ANIMALS. Setting aside, at least for the moment, his acting and his frequently very public private life, let us consider Ben Affleck as director. Making a startlingly surefooted debut with Gone Baby Gone (2007), which benefitted from Denis Lehane’s solid source novel, he then delivered The Town (2009), a riveting Boston bank-robbery/class-struggle picture that just […]
Arts + Scene
Reviews, interviews and upcoming highlights from the week in visual and performing arts around Humboldt County.
Posted inPoetry
Dry Spell
Mind arid as an endless desertstretching into the horizon—sterile weeks,not even a scrawny, spiny cactus ideafor a parched pen to suck.Blistering sand sifts through this barren brainsearching for shadefrom any lonely palm tree,a moist poem of mud to cool these sun burned toes.Seems like months in this scorching Sahara of writer’s block,tongue bone-dry thirsts for verse.A mirage of metaphor […]
Posted inNews (NCJ)
In the News: Bears and Burns
The latest from the NCJ newsroom. In the News Culture Seriously?
Posted inArts + Scene
Halloween Events this Weekend, both Spooky 💀 and Sweet 🎃
Halloween events abound! Check out the highlights here, and visit northcoastjournal.com for more of what’s going on. Thanks for reading and have a great Halloweekend. The season of scares and dares is here! Griffin Loch’s Scaregrounds is back to raise the dead (and your heart rate) at the Humboldt County Fairgrounds, Fridays through Sundays, Oct. […]
Posted inScreens
A Very del Toro Spooky Season
Last week, I took advantage of the re-release of writer and director Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) in theaters to see it on the big (well, bigger) screen. The strange, sad, dreamy marvel of it bears as many rewatches as a person’s heart can take. Like so much of del Toro’s catalogue, even those […]
Posted inFront Row
‘Wusatoumuduk: We Make It Burn’ Lights a Fire
It has been quite a long while since I’ve seen a production that transcends conventional understanding of theater. Wusatoumuduk: We Make It Burn is one of those productions. As the program notes, the original play was “envisioned by Wiyot culture-bearer Marnie Atkins and collaboratively written by an inter-tribal group with direct connections to local efforts […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Events this Weekend: 🐻 OktoBEARfest, 🇬🇷 a Taste of Orthodoxy and 👻 spooky Ferndale Cemetery tours
Just the highlights here, folks. Visit northcoastjournal.com for all of what’s going on. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend. Courtesy of Sequoia Park Zoo Embrace your growler spirit and head to Sequoia Park Zoo for the second annual OktoBEARfest, happening Saturday, Oct. 10, from 4 to 7 p.m. ($25 advance, $30 gate, 21 […]
Posted inNews
Gold in the Cracks
Conrad Calimpong draws a thumb along the gold seam running through his chestnut brown “Pillow Pot Vase” to where it meets three other metallic streaks, fusing a mottled river rock like a jewel or a heart at its center. Like the other pieces in his show Earthquake Trauma: My Path to Recovery in the Anderson […]
Posted inScreens
‘Digger’ Devastates
DIGGER. The truth is that I didn’t think I would enjoy Digger. Even more than that, I had assumed that it would disappoint me: a stickler for the psychological battery that characterizes the realist landscapes of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s pre-2010s catalogue. I saw the trailers and was quick to write the movie off as another […]
Posted inArts + Scene
It’s Flash Fiction Season 2026
Here’s the story in 99 words: NCJ’s 99-word Flash Fiction Contest is on. Send up to three entries in the body of an email (no attachments or links) to fiction@northcoastjournal.com with your name and contact information (no pen names) by midnight Oct. 31. Dainty dramas, bite-sized adventures, flits of fantasy, micro-mysteries, half-pint hauntings, brief romances […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Events this Weekend: Two Fests and a Feast
Of course that’s not all that’s happening. Visit northcoastjournal.com for more of what’s going on. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend. Photo by Mark Larson Get ready to swing, stomp and boogie your way through Eureka. The Redwood Coast Music Festival returns Oct. 1-4 with four jam-packed days of live blues, jazz, swing, […]
Posted inArt Beat
Aminah Herrman’s Cold Wax Paintings Shimmer and Shine
“When I’m painting, I’m in a state of discovery, and it’s always an adventure,” says Eureka abstract artist Aminah Herrman, who creates her artwork using cold wax and oil. “I’m constantly experimenting.” Cold wax is an oil painting medium made of beeswax mixed with a small amount of solvent and resin, forming a buttery soft […]