Gangster No. 1 dir. McGuigan Opens Fri Sept 27 Hollywood Theater Malcolm McDowell has packed on some weight and lost a significant mass of hair since A Clockwork Orange. Rather than ignoring the fact that his button-nosed sneer will forever be associated with that film, Gangster No. 1 capitalizes on it. McDowell plays a criminal […]
Marjorie Skinner
Marjorie Skinner is the Portland Mercury's Managing Editor, author of the weekly Sold Out column chronicling the area's independent fashion and retail industry, and a frequent contributor to the film and other arts and feature sections of the paper. She has been writing about Portland life and culture for the Mercury since 2001, produces one of Portland's largest annual spring fashion shows, and occasionally answers emails.
Posted inMovies & TV
Aliens Are Coming
Or at Least, Using Wheat to Make Pictures
The average viewer entering the theater for William Gazecki’s documentary Crop Circles: Quest For Truth, will more than likely come equipped with any number of preconceptions about how crop circles are made. Images of hillbillies stomping around with boards in the night, UFOs, government conspiracy, etc. It’s perfect! In fact, those with the most skepticism […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Barberslop
Mediocre Movie x3
Barbershop dir. Tim Story Opens Fri Sept 13 Various Theaters The latest of Ice Cube’s cinematic ventures, Barbershop, seems to promise lightweight, “feel-good” comedy. It takes place over the course of one day in a barbershop on the south side of Chicago. Strapped for cash, the shop’s owner, Calvin (Cube), has to contend with neighborhood […]
Posted inMusic
Stevie Nicks
Stevie Nicks’ participation in Fleetwood Mac is a mystery tantamount to the Bermuda Triangle. I HATE Fleetwood Mac. Their songs are boring, pedestrian and sappy as all get out. Christine McVie’s nasal-ass voice makes me want to smear shit on the wall. I narrowly avoid major automobile accidents scrambling to fast-forward all the rancid crud […]
Posted inMusic
The House Band at the Pig & Whistle
The best band I ever heard totally stunk. However, they exhibited the spirit of rock and roll better than any other live performance I’ve ever seen. In Vancouver, B.C., there’s an interesting “bar” called the Pig & Whistle. The roof is literally caving in, the walls are uneven, and they have one beer tap. It […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Take Me Away
Early Bestial Fantasy in Film
Beauty and the Beast dir. Cocteau Opens Fri Aug 23 Cinema 21 Anyone who’s seen this adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, appreciates its standing as a classic date movie. But not the first date. Although it is a fairytale most people in industrialized countries have heard during childhood, its themes are intense. Director Jean […]
Posted inMovies & TV
The Tedium of Wanting
Will They Just Screw Already?
Read My Lips dir. Audiard Opens Fri Aug 9 Cinema 21 Read My Lips begins as an unlikely tale of romance, and it is, although one as irregular as its participants. Carla is a homely secretary in a nightmarish office, shot effectively enough to induce the fluorescent nausea that turns everyone’s skin a lurid green. […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Theater: Review
The Whipping Hand
The Whipping Hand Disjecta, 116 NE Russell through August 4 The Whipping Hand is a hodgepodge of theater, music, film, and dance, combined in a production billed as “a cabaret of sorts.” It takes place in the mind of an unconscious man, and the patchwork of scenes creates a narrative that invokes the non-linear, visceral […]
Posted inNews
Welcome To My Neighborhood
Drug and Prostitutes on the Run in NW
On Wednesday, July 17, the Northwest District Association hosted a meeting to discuss crime problems in the Northwest neighborhoods. In an attempt to address what is perceived as a recent proliferation of drug activity and prostitution in Northwest Portland, the Association is working with Portland police to expand and modify Portland’s Drug- and Prostitution-Free Zones. […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Nerd-O-Rama
Behind the Scenes at a Spelling Bee!
Spellbound dir. Blitz July 26-27 Whitsell Auditorium Spellbound is a documentary that follows eight pre-teenage contenders in the 1999 National Spelling Bee finals. The cast includes an inner-city girl from D.C. who looks like she’s going to barf every time she steps up to the microphone. Another is a hyperactive spaz from New Jersey who […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Woe Is Me
Another Depressing French Film
The Town is Quiet dir. Guédiguian Opens Fri July 5 Hollywood Theatre These are some sad stories. Robert Guédiguian unflinchingly directs The Town Is Quiet, a melancholy film in which characters in bitter circumstances make desperate choices, going from bad to worse. Michéle works graveyard shifts at a fish factory, supporting her family. Her husband’s […]