Author Archive
Movie
When director Ariel Vromen first approached Michael Shannon about playing hit man Richard “Richie” Kuklinski in his biopic The Iceman, Shannon at first suggested he might want to find a bigger star to carry the movie. But Vrome...
Movie
There’s no denying that Robert Downey Jr. makes a good Tony Stark/Iron Man. He’s not as steely and cold as Christian Bale’s Batman, but he doesn’t need to be. Stark is a bit of an egotistical smart-ass and that comes naturally ...
Eats & Drinks
Los Angeles musician and engineer/producer Mark Trombino earned his props as the drummer behind San Diego rock ‘n’ roll juggernaut Drive Like Jehu before he produced an array of punk-pop gems for groups including Bl...
Movie
At the start of The Company You Keep, newspaper reporter Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf) exposes lawyer James Grant (Robert Redford) as a fraud in the wake of the arrest of one of his fellow radicals (Susan Sarandon) and reveals his...
Movie
There’s very little gray area in 42, a biopic about Brooklyn Dodger Jackie Robinson, the first African American on a major league team. As played by Chadwick Boseman, Robinson is a guy who elicits our sympathy after Dodgers own...
Beer
A few years ago my friend, Jonathan, received advice to abstain from gluten in his diet. I wanted to support him. One afternoon, I picked up a six pack of ale brewed with sorghum for us to share. The sensation of taste does not...
Movie
Aside from a few well-choreographed martial arts sequences, G.I. Joe Retaliation has little going for it. An ill-conceived sequel to 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, it starts out with a scene in which the G.L. Joes are betr...
Movie
This is the kind of movie you either love or hate. We hated it. Not sure who had the bright idea of handing art house auteur and all-around weirdo Harmony Korine (Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy) the reins to a film about a group of h...
Movie
We initially didn’t have high hopes for The Croods, an animated feature about a group of prehistoric cave dwellers whose lives are interrupted when the earth’s plates begin to shift. Wild man Nicolas Cage voices Grug, the famil...
Q&A
Portland’s MarchFourth Marching Band transcends categorization. Musically, they are aptly self-described as a “brass-rock-funk assault peppered with moments of swing, jazz, Bollywood, ska and metal.” Visually, to call the...