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If you’ve been thinking that maybe Tim Burton has slipped a little, you’re hardly alone. This spring’s Dark Shadows came and went, hardly a blip on the radar screen of pop culture, and 2010’s Alice in Wonderland was such a murky muddle that even Johnny Depp and a plethora of talented actresses couldn’t turn it into something watchable. Continue reading
2012 is flying by, people. The end is nigh, supposedly, on Dec. 21, and so this month, the University of Oregon Folklore program began a series of film screenings entitled “Apocalypse Now … and Then” that will run weekly through Wednesday, Nov. 21. Take a wild crack at what the films are about — yep, you guessed it: the end of the freaking world. The series includes such films as Children of Men (10-24), The Omega Man (11-7), Night of the Comet (11-21) and other such apocalyptic works. Continue reading
Time-travel stories are always tricky. As a viewer, you have to accept paradoxes and twisting strands of plot, and writer-director Rian Johnson’s Looper — the fall film I looked forward to the way some people anticipated The Master — will not hold your hand on this matter. The explanation is quick and to the point: In the future, time travel will be invented, then outlawed, then used by outlaws. The future mob hires loopers, men (and only men, apparently) who assassinate victims who have been sent back in time to be killed. Continue reading
Samsara, according to the film’s website, is a Sanskrit word meaning “the ever turning wheel of life.” The film, which has taken this word for its title, has no dialogue, no narrative; it consists of a series of images the filmmakers describe as a “nonverbal, guided meditation.” Continue reading
Downtown Eugene: On a spring evening in 1938, Shirley Temple, Laurel and Hardy, Mae West, Ginger Rogers and the Three Stooges could be seen posing for the paparazzi under the bright lights of the Heilig Theater marquee where the Hult Center now stands. OK, they were actually local actors hired by the theater for the “Hollywood Premiere and Follies,” a show replicating the Hollywood glamour of an opening night at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater and slated by The Register-Guard as “one of the biggest social and theatrical events ever seen in this city.” Continue reading
Elena begins with such a long, slowly shifting shot that the image — a bare tree branch, a black bird, an apartment balcony — becomes ominous. The branch blurs into the apartment, which comes into focus as a large, sterile, tasteful place, spacious and passionless, and clearly expensive. Continue reading
Stephen King announced on his website today that the sequel to The Shining will be released Sept. 24, 2013. King will bring the child character, Danny Torrence (the Esp-gifted/cursed kid who bikes around the Overlook Hotel), back to life in Doctor Sleep, as a middle-aged hospice employee who finds his supernatural powers still come in handy. Here's to 36 years in the making! Continue reading
Mike Birbiglia’s life story is determined to come to you in all forms. In 2010, the comedian’s book Sleepwalk with Me and Other Painfully True Stories — a series of stories, half painful and half funny, about the comedian’s life, career and bouts with sleepwalking — was released. Continue reading
In 2006, director John Hillcoat blew my mind. I went into The Proposition knowing only that it was set in Australia and starred a lot of actors I admire; I came out half shellshocked and entirely awed. Bloody, ugly, intense, beautifully and intelligently made, The Proposition was a movie that wrestled with morality; put tough, deeply flawed characters front and center; and didn’t shy away from truly awful violence. Continue reading
“Likable” might not be the first word that comes to mind when you imagine a semi-romantic comedy about a pair of divorcing thirtysomethings, but it might be just the word for Celeste and Jesse Forever. Writer and star Rashida Jones, who’s arguably most familiar from Parks and Recreation, turned what could have been a one-note role in I Love You Man into an actual character, and has a slippery, almost prickly warmth; she radiates a sense that she’s a lot of fun to be around until you piss her off. Continue reading