I stopped trying to be a Woody Allen expert a long time ago. Too many movies, too much the same, lingering on the surface, hoping perhaps to be more than they were, but mostly content to just be there, or so it seemed, hoping to capture the zeitgeist the way Annie Hall did. Not [...]
I love our words for “hot” here in the middle of August (and in Portland, anyway, it is hot, especially by wimpy Northwest standards). My favorite is “sizzling.” The nameless Oregonian headline writer today employed “baked,” “broiled” and “grilled” all in one deck that might have escaped from FoodDay. Good one! If it were [...]
At lofty Scatter Tower, high above the din of the city, we occasionally receive missives about what’s going on down below. Otherwise known as press releases. We appreciate these, but because we don’t do a regular “calendar” sort of thing, we don’t often post them. But the email from Erin of Hand2Mouth Theatre [...]
Our 19th century conception of the Artist (or Poet or Actor) still stands, mostly intact, a testament to the enduring power of Romanticism. You know by now that I’m no Romantic, right? (Though I can be a sentimental old fool and sometimes the symptoms are the same.) But the Romantic idea of the “studio” [...]
High above the windy hollow of the Columbia River Gorge, Sitting Bull and Geronimo and Gen. George Armstrong Custer seem right at home.
And Andy Warhol? Surprisingly, him, too.
Warhol, the epitome of a certain sort of New York sophistication — a self-created phenomenon of the 20th century, pointing the way to the 21st — is the [...]
While you continue to hone your answers for the “movies that move me” confessional below — more! we want more! (it’s kinda getting a little Bruno Bettelheim-y in there) — we have some refreshing links from home and abroad.
Let the celebrity conduct Maybe this is “only on the BBC” but a new reality show is [...]
This is an audience participation post, it just takes a few paragraphs to get there.
A few nights ago, I was watching one of the old film channels on cable, the ones that I find myself watching more and more, which I take as a sign of my impending decrepitude. It was dangerously close to my [...]
A recent (completely fictional) email to Art Scatter began: “Sweet Mother of the Muses, can’t you get over the Shakespeare festival already?” Art Scatter was gob-smacked. Over the Shakespeare festival? Who would want to get over the Shakespeare festival? We are just beginning to sharpen our dull thoughts on the subject. We [...]
There are plenty of reasons to quit a job, even in a lousy economy like this one.
You just came into a healthy inheritance.
You married a millionaire.
You’re going back to school so you can get something that pays better than slinging coffee drinks.
Or, you’re mad as hell and you’re not going to take it any more.
That’s [...]
It’s been around since 1935, when, legend has it, a young college prof named Angus Bowmer persuaded the town fathers of Ashland, Oregon, to let him produce two performances of “Twelfth Night” and one of “The Merchant of Venice” on an old Chautauqua stage for the town’s Fourth of July celebrations. They gave him $400 [...]