NORMAL boasts more than enough bona fides to excite a certain kind of audience (me): a script by creator of John Wick (2014) Derek Kolstad, again collaborating with star Bob Odenkirk (Nobody, 2021); Ben Wheatley directing; the promise of small-town, Main Street gunplay. Any one of which should be sufficient to assure a good time […]
Arts + Scene
Reviews, interviews and upcoming highlights from the week in visual and performing arts around Humboldt County.
Posted inPoetry
Beginning
Beginning is the color of a red poppy It tastes like a fresh papaya coated with a ripe lime It lives in an ending, patiently waiting its turn A beginning is a wave, rolling, like an uncontrollable wagon, flying across the colored sand It’s a palm tree, dancing in the wind like a ballerina Even […]
Posted inScreens
‘The Drama’s’ Uncomfortable Romance
THE DRAMA. The immersive paranoid magical realism of Dream Scenario (2023) made it tempting to presume to know what to expect from writer/director/editor Kristoffer Borgli: another fantasia set against the vagaries of the modern world, defined by wild departures from that reality and underpinned by bleak, comic hysteria. To indulge that temptation would have been […]
Posted inScreens
An Anti-Star Turn in ‘Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’
MIKE & NICK & NICK & ALICE. Setting aside his questionable politics for the moment (which may be an understandably impossible task for much of the potential audience), Vince Vaughn remains one of the old-school Hollywood stars who seems to get the brief. And he’s one for whom, despite my own reservations, I continue to […]
Posted inFront Row
‘Sherwood’ Makes Merry in Ferndale
Had I known Ferndale Repertory Theatre’s Sherwood: The Adventures of Robin Hood is a complete “huzzah” and “tally-ho” audience-inclusive affair, I’d have rethought my regular theater attire in favor of Renaissance fair garb. Though the show doesn’t take it to the extremity of a Rocky Horror Show cult, this production pleasantly invites the audience to […]
Posted inFront Row
‘Bat Boy’s’ Bloody, Messy Fun
Let there be blood. Not blood represented in scarlet scarves pulled from a jugular like a macabre magic trick, but thick and tacky liquid lifeforce spilled across the stage splattering the audience with its faint metallic scent. Bat Boy: The Musical can be the production to do it. Perhaps it even should be that production. […]
Posted inScreens
‘Undertone’ Underwhelms
UNDERTONE. In the photograph Mary Todd Lincoln sits laden in the heavy black garb of formal Victorian mourning, with only her round pale face and clasped hands visible. Behind her is the transparent form of her deceased husband, his spectral hands on her shoulders. This photograph was one of many staged by infamous “spirit photographer” […]
Posted inPoetry
Bear
An open doorFuzzy bear in hand,He wanders outHis sister once went thereHe remembers her faceDimpled, laughing, framed with grace,Her mane flowing in joyArms embraceVibrant garden flowers. Now he scramblesOver concrete and cobbles –fruits of mendacious power –o see her laughing againBear still clutched tightlyAgainst his tattered shirtEyes scanningDefiled landBlossoms face downIn ashes and dirt. Little […]
Posted inFront Row
‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’ Live Again
Classes consistently bludgeon young directors to simply tell the story of theater works — stick to themes, find rhythms, push characters’ objectives and explore consequences. Then you’re given a work like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard, forcing you to question or challenge those teachings. After all, theater, like life, doesn’t come with rule books […]
Posted inScreens
Books in Space
Project Hail Mary PROJECT HAIL MARY. Loving books just as much as movies and credibly accused of being a formalist, I am generally skeptical of adaptations for the screen. I suppose I find works of literary creation something like sacrosanct and will always bristle at the notion that there aren’t enough original ideas being developed […]
Posted inPoetry
No Kings
Sing out, America, sing out. Vocalize your discontent. Make clear your grievances. Raise voices high and long and loud. Sing out, America, the time is now. Now to shed these foolish cretins. Now to still the liars’ din. Now to beg no tyrant’s pardon. Now to stoke that rage within. Now refire that torch held […]
Posted inScreens
Some Good and Some Gold at the Oscars
Exigent circumstances prevented me from watching the majority of this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, an event to which I had (to my own surprise) been looking forward. In the decade since I actually sat through one, my enthusiasm for the movies has done anything but wane. I had to consider why this event should stir […]