, long legs. I'll review long legs next week, another horror movie. And there's a lot of them right now. That stars Nicholas Cage and some other people. That's going to be a really interesting one. Musica. I'm going to review that in a couple of weeks. That's on Amazon. And then we have Deadpool and Wolverine. That's coming up soon as well. Matt, if I were to ask you right now what the most popular genre is for theater viewing, is it horror movies as we speak? I think it's the most reliable one. Now you have horror movies that don't make money, but Maxine is, you know, doing pretty well. People have seen X and Pearl. Long legs is doing really well, with its first opening. I think it did 20 million. And I just saw it and I'll review that next week so I don't want to give away too much, but it's the most reliable genre because you have a built-in audience of young adults, kids, going to these movies. If you sprinkle a big star in like Miyagoth and Nick Cage, that helps too. Personally, the fact that "Slasher" movies do well is a little troubling, Matt. Well, it's a movie. Not my favorite genre, yes, that is true. It is a movie. All right, let's go to some Oscar trivia, Matt. I'm going to give you a hint in a little bit of a different way. In 2009, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery acquired four Oscar statuettes. Four is the clue from this actress. It was a gift from her estate. They're now on view in the 20th Century America's Gallery on the museum's third floor next to a 1982 portrait of this actress by artist Everett Raymond Kinsler, which she termed her favorite. Four is the clue. Catherine Hepburn. She's the only actress or actor to win four acting Oscars. And she never famously never showed up for any of the awards, but she didn't refuse them the way Brando and George C. Scott did, but I think she only came to one Oscar ceremony her whole life, something like that. Honestly, the only movie that I have seen with Catherine Hepburn was "On Golden Pond" in the theater. All right. All right, Matt, name the other three. Morning Lori, 1933. Guess who's coming to dinner in 1967, and then she won for the Lion and Winter 1968. We've been to the movies with Matt Olien. Matt, thanks for joining us again on Main Street. You bet. More Main Streets Ahead. Stay with us. Support for Prairie Public is provided by Basin Electric Power Cooperative, headquartered in Bismarck, serving 3 million consumers in nine states with electricity from wind, natural gas, coal, and hydro. This is Dakota Datebook for July 18th. North Dakota's political history is marked by several people who left their legacy on the state and the nation through years of service in elected office. Quentin Burdick and Mark Andrews are two such examples, but serving between them was Yalmar Nygaard, whose legacy was cut short before he could achieve similar status. Nygaard was born in 1906 on a farm near Sharon, North Dakota. He attended Mabel State Teachers College and the University of North Dakota, then taught for a time in rural schools in Emmons and Steel counties. He would later work in the grocery and hardware businesses in Sharon and Enderlin. He also began a political career, serving on the local school board and as mayor of Sharon before his election to the North Dakota House of Representatives, a post he held from 1949 to 1960. He rose to majority leader in 1955 and 1957, and finally, as Speaker of the House in 1959. In 1960, he was elected to the U.S. Congress, succeeding Quentin Burdick in one of North Dakota's two at large districts. Burdick had resigned upon his election to the Senate. Nygaard also served on the National Monument Commission during his time in Washington. Nygaard was re-elected to Congress in 1962, but his second term was cut short. On July 18th, he entered the office of Dr. George Calver, physician to Congress, complaining of chest pains. He died there from a heart attack at age 57. He was succeeded by Mark Andrews. The Enderlin Independent summed up Nygaard's service stating, "During his service in Washington, representative Nygaard became known for his hard work, sincerity, and determination to serve North Dakota and the nation to the best of his ability." The paper expressed the grief of the community by re-printing past articles on him and a stirring obituary on the front page. Nygaard's untimely death represented a turning point, as it coincided with a shift in the political geography of the state, as North Dakota moved from at large districts to two separate districts, one eastern and one western, a change that lasted until the 1970 census when the state lost its second seat in Congress. Nygaard served between two political giants, and we can only wonder what he might have achieved had his life not been cut short. Today's Dakota Datebook written by Daniel Sauerwing, I'm Ann Alquist. Dakota Datebook is produced in cooperation with the State Historical Society of North Dakota with funding by Humanities North Dakota, North Dakota's largest lifelong learning community. The arts programming on Prairie Public is supported in part by the North Dakota Council on the Arts, a state agency developing, promoting, and supporting the arts in North Dakota. The GOP presidential nominee survived a shooting and he'll close out a convention filled within your face rhetoric. The Democratic nominee struggles with COVID amid anxiety within his party over his fitness for the job. Whatever side you're on, this election is fueling a range of emotions, tips on managing your election anxiety on the next morning edition from NPR News. Weekdays beginning at 4 a.m. Central here on Prairie Public. And that's it for today's edition of Main Street here on Prairie Public. Main Street will be back on Monday with a special guest, our go to Presidential historian, Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane, who is the Roman Walton Endowed Chair of Theodore Roosevelt Studies at Dickinson State University. We'll discuss President Biden's recent haunting debate performance because I'm going battle with COVID-19 and the increasing calls for him to step aside from the race. And additionally, we'll delve into the recent attempted assassination of Donald Trump and the completion of the Republican National Convention. There's a lot to unpack as we look toward the upcoming presidential election. Tomorrow at this time at 3 p.m. Central, tune in for the middle with host Jeremy Hobson. This week's topic is something that's on everyone's mind. What can we do to tone down the political rhetoric in America? And at 7 p.m. Central tomorrow, don't miss Science Friday with Ira Flato. Thank you for joining us today on Main Street. We look forward to having you with us again on Monday. [MUSIC PLAYING]