Author: Rick Levin

Racism and Homophobia at Shakespeare Festival

Performing Arts

We were deeply troubled today when we received the letter below detailing incidents of racism and homophobia towards our friends at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. As evidenced by this and the recent cancellation of the Festival of Eugene due to an incident of racism, it's becoming more and more apparent that these are not isloated incidents but evidence of an alarming national trend.  An Open Letter to Our Community Continue reading →

Fitting In

Strange seizures afflict a group of young women in Anna Rose Holmer’s excellent debut The Fits

Film
Royalty Hightower in The Fits

Clocking in at just 72 minutes, The Fits is less full-length feature than a new form of cinematic poetry, a visually stunning film that is at once as inscrutable and straightforward as a parable. Co-written, co-produced and directed by Anna Rose Holmer in her filmmaking debut, the movie focuses — with physical intimacy and minimal dialogue — on Toni (Royalty Hightower), a quiet, observant 11-year-old girl who seems to spend all her waking hours in a gym, surrounded by boxers and the fierce women of a competitive dance team. Continue reading →

It’s Not Funny Anymore

In Tickled, journalist David Farrier exposes the wealth, power and abuse behind a bizarre Internet fetish

Film

“I started this journey curious about a bizarre sport called competitive endurance tickling,” says New Zealand journalist David Farrier near the conclusion of his strange and upsetting documentary Tickled. “But I now think this was never even about tickling. This is about power, control and harassment. It’s about one person’s twistedness and how far that can go.” Continue reading →

Heed the Siren’s Call

In which a grumpy reviewer falls in love with The Little Mermaid at Actors Cabaret of Eugene

Theater
Jenny Parks and Anthony Krall in ACE's The Little Mermaid

I have two sisters, much younger than me, the offspring of my father’s second marriage. I love them both dearly, but when they were little girls and I was in my 20s, they drove me batshit crazy — especially with their fanatical devotion to all things Disney. Both of them possess gorgeous singing voices, always have, and traipsing around the house they would suddenly stop, raise their arms with operatic urgency and begin belting out some saccharine ballad from The Lion King or The Little Mermaid. If I hear about Ariel one more time, so help me … Continue reading →

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

Set and shot in Eugene, Tracktown tells the story of a young runner as she faces the Olympic Trials

Film
Alexi Pappas (second from right) in Tracktown

Few things are as staid and predictable as the lone-athlete sports film. Since the sleeper success of Rocky in 1976, such movies have become increasingly formulaic potboilers in which we dutifully witness, as though through a fisheye lens, the algorithmic progress of an underdog as he confronts endless obstacles on the way to inevitable triumph. Cue ovation. Continue reading →

Consider The Lobster

Film

The Lobster is the English-language debut of Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. As far as I can tell, it’s a near-perfect film, a movie of surpassing oddness and eerie beauty, though hardly an easy one to digest. Nor is it very pleasant, in the conventional sense. Continue reading →

Coming To America

Film

Local soccer fans will be spoiled this summer with several Lane United FC matches at the Willamalane Center as well as the July 24 International Champions Cup match between Paris Saint-Germain and F.C. Internazionale Milano, to be played in Autzen Stadium. And yet, if Eugene soccer fans are as passionate about the beautiful game as I am, they might be most excited about the Copa América, to be hosted in the U.S. for the first time in its long and influential history, with the closest matches being played in Seattle and Santa Clara, California. Continue reading →

Medieval Malarkey

Very Little Theatre’s current production of Spamalot

Theater

The irreverent postmodern humor of Monty Python — a stew of bawdy iconoclasm, parodic schmaltz and geek-boy cheekery — achieved perhaps its finest expression in the 1975 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This cult classic contains so many insider touchstones (the Knights Who Say Ni, Frenchmen who fart in your general direction, a homicidal rabbit) that, by now, it requires its own cultural thesaurus. Continue reading →

Mothers Who Smother

Film

From the exact moment I spied Susan Sarandon rubbing lemons on her naked torso through the apartment window in Atlantic City, I was in love. Yep, me and Burt Lancaster, forever united in our voyeurism, but it isn’t quite what you think: Sure, the scene was rawly, almost excruciatingly erotic as Sarandon, utterly unaware of being observed (they don’t call them apartments for nothing), went about slowly disrobing and squeezing citrus on her flesh to slice out the proletariat stink of the oyster bar where she works. Continue reading →