Buddy cops

First, a warning: Don’t try this at home. However much it may seem like a piece of cake to build a whole movie around a lazy, lonely, corrupt, faux-racist, foul-mouthed provincial Irish cop, in fact it is a delicate art. Consider The Guard, wherein writer-director John Michael McDonagh, whose brother Martin wrote and directed In […]

Writing on the walls

Most people with English rattling around their heads give little thought to what their language looks like. Typeface and handwriting vanish quickly behind the meaning of the words they form. It’s a playful change of pace, then, to study the work of Noriko Maeda, whose Japanese calligraphy, on view through September at Warm Springs Gallery, […]

The underground actor

A barrel-chested man with a white beard and a casual manner, James “Ike” Eichling strikes up a conversation on anything, anywhere. He is most often found in his Downtown Mall shop, Ike’s Underground, an emporium for vintage clothes, furnishings, magazines, and other artifacts. Located below street level, that is where he sits most days, and […]

Quiet destroyer

As the Microphones, the Anacortes, Washington-based musician Phil Elverum released The Glow, Pt. 2 in 2001, through the tastemaking K Records. The record channeled analogue warmth and a personal style that turned the songwriter and studio whiz into one of indie rock’s most respected.

Checking in with John Milliken Thompson

What were you doing when we called? I was actually correcting a blog that I’ve been working on, a guest post about my novel for a book reviewer. They just want to know about my book. Aside from that stuff—how I wrote the book and why—the topic is usually sort of open.  Which of your […]

In with the new

 “Ringer” Tuesday 9pm, CW Buffy is back! Well, not really, but Sarah Michelle Gellar returns to TV with this new thriller about identical twin sisters in trouble. Recently sober Bridget goes on the run after witnessing a professional hit job. She turns to her estranged sister Siobhan, a wealthy Manhattanite who has kept her past […]

Play catch

Contagion is named for the film’s most developed character. That might seem unfair to the human actors, who play their parts—Marion Cotillard an epidemiologist, Matt Damon a paragon of endurance, Laurence Fishburne a CDC boss, Jude Law a blogger-alarmist, Gwyneth Paltrow a first casualty and Kate Winslet a damage controller—but that’s the nature of the […]

Minding her beeswax

To be a sculptor or a painter these days means living and dying by the photographs on your website. Martha Saunders, who has painted with beeswax for the last decade, often jokes about switching to a medium that's easier to photograph than encaustic, but she is quick to credit photographer Scott Smith with bringing her work to life online.

Payback

When I found out what The Debt was really about, I greeted it with a sense of relief. Here’s what this movie is not: some hectoring documentary about Congress figuring out its financial super committee.  After a strong showing at film festivals, and chatter that it may be a 2011 awards contender, The Debt, starring […]

Trendsetters and jumpers

“Pawn 90210”  Wednesday 10pm, E! Pawn-store shows are big right now, between “Hardcore Pawn” and “Pawn Stars.” E! never met a trend it didn’t want to cash in on, so this special follows three formerly rich Californians looking to liquidate their assets at the “Taj Mahal of pawn stores.” One is a divorcee and widower […]