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My press email about this year’s crop of Oscar shorts notes that all the animated shorts are rated approximately PG, except “Prologue,” which is described as “not suitable for children.” I would go a step further and say it’s not suitable to be a nominee; it’s more of a five-minute demo reel for someone who clearly has talent but little to say. Continue reading
The Annual Freshman Class Cypher put out by XXL Magazine is something like a rap world debutante ball — a chance for the genre’s most promising hopefuls to prove their mettle in rap’s oldest battle tradition. When the little-known Logic made XXL’s class of 2013, the response was mostly indignation. Who the hell is this guy? And why did he make the cut over, say, Chief Keef? Continue reading
What is the sound of Northwest rock? Some might answer Bikini Kill, Nirvana, The Wipers or even The Kingsmen. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I posit it’s Boise’s Built to Spill. The evidence? The music of Built to Spill is like a day that’s ended up rainy when you expected sun. Doug Martsch’s nasally tenor sounds like damp basements, guitars, drums and bass intertwined in a woozy haze, fueled equally by beer, weed and disappointment. Also the band’s longevity: Built to Spill have been at it since ’92, and in that time they’ve remained remarkably consistent. Continue reading
In the 1970s, The New Mime Circus Theater Ensemble was one of Eugene’s several cooperative community projects. Today, the company has been resurrected in a new form by co-founders Judith “Sparky” Roberts and fellow performer Joe Cronin. Fools Haven, a nonprofit, launched its inaugural performance with a Shakespeare showcase at Springfield’s Wildish Community Theater in December 2014, and has since staged several showcases and other works at the Eugene Public Library, the Very Little Theatre and other public venues. Continue reading
What if you could peer into the hearts and minds of the participants of a middle-school spelling bee, just to see what makes them tick? What’s motivating them? What performance rituals do they employ to correctly spell words like autochthonous or eudaemonic? Cottage Theatre’s new production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee answers these questions and more in a winning production directed by Mark VanBeever. Continue reading
A Masterwork for the New Century: La Compagnie Hervé Koubi at WhiteBird Dance A remarkable piece of movement, a triumph, really, Hervé Koubi’s Ce que le jour doit a la nuit, or in English, ‘What the day owes the night’ pulls together threads stretching into the past, the present and the future. Continue reading
However much we’d all like to tell 2016: “Go home, you’re drunk,” New Year’s Eve in Eugene offers plenty of options to get (responsibly) rowdy … Continue reading
The screenwriter and occasional director Charlie Kaufman has been delightfully gas-lighting moviegoers since 1999’s Being John Malkovich, a film that takes place, quite literally, inside the head of John Malkovich. Like Rod Serling before him, Kaufman loves to knock everything just slightly off kilter, creating an existential free fall that is at once exhilarating and upsetting. Using wry humor to offset his philosophical heebie-jeebies, Kaufman’s what-if movies pry open absurd cracks in accepted reality until a plausible explanation of our human condition emerges. Continue reading
Yes, technically speaking, Shabazz Palaces is a rap group. But that sort of classification is about as accurate as calling Bitches Brew a jazz record or Captain Beefheart a rock star. Sure, it gets you in the right galaxy, but it does nothing to describe the bizarre constellation of fractured beats, warped vocals and occult imagery the group has formed during their six years together. Continue reading
Last year, Ohio’s Saintseneca released Such Things, one of the freshest, and yet familiar, indie-rock records of 2015. Saintseneca’s guitar-based music is sweetly earnest, exhibiting the infectious melodies and charmingly snotty lo-fi sensibilities of Pavement. In other words, Saintseneca are quintessential college rock. Continue reading