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Courtney Ferguson

Mercury copy chief and appreciator of the most sophisticated form of comedy: PUNS!
Posted inNews

Tears, Cheers, and Beers

A Recap of Tuesday Night’s Election Results by the Mercury‘s Election Squad
Avatar photoAvatar photoAvatar photoAvatar photoAvatar photoAvatar photoAvatar photoAvatar photoAvatar photoAvatar photoAvatar photo Amy J. Ruiz, Matt Davis, Wm. Steven Humphrey, Marjorie Skinner, Alison Hallett, Erik Henriksen, Courtney Ferguson, Ned Lannamann, Patrick Alan Coleman, Jonathan Shapiro, and Drew Gemmer

IT WAS A PRIMARY ELECTION season marked, from the Democratic presidential contest on down, by excruciatingly close races—at least according to the pre-election day polls and punditry. According to poll numbers, Sho Dozono was holding Sam Adams under the 50 percent mark in the race for Portland mayor, and Steve Novick was consistently neck and […]

Posted inMovies & TV

Aslan Is a Prig

Prince Caspian: The Backwoods Cousin of Lord of the Rings
Avatar photo Courtney Ferguson

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian marks the dubious return to the magical land of Narnia, where lions are even more Jesus-y and those four Pevensie kids get on your last good nerve. Prince Caspian is also, without a doubt, better than the first Narnia film, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but while […]

Posted inMovies & TV

Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Animation Festival

A Succinct Review for the Discerning Cinephile
Avatar photo Courtney Ferguson

Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Animation Festival is like eating too many delicacies in one sitting—caviar, brains, truffles, chocolates… it’s a bit intense. But it’s not the “sick” or the “twisted” that’s too much—96 minutes just isn’t enough time to digest all the animation shorts that get thrown your way. (Granted, we’re talking about […]

Posted inBooks

The Resurrectionist

by Jack O’Connell (Algonquin Books)
Avatar photo Courtney Ferguson

Jack O’Connell’s The Resurrectionist starts out standard enough—in a book club sort of way—with a man, Sweeney, who is dealing with the rage and guilt of losing his six-year-old son to a coma and then his wife to suicide. But, holy hell, things get weird fast. Enter Nadia, a femme fatale nurse who’s the matriarch […]

Posted inMovies & TV

Cannibals Are Not Vegans

Succint review for the Discerning Cinephile
Avatar photoAvatar photoAvatar photo Courtney Ferguson, Marjorie Skinner, and Drew Gemmer

Cannibal Holocaust dir. Ruggero Deodato Plays Sat April 12 Hollywood Theatre Cannibal Holocaust is exactly as tasteful as its title implies. The organizers of the Grindhouse Film Festival, who’re sponsoring this screening, promise, “This film is absolutely guaranteed to shock, offend, and disgust.” Yeah, that’s pretty much right. Granted, this is a rare chance to […]

Posted inBooks

Pravda

by Edward Docx(Mariner Books)
Avatar photo Courtney Ferguson

Man, I had a pickle of a time reading Edward Docx’s second novel, Pravda. Fifty pages in, I was fit to throw his twisted knot of metaphors at the wall. Two hundred pages in and I’d calmed down considerably, even if Docx’s use of literary whatzits was still as thick as London fog. Fortunately for […]

Posted inBooks

Then We Came to the End

by Joshua Ferris (Back Bay Books)
Avatar photo Courtney Ferguson

Compared ad nauseam by every literary critic in the business to Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Joshua Ferris’ debut novel Then We Came to the End doesn’t live up to the hype. While amusing and spot-on, the clinging gimmickry of the novel’s collective first-person voice (“We walked to the cafeteria”; “We gathered in her cubicle”) never transcends […]

Posted inMovies & TV

Yawn

Sleepwalking through the Late ’90s
Avatar photo Courtney Ferguson

Remember that spate of great indie films in the late ’90s? Affliction, In the Bedroom, Happiness, Cookie’s Fortune: all similar in their portrayal of dysfunctional families, told via indie-film sensibilities. Sleepwalking wishes it could include itself on that list, but not even a time machine could transport this lifeless relic back to that heyday. With […]

Posted inBooks

The Delivery Man

by Joe McGinniss Jr(Grove Press)
Avatar photo Courtney Ferguson

The Delivery Man packs a wallop, in that Bret Easton Ellis “my characters live in an ethical vacuum and they love it” sort of way, but author Joe McGinniss Jr. has a voice of his own. Yes, his characters live in the epitome of a moral morass—Las Vegas—but these twentysomething desert rats are searching for […]

Posted inMovies & TV

Ghost Whisperer

Over Her Dead Body: Surprisingly Funny
Avatar photo Courtney Ferguson

The plot is ludicrous. In Over Her Dead Body, a gigantic angel ice sculpture crushes dead-eyed Kate (Eva Longoria Parker) on her wedding day. Her fiancé, Henry (Paul Rudd), begrudgingly consults a psychic a year later to see if Kate’s ghost will let him start dating again. His psychic, Ashley (Lake Bell), falls for him. […]

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