KAREL APPEL: I think a late night conversation over burgundy wine with this man would have been a trip.

PET SHOP BOYS ARE BACK AGAIN: It’s so colorful, I just couldn’t resist. That, and the interactive ‘Advent Calendar‘…and given that it’s the season of giving why not also check out the just released Christmas EP!

And here was the track originally recorded back in ‘97 exclusively for its fanclub, now available in a new mix heard here, enjoy!

Have you ever just stared longingly at the ring made from the last dregs of coffee, the edge it produces in the floor of your cup? Today seems like one of those days, the sun sitting fairly calmly in the blue southern sky. Which makes me ponder the other day when Fernando and I saw a matinee of 2012, probably my most anticipated movie of the year. Well, it was basically long and just OK. I’m fascinated by what-ifs, conspiracy theory, dna logic and the like. This disaster movie, based in our time, had some keen special effects, all rotating ’round the aforementioned star above - and the Mayan prediction of the end of time. With consumption, waste, tsunamis, quakes and other earthly realities the movie paints a big picture of cataclysm and the throes of survival. But it is all so overly dramatic. And it misses its opportunity to massage the historical relevance of prophecy by slight mention only. Sure, science dictates the charted courses of our icebergs in New Zealand and Greenland, and the ozone has long had its depleted holes, though the soul of the movie is debatable given this key component. I guess while peering at my coffee ring I was truly staring into my own version of the cosmos.

Arkansas Times reports

NURSE WITH WOUND

Hot Little Hands
Ill-Starred
@ IFCC (through 11/14)

Jim Lommasson @ NAAU
+
Powell’s (w/Inara Verzemnieks)
11/16 @ 7:30PM (reading)

Performance Works Northwest presents
BANDAGE A KNIFE
Linda Austin/Seth Nehil
Through 11/22 (tickets)

Michael Paulus‘
The Preoccupied Occupant (short film)
NW Film & Video Festival
Through 11/14

OPENS TODAY: It was absolutely engrossing to finally see my favorite childhood story come to life on the big screen - Fernando and I caught the opening matinee at Roseway. Written two years before I was made, Where the Wild Things Are is Maurice Sendak’s (who also helped produce the film at age 81) timeless story about one boy’s imaginative exploration. Now an artfully sensitive retelling by director Spike Jonze it is apt for its subject matter, and just surreal enough for those tempted by the edge of their dreams, and just this side of reality to please a more mass audience. Portland’s Max Records plays ‘Max’ and is curiously entirely spot on in this role. And the wild things are most certainly ten steps beyond H & R Puffinstuff, that’s for sure. Hey, and just in case you wanted it but didn’t know where to get it, here’s the link to the movie’s very own iPhone ap. This is one of two films I waited for all year, and the wait served me well, and it will you too.

Star Wars in Concert. Who knew it could be so much fun all over again? Using the cinematic theme music of composer John Williams combined with the very large silver screen at the Rose Garden, add tons of original props and costumes (including those of: Princess Leia, Darth Vadar and Yoda among many others) in the lobby, and live narration by Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), this two-hour show with lasers and fire was a pure delight to watch in its segments dedicated to its six films under the Star Wars moniker. May the force be with y’all!

Concurrent with the cognitive space of apprehended sounds, a separate view can be opened onto the physical life of waves. - R. Ganchrow, Hear and There: Notes on the Materiality of Sound

OPTOFONICA: A new and impressive DVD/Book combo has just been released by 12K/Line and it is an essential for anyone out there following contemporary sonic cinema art. With videos by several artists I’ve worked with including Portland’s own Ryan Jeffery (in his second collaboration with Scanner), Frank Bretschneider, Richard Chartier, Pe Lang + Zimoun and Skoltz_Kolgen among others. One of those others is Kanta Horio who was featured in PICA’s TBA Festival a few years back, it’s great to see his em#3 once again! Inside the full color book  is an essay by Cretien van Campen who also wrote The Hidden Sense, Synethesia in Art and Science (MIT Press, 2007). Black Noise White Silence by Marcel Wierckx alone is brilliant. Get your copy of this limited edition before it vanishes into the thin air we have left….

>>> VIEW TRAILER <<<

Instead of creating mere objects of aesthetic seduction, a new form of art is surfacing that invites audiences to transcend the limits of habitual perception. It seeks to shift the observer’s attention from the physical objects that stimulate perception to the act of perception itself.

On this day, this Oregon Day of Culture, why not take a walk through the Classical Chinese Garden with me at 3? Or stride along the Park Blocks up to the Oregon Historical Society where admission is free for this event. If you are like me, though why would you (?), you would also entertain the idea of crossing that park strip to listen to what Jacqueline Ehlis contributes to the larger discussion at Portland Art Museum’s informal Artist Talks at 6, and finish the evening with the final reel in this years PLGFF at Cinema 21 at 9 - yes it’s An Englishman in New York with John Hurt! I will never, ever forget meeting this great mind back in the early 90s, nor will I ever lose the vision of seeing his iconic visage not once, but twice in the front window of his favorite spot in the Village (Cheyenne, which sadly closed last year), where he spent most of his final years. He would have been 100 this year, a true legend in my lifetime.

ADDENDUM: A flashback on yesterday revealed a most pleasant walk through the Chinese Garden in Old Town with friends, where for the time, you can escape the rumble of the city streets. Mostly green with many fewer blooms than my last visit, the gardens had more of a crowd on this free day, but not unmanageable for that sense of peace. Right afterwards I walked up to the Pearl for a special and important meeting with a gallery (more details soon). And then it was to Superdog for veggie sausage/chili. And across to the Portland Art Museum where I took in the tight Word and/as Image as well the light Apex exhibition of work by Joseph Park which didn’t appeal to me given the more risky work they’ve shown in the context of this space/program in the past. But descending downstairs made up for its deficit having the pleasure to listen to what Jacqueline Ehlis had to say about argyles in the silver collection. She made mention that as an undergraduate with PNCA her thesis work was shown in the same room, and in 1999 as one of the artists in the then Oregon Biennial, her work was again shown in that exact spot. She discussed the concept of shine and its often misunderstood sensibilities in fine art and how it literally reflects the maker and the viewer. The patina of the evening came to a higher sheen when I witnessed the lure of how important character studies are held and molded by such graceful talents as John Hurt (@ 68) in the phenomenal biopic An Englishman in New York. The story follows granddandy Quentin Crisp through his final decade or so when he came to the big city to become a cherished and controversial orator in a hard time in the gay community when many were suffering from the onset of AIDS. Along the way he meets artist Patrick Angus (who may have been the love of his life if he hadn’t died so young), the film alludes to the impossibility of grasping this kind of love. And later meeting performance artist Penny Arcade (whose one-woman show I truly Ioved back in the day, lithely played by Cynthia Nixon). What further makes the film a special landmark is that Hurt (at age 35) also played Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant in 1975! That was 34 years ago folks.

Half my weekend was spent here.

BALANCING ACT: The first half was all about cowboys, spurs, chew, Wranglers, big bad bulls and a whole lotta dust flyin’ at the Rose Garden. I guess being a city boy and all is proof of my limited exposure to such rodeo doin’s and as such this wasn’t in my vocabulary until later in life, and I don’t mind it that way one bit. There’s a robust, homespun feel to this kind of event that grounds itself between ‘man and beast’. It’s entertaining and odd at the same time, I love watching people’s faces when the rider falls from the snarling, bucking animal. On the train ride home a sweet young rider with a drawl from Molalla chatted openly about his coming in second place with the last of the straglers home. He kindly signed a few autographs for a few kids as the Green Line sped forth. This was the final round of PBR before the World Finals in Vegas later this month.

The other half, here.

ACTING (in) BALANCE: The second half was another first for me this month. Attending the PLGFF I sat through four films in one straight shot including: the moving documentary Out Late, the thriller Pornography, Casper Andreas and Fred M. Caruso’s The Big Gay Musical and the real life story of guys in the sex industry - Greek Pete. Of the four my pick would be Forever Films’ Out Late as it was a moving depiction of several men and women who came out after 55 years of age. A story of passionate longing for partnership and self truth by Beatrice Alda and Jennifer Brooke. It tells the intimate stories of five different individuals (and couples), in North America - their struggles with family life, (mis)understanding and identity. Pornography was edgier than I would have expected, very dark, twisted and brooding with as much mystique as any David Lynch of late. Long, partly illuminated corridors, characters in the past/present somehow spontaneously, and effective, glitchy video sequences. The plot was thick with layers and levels of allusion.

Greek Pete was raw, earthy having no problem entering right into the bedroom and minds of a handful of real, virile London ‘rent boys’, namely Pete, a rangy and slightly gruff 20something who is bent on turning tricks to better himself in life. Through drugs, odd fetishes and other circumstances we see a tender side of someone with his eyes on the prize in his mind. Big Gay Musical definitely boasted the biggest crowd, but this sorta branch of Latter Days and other films that dealt with religion and sexuality does so in a glib way with robotic acting. It was nice to learn that one of the handsome leads (Daniel Robinson) hailed from Portland and his intimate talk with the audience was a nice touch - but that did not save the film. It plays on irreverent stereotypes of televangelists, go-go boys and the whole ‘happily ever after’ theme which is cliche and predictable. I will hand it to some of the performers who were extremely versatile dancer/singer/actors - like a cavalcade of auditions from American Idol. If there were a five star rating system I’d give it half that as the songs are catchy and the subplots are decent, especially when an admirer croons “Paul” in the Sondheim sequence. ** 1/2

Matt Alber | Hide Nothing (lyrics)

The 13th Annual Portland Lesbian & Gay Film Festival (PLGFF) takes place October 2 - 8, 2009 at Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave. PLGFF is a non-profit arts groups that annually showcases queer feature, documentary and short films from all over the world. Here are the highlights:

Sing-Along HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH
John Cameron Mitchell’s gender-bending, rock musical is back complete with a host, props and complete lyrics so you can sing along

OFF AND RUNNING
Life gets complicated when the adopted daughter of two Jewish lesbians decides to find her birth mother and get in touch with her African-American roots in this stirring documentary.

AN ENGLISHMAN IN NEW YORK
John Hurt stars in a biopic about the great British wit, Quentin Crisp’s, life in New York City.

HANNAH FREE
Sharon Gless stars in a drama about an ailing lesbian’s reflections on her life.

OUT LATE
Documentary featuring gays and lesbians who came out of the closet late in life.

GREEK PETE
Part narrative, part documentary the graphic, insightful film follows a London escort’s desire to be nominated for a “World Escort Award” in LA.

OUT OF THE BLUE
French melodrama about a middle-aged woman’s attraction to a younger woman.

Just two actors who have recently caught my attention to all intents and purposes. Tom Hardy (top) and Jeremy Piven (btm). Not necessarily in that order (or orientation) but in the ‘watch-for’ movies Bronson and Marmaduke respectively - both coming soon. Maybe it’s something about those with their hands full?

I’m re-addicted to this bandanomenon. This is what KLF is about:

Justified & Ancients, all bound for Mu-Mu Land:

Back to the heavyweight jams:

I’ll never forget The White Room…
or my 1st Blue Man Group show <<< clip is spot-on!
They said “Tammy, Stand By The Jams”

Over n’ Out.

Two exquisite extensions of TBA:09 visual arts programming are on view at Reed and Lewis & Clark Colleges respectively. If you are strictly looking at time as a historical marker (and as everything takes time) this makes sense, otherwise its basic cross-institutional networking. What’s contained inside these rooms is a whole lot of eye/ear opening, jaw-drop inducing masterworks by artists over centuries.

The Language of the Nude, Four Centuries of Drawing the Human Body is an exhibition of impeccable Italian, French, Dutch and other drawings from the collection of Sacramento’s Crocker Art Museum. Upon entry there is a sense that you have left the building inside which one ordinarily finds the most cutting edge contemporary work. Here the Cooley has been transformed into a high museum-style space (ala Smithsonian) to great effect with dark evergreen walls, simple gilded frames and dim light. Drawings by the greatest master draughtsmen of the Renaissance (Dürer) and Baroque (Rubens) periods hang alongside images of goddesses, erotic scenes and the sumptious renderings of visceral musculature by François Lucas. This collection, curated by William Breazeale, was presented last year at its home institution but this is the first exhibition of its scale to travel from the Crocker since 1992. Lithe bodies, in reverence, stretching, lounging, solo and in group scenes - it’s a truly stunning body of work and a wonderful opportunity to have this treasure in Portland. The language, so to speak, is an eternal motif in the arts, the flesh. And here the figures bare all in pure light, and lines undulate around the lush curvature of thighs and return to the gaze, the eyes. An addendum/counterpoint titled Psychedelic Soul (curated by Stephanie Snyder and Kristan Kennedy) is also on sight though may have served better to be presented in the adjacent library. The visual context was hard to jump into given the flicker of monitors, though placed discretely, creating a slightly jarring effect to the wow factor of being in the presence of such awesome work in the gallery.

On view at the Douglas F. Cooley Art Gallery at Reed College through December 5.

Broadcast is co-organized by iCI (under new directorship by Kate Fowle) and Baltimore’s Contemporary Museum (Irene Hoffman, Director) and includes some of the leading innovators of the video medium from the 1960’s to the present including some of my personal favorites. Works by pioneers Dara Birnbaum, Nam Jun Paik and Chris Burden neatly mesh with newer sensations like Christian Jankowski and the team known as neuroTransmitter. I had just seen Jankowski’s Telemistica (1999) last week for the first time at SFMOMA as part of The Studio Sessions in a similar small installation set-up. In dealing with the medium of television and radio, however, seemed even more fitting here at the Hoffman Gallery. Authority and influence, voice and vulnerability. I enjoyed the collaborative work by Doug Hall, Chip Lord and Jody Procter who in The Amarillo News Tapes (1980) worked alongside TV newscasters in an Artists-In-Residence program, taping an actual newscast with a completely phony script. Very unlike conceptual art guru Burden’s daring TV Hijack (1972), a piece hard-to-imagine in today’s climate of fear and surveillance. In it Burden pretty much hijacks a live cable broadcast, taking its interviewer hostage. Also included are some amazing short commercials that were made in response to governmental laws preventing individuals to broadcast such. The piece questions power and rights to free speech, of which he was also an early pioneer (some say brazen). Birnbaum’s video installation piece Hostage (1994) literally poses the viewer as target. The interactive laser beaming from the main monitor component aims at your chest as you view its contents while overhead ceiling-mounted monitors are shielded by front-facing targets, a six-channel broadcast depict news reports of international hostage situations. The show is startling with historical content, though feels much more open than most video-based exhibitions where one travels from darkened room-to-room. The various approaches to the medium are welcome as is the cellphone-audio tour which you could presumably ring up even before visiting, 503-205-0332.

On view at the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary Art at Lewis & Clark College generously through December 11.

(thanks Harvest!)

Short interviews by Mayor Sam Adams of Gary Wiseman, Chris Haberman and Brad Malsin as well as clips of works by Troy Briggs, Gabriel Liston and others. At the beginning you can also see a clip of The Grid, now on view ’til 10/17.

Well, more on the reference to the title later. But you’ll have to wait until 9/18 to see whatever words I conjure in ink form about this whole lot, in the next edition of Just Out. I’ve already seen Young Jean Lee Theater Company in The Shipment and Miguel Gutierrez’s Last Meadow and upcoming I am planning to see Locust/Crushed, Back to Back Theater/small metal objects, Pan Pan Theater/The Crumb Trail and Erik Friedlander/Block Ice & Propane. In the meantime, sit back and try to relax as PICA’s TBA Festival works your every last nerve.

Julie & Julia is the latest Nora Ephron film, a spin-off on two books by the ladies it depicts: The French Chef extraordinaire, Julia Child and food blogger Julie Powell. The two stories interwoven focus on Child’s life-altering years in Paris and Powell’s Julie/Julia Project on Salon.com. The fusion of the personal stories is very thoughtful and a bit, shall I say, romantic. Yes, I should say. Growing up the son of a gourmet I often was upon the couch with family when Julia invited us into her kitchen on Channel 2 (PBS/Boston). I wasn’t, however, invited into my own mom’s kitchen (wasn’t a “man’s place”…). Though I only learned today that she grew up in sunny Cal, her story truly hits home. In my late 20s and 30s I lived in Cambridge only blocks from Child’s home and spied her shopping at Bread & Circus which got folded into Whole Foods from time to time. She always seemed to shop alone, and she just had a magical gate and mystique about her. I watched once as she selected produce, never speaking to the legend directly, but once copycat through the fresh greens, taking a deep whiff of the basil before adding it to my cart, and squeezing the peaches just so. She also shopped the Wine & Cheese Cask and she recommended a certain rioja once - which to this day I have never matched for overall body and rich cask flavor. That bottle of wine was $5.99 I recall vividly. Well, you can’t find a rioja under $12 these days.

A TASTY FROTH: I love that the film was born out of the age of the blog. It delivers vignettes in which Powell, effortlessly played by the genuinely talented Amy Adams, chooses to take 365 days to cook all 500+ recipes from Cook’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking (now in it’s 40th Edition). Meryl Streep is a dead-on interpretation of Child, and hers is a love story of both her beloved husband artist/photographer Paul Child (the debonnaire Stanley Tucci) and everything food-related. Streep not only characterizes her subject, she keeps a sense of levity under the radar of farse by enriching this version of Child with passion and complexity, particularly around relations with her collaborators and teachers. The film is partly set when Child, a woman of 40+ years, was studying in an all-male Le Cordon Bleu, and the chopping scene alone is worth admission. Funny, heartwarming and a great way to fuse two women’s stories from eras nearly 40 years apart. It’s, well, gastronomic by mild to wild proportions.

STORIES STILL SELL SILVER SCREEN STYLE: As usual, when times are tough I end up behind the air-conditioned closed doors of some second-run comfy haven - and these two weeks have proven pretty good for all that’s fit to print in motion pictures, literally! As such I visited my favorite neighborhood triple-screen, The Academy, to see both State of Play and The Soloist. They have “Monday Movie Madness” (see two consecutive films for a total of $6!!!) and “Twofer Tuesdays” (admits 2 people for a total of $4!). That’s the absolute best deal in town people! Plus they offer good eats from their amazing neighbors, the BiPartisan Cafe and Flying Pie Pizza - not to mention sensible prices on all other goodies as well.

DEADLINES: Both films gave a sensitive inside look into the drama of an everyday newsroom. One in the east (DC) and one out here (LA). State of Play was a bit of an action packed political thriller with secret twists, all slowly unknotted. The well plucked cast, including a fuller-bodied Russell Crowe and the always stunning/amazing Helen Mirren were great characters. The supporting cast includes the whipsmart Rachel McAdams as Crowe’s sidekick saavy blogger, a carboardy Ben Affleck (though necessary for this role) and bit parts by great actresses like Viola Davis and Robin Wright Penn. Cast as Rep. George Fergus is Jeff Daniels who I’m usually mezza-mezza about - but if this were a more meaty role he would have stole the screen, I like him as a subtle badass.

EXTRA EXTRA: The movie sort of traces a story and relationship between a reporter (Crowe) and his college roommate (now state Rep, played by Affleck). There’s a love tryst outside his marriage and the intrigue begins with a mysterious murder on a subway platform. Governmental agencies and big power/$$$ relationships are at stake and it takes the news crew to retrofit the facts before the police, who they p-o in the process. There’s a lot going on here, so you have to pay heed to the action. What makes this movie pop is the exploration of how important and impactful the front page is, and its weighty struggle against the change of the guards (ie: recycling vs. the pixel).

IN BLACK/WHITE: Both of these stories certainly romance the power and passion of the poison pen. Well, its not all poison, it’s what they do - report first hand accounts, even getting directly involved in the action. Of course I write this wondering, hoping, wishing that arts writing were as full of such passion - but if it were all simply drama that could drive one to delusions and/or martinis. But further explored in The Soloist is a true story of an LA Times writer’s penchant for getting close to his subject in the streets of the big city. Whoa Nelly! Robert Downey Jr. as journalist Steve Lopez and Jamie Foxx as the homeless virtuoso Nathaniel Ayers are perfect foils for each other, their acting is exquisite in a riveting, moving story. Aside from Sunshine Cleaning (which I think is the flick of the year thusfar) this comes close and is one of the best I’ve seen about a difficult relationship built on the basis of respect for defining/understanding human difference (and its core struggles). This more defines a look at humanity outside the basic human interest story.

Talk about double features!

IT’S A TRIPLE….To escape the heat of the night one evening recently it was to the Laurelhurst to see Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View (1974) w/Warren Beatty. This one gets closer to home as Beatty plays Joe Frady, a local correspondent for a Portland OR newspaper. He’s following up on a story in which he was present when a Presidential candidate is assassinated during a fundraiser speech at Seattle’s Space Needle. Many scenes with a tint of Kubrick and a wholesome dollop of 70’s color, hair and paced cinematic timing ensue as Frady learns of the mysterious Parallax Corp. While rummaging through a sherriff’s domestic belongings he comes across a sorta mail-order intelligence/hitman agency after being nearly shot during an undercover investigation of another related murder. He enrolls in said corporation and things start to become a series of scearios of ‘who dunnit’, where implicating said reporter might not be outta range (especially after his editor/boss, played by Hume Cronyn, is mysteriously murdered after a late night snack in his office). The intriguing paranoia and shifting plot turns the viewer’s head in the direction of misguided fingers to the left and right. It’s most definitely an odd film, though I enjoyed the (drug) trippy interogation Frady withstands with its montage/brainwashing of images (good vs. evil) that is something ala Willy Wonka meets Clockwork Orange (two of my all-time favorite flicks).

ORIGINAL ANGEL: Yeah, even I had the poster. She may be the epitome in my generation’s vision of timeless beauty. I took her seriously because she commanded attention through her looks somehow as the quintessential California blonde bombshell, femme fatale - even in our age of post-feminism (whatever that is). In the day she was known as FFM and married to the Six Million Dollar Man. Her visage was indelible in the days of yore until she suddenly dropped out of the big picture almost entirely. That was until her ferocious stint as Fancine Hughes in the completely horrifying Burning Bed, remember? Who can forget the iconic feathered mane! Well, over and above, as far as I am concerned besides for having the most awesome name in show business, Farrah Fawcett also had a bit role in one of the best retro cult flicks of all time, Logan’s Run which was released in the spirit of ‘76 (the NY Times obit oddly left this fact on their cutting room floor). On some level you might say Aaron Spelling did for Fawcett what Andy Warhol did for Marilyn Monroe, encapsulate a sense of deer-in-the-headlights sex symbolism. Her collectable (and fluoro-carbon enriched) Faberge hairspray aside, condolences to the love of her life, Mr. Ryan O’Neal, her family and many fans.