“….I think only birds look well stuffed….” (via samljackson)
Movies: a noisy ‘Battleship,’ a sweetly dark ‘Bernie,’ a dim ‘Dictator’ and more
This week's new releases in Portland-area theaters.
"Battleship"Lots -- and I mean lots -- of films and film events for this springlike weekend. At the multiplexes, we've got the boats-vs-aliens film "Battleship," the Sacha Baron Cohen comedy "The Dictator," and the star-packed mom-and-dad-com "What to Expect When You're Expecting." In the arthouses we have the dark marital comedy "Darling Companion," the dark true crime comedy "Bernie," the spree-killer satire "God Bless America," and the documentary "Mansome" about male grooming. We've also got a roundup of three local film events well worth catching: the annual Portland Queer Documentary Festival, the Great Northwest Film Tour of the documentary "Adventures in Plymptoons" about cartoonist Bill Plympton, and the brand new Experimental Film Festival Portland. Add a jam-packed "Also Opening" and "Indie/Arthouse" and "Levy's High Five" and your cinematic cups run way the heck over.
Tugg combines crowdfunding and video-on-demand to let moviegoers program the theater
A new online system allows film lovers and local communities to bring special film events to theaters near them.
from "One Day on Earth"Heaven knows the modern multiplex experience -- a torture of in-theater advertising, unrepentant texting and telephoning, noisy snacking, and various other indicators of impending cultural collapse -- isn’t like that any more. And that’s without even factoring in the quality and monotony of the films that you can choose from, which, as we all know, are rarely as good as the best of what’s on TV on a given night.
But now there may be another way to go to the movies, to see films with a like-spirited community, to select what you’d like to see and when you’d like to see it, and to be joined in the screening by others, known to you or not, who share a similar passion for the same sort of thing, no matter how unusual or specialized it may be.
That’s part of the idea behind TUGG, a new service that combines crowd-funding, like Kickstarter, with the build-your-own-entertainment model of video-on-demand -- but in a movie theater. With relationships with movie theaters all across the country and a library of more than 400 feature-length films, including new independent films, classic Hollywood and foreign movies, dramas, documentaries, and genre pictures, Tugg allows film lovers or people with a common interest in a particular subject matter to create a screening at a local theater at a time and date of their choosing.
The system was developed over the past two years in Austin, Texas, and it has been out in the world in beta format since the South by Southwest festival in March.
In mere months, Tugg has been used across the US to spread new independent films outside of the traditional channels of distribution, to showcase small films that can’t necessarily sustain an weeklong run at a theater in certain communities, and to combine social issue campaigns with nights out at the movies. In April, an Earth Day screening of the documentary "One Day on Earth" resulted in 1800 tickets being sold through TUGG to screenings in 11 different cities; one Los Angeles theater alone had 400 attendees.
It’s a truly simple system: You create an account on Tugg and connect it to your social networks (Facebook, Google+, or Twitter), select a movie from Tugg’s library, choose a date and time, and select from among the theaters in your area that work with Tugg (the list includes many Regal and Cinemark theaters as well as local houses such as Portland’s Living Room Theaters). An invitation goes out to the people on your network, who can then reserve a seat for the event with a credit card. When a minimum percentage of the seats has been reserved, the screening is guaranteed as a go and credit cards are charged for the tickets. And then you and your friends (and friends of your friends) attend just as you would any ordinary movie screening -- with the novelty that everyone in the theater is connected by the fibers of social networks as well as by the desire to see this film at this particular time with this particular group.
from "#ReGeneration"“We heard about Tugg through our distributors,” Baker explains, “and we decided it was a great way to promote our project.” In Portland, Baker and company had a triple-threat of promotional tools: a strong interest in the subject matter of the film, a community which is already very supportive of independent movies, and Baker’s own web of personal connections. “Being born and raised in Portland,” he says, “I reached out to several people within the community to help spread the word. And of course I had some family and friends take part in the screening.”
“#ReGENRATION” is coming back for another bite of the apple in Portland, on June 6 (details). But another screening, of the documentary “El Bulli,” about the famed chef Ferran Adrià, was due to be held at the Living Room but failed to garner enough ticket reservations in time for the film to be shown.
Tugg co-founder Nicolas Gonda explains that, so far, the system works just as well for classic or narrative films as for new and issue-driven movies. “The films we’ve shown have really run the gamut, from classics like ‘Dr. Strangelove’ and ‘The Good, The Bad & The Ugly,’ to recent releases like ‘The Tree of Life’ and cult films like ‘The FP.’”
According to Gonda, “It may not make sense for a theater to program a weeklong run of a small independent film with no marketing budget attached. But in almost every community there is potential for like-minded individuals or organizations to facilitate a one-off screening through Tugg.”
The films are principally shown in the digital DCP format, but Tugg can also work with 35mm film prints and other formats. Currently, Tugg is in negotiations with major distributors to get even more films -- both back-catalogue and current releases -- into its system, and is seeking more theatrical venues in more communities as potential host sites.
“People nationwide are using Tugg to bring their communities together,” says Gonda. “We’ve received feedback from Tugg users who say it’s particularly rewarding to share a film with a theater packed full of your friends, family and fellow film fans.”
The dazzling ‘Cunningham,’ the lost ‘Jobs,’ Chilean zombies and more
New releases in Portland-area theaters not reviewed in this week's A&E.
"Bill Cunningham: New York"“Daughters of the Dust” Director Julie Dash will be present for a screening of her 1992 feature about life in the Gullah regions of Georgia and South Carolina. (Northwest Film Center, Monday only)
“H. P. Lovecraft double feature” The silent short feature “The Call of Cthulhu” and the full-length “The Whisperer in Darkness” help keep Portland’s love of the cult writer alive. (Clinton Street Theater, Friday to Sunday only)
“The Killing” Stanley Kubrick’s great, tense, doomy 1956 heist movie. A perfect film noir. (Laurelhurst Theater)
“NW Animation Festival” A selection of short films from around the world. (Hollywood Theatre, Friday to Sunday only)
“Payback” Documentary, based on a Margaret Atwood book, about the culture of debt and bankruptcy. (Living Room Theaters)
“The Perfect Family” Kathleen Turner in a dark comedy about a mom trying to reshape her family into an ideal. (Living Room Theaters)
“Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview” Feature-length chat with the computer guru from the days when he was running the doomed company NeXT. (Hollywood Theatre)
“Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” Before the internet meme featuring a sarcastic Gene Wilder, before Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, um, revisited it, the original 1971 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book became a classic for good reason. Presented in a sing-along version. (Hollywood Theatre, Saturday only)
“Zombie Dawn” Low-budget zombie movie from Chile. And if that isn’t intriguing enough, you get a free comic book with your ticket. (Kiggins Theatre)
Hope and Change
Hope and Change
Levy’s High Five, May 18 – 24
The five films playing in Portland-area theaters that I'd soonest see again.
"Jiro Dreams of Sushi"2) “The Raid: Redemption” An ultra-violent, wildly kinetic martial arts film that virtually strips itself of the narrative conventions of plot, theme and characterization to create a white-knuckle thrill ride. Writer-director Gareth Evans, a Welshman living in Indonesia, takes the simplest story -- a squad of cops attacks a Jakarta apartment house where a crime lord is ensconced -- and uses it to string together wild action sequences that leave the viewer as exhausted as if he or she had fought them. His stars -- Iko Uwais as a baby-faced cop and Yayan Ruhian (who also choreographed) as a stringy-haired bad guy -- are dazzling. The whole thing is pure cinema: the human body rendered as a machine capable of mayhem, daring, and, yes, grace. Academy, Laurelhurst
3) “The Portland Queer Documentary Festival” Now marking its sixth year, QDocs, as it’s known, continues on as the only festival in the hemisphere dedicated to non-fictional films dealing with LGBT issues (there’s also one in Australia, which is rather a schlep...). This year’s crop is predictably diverse, with several films on contemporary political issues such as marriage rights (“Question One”) and gay clergy (“Love Free or Die”) and a number of portraits of artists who have carved out space in fields not immediately associated with gay and lesbian performers such as country music (“Chely Wright: Wish Me Away”) and comic books (“King of Comics”). A particular highlight is “Vito,” a compelling, smart and moving portrait of the late film historian and activist Vito Russo. Many of the films will be presented by their directors or subjects; all screenings will be held at McMenamins Kennedy School. Full ticket and schedule information
4) “Bernie” It’s a term of deep praise to note that writer-director Richard Linklater (deepbreath: “Slacker,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset,” “Waking Life,” “School of Rock”) is capable more than any contemporary American filmmaker of making terrific movies about nearly nothing. Here, working with a based-on-truth story, he gives us life in the small East Texas town of Carthage, where a beneficent funeral director (Jack Black) and a mean, wealthy widow (Shirley MacLaine) become unlikely chums and companions...under she mysteriously goes missing. Linklater weaves the dramatized version of the story with dry and deft interviews of actual Carthaginians (is that what they’re called?) and even several musical numbers in a perfect frappe of a black comedy. Fox Tower
5) “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” Jiro Ono is the owner of a Tokyo sushi bar with 10 seats and 3 Michelin stars, and David Gelb’s gorgeous and intimate documentary about the man and his obsession gives you an idea of how that can not only be so but be fitting. Jiro and his two sons (bound to the chef’s apron strings, almost literally) devote untold hours of work and thought to the perfection of sushi-making, turning a sometimes makework form of cookery into indisputably high art. At 85, the old master still works virtually every day, and the fruit of his focus is in servings of raw fish and warm rice photographed so lusciously that you can almost taste them. A mouthwatering film: literally. Laurelhurst, Living Room Theaters
‘Bernie’ review: Richard Linklater’s light and lighthearted Texas true-crime story
The unlikely comic trio of Shirley MacLaine, Jack Black and Matthew McConaughey brings a sordid little tale to sparkling life.
Shirley MacLaine and Jack Black in "Bernie"The film tells the story of Bernie Tiede, an East Texas mortician beloved in his community for his charitable works, his cheerful spirit and his attentiveness to widows. After the death of one of the town’s richest men, Bernie befriended the fellow’s irascible -- nay, mean -- wife, Marjorie, and became her unlikely best friend, to the point that the suspicious and sharp old gal gave him control of her fortune. It was eyebrow-raising stuff, and then Marjorie stopped being seen around town and some folks got more suspicious than ever.
Working from a script he co-wrote with Skip Hollandsworth, who chronicled the story in a magazine article, Linklater intermixes the recollections of actual denizens of Carthage, Texas, where it all took place, with the dramatic telling of the story as acted by Jack Black as Bernie, Shirley MacLaine as Marjorie and Matthew McConaughey as a district attorney.
The three are marvelous. Black espouses a mincy fussiness, uses his powerful singing voice beautifully, and stretches more than he ever has, even in Linklater’s “School of Rock.” MacLaine, 57 years into a movie career that began when she was 21, plays her wicked role with just the right blend of comedy and villainy. And McConaughey (whom Linklater discovered, recall) manages subtly to expose the dumb core of his prima donna prosecutor.
“Bernie” is slight but terrific. The intertwining of the sharply tuned actors and the guileless (and often hilarious) townspeople is seamless, the tale is sometimes despairing but never heavy, and the blend of drama, comedy and music is brisk and fresh. Linklater has many estimable qualities, but with this film he reminds us that he can craft a cinematic soufflé better than just about any director in America.
(104 min., PG-13, Fox Tower) Grade: A-minus
QDocs, "Plymptoons" and EFF Portland make for a busy week of film festivals
A diversity of film events turn up at once, making for a rich and hectic week.
Vito Russo from "Vito" at QDocsTwo festivals of note and a barnstorming film tour highlight a truly eclectic crop of movie choices, and we’ve got the skinny on all three.
QDoc
(by Grant Butler)
Portland’s Queer Documentary Film Festival, kicked off at McMenamins Kennedy School on Thursday night with “Wish Me Away,” about country singer Chely Wright, followed by a big party at downtown’s new restaurant Corazon. But the festival kicks into high gear today, with screenings of 11 additional films being held Friday through Sunday. Here are five of the standouts:
“King of Comics” German cartoonist Ralf König has been shocking and entertaining readers since the 1980s with his graphic and often hilarious comic books “Gay Comix.” His drawing style is reminiscent of R. Crumb, with a touch of delicious crude humor. This portrait of the artist shows him giving a hilarious reading of some of his best stories, intermixed with a melancholy look at his life, which has involved broken relationships and loneliness, showing there can be tears behind the laughter. This is a 21-and-over screening. (9 p.m. Friday; 80 minutes; Germany) B+
“Question One” President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage earlier this month is just the latest chapter in the ongoing debate over marriage equality, and this documentary offers an even-handed look at the emotions on both sides of the issue. In 2009, Maine’s state legislature approved same-sex marriage, prompting a constitutional ballot battle that ended with voters overturning the right to marry by a significant margin. Filmmakers Joe Fox and James Nubile follow both gay activists fighting the ballot measure, as well as Christian supporters and ministers who believe that marriage can only be defined as between a man and a woman. The film captures the complex thoughts and concerns of people on both sides of the referendum — no easy task. The filmmakers and one of their subjects, Darlene Huntress, will be in attendance. (6 p.m. Saturday; 113 minutes; United States) A
“This Is What Love In Action Looks Like” Gay-conversion therapy is one of the most-controversial practices by some churches today. It prompted a national firestorm in 2005 when a Tennessee program called Love In Action became the focal-point of protests after a 16-year-old gay boy was forced into the program by his parents against his wishes. Memphis bloggers and activists began protesting outside the treatment facility, eventually getting the attention of national TV news, leading to the eventual dissolution of the program. This film asks questions about the intersection of Christian faith and free will, and whether any gay-conversion programs have any merit — not just those directed at teens. Director Morgan Jon Fox will be in attendance. (11:30 a.m. Sunday; 70 minutes; United States) B+
“Love Free or Die” Gene Robinson made international news when he was made a bishop of the Episcopal Church in New Hampshire in 2003, prompting the Anglican Church to ban him from its 10-year conference of bishops five years later. But Robinson went to England anyway, shadowing the conference with speeches at a handful of churches that dared to invite him to preach. The portrait shows how Robinson’s efforts to get the Episcopal Church to recognize same-sex marriage and the role that gays and lesbians have in the clergy is fleshed out with snapshots of his homelife, including his own marriage to his longtime partner when it became legal in New Hampshire. Director Macky Alston will be in attendance. (4 p.m. Sunday; 82 minutes; United States) A-
“Vito” Gay film historian Vito Russo helped show the dismal way that Hollywood has treated gays and lesbians on film with his landmark book “The Celluloid Closet” and his live presentations in the 1980s that showed hundreds of examples of homophobia on film. But Russo was more than a scholar, becoming an outspoken activist in the early years of the AIDS crisis, before the disease cut his own life short. Interviews with family, friends, and archival interviews with Russo create a full portrait of someone who loved cinema, and wanted to see gays and lesbians depicted fairly in the medium. Director Jeffrey Schwarz will be in attendance. (7 p.m. Sunday; 93 minutes; United States) A
Full ticket and program information
The Great Northwest Film Tour
(by Shawn Levy)
The Oscar-nominated cartoonist Bill Plympton is, of course, a native son of Oregon, so it’s only right and proper that he bring a film about his life and art to his home state. And by that you can take it to mean the whole state -- or as much of it as hosts a McMenamins brewpub movie theater.
“Adventures in Plymptoons,” directed by Alexia Anastasio and featuring interviews with a great many of Plympton’s peers and chums, both local and national, will play at no fewer eight of the McMenamin brothers’ theaters in a span of nine days. And Plympton and Anastasio will be on hand throughout the event to discuss their project.
The tour, which has been mounted by the Oregon Media Production Association trade group, begins on Saturday at the Mission Theater in Portland, followed by screenings at the Old St. Francis School in Bend (Sunday), the Kennedy School in Portland (Tuesday), the Grand Lodge in Forest Grove (Wednesday), the Olympic Club in Centralia, Washington (Thursday), the Edgefield Powerstation in Troutdale (Friday, May 25), the Bagdad Theater in Portland (Saturday, May 26) and the St. Johns Theater in Portland (Sunday, May 27).
Saturday’s event is being billed as an “Industry Premiere,” with many of Portland’s famed animators and filmmakers expected to attend. And the next-to-last show, on May 26, is a gala fundraiser for the OMPA, with musical performer Weird Al Yankovic adding to the festivities.
Full ticket and schedule information
Experimental Film Festival Portland
(by Shawn Levy)
It’s been a few years since Peripheral Produce has held one of its seminal PDX Film Fests, and that hasn’t been because there’s been a lack of new experimental film projects created in this most creative of towns. Rather, PDX Fest honcho Matt McCormick has been working busily films of his own and simply hasn’t been up to the heavy task.
With the thought that it would take a whole collective of people to replace McCormick and his team, the filmmakers in the group called Grand Detour have combined their talents to mount a new festival dedicated to film on the margins. Experimental Film Festival Portland (or, cheekily, EFF Portland) will run from Tuesday, May 22 through Sunday, May 27, with premieres of new works from, among many others, Portlanders Vanessa Renwick, Pam Minty, and Karl Lind.
The several programs, comprising dozens of films in all, bear names like “Eruption,” “Mycology” and “Magma Flow” and screen at various locations around town. It all climaxes on May 27 with the Dill Pickle Club history group hosting a symposium on experimental film at the Clinton Street Theater,featuring new work from McCormick, Brooke Jacobson and Jim Blashfield, and, later in the day, the premiere of Renwick’s new film, “Charismatic Megafauna,” presented at the Hollywood Theatre with live musical score.
Full ticket and schedule information
Robert Mitchum does Cannes, 1954
Robert Mitchum does Cannes, 1954
‘Mansome’ review: a lighthearted look at the culture of male grooming
The director of "Super Size Me" takes a look at men (like himself) who take care with their appearance.
Jason Bateman (l.) and Morgan Spurlock in "Mansome"Spurlock, who risked his health with a fast-food diet in “Super Size Me” and sports a signature handlebar moustache, reveals the stories of a champion beardsman whose life is built around healthy beard growth, a New York businessman who obsessively tweaks his appearance with cosmetic treatments, a professional wrestler who shaves his impressively hairy body every working day, and the manufacturer of a deodorant designed for men to wear in, um, their pants. These are peppered with cameos by a clutch of famous faces, ranging from Paul Rudd and John Waters, who raise sharp points, to Zach Galifianakis, who adds randomness, to Adam Carolla, whose patter any 12-year-old could predict and write without seeing the film at all.
As I say, there’s not a lot of meat on the bones of “Mansome” -- certainly not compared to, say, the steroid expose “Bigger, Stronger, Faster*.” Nor is there the sort of zest that infused Spurlock’s last film, “Comic-con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope” (which appeared in April, bless his busy heart). But there are a few chuckles, a few head-scratches and, thankfully, very few missteps. It charms.
(82 min., PG-13, Fox Tower) Grade: B
‘Mansome’ review: a lighthearted look at the culture of male grooming
The director of "Super Size Me" takes a look at men (like himself) who take care with their appearance.
Jason Bateman (l.) and Morgan Spurlock in "Mansome"Spurlock, who risked his health with a fast-food diet in “Super Size Me” and sports a signature handlebar moustache, reveals the stories of a champion beardsman whose life is built around healthy beard growth, a New York businessman who obsessively tweaks his appearance with cosmetic treatments, a professional wrestler who shaves his impressively hairy body every working day, and the manufacturer of a deodorant designed for men to wear in, um, their pants. These are peppered with cameos by a clutch of famous faces, ranging from Paul Rudd and John Waters, who raise sharp points, to Zach Galifianakis, who adds randomness, to Adam Carolla, whose patter any 12-year-old could predict and write without seeing the film at all.
As I say, there’s not a lot of meat on the bones of “Mansome” -- certainly not compared to, say, the steroid expose “Bigger, Stronger, Faster*.” Nor is there the sort of zest that infused Spurlock’s last film, “Comic-con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope” (which appeared in April, bless his busy heart). But there are a few chuckles, a few head-scratches and, thankfully, very few missteps. It charms.
(82 min., PG-13, Fox Tower) Grade: B
Amazin’s: Agee and Swoboda
Amazin’s: Agee and Swoboda
‘God Bless America’ review: killing off pop culture, one reality star at a time
A screed against the worst aspects of the culture goes off the rails, but not without raising some real issues.
Joel Murry and Tara Lynne Barr in "God Bless America"Writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait (the squealing, gnarly-haired comedian and, by now, auteur of a handful of cult films) vents his frustration with contemporary American culture, values and mores in the story of Frank, a middle-aged schlub who, divorced, friendless, jobless and diagnosed with cancer, goes on a spree to kill reality TV stars, parking space hoggers, movie theater talkers, and others who violate his code of simple human decency. In the process, Frank accrues a co-conspirator, Roxy, a high school girl with just as many peeves and maybe even more anger at the world.
The pair are played by Joel Murray (Freddy Rumson from TV’s “Mad Men”) and relative newcomer Tara Lynne Barr. Murray isn’t exactly a deep performer, but he fits the role well, and Barr is quite game. As the film progresses, though, their characters come to seem less like people than like mere vehicles for Goldthwait’s personal outrage. And in that context, their anger (not to mention the murders they commit) seems disproportionate and contrived. “God Bless America” offers a few laughs and a moment or two of drama, but it’s finally more of a conceit -- and a familiar one -- than a film.
(100 min., R, Hollywood Theatre) Grade: B-minus
This week’s last-chance movies: ‘Bully,’ ‘Damsels in Distress,’ ‘Marley,’ and more
Catch 'em while you can!
from "Bully"One shot: George Lazenby, the only Australian James Bond
One shot: George Lazenby, the only Australian James Bond
‘The Dictator’ review: in a tired fiction, Sacha Baron Cohen loses his comic bite
He's still crude and sometimes quite funny, but there's little electricity in the make-believe compared to his real-world exploits, and the result is Sandler-esque.
Sacha Baron Cohen in "The Dictator"It was frequently sophomoric and often quite hilarious, but it was also a finite enterprise: as the career of Michael Moore demonstrates, a fellow can only catch other folks by surprise for so long before the echo of his own fame precedes him and his access to unguarded sources dries up.
And so Cohen and his team -- director Larry Charles and a cohort of writers who worked on “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” -- have invented a new character who shares some attributes with the comedian’s other false faces but who lives inside a fictional world, which rather blunts the satire. “The Dictator,” the lumpy comedy in which this new fellow appears, feels not so much like a sibling of Cohen’s brilliant TV work or the stupefying “Borat” and “Bruno” movies as it does a cousin with only some of the genetic gifts its relatives enjoys.
Cohen plays Supreme Leader Aladeen, president-for-life of the fictional North African nation of Wadiya, which he rules with callous brutality. When Aladeen addresses the United Nations on the subject of Wadiya’s nuclear weapons program, he is kidnapped and stripped of power by a scheming underling (Ben Kingsley) who plans to democratize the nation in order to exploit its oil reserves. Aladeen survives the coup but is left to the mercies of modern New York, which is filled with the sorts of people whom he has mercilessly despised and belittled throughout his life.
He’s taken in by Zoe (Anna Faris), the over-eager operator of a politically correct grocery, and has a chance encounter with Nuclear Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas), a Wadiyan scientist whom Aladeen had ordered to be executed years earlier (all of his victims, learns, actually had their lives spared by an executioner disloyal to the regime). Together, the two exiles plan to scuttle the plans for regime change in Wadiya, restore Aladeen’s despotic monarchy, and get back to building nukes.
All of this is an excuse for one outrageous, grotesque, gratuitous joke after another. Like Cohen’s other personae, Aladeen is a seething mass of biases and bigotries, and he continually hates on and debases women, minorities, celebrities, children, old folks, ordinary Americans, and, really, anyone who wanders through into his gaze. Some of it is funny, and much of it is shocking, but little of it has the satiric impact or sense of danger that accompanied the antics of Cohen’s previous characters, who risked the chance of having political or cultural figures explode at them or ordinary folks -- often mobs of them -- beat them up. Here, in a purely fictional context, it’s all make-believe, and the sparks that occasionally result from the cheek and the crudeness aren’t nearly so bright. (And Charles, needless to remind anyone, is no one’s idea of a master comic filmmaker.)
For all its boundary-pushing, “The Dictator” only once makes you feel truly uncomfortable, very near the end, when Aladeen lists the qualities that make a nation a dictatorship and virtually anatomizes the contemporary American political, economic, journalistic and cultural milieu. But that moment, a weird inversion of Charlie Chaplin’s famous paean to human rights at the end of “The Great Dictator,” doesn’t resonate amid the caustic frivolity of the rest. “The Dictator” has a few laughs along its bumpy path, but not enough of them to indicate that Cohen has found a means to escape the shadows of his early career and forge a second act for himself.
(82 min., R, multiple locations) Grade: C-plus
Pele takes the field in Portland under yet more awesome tifo,…
Pele takes the field in Portland under yet more awesome tifo, Soccer Bowl 1977 (F. Beckenbauer in tunnel) #rctid
Undaunted by massive tifo display, Bobby Moore & San Antonio…
Undaunted by massive tifo display, Bobby Moore & San Antonio Thunder take on the Timbers, 1976 (via FYNASL) #rctid
“I said, ‘Jesus Christ! Where’d you get that…
“I said, ‘Jesus Christ! Where’d you get that Cadillac?’”
“We know how to behave! We’ve had lessons!”
“We know how to behave! We’ve had lessons!”
“….all I see now is blonde, brunette,…
“….all I see now is blonde, brunette, redhead….”
Being geniuses together (sort of): Federico Fellini and Jerry…
Being geniuses together (sort of): Federico Fellini and Jerry Lewis
Robert De Niro Sr. (1922 – 1993)
Robert De Niro Sr. (1922 - 1993)
Blue eyes, 4 of ‘em: Montgomery Clift & Frank Sinatra…
Blue eyes, 4 of ‘em: Montgomery Clift & Frank Sinatra filming “From Here To Eternity” (via avaritagrace)
International posters for “The Searchers” (1956)
International posters for “The Searchers” (1956)
Blue droog
Blue droog
Movies: Hot summer films, tepid ‘Shadows,’ an eerie ‘Voice’ and more
New releases in Portland-area theaters not reviewed in this week's A&E.
Johnny Depp in "Dark Shadows"Cruel ‘Games,’ tireless ‘Searchers,’ several fests and more
New releases in Portland-area theaters not reviewed in this week's A&E.
John Wayne in "The Searchers" (1956)“HDFEST” A selection of new films from around the world made for and projected in high-definition formats. (Living Room Theaters, Tuesday through Thursday only)
“Inter-Action: Animated Shorts” A collection of recent animated films by SEAT (the Seattle Experimental Animation Team), presented by Seattle animator Tess Martin. (Northwest Film Center, Thursday only)
“The Invisible War” Documentarian Kirby Dick (“This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” “Derrida”) looks into the under-reported phenomenon of sexual assault in the American military. (Hollywood Theatre, Thursday only)
“Jesus Henry Christ” A boy conceived in a laboratory seeks his biological father; stars include Toni Collette and Michael Sheen. (Living Room Theaters)
“Pacific University Senior Theses Films” A presentation of the work of soon-to-be graduates of Pacific University’s Media Arts Department. (CLinton Street Theater, Thursday only)
“Sprout Film Festival” A collection of films about the lives and accomplishments of people with learning disabilities. (McMenamins Kennedy School, Saturday only)
“The Searchers” John Wayne stars as the brutal, dogged, racist Ethan Edwards, who spends years seeking a neice who has been kidnapped by Native Americans, in John Ford’s 1956 classic. (Laurelhurst Theater)
Summer Movie Roundup: ‘Sumer is icumen in’ with a bang and lots of echoes
All the summer movie news you need for only-in-Portland film events, big global blockbusters and everything in between.
Christian Bale as Batman in "The Dark Knight Rises"As my small gesture toward decluttering your heads, I've (trendy verb alert) aggregated the whole shebang here.
To wit:
Mini-essay on Summer Movies 2012
May releases
June releases
July releases
August releases
Films with undetermined release dates
Photo slide show of dozens of images from the summer's releases and events
It's a lot, yes. How nice of somebody (and I only take partial credit here) to break it all down and map it out.
