Previews Happily, we are getting one film on Friday, June 6, that is not a summer blockbuster: Then She Found Me, directed by and starring the talented Helen Hunt. Based on the novel by popular writer Elinor Lipman, this directing debut features Hunt as a 39-year-old woman who hears her biological clock ticking very loudly […]
Arts + Scene
Reviews, interviews and upcoming highlights from the week in visual and performing arts around Humboldt County.
The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
By Pico Iyer. Knopf. At the center of today’s conflicts and aspirations, the Dalai Lama stands as an embodiment in proxy for his stolen and decimated nation (China began to invade in 1949), but also an example of nonviolence and reconciliation. From humble village origins to a state of virtual divine rule as a child, […]
Sanskrit Comes to Ashland
With clouds of incense rising above them, the large cast in colorful costumes is arrayed in a circle. They sit on cushions and stand under lanterns, chanting and singing in a golden light. The opening of The Clay Cart, now in repertory at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, promises an exotic experience from ancient […]
Just Married
Arriving at the Arcata Farmers’ Market on graduation Saturday, I must confess that my thoughts were not directed at cheering students, but at cheerful strawberries. I had a feeling they would be there and my feeling was correct. I believe the look in my eyes must have been particularly spirited, prompting the smiling young woman […]
The Story of a Marriage
By Andrew Sean Greer Farrar, Straus and Giroux We’re in a strange time in the history of the novel. It would eventually cannibalize all previous literary forms, but in England the novel began as almost satire, a playful burlesque of sermons, letters and travel narratives. It started as a popular form and prospered as such […]
Creaky Old Indy
Previews For those who didn’t get enough of Sex and the City from Candace Bushnell’s book of her collected newspaper columns about young, single, professional women in Manhattan, one of whom was the author herself, or from the six-season HBO series, May 30 brings fans the big screen version, and it remains to be seen […]
What the Brits Are Up To
At the moment I’m on holiday, as they say here in Jolly Old England. We’re here visiting relatives, but I thought I mightas well take the opportunity to suss out the British art scene. This, of course, is an impossible task for a three-week visit, but I’ll tell you about a few interesting things I’ve […]
Quantum Physics and a Man-Eating Plant
The Little Shop of Horrors musical has do-wopped its way onto the North Coast Repertory Theatre stage. With fine singing, comic performances, clever set and costumes and an impressive puppet-monster, it’s a diverting evening of live entertainment. With music tied to its early ’60s origins in a cult Roger Corman film, a combination Motown trio/Greek […]
Eh, Brah!
Previews Opening on Thursday, May 22, with special midnight showings at the Broadway, Minor and Mill Creek theatres, is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, surely a contender for the top-grossing film of 2008. The venerable Harrison Ford, who seems to get better with age, returns as the archaeologist who just wants […]
