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Suzette Smith is the arts & culture editor of the Portland Mercury. Go ahead and tell her about all your food, art, and culture gripes: suzette@portlandmercury.com. Follow her on Twitter, Bluesky, and Letterboxd.
Portland comic artists share their passion for Shirley Jackson, Queen of Gloom.
The Lure works on a few different levels. On one hand, it’s a sexy Polish horror musical about savage mermaid sisters trying to eat people. (Everybody who’s into that already has their ticket.) But dig a bit deeper and The Lure is what I wish films were more often allowed to be. Agnieszka Smoczyska’s debut […]
After being threatened with a 300-percent rent increase, it seemed that things were looking up for Portland’s Independent Publishing Resource Center. Now, though, it looks like the opposite might be true. The Independent Publishing Resource Center “has now officially walked away from negotiations with the [City Bikes Annex] location on 7th and Ankeny,” IPRC Executive […]
STEF CHURA Fri 2/17 Disjecta Zak Bratto Stef Chura is kind of blowing up right now. Her debut full-length, Messes, just dropped at the end of January, and though it may seem like the Michigan singer/songwriter arrived at the head of grunge rock fully formed, she’s actually been sitting on a number of Messes’ tracks […]
The Lure: There’s some tail sex stuff.
FRED THOMAS More than just a gearhead. JIMMI FRANCOEUR IT’S EASY to see that Fred Thomas is a well-rounded songwriter; he’s done a lot of living. Even though his main job is producing and recording—the work he did with Stef Chura’s new album Messes immediately springs to mind—he has more to talk about than gear. […]
Fred Thomas’ latest, Changer, centers on immersive synth instrumentals.
The Space Between Us asks you to believe that journalists would show up in ball gowns to a press conference about a rocket launch—and that afterwards, they would spill out onto a picturesque runway, watching as a rocket revs its engines like a motorbike. Who wastes fuel like that? It’s clear we aren’t at NASA, […]
In which Gary Oldman watches teens make out.
Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar has given Adriana Ugarte, the central actress of his new film Julieta, his current hairstyle—puffy and white like a seeding dandelion. It’s as if he’s trying to place himself into this narrative he so admires—as the youngest, hottest Julieta, who gets to have sex on a moving train. Julieta is based […]
They’re all bad people. I’d like to say that the characters in Portland-based director Vu Pham’s short films are “morally complex”—but really, just about every single one of them is self-serving in a way that can be hard to watch. There’s a theater director who’s playing mind games with his wife in preparation for a […]
With Julieta, Pedro Almodóvar riffs on Alice Munro.
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