(Written May 2006, at Finnish Country Sauna and…
Arts + Scene
Reviews, interviews and upcoming highlights from the week in visual and performing arts around Humboldt County.
Posted inArts + Scene
Cool, Clear Water
Making art is more about what you do with your eyes than what you do with your hands. I came to the conclusion some years ago, and that theory has been confirmed over and over again in my conversations with painters. “What I get out of painting is looking,” says Judy Evenson. “I see things […]
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No Debate
Film fans, do not be alarmed: Charlie is out of town for the week, but he shall return! We also happen to know he is in a land barren of palatable movie offerings, a land desicate of modern culture, a land so pure as the driven snow as to be devoid of all cultural ambition […]
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What Good is Art?
It’s a cold and rainy afternoon. Christmas is upon me, and then the New Year. A time to reflect, and what I’ve been thinking about is why I write this column (roughly) every two weeks. I often feel like I’m shouting in the wind. Why do I bother writing about art and artists when people […]
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Charlie digs Charlie
Openings CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR Easily the most interesting of the four local openings last Friday, Charlie Wilson’s War, directed by Mike Nichols with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (West Wing), is an ironic and ultimately serious look at the U.S. covert involvement in the war between Soviet forces and the Afghan mujahedeen in the 1980s. […]
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Musings on Musicals
The musical is not my favorite form of theatre. Yet when I look back on the past calendar year or more on the North Coast, many of the shows I’ve most admired have been musicals. This personal paradox came into view especially in the last month or so, when I saw four of them and […]
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I Am Bland
Previews The Christmas onslaught kicks into overdrive beginning this Friday, Dec. 21, and continues on Christmas day. Based on George Crile’s 2007 book of the same title as adapted by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (TV’s The West Wingand the short-lived Studio 60) and helmed by veteran Mike Nichols, Charlie Wilson’s War is about how the swinging […]
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Epically Bland
Previews Opening Friday, Dec. 14, is I Am Legend, yet another version of the apocalyptic 1954 novel by Richard Matheson. Will Smith is the military’s virus guy, taking over the role previously played by Charlton Heston (The Omega Man, 1971) and Vincent Price (The Last Man on Earth, 1964). It seems some really nasty virus […]