THE YOUTUBE EFFECT. As a Luddite, my contact with YouTube is infrequent, shallow and glancing: the occasional how-to, stand-up specials, squinty-eyed late-night music video ping-pong sessions, that’s about it. Living as I do in the allegory of the cave, though, I have at least some sense of how central the site is to many (most?) […]
The Miniplex
Posted inArts + Scene
Vampires on a Boat
THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER. Before the title character in Bram Stoker’s 1897 epistolary novel Dracula drinks his way through England, he travels there on a ship called the Demeter, as detailed in the chapter titled “The Captain’s Log.” Not to spoil a 126-year-old book further than the movie’s title does, but it’s a […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Bigger Sharks to Jump
THE MEG 2: THE TRENCH. Whether because or in spite of its unrepentant silliness (stupidity?), I found a lot to like about The Meg (2018). Jason Statham plying his acerbic brand of ass-kickery against a gigantic dinosaur shark? Yes, please, and some more, if there’s any. Thing is, I kind of thought I was more […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Talk to Me Makes Contact
TALK TO ME. Australia, home to venomous brown snakes, saltwater crocodiles and a snail that can evidently kill you with a tiny harpoon-like tooth, is scary enough. Perhaps the steady baseline of adrenaline that comes from living in a country where a very large spider might casually drop out of your curtains makes scaring audiences […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Bombs and Bombshells
OPPENHEIMER. It comes as no surprise that Christopher Nolan’s latest magnum opus should be heralded for its audacity and scale. He being a holdover from another time, if such a time even existed; all of his opuses are magnums. Seemingly to demonstrate this, or to prove that even the great director is susceptible to hubris, […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Making it Possible
What I couldn’t have articulated then, and perhaps cannot now, was director Brian De Palma’s critical role as both arbiter and synthesist of cinema cool, even as his career was approaching an inevitable cooling-off point and he his 60th birthday. De Palma wouldn’t become a touchstone for me until years later, incapable as I was […]
Posted inArts + Scene
The Joy of the Ride
JOY RIDE. It has been rather widely reported — but may still be apocryphal — that at some point during the development of this screenplay, the writers (Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao) thought to call it The Joy Fuck Club. Clearly, that title is a bit too outré for our provincial American sensibilities, but I […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Maintaining a Legacy
INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY. Time may eventually allow us to more properly contextualize the great Dr. Jones. Younger generations may have already done it, distanced as they presumably are from the visceral, world-making experience of meeting Harrison Ford’s irascible, iron-tough, impossibly cool archeologist at an age when that introduction was as formative, […]
Posted inArts + Scene
No Hard Feelings‘ Rom-com Chops
NO HARD FEELINGS. Within the ever-deepening river of pan-cultural division, there are convoluted, often contradictory undercurrents too numerous to parse. In this new age of (dis)information, some of these knotty notions see more frequent, if less substantive, discussion than they might have in decades past. But for all the pointing and yelling, precious few reach […]
Posted inArts + Scene
New Tricks, Old Tropes
EXTRACTION 2. It could be said 2020 came on a little strong. Many of us met the uncertainty, paranoia and concern with a voracious consumption of media, both new and familiar. Of course, novel entertainments were in rather short supply in those early, apocalyptic months. This turned out to be quite the boon to Netflix […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Flamin’ Hot‘s Stale Corporate Propaganda
FLAMIN’ HOT touts itself as a heartwarming tale of grit and pride, and a corrective to the injustices Latinos face in the U.S. (and Hollywood in particular), but it’s a discouraging paean to a mythical American dream. The strength of its cast, its cultural celebrations, and its hollow promise of an examination of race in […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Music Tonight: Saturday, June 10
Oyster Fest is back in its vintage form, and there will be beaucoup happy daytime spoils for any and all comers to the Arcata Plaza, fingers crossed. If you are looking for an afterparty, well, that’s my beat. I suggest you head to the Miniplex at 9 p.m., where Black Humboldt is throwing a party. […]