The Wake

The Guthrie Theater’s recent production of The Night of the Iguana is a true visual work of art. The play is solid with both strengths and weaknesses in its performance. Written by Tennessee Williams, The Night of the Iguana is an evocative play. This celebrated writer of American Theater is famous for many productions including A Glass Menagerie, A Street Car Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Unlike many of his plays, The Night of the Iguana has uncommon consequences for his tortured hero in comparison to the typically violent endings experienced by his other characters. The Night of the Iguana addresses an individual’s search for self-purpose and meaning within a life time, no matter how short or long. It tells the story of a day in the life of Lawrence Shannon, a discouraged …

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“Everyone wants to be found” is the tagline used in the advertisements for Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola’s follow-up to The Virgin Suicides. The irreverent look at relationships and culture stars Bill Murray (Rushmore) and Scarlett Johansson (Ghost World). Usually, advertisements do not tell the prospective consumer a thing about the film, but in this case it boiled the essence of the film down to a bite-sized morsel. Both of the main characters are very lost in life and in Japan as they attempt to fight their way through life’s many transitions. Johansson (Charlotte), a recent college graduate that has been married for two years, is in Tokyo on vacation with her husband. The problem is that her husband is too busy working on his photography career to care that she is sitting in …

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From stories of one-man bands that play kitchen sink tubas and Game-Boy electronica to the story of a man that has amassed over 35,000 artworks in his home and yard, the Weisman’s new film series, New Films Independent Artists, guarantees an intriguing look into the world of quirky underground artists. Expect unusual stories of musicians, filmmakers and visual artists that possess innovative vision and unchecked passion. Several of the films have been featured at the Sundance Film Festival and one comes directly from the “Oregon Department of Kick Ass.” The series, which begins October 16th and runs through November 20th, will showcase seven documentary films from the last two years. Films are once a week, every Thursday, with the exception of one showing on Saturday, October 25th, instead of Thursday, October 23rd. The opening night brings the Jury …

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Harry Shearer makes people laugh their asses off. Creeping into your system like some kind of narcotic substance, Shearer’s work slowly unravels your composure, eventually reducing you to a hysterical, laughing shadow of your former sane-self. For over 30 years, from his role as Derek Smalls in This is Spinal Tap, to his tenure as a voice on The Simpsons (Shearer plays Mr. Burns, Flanders, and Smithers, among others), Shearer has been entertaining the masses with his excruciatingly funny blend of humor.
Last month I was able to speak with Shearer about college, comedy, and cross-dressing. The conversation that follows is typical Harry Shearer: comedic, intelligent and witty in a manner that only a man who has performed as a cross-dressing, folk singin’, crotch-stuffing, bottom-loving, ambiguously homosexual man can muster. The Wake: What have …

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The Return of Captain Invincible is a film that has sadly gone virtually unnoticed since its release. This is a film I bought used with nine other movies for five dollars. That haul contained the worst film of all time, The Jar (1984, director Bruce Toscano), but The Return of Captain Invincible, on the other hand, has become one of my favorites. It is a piece of campy cult-musical brilliance! Director Philippe Mora has shown the world what happens when Captain America meets the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Alan Arkin stars as Captain Invincible who as we see through black and white film reels in the films beginning, helped bail America out of trouble time and time again during the early part of the century. The Captain’s glory disappears, however, as during the McCarthy witch …

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A period of social, economic and political repression can describe Nazi Germany, where opposition was handled through swift execution. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian, became a spiritual voice in the resistance movement against Adolf Hitler’s unethical and inhumane Third Reich. Traced and examined in Martin Doblmeier’s documentary Bonhoeffer, the actions and demonstrations attempted by the young pastor/pacifist/Nazi resister put increased stress upon the role of the Catholic Church in a society controlled by a false God. To oppose the ideology of salvation from Adolf Hitler, Bonhoeffer proposed the only way to salvation was through God himself. Bonhoeffer attempted to “put the spoke in the wheel” of the Third Reich. Submitted to the Sundance Film Festival, Bonhoeffer was one of 3,000 films that did not get the chance to be played at the festival. Being persistent, …

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The sleek new Regis Center for Art opened for classes in September, replacing the leaky, mouse-infested temporary building that housed the art department for the past 38 years. The new $41.5 million building, located at the southernmost tip of the West Bank, has an angular white and brick exterior and exposed concrete interior with lots of spare metal fixtures, giving it a blank-canvas look inside and out. Along with painting, drawing, digital and printmaking studios, some of the more impressive features of the building are its foundry (a studio for casting sculpture from molten metal), 23 kilns, a woodshop, plaster shop, and a much-improved Katherine Nash Gallery. The building is split into two halves joined by a skyway that spans 21st Avenue. The west is dedicated to two-dimensional work and the east to sculpture. I wondered how …

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