And And And

You can’t hide from this music, but why would you want to?

You know how most rock musicians’ careers have an arc that generally travels from frenetic, aggressive youthfulness to a reflective, subdued adulthood? Like how Paul Westerburg went from shouting “I Need a Goddamn Job” in 1981, to crooning “Here Comes a Regular” by ’85, to looking utterly despondent and confused while twanging out “It’s a Wonderful Lie” (as if he was country all along)—in ’08?

Coco Fusco does what she wants

Performance artist to deliver latest Art and Social Practice MFA lecture at PSU

Coco Fusco is a New York-born Cuban American, multimedia and interdisciplinary artist perhaps best known for her performance and video pieces. Her work falls squarely into the category of what is referred to as “social practice”—art whose primary focus is a social, political or economic critique/exploration.

Stalking Bill Cunningham

Richard Press’ documentary Bill Cunningham New York runs out of ways to dance around its subject

Some subjects are more constructively talked “around” than “about” because they can’t be approached directly. Some subjects are talked around because they are impenetrably enigmatic. Fashion photographer Bill Cunningham is one of these subjects.

Funny Games points the finger at us

Michael Haneke’s meta-commentary of media violence isn’t ‘ha-ha’ funny

To write about Funny Games is to give it away, but write I must. The name Michael Haneke may clue you in to the fact that what you are about to watch is neither straightforward nor simple.

The original Portland Occupiers

This Friday’s The Seventh Day documentary screening depicts Park Blocks Riot of 1970

On Monday, May 11, 1970, Portland State students had been on strike for nearly a week. The campus had been closed since the previous Thursday, and the mayor, the commissioner of parks, Gov. Tom McCall and the citizenry were running out of patience.

Memories of the killing fields

Public humanities film and panel discussion of Cambodian genocide promises to be emotional, historic

In 1969, President Richard Nixon ordered the clandestine bombing of suspected Viet Cong supply routes in Cambodia. That campaign of U.S. aggression continued until 1973, killing an estimated 100,000 Cambodians, and fostered the overthrow of Lon Nol’s pro-American government by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.

Genghis Kahn, feminist

Mongol closes the gap in your knowledge of Asian history

Being an intelligent college student, I’m sure you know that Genghis Khan conquered China’s Xin and Jin Dynasties in the 13th century. I’m sure you’re also criticizing me for oversimplifying the Mongol invasion of the landmasses currently known as China and Russia.

Beautiful squalor

Wong Kar Wai’s Happy Together makes Brokeback Mountain look like a Disney movie

Lai Yiu Fai and Ho Po Wing are like any other quarrelsome gay couple from Hong Kong. They have sex, and they fight. And when the petulant and precocious Ho has decided he’s had enough of slumming with the sincere, hardworking Lai, he leaves him. After all, he can always say, “Can we start over?” and he knows that Lai will take him back.

The lost dance

Oregon Ballet Theater evokes urban excitement, tells ghost stories

Lucas Threefoot started training at the Oregon Ballet Theater when he was four or five. He’s now a 23-year-old soloist with the company.

Low-fly zone Cary Grant outmaneuvers a fiendish crop duster.

Dangerous directions

Cary Grant is cool, Eva Marie Saint comely in ’50s thriller North by Northwest

Cary Grant is Roger Thornhill, an ordinary, mid-century, New York City adman in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 classic North by Northwest. Thornhill has little on his mind but his career, his girlfriends and his bar tab: the perfect 1950s bachelor’s (well, divorcée’s) existence.

Bedevilled Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg share a post-coital moment in Eden.

The church of bad taste

Lars Von Trier’s controversial 2009 film Antichrist was written while the director was under the influence of what he called a “deep depression,” and it shows.

The film has been called misogynistic by various reviewers, “a load of balls” (Willamette Week) and “dumb” (The New York Times). It has also been hailed as a challenging, philosophically insightful piece of cinema, among the best of the Danish provocateur’s offerings.