Arts: Page 244

Carte Blanche

Film

After more than a decade of writing about movies, the Oscars, somehow, still raise a fire in me. I know I will be disappointed. I know there will be one or two wins that seem perfect, one or two speeches that surprise, just like I know that most of the lauded films will be about white men enduring something. I know the Oscars matter, on a business and cultural level, no matter what the Coen brothers — who’ve conveniently already earned a few — say. Winning is power and power is money, and money lets people decide which stories get told. Continue reading →

Drone Grrrls

Seattle band Chastity Belt

Music
Chastity Belt

Last year, Seattle band Chastity Belt released its debut, Time to Go Home, on Hardly Art, a subsidiary of Sub Pop Records used to foster and grow interesting bands that might not otherwise be quite ready for prime time.  The album runs the gamut of Northwest indie rock: a little Riot Grrrl here, a little Nirvana there, a little Sleater-Kinney elsewhere. Listen closely and hear the guitar tone of REM’s Peter Buck on the song “Trapped.”  Continue reading →

Fire Waiting for Fuel

Activist singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco comes to McDonald Theatre with a mission

Music
Ani Difranco

Ani DiFranco doesn’t mince words: Her current tour is called Vote Dammit! The objective is to ignite the political fires of an audience through music and community building.  “It’s about participation,” DiFranco tells EW. “If we sit out on election day, bad things will happen, but if everyone who could vote would vote we’d have a better country.”  Continue reading →

Growing Up Gay

Local actor Brian Haimbach discusses his play How to Be a Sissy

Theater
Brian Haimbach

How to Be a Sissy, a new solo work by actor-writer Brian Haimbach, opens with the memory of a little boy wearing a towel on his head and imagining that he has long, glorious hair.  “I always played with dolls, as early as I can remember,” says Haimbach, who directs the theatre program at Lane Community College. “I don’t remember when I started putting the towel on my head — maybe about third grade.” As a boy, Haimbach’s mother made him keep his hair closely cropped. Continue reading →

Great Expectations

Oregon Shakespeare Festival opens 81st season with beloved classics and world premieres

Theater

As the tilted Earth spins and progresses through her orbit, late February brings light and warmth flooding back to us. But spring is not the only fresh thing bubbling up from all points the south. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland soon greets the lengthening days, buzzing with new stories that are beautifully staged. Under the artistic direction of Bill Rauch, the internationally renowned festival’s 81st season boasts first-run plays, elegant classics and a commitment to bringing a broader world perspective to the stage.  Continue reading →

Arts Hound

Visual Arts

Local jazz songbird Halie Loren joins Torrey Newhart on piano, Mark Schneider on bass and Brian West on drum for “I’ll Be Seeing You: Reflecting the women of jazz,” an event featuring songs by Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Joni Mitchell 7:30 to 10 pm Thursday, Feb. 25, at The Jazz Station downtown. Continue reading →

Walk Like A Man

Jersey Boys tells the Frankie Valli and Four Seasons story

Performing Arts
Jersey Boys opens March 1 at the Hult Center

The earworm train is coming to Eugene: “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You”— the list goes on. Song after song, hook after hook, all from Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons from their glory days in the ’60s and ’70s. Yep, Jersey Boys, the Broadway smash hit, makes its way to the Hult Center March 1-6 with a fairytale about four friends from Newark and their meteoric rise to fame.  Continue reading →

Dicking Around

Film

The long-awaited Deadpool movie is a lot of excellent things: Lively! Violent! Cleverish! Ribald! (If you don’t enjoy the occasional — OK, frequent — dick joke, this is probably not the movie for you.) As the title character, Ryan Reynolds is in his element, and he embraces the challenge of being a likable, violent smartass whose face we often can’t even see (it’s a physical role on more than one level). Continue reading →