Arts: Page 388

Swinging from the Altar

Tarzan: The Musical to open at the New Hope Center

Theater

A 1912 piece of pulp fiction by Edgar Rice Burroughs leaves a British baby on the shores of West Africa, growing up securely in the arms of a gorilla, swinging through the jungle and finally landing at the feet of a beautiful young lady, Jane. The original story spawned over 20 sequels. Disney revamped the adventures for a film in 1999 and again for a stage musical in 2004. Nine years later, Tarzan lands at the New Hope Center for the first Pacific Northwest production. Continue reading →

Vampires of Oregon

Springfield Museum hosts Portland artist Anna Fidler’s haunting exhibit

Visual Arts

Vampires are not dead (OK, technically they’re undead). Even with the final nail in the Twilight coffin, they still walk among us: True Blood’s sixth season premieres this June, Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires in the City will be released in May, a remake of the 1992 cult classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer is in the works and an adaptation of the video game Castlevania is slated for 2014. Continue reading →

Folk Renegade Mystics

Music

The ’90s are back. Tribute nights to the decade of the Gap are popping up everywhere; Matchbox 20 is touring with the Goo Goo Dolls, and Boston-based Little War Twins kick off their album Marvelous Mischief with “One Bottle”— recalling the coiled-up intensity of fellow Bostonians and ’90s icons The Pixies before settling into a Ani DiFranco-esque easygoing folk-swing backbeat, but unfortunately falling a little short of both. Continue reading →

Teenagers & Aliens

Film

Two sets of fingerprints are smeared all over The Host, a quiet sci-fi story about a strange invasion. The film is based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer, whose weaknesses as a writer have been plentifully detailed. Her dialogue is leaden, her adjectives overused, her love triangles — or squares — so predictable that my date leaned over, midway through The Host, to say of its matching blond hunks, “I’m confused about which one is Robert Pattinson and which is the werewolf guy.” Continue reading →

Seventies Soul, Comic Books and Ghostface Killah

Music

It’s surprising someone hasn’t done it sooner. On April 16, Ghostface Killah is releasing Twelve Reasons to Die — a companion album to a comic book of the same name.  Given the exaggerated, cartoonish bravado and gritty, urban crime-world motifs of hip hop, the pairing makes perfect sense. And the online trailer for Twelve Reasons to Die is full of noir, Tarantino-style atmosphere referencing classic Blaxploitation films.  Continue reading →