First the good news: The Merry Wives of Windsor at North Coast Repertory Theatre is skillfully comic. With David Hamilton’s fluid direction, an accomplished cast excels at comic invention, and the evening features at least a few moments of comic brilliance. Old Falstaff, one of Shakespeare’s most beloved characters from the “Henry” plays, writes love […]
Arts + Scene
Reviews, interviews and upcoming highlights from the week in visual and performing arts around Humboldt County.
Posted inArts + Scene
Return to Allentown
Previews Following a screening at the Wild Rivers Film Fest, the locally shot Humboldt County opens commercially on Friday, Sept. 26. The story involves a medical student who finds himself in the midst of marijuana farmers. In Humboldt? No way. Rated R for drug content and language throughout. 97m. At the Broadway and Minor. Eagle […]
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Twilight of the Machines
The value of John Zerzan’s book Twilight of the Machines is not its fresh interpretations of Nietzsche, Marx and Freud, nor its editing (which deserved better), but rather its utter commitment as a polemic. Released by Feral House, the book seems nothing less than an attempt to initiate a paradigmatic break in ideology with Western […]
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The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative
Thomas King is a Native writer who teaches in Canada and published most of his fiction while living there, including his novels, Medicine River (made into an obscure but amusing movie starring — who else — Graham Greene), Green Grass, Running Water and Truth and Bright Water, all of which are, among other things, pretty […]
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Junk + Art + Retail
The other day I drove by a telephone pole that had about a dozen signs advertising yard sales stapled on it — and that was just one pole. These days, when you go to take your cast-offs to the thrift store, they often have a sign out saying they are not accepting drop-off donations; you […]
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The Rise of the Fourth Reich: The Secret Societies That Threaten to Take Over America
Popular pundits of the left have not been silent comparing the actions of the Bush administration to the actions of Nazi Germany. Parallels and comparisons are one thing; Jim Marrs goes further with claims that Nazis have infiltrated the U.S. at every level of government. Combining revisionist history with careful research, the author offers a […]
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The Change is Gonna Come
On Aug. 28, 1963, I was one of more than a quarter of a million people in the now-famous March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. I was 17, and as magical as that day was, I recall that it was very controversial. On Aug. 28, 2008, I watched an African American accepting the Democratic […]
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Macho-A-Go-Go
Previews Woody Allen fans (I’m one) can rejoice as Vicky Cristina Barcelona opens Friday, Sept. 19. Starring Woody’s latest favorite Scarlett Johansson along with Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz and Patricia Clarkson, the film involves a quadrangle between two vacationing women friends (Johansson and Clarkson), a painter (Bardem) and his ex (Cruz). Lucky guy. Rated PG-13 […]
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Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
When Fenfang Wang, the protagonist and narrator of Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, finally reaches some semblance of happiness and freedom in her young life, she tries to reach back into her past to deliver a message to her 17-year-old self, an unhappy budding artist trapped in a boring fishing village in East China: […]
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The Quantum Ten: A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition and Science
“How can you be in two places at once, when you’re not anywhere at all?” When the Firesign Theatre performed that vaudeville parody, they expressed a central conundrum of quantum physics without really trying. A lot of mischief flows from the finding that, at least at the sub-atomic level, an object is created in a […]
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Nature Cares Nothing for Calendars
It is only September 1, but autumn arrived…