Author: Rick Levin

His Aim is True

Elvis Costello takes a ‘Detour’ to Eugene

Music
Elvis Costello

He descended on the Carter era of gas lines and bloody carpets and post-love funk like some infernal geek bastard child of Buddy Holly and Johnny Lydon, spitting out lyrical venom over gorgeous hooks and bellicose riffs that plumbed the deepest, darkest wells of pop music — billboard fuzz attacking itself with newborn impunity — all of it churned out with a churlish amphetamine sneer that belied his antediluvian genius for melodic universalism within the three-minute cliché of radio-radio rock. Continue reading →

About a Boy

Film

It is a peculiarity of art that its failures are often more moving, more profoundly beautiful, than its successes, especially when the artist failing is a great one. Perfection has a monolithic aspect, airtight and intimidating; it can leave us cold. Better, sometimes, the flaw, the frayed end, which reveals the Icarus burn of lofty ambitions. Humanity, you might say, is never more humane than when it strives and crashes. Continue reading →

Apples to Apples

ACE’s offbeat musical comedy Falling for Eve looks at the pitfalls of relationships in the Garden of Eden

Theater
Jenny Parks (left), Joel Ibanez, Donovan Seitzinger and Hillary Humphreys in ACE’s Falling for Eve

Ah, Paradise: What an orchard of happiness. Endless green, endless time and endless innocence, unsullied by death and the knowledge of it. What’s not to like? But God, in his infinite wisdom, looked upon Eden’s immaculate expanse and thought unto himself: Needs something. Needs a beholder to appreciate my handiwork and artistry, my Godness. Needs people. And so there were people, and everything went to hell. Continue reading →

Hearts of Darkness

Film

Shot in lavish black-and-white, Embrace of the Serpent drops you immediately into the humid nightmare of colonial devastation. A lone shaman, Karamakate (Nilbio Torres), squats silently on the banks of the Amazon River in the Colombian jungle. A canoe approaches, carrying a Colombian guide, Manduca (Yauenkü Miguee), and Theo (Jan Bijvoet), a German anthropologist dying of an unspecified disease. Continue reading →

Stages of Grief

VLT's excellent production of The Quality of Life makes meaning of senseless death

Theater
Storm Kennedy and John White in VLT's the quality of life

Two couples, one reeling from the horrific murder of their only daughter, the other coping with a terminal illness that is reaching its late stage, come together and confront their demons: This is the thumbiest of thumbnail sketches of The Quality of Life, a play by Jane Anderson that explores the specter of death, the lash of loss, the cycles of grief and how people make meaning amid chaos and crisis — in short, it’s about life itself. Continue reading →

Holistic Fitness Reigns at local Gym

A gym workout should mean more than simply pumping up your pecs or trimming an inch off your waistline

News
Wolfram Conall training with GNG FItness Owner Via MCGriff

As owner of GNG Fitness in Eugene, Via McGriff adheres to the belief that a gym workout should mean more than simply pumping up your pecs or trimming an inch off your waistline. McGriff, who played volleyball in college and on semi-pro teams overseas, says that fitness is not only physical but mental and spiritual as well, and to this end she started up the Holiday Give Back Challenge, a holistic routine that taps a contestant’s “mental ability to maintain or make it through the tough days.” Continue reading →

Tragedies and Statistics

University Theatre's Scorched looks unflinchingly at the side of war we don’t often see, or want to

Theater
Alex Mentzel and Mallory Oslund in UT's Scorched

Clocking in at nearly four hours, University Theatre’s production of Scorched is something of an endurance test, and the stamina it requires is more than just physical. Bloody and unrelenting, the play transports the audience front and center to hell on earth, and its emotional impact is undeniable, like a seizure of post-traumatic stress that won’t let you go. Continue reading →

Drama at the Movies

Film

If this were a movie, it might be a complicated and acrimonious courtroom drama called A Tale of Two Theaters, in which a pair of once-united independent movie houses splits over irreconcilable differences, becoming two separate cinemas run by different ownership. Continue reading →

Toil and Trouble

Film

Lush, brooding and contagiously creepy, The Witch is just the sort of spooky gem that fans of horror clamor for but rarely get. The film neither shocks nor bludgeons you. It does not beg indulgence, nor does it paint its grotesqueries in broad strokes. Continue reading →