We've got issues.
Staff writer for Eugene Weekly, Rick Levin been airing his grievances in newspapers for the better part of two decades.
From his early career until now, director Martin Scorsese has been documenting the dark and devious side of The American Dream, where success achieved in bad faith leads to spectacular crashes and spiritual bankruptcy. Scorsese is obsessed with the Cinderella story in reverse, where the magic slipper shatters into killing shards of glass. Continue reading
Few things are as starkly inconvenient to our collective perception of well-being than the ongoing existence of homelessness and mental illness. They baffle our understanding. And so, when these two uncomfortable facts collide in a very public way — say, in the form of a ragged man screaming at ghosts in Kesey Square — we reach a level of collective dismay that approaches hysteria. Hysteria, which is just fear, drives us to extremes: anger, pity, denial, paralysis. Continue reading
David O. Russell’s new film, American Hustle, is a shaggy, shambolic love story masquerading as a period crime drama. Loosely based on the ABSCAM operation of the late 1970s, the movie follows the exploits of a pair of charming con artists, Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), who end up getting popped by an ambitious FBI agent, Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), and thereby enlisted in a sting that seeks to bring down, among others, Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), the mayor of Camden, N.J. Continue reading
Tom Blank is on a mission. A Navy veteran and retired director who served his career in television, Blank and his wife moved in 2005 from Hollywood to Eugene, where he immediately took up the cause of advocating for movies as cultural and spiritual artifacts. Continue reading
“Why Star Trek?” asks Christina Allaback, an adjunct theater professor at the University of Oregon. “Why not Star Trek?” Continue reading
Movies are grand, but theater is alive — something to remember as the 2013-2014 season settles into its groove. When we recline in our cozy seats before the big screen, we are supplicating before a product, a bit of prefabricated horseplay that, despite our various responses, is as inflexible and immutable as a ride on a roller coaster. Continue reading
Genre breeds familiarity, and then formula, and then contempt. This is especially true when it comes to romantic comedies, which seemed to suffocate on their own fey cuteness with the disappearance of such seminal directors as Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks. Continue reading
Czech-born playwright Tom Stoppard was knighted as a British subject in 1997, a gesture of literary pomp that, while entirely deserved, nonetheless must have struck Sir Tom as a delicious twist of irony. Continue reading
When Bijou Cinemas announced its 72-hour Horror Film Fest, I said to myself: Why not? It was an open competition with no entry fee; contestants had three days to write, film and edit a 2-3 minute scary movie, the only mandate being that each entrant must utilize a prop and single line of dialogue provided by the Bijou. The prop, in this instance, was a tennis ball, and the bit of dialogue, delivered at the start of the 72-hour countdown, was a line spoken by the ghost Delbert Grady in The Shining: “I should know, sir, I’ve always been here.” Continue reading