Articles
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Notable Festivals: Sundance Inducted into the Criterion Collection: 2017 As an ideological or sociological construct, The West looms large over the American psyche. Far more than a physical, geographical region, it has come to represent a state of being that embodies our foundational values: freedom, fortitude, and persistence. Ever since the film industry dropped into…
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Notable Festivals: Venice, Deauville (Grand Prix) The state of Oregon boasts a long and proud history of eco-activism, be it as simple as routine composting and recycling at the individual level or as sweeping as governmental efforts aimed at preserving our natural resources. The beauty of nature knows no politics; our lush forests and bubbling…
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Notable Festivals: Venice The Oregon Trail holds a venerated place in the annals of American myth, buoyed by a pioneering spirit as well as its status as a cultural touchstone for every Millennial who played the iconic computer game. The actual journey, however, was far from some game or romantic adventure— it was a grueling,…
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Notable Festivals: Cannes When the Great Recession arrived in mid-2008, very few people outside of the financial sector saw it coming. Naturally, it was the middle and lower-class factions that bore the brunt of the damage, their jobs and life savings having evaporated away overnight while wealthy corporations received generous government bailouts. Jobs, homes, and…
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Like many other artists of the time, the highly-controversial outbreak of the Iraq War weighed heavily on director Kelly Reichardt’s mind. Easily the most divisive conflict since Vietnam, the Iraq War was waged by the George W. Bush administration as a drastic pre-emptive measure based on faulty, misleading, and downright false intelligence. As the…
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The Portland I knew growing up is gone now. Its soggy, homegrown eccentricity has long since been replaced by a cosmopolitan renaissance. A ruggedly provincial, semi-blue-collar character has given way to a creative class comprised of outsiders and economic refugees fleeing the runaway cost of living in larger cities like LA or San Francisco. This…
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Director Kelly Reichardt released her debut feature, RIVER OF GRASS, in 1994, but her sophomore effort, OLD JOY, wouldn’t arrive until 2006. At the risk of stating the obvious, that’s a gap of twelve years — an unnaturally long period by any standard of measure. While such developments are rare among most commercially-successful filmmakers, they…
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Notable Festivals: Sundance, Berlin As a filmmaker born and raised in Portland, Oregon, I naturally feel a kinship to its homegrown film scene— one that’s been infused from the start by a freewheeling DIY spirit. The first ten years of my active filmmaking life were spent on reckless, ragged guerrilla shoots with close friends and…
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Despite making his name in the 1970’s in advertising, director Sir Ridley Scott hasn’t made a commercial for the past fifteen years. His continued success in the theatrical feature realm has all but precluded a return to the medium that built his career, so it stands to reason that he would need a very, very…
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First, a bit of personal sentiment if you’ll indulge me. I try not to editorialize too much or insert myself into these essays— after all, that’s what my original film work is for. That said, I can’t help but express an appreciation for this harmonious coincidence of a new essay on director Sofia Coppola with…
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Following their series of collaborations throughout 2016 to support the new album “Something To Tell You”, director Paul Thomas Anderson and the buzzy rock band Haim would reunite for yet another music video, released right in the middle of PHANTOM THREAD’s awards season campaign. The song— “NIGHT SO LONG” — is a spare, gorgeously haunting…
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As one of the most acclaimed artistic voices in contemporary filmmaking, director Paul Thomas Anderson enjoys a level of prestige that’s virtually unmatched by others of his generation. He’s gotten to this level by refusing to be anything other than himself: an idiosyncratic kid from southern California’s San Fernando Valley with eccentric artistic tastes and…