“I got a buzz and it felt good, so I got drunk,” says Sharon, a Portland-area teen and recovering addict in one of the more matter-of-fact moments in Janet McIntyre’s 2011 documentary, Faded: Girls + Binge Drinking. “That was it.”
Mark Romanek’s quasi-sci-fi drama Never Let Me Go straddles a fine line between creepy, dystopian thriller and understated drama—a line that often goes unexplored but is done deftly by the long-time music-video director.
Mark Romanek’s quasi-sci-fi drama Never Let Me Go straddles a fine line between creepy, dystopian thriller and understated drama—a line that often goes unexplored but is done deftly by the long-time music-video director.
Kristina McMorris, a prolific women’s fiction author, is an unfailingly nice person.
Not only did she pick me up from the MAX station with her two gregarious sons in tow; she served me some hot coffee and gave me a copy of her new book, Bridge of Scarlet Leaves, which is being released today by Kensington Books.
Eleanora Derenkowsky emigrated with her family from Kiev in 1917, the year that saw the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II from Russia’s throne, the institution of a provisional government and, ultimately, the formalization of the Bolshevik government. Derenkowsky died of a brain hemorrhage due to extreme malnutrition in 1961 as “Maya Deren,” modern dancer, pioneering avant-garde filmmaker, author, early film advocate and Haitian Voudon expert.
According to Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain), the film is a companion piece of sorts to his 2008 film, The Wrestler. The comparison is a useful one: Both films feature a protagonist pursuing their respective craft—ballet for the former, pro wrestling for the latter—to crippling, cringe-inducing and terrifying lengths.
Nearly eight years have passed since the shocking Abu Ghraib prison photos surfaced on CBS’s 60 Minutes II and in Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article. The United States Department of Defense subsequently removed 17 of the military perpetrators from duty, and 11 soldiers were convicted by court martial and dishonorably discharged. Two of the torturers, Specialist Lyndie England and her former fiancée, Specialist Charles Graner, were sentenced to a combined 13 years in prison for their actions at the military prison in Iraq.
Mania Akbar’s 2004 film, 20 Fingers, is obsessed with motion. In only 72 minutes, viewers are transported along with the main characters via car, boat, train, gondola-style ski lift, moped and yet another car, for good measure.
As premises go, “Two wobbly drunks holler obscenities, choke each other out and smash glasses” sounds like sweeps season on Basketball Wives. But when said premise features dialogue from Edward Albee, direction from Mike Nichols and knockout performances from Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, it garners five Academy Awards and secures a spot on the American Film Institute’s 100 Greatest Films of All Time.
Portland State’s School of Social Work is screening local filmmaker Jordan Thierry’s 2011 documentary, The Black Fatherhood Project, Monday, Feb. 6, in the Smith Memorial Student Union.
On Sept. 11, 2001, as the first plane struck the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. EST, former Beatle Paul McCartney was on the tarmac at John F. Kennedy International Airport, preparing to depart for London.
The pilot on McCartney’s flight informed the passengers that the airport was closing as he and others witnessed smoke billowing into the morning sky. In the days following the attacks, McCartney, like so many others, started wondering how he could help the millions who were affected by 9/11.