The Portland Art Museum (PAM) photography department has been a puzzling entity for at least the last six years that I’ve followed it. Part-time curator Terry Toedtemeier has a refreshingly unconventional eye for photographs that serve the worlds of history, science, and art alike—PAM’s holding of the first scanned photo is a perfect example—but actual […]
Chas Bowie
Posted inMusic
God’s Crooked Smile
Jim White Is Still Searching for the Gold Tooth
“Sometimes I feel like the sky is a prison and the earth is a grave,” Jim White growled on his amazing 1997 debut. The Pensacola singer’s new album, Transnormal Skiperoo, is preoccupied with religion, as per usual, with tracks like “A Town Called Amen” and “Pieces of Heaven.” But the most probing song about God […]
Posted inBooks
Lush Life
by Richard Price (Farrar Straus & Giroux)
When many authors pen “ambitious” novels, they overstuff their books with infinitesimal details about arcane subjects that they’ve recently become expert in. Whether ticking off the contents of a vagabond magician’s bag of tricks, or painting tableaux of whaling boat mess halls, some are so eager to show off their savant-y knowledge that readers have […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Van Sant’s Slow-Mo Kickflip
Paranoid Park: Animal Chin Meets Kurosawa
Gus Van Sant’s last three films—Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days—were, shall we say, “demanding” works. (Several people I know use other terminology.) All of them patiently defied the quick-cut edits and poppy dialogue of contemporary cinema, but while they’re widely regarded by many critics (myself included) as Van Sant’s best films, it’s rare to meet […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Alt Country
The Perfect Robert Altman Mix Tape
The Northwest Film Center (NWFC) has taken a few lumps lately, and while some grievances hold water (namely, the Whitsell Auditorium has all the charm of a college lecture hall), it seems negligent not to point out what the NWFC is doing right, and that’s showing great movies. Over the past year or two in […]
Posted inBooks
How the Dead Dream
by Lydia Millet
Lydia Millet’s sixth novel, How the Dead Dream, opens with an unforgettable image: A young boy named T. is so entranced by money that he purses coins in his mouth, as if to absorb the currency’s mysterious power. His parents are naturally concerned: “Such a dirty habit,” his mother says. T. says he’ll quit for […]
Posted inArt
Lectures:
James Turrell and the Center for Land Use
It’s a dream-team lineup for fans of the earth art set: Wizened guru James Turrell, the reclusive genius who’s transforming an extinct volcano into the greatest artwork of our lifetime, paired with the Center for Land Use for Interpretation (CLUI), a loose but ambitious organization that devotes meticulous attention to how humans interact with the […]
Posted inArt
Working History: African American Objects
The nuances of the word “working” in the title of the Cooley Gallery’s new exhibition, Working History: African American Objects, reveal themselves gradually. These are “working” histories in that they’re still in process and subject to change; a piece of art is commonly referred to as a “work”; the artists in the show are working […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Martin Beats Stiller
Roscoe Jenkins: Martin’s Family Reunion
Your enjoyment of Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins can be predetermined by one question: Do you think an obstacle course showdown between Martin Lawrence and Cedric the Entertainer sounds hilarious? If not, move along to the next review. And even if you said yes in theory, but have been burned by too many pieces of shit […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Lit-Flicks for Dummies
Starting out in the Evening: Read a Book Instead.
In an early scene of Starting out in the Evening—which could best be described as a movie about books for people who don’t actually read them—a publisher demurs from accepting a novelist’s unsolicited manuscript. “We don’t deal with much that’s not cookbooks or celebrity bios these days,” he apologizes. Swell, I thought: Some bitter novelist-turned-screenwriter […]
Posted inBooks
Triple Dare Reading Series
This Friday marks the inaugural event of the Triple Dare Reading Series, a joint venture from neighboring (and seemingly reinvigorated) indie stalwarts Reading Frenzy and the Independent Publishing Resource Center. If the premiere program is any indication, Triple Dare looks poised to set a new standard for well-rounded fun and quality smarts. Author Vendela Vida—better […]
Posted inBooks
Thousand
by Philip-Lorca diCorcia
The year in photography monographs has officially commenced with a squat but massive doorstopper from mid-career superstar Philip-Lorca diCorcia. Thousand is about as compact as a 7-inch LP, but as thick as a pair of phonebooks. It collects 1,000 of the artist’s Polaroids from the past several decades, and reproduces each one alone on ultra-thin […]