Alison Hallett, Author at Portland Mercury

Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Journey into Manhood and Back

Alison HallettJanuary 12, 2006 4:00 amJuly 12, 2022 7:16 pm

Self-Made Man was a book begging to be written. In the reality TV age, with a literary legacy of books such as Black Like Me and Nickel and Dimed, with questions of nature and nurture lurking behind the politics of gay marriage and gender identity, author Norah Vincent has finally done the inevitable: She went […]

Movies & TV

The Real World

Versus the Fake One: Zhang Ke Jia’s The World

Alison HallettDecember 29, 2005 4:00 amJuly 12, 2022 7:16 pm

Okay, so the title’s ironic: The World is set in a theme park in Beijing, a park full of international attractions like Manhattan’s skyline, a miniature Big Ben, and a faux Eiffel Tower. The park looks like the world, but the young people who live and work there know it’s only an imperfect representation. Director […]

Theater & Performance

The Cold Comedy Concoction

Alison HallettDecember 22, 2005 4:00 amJuly 12, 2022 7:16 pm

Stark Raving Theatre’s Second Annual Cold Comedy Concoction has a humanitarian goal: to transform wintertime chills into warmth by keeping audiences laughing at four original, cold-themed one acts. On the night I saw the production, though, it was 31 degrees outside, and the half-hearted chuckles elicited by the show were no substitute for gloves and […]

Movies & TV

The Family Stoned

A Family More Exhausting Than Yours

Alison HallettDecember 15, 2005 4:00 amJuly 12, 2022 7:16 pm

Set in the apparently godless (but still Christmas lovin’) Stone home, The Family Stone opens with the hate-fest that ensues when beloved son Everett (Dermot Mulroney) brings home his new girlfriend, Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker). Meredith is an uptight businesswoman who wears impractical shoes, so it’s no surprise that Everett’s laidback, left-leaning family thinks she’s […]

Theater & Performance

Oleanna

Alison HallettDecember 15, 2005 4:00 amJuly 12, 2022 7:16 pm

Tribe Theatre has new digs at the centerRing, a hippie enclave on SE Foster that also

Theater & Performance

I am a Superhero

Alison HallettDecember 8, 2005 4:00 amJuly 12, 2022 7:16 pm

A sign on the door of the Goldsmith Building instructs passersby to knock three times for entrance to Fever Theater’s I am

Books

The Tender Bar

Alison HallettNovember 24, 2005 4:00 amJuly 12, 2022 7:16 pm

Generally, if booze features prominently in a memoir, it’s in relation to debilitating alcoholism, domestic

Theater & Performance

Alice in Bed

Alison HallettNovember 17, 2005 4:00 amJuly 12, 2022 7:16 pm

Integrity Productions bites off a mouthful with their new production of Susan Sontag’s Alice in Bed. Sontag’s stilted, literary script revolves around women’s illness, intelligence, and imagination, and it’s questionable whether even the finest production company

Movies & TV

Good Actors. Bad Film.

The Dying Gaul: Just Die Already!

Alison HallettNovember 17, 2005 4:00 amJuly 12, 2022 7:16 pm

Poor Hollywood. Once a symbol of glamour and possibility, these days it’s now used in films as little more than a metaphorical cesspool full of symbolic human turds—and with The Dying Gaul, writer/director Craig Lucas plops in a few more. Peter Sarsgaard plays Robert, a young gay screenwriter with a chance to sell his autobiographical […]

Movies & TV

Malle’s Cool

No, Seriously. He Is. We Mean It.

Alison HallettNovember 10, 2005 4:00 amJuly 12, 2022 7:16 pm

Louis Malle’s 1958 film Elevator to the Gallows was, arguably, the beginning of the French New Wave movement in cinema. Inarguably, it’s simply one of the coolest movies ever. Three elements combine to create this apogee of cool: a moody, sultry score by Miles Davis; the rainy, atmosphere-drenched streets of Paris; and starlet Jeanne Moreau’s […]