That’s Amore
Woody Allen is a great American filmmaker, though I’m not sure if I should place that somewhat queasy statement in quotation marks or simply note that, as an assertion, it drags the luggage of several qualifiers. Continue reading
Film: Page 51
Big House Blues at the Bijou
The Goddess of Canadian Blues visits Eugene This week, Bijou Art Cinema will begin screening Music from the Big House, a film that follows Canadian blues chanteuse Rita Chiarelli through her experience with putting on a show inside Louisiana’s Angola prison. Continue reading
Fade to Black
In the age of the quick fix and pop-up porn, you gotta hand it to E.L. James for hoodwinking the hoi polloi into dicking around with something as atavistic and temperate as on-the-page erotica. Fifty Shades of Grey — the first installment in a trilogy of erotic novels that started online as Twilight fanfiction — sold more than 10 million copies in six weeks in the U.S. alone. This, despite repeated assaults by high-brow literary critics as well as pop sexpert Dr. Continue reading
Growing Pains
In 2007, Dee Rees wrote and directed a short film, Pariah, about a black teen in Brooklyn struggling to come to terms with her identity as a lesbian. Rees — who interned for Spike Lee’s 40 Acres program — went on to direct two more shorts before returning to the compelling drama of a teenaged protagonist who, in her search for sexual identity, shuffles through personas like masks at a costume ball. Continue reading
Eugene Goes to the Oscars
If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front cuts from dramatic media footage, including the burning of a $12-million ski resort at Vail, Colo., and the arson at the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture, to the streets of New York City, where activist and ecosaboteur Daniel McGowan was living in 2005. Continue reading
Bombers, Bullets and Black History
John Wayne, Audie Murphy, Tom Berenger, Sylvester Stallone — these were the “war heroes” in the movies I grew up watching. All of them portrayed brazen, fearless, patriotic characters in over-the-top flicks that defined the psyches of many American fighting men in service today, as well as Americans who’ve never seen war but love to watch war movies. Continue reading
Make It Stop
Only you can stop audience abuse. By not going to this movie.
Make It Stop Only you can stop audience abuse. By not going to this movie. by Molly Templeton Continue reading
Tonight Only: ‘Hood to Coast’ at Cinemark
The way I feel about running can be summed up in one tiny word: No. No, no, no; no to being sweaty and uncomfortable and having aching knees and feeling like I can’t breathe. (I blame high school gym class for all of this, by the by.) Continue reading
Tonight: ‘Hori Smoku Sailor Jerry’
‘Scott Pilgrim’ is Even Nerdier Than You Think
I can’t decide which gave me a bigger squee in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: the tinkling fairy fountain music from Zelda? Or Nega Scott’s super-resemblance to evil Link. Or maybe … no … yes … I CAN’T PICK! (You read and watch enough Scott Pilgrim, you’ll start being indecisive in all caps too, OK?) Continue reading