How much do you read each week? How many pages are you expected to read? How many books, papers, reports, articles, e-mails and instruction sheets are you expected, do you expect yourself to understand, comprehend, remember? I teach reading at our local community college. Some, including some of my students, are often incredulous. "Don’t they […]
Arts + Scene
Reviews, interviews and upcoming highlights from the week in visual and performing arts around Humboldt County.
Posted inArts + Scene
Meet the Meat
There’s a very funny, very short science fiction story by Terry Bisson that I first heard as a radio dialog, in which two alien spacefarers are passing near Earth. One describes the intelligent species below while the other can’t believe what he’s hearing. “They’re meat?” he keeps repeating. “They have brains made out of meat? […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Raging Rourke
Previews Opening Friday, Jan. 30, is the French film Taken, featuring Liam Neeson as a retired secret agent who returns to action when his teen daughter (Maggie Grace) is kidnapped by sex traffickers. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence, disturbing thematic material, sexual content, some drug references and language. 94m. At the Broadway, Fortuna […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Freaks, Not Greeks
Last April, Crawdaddy: A Freak Tragedy, produced by a Canadian mask and puppet group, the Calgary Animated Objects Society (CAOS) in conjunction with Dell’Arte and Four on the Floor Productions, came to the Arcata Playhouse for two weekends of workshop performances. In the two performances I saw of that show, Crawdaddy (played by James Griffiths) […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Floodgates Open
Previews Film fortune finally smiles upon filmslumdog Humboldt County. Opening Friday, Jan. 23 is Slumdog Millionaire (see review below); Milk (see review); Revolutionary Road, directed by Sam Mendes with Kate Winslet reunited with Leonardo DiCaprio in suburban angst (Rated R. 119m. At the Broadway); The Wrestler, featuring comeback kid Mickey Rourke as a pro wrestler […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Life of Kaufman
Previews For once, our overlords at Coming Attractions have scheduled the week’s big release to open at the mall (and only at the mall). Notorious is a Fox Searchlight biopic of slain rap star Biggie Smalls, aka the Notorious B.I.G., aka Christopher Wallace, and as such it should appeal to the teen-tween filmgoers to whom […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Colors Flowing Like Water
Up in Crescent City, there’s a place where you can rent a room and have access to a beachfront artist’s studio. The owner, Rande Rothman, uses the space herself to create her silk paintings, and she loves her craft so much, she just can’t keep it to herself. She says that after discovering the medium […]
Posted inArts + Scene
The English Major
Jim Harrison is known as a master of the novella — his most famous work is probably Legends of the Fall — but he’s also written what I regard as an American epic with the 800-plus pages of the interlaced novels, Dalva and The Road Home. This new one is an ordinary-sized novel, a first-person […]
Posted inArts + Scene
The Audacity of Hope
Inauguration Day will be a day of celebration for many and perhaps a little sadness for others. Whatever your feelings about Barack Obama, the United States will swear in a new president on Jan. 20. In The Audacity of Hope, we gain insights into our new president’s life and philosophy. Obama shows us his political […]