Bad Education dir. Almodovar Opens Fri Jan 14 Cinema 21 If Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo collided head-on with a drag queen variety show, the brilliant wreckage would be Pedro Almodovar’s latest, Bad Education. The eccentric Spanish filmmaker weaves together themes of false identity, chronological shifts, and his erotic style, bathing the whole film in a palette […]
Ryan Dirks
Posted inArt
23+ on 9th
23+ on 9th Elizabeth Leach Gallery 417 NW 9th Ave, reception Thursday, January 6, 6 pm Elizabeth Leach’s new gallery space is gorgeous. It’s difficult to parse out the distinctive charm of white walls and hardwood floors, but it’s safe to say this is the most beautiful space in town. To celebrate the new digs, […]
Posted inMovies & TV
I’m Staying Home
It Could Be Worse
Congratulations! You survived the holidays–a time of year when suicide rates spike due to made-for-TV movies and the force-fed myth that everyone wants to spend time with their family. While festive images just make us feel worse about our mundane, imperfect lives, these films, which are often mislabeled as “depressing,” will actually help you realize […]
Posted inArt
Michael Bland’s Four Eyes
Michael Bland’s Four Eyes The Basil Hallward Gallery (inside Powell’s Books), 1005 W Burnside, through December You probably think you’re busy these days, attending holiday parties, drinking, working, looking for work. But you are not busy, not compared to Michael Bland. He has a piece in Motel’s holiday show, Twelve Days, and has a show […]
Posted inArt
Skeletal Systems
Skeletal Systems Michael Paulus, Stumptown on Belmont, 34th & Belmont, through December We’ve all grown up with cartoons–celebrating Thanksgiving with Charlie Brown, watching the Flintstones fight on TV while our parents fight in the other room, mapping a universe of evil with Marvin the Martian. But they’ve also been hiding something from us, something personal, […]
Posted inArt
Sin Tax
SinTax Belinki & Duprey (1224 SW Broadway) and Gallery 500 (420 SW Washington), through December 30 You know that feeling you get when your uncle pins you down at his Thanksgiving party and finds out you share a love for “the rock music?” You can bet he’s going to put on a David Bowie record […]
Posted inBooks
The Romentics
The Romentics The experiment began when this gay couple, Scott Whittier and Scott Pomfret, decided that the rapidly growing contingent of “heterosexual homosexuals” would enjoy reading a romance novel about two men. Enter the “Romentics” books. Their intended readers: Fags who want to have true love and settle down, a new generation that seem to […]
Posted inArt
Surface Tension
Surface Tension Savage Art Resources, 1430 SE Third, opening reception: December 3, from 5-8 pm; exhibit runs through December 31 People used to get excited about abstract art, and I mean excited like a housewife at a taping of Oprah’s Favorite Things. Somewhere between Cubism and Pop people thought abstract painting might change the world, […]
Posted inMusic
The Velvet Underground Play Portland
How an Original Velvet Underground Acetate Wound Up in Portland (And Could Be the Most Expensive Record in the World!)
Yard sales are like junior high dances. You show up full of anticipation, bump into a lot of people, and then leave disappointed. But in both cases, an ineffable sense of possibility spawns return, over and over. Maybe this time I’ll slow dance with Tiffany Pfeiffer. Maybe this time I’ll find a first edition of […]
Posted inArt
Portland Modern
Portland Modern Hall Gallery, 630 SE 3rd, Open Saturdays 12-5 through the end of the month You’ve probably flipped through the pages of Portland Modern by now. Copies of the small catalog of emerging and independent artists can still be found on coffeehouse tables, forgotten on buses, and stacked with year-old magazines on the back […]
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Torch Songs
Torch Songs Elizabeth Leach Gallery, 207 SW Pine, through Nov 20 Disappointment should never come as a surprise to anyone. So while traversing the usual thicket of middling gallery show last First Thursday, I shouldn’t have felt confused. But I did. To say I just didn’t like the works would be to suggest a kind […]
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Visual Art News
The End of the Beginning
With the closing last weekend of two of Portland’s premiere art spaces, Haze Gallery and Disjecta, one might have expected the mood of the city’s creative community to match the macabre zombie disguises of trick-or-treaters wandering the streets. Instead, it was a weekend of fun and celebrations, as both spaces ended their current runs with […]