Live Review: Camille A. Brown & Dancers

Arts & Books Mr. TOL E RAncE, a new piece of dance-theater from choreographer Camille A. Brown, clocks in at only 45 minutes. But with its frenzied pace, repetitive movements and sometimes cluttered staging, the work feels much longer. Receiving its West Coast debut as part of White Bird’s Uncaged series, Mr. TOL E RAncE means terribly well....   More

 

Friday, December 7, 2012 by REBECCA JACOBSON

Remember the Alameda

Revisiting blaxploitation classics at a former Alberta street institution.

Movie Reviews & Stories In the early 1970s, during the heyday of blaxploitation, there was only one place in Portland you could consistently see pictures like Shaft and Superfly: the Alameda Cinema.  “There wasn   More

 

Wednesday, December 5, 2012 REBECCA JACOBSON

’Couve Crawl

A night out in Portland’s northern neighbor.

Featured Stories Vancouver’s nightlife is not bountiful, but it is comprehensive. Along downtown’s Main Street corridor, you’ll find an Irish bar, a sports bar, a martini bar, a wine bar, a discoteca, a br   More

 

Wednesday, December 5, 2012 RUTH BROWN, MARTIN CIZMAR, REBECCA JACOBSON, MATTHEW SINGER

Gift Guide 2012: The Unformed

Featured Stories The thing with kids is, everything you do affects who they are; it’s like the butterfly effect, we’re told. If you give them a lollipop as opposed to some candy corn, it’ll affect whether th   More

 

Wednesday, November 28, 2012 REBECCA JACOBSON

Plastic Tiger

Life of Pi’s saturated spectacle clamps its jaws, but the story lacks teeth.

Movie Reviews & Stories Ignore the tiger for a moment. Ang Lee’s Life of Pi is a very simple story with a grandiose backdrop. For much of the film, we’re alone on a lifeboat, in the middle of the Pacific, with a boy    More

 

Wednesday, November 21, 2012 REBECCA JACOBSON

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Portland Center Stage)

Staying warm with Shakespeare.

Performance November and December seem, at first, an odd time to stage A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s not just the play’s title that contributes to its air of endless summer: Shakespeare stocked his fe   More

 

Wednesday, November 21, 2012 REBECCA JACOBSON

Headout: Bottle Brush

It’s the perfect time to unwind with a bottle of red and some paint.

Headout Thanksgiving is already an occasion of tension, overindulgence and inevitable mishap—my favorite holiday memory involves washing gravy off the ceiling and out of my hair. And who says the hedo   More

 

Wednesday, November 21, 2012 REBECCA JACOBSON

Animatronic Abe

Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is a live-action history lesson.

Movie Reviews & Stories Lincoln opens with a shot of Abraham’s very large, very statuesque head. As the camera pans to the front, the effect is startling. Though the 16th president has been put to film many times bef   More

 

Wednesday, November 14, 2012 REBECCA JACOBSON

Siren Nation Film Festival

The personal is political is cinematic.

Movie Reviews & Stories As one of three women in the Willamette Week newsroom, I need no reminder of the embarrassing underrepresentation of women in the media. Documentaries like...   More

 

Wednesday, November 14, 2012 REBECCA JACOBSON

Smashed

Beer me! Wait, maybe don’t.

Movie Reviews & Stories Though there’s no dearth of films about alcoholism and recovery, Smashed reeled me back not to Barfly or Days of Wine and Roses, but to Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry’s 1947 modernist novel. L   More

 

Wednesday, November 7, 2012 REBECCA JACOBSON