enise Emerson has been creating traditional Native American art pieces for 41 years. For her, each threaded bead is a memory of her mother. Each beaded square-inch she completes ties her closer to tradition. Lacing her past into tangible artwork is not just a hobby: It is a custom, a passion and, during the winter months, life-sustaining work.
Kathleen Murphy writes: Asger Leth made his directorial bones with Ghosts of Cité Soleil, a hard-hitting documentary about the crime-ridden slums of Haiti’s Port-au-Prince, advertised as the most dangerous place on Earth. The multi-talented Leth also wrote, photographed, and provided production design for Ghosts, which garnered good notices for visceral immediacy, as well as some critical cavils about its scattershot narrative. Sadly, Man on a Ledge, Leth’s first fiction film, fails, due to a convoluted plot that’s also stunningly improbable. That wouldn’t have to be a dealbreaker, if we were grabbed hard and held fast by a charismatic cast, and/or the film’s three or four lines of action and suspense were taut enough to keep our pulses racing. Still, fortified with sufficient popcorn and soda pop, killing time with this amiable mess isn’t the worst you could do at the multiplex. Grip that wall while continuing to read at http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/man-on-a-ledge/
Kathleen Murphy writes: A Valentine Day's gift swaddled in sanitized Saran wrap, The Vow is a pretty package of sweets, sealed off from the corrupting air of reality. It will encourage susceptible audiences—women, to be precise—to believe that they've been party to Big Emotions, the kind that leave a pleasant if transient glow. Think of The Vow as vanilla Valium, a feel-good cure for a Blue Valentine's hard truths about everlasting love. Inspired by a true story, this weepie stars hunky Channing Tatum (Dear John) and perky Rachel McAdams (The Notebook), both veterans of the lucrative Nicholas Sparks genre of lovers cruelly separated by fate and whatnot. Here, in a non-Sparksian script, brain damage and amnesia do the trick. http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/the-vow.3/#Review_0
It's been close to three decades since a series of 11 tiles designed by notable artists were visible on the rounded walkway in front of the Betty Bowen Viewpoint at Marshall Park at the end of West Highland Drive.
Out of the dark, comes a man's voice that says, "I hate musicals." And we're hooked on "The Drowsy Chaperone, a delightful and often ridiculous musical romp.
Michael Peringer is a businessman. Vice-president of a local heating equipment company. In addition to those duties, Peringer is the president of the SODO Business Association. But what the long-time Queen Anne resident and father of five might eventually be most remembered for is starting a nonprofit in 1995 called ArtWorks, which is still thriving today.
Straight Shooting ended up having to sit out the first Framing Pictures session in January, onaccounta its date fell midway through an out-of-town trip we had planned. However, RTJ will join Herald-KUOW film critic Robert Horton and flâneur extraordinaire Bruce Reid for a freewheeling conversation about things cinematic Friday, Feb. 10, 5 p.m. at Northwest Film Forum (1515 12th Ave. between Pine & Pike). Expect to hear a lot about Nicholas Ray, the legendary American director who gave us a decade's worth of vibrant cinema—from They Live By Night (1948) through, oh, Bitter Victory (1958)—and whose centenary is about to be observed by NWFF. Admission is free; participation likewise. Beer and wine you pay for.
Kathleen Murphy writes: Think of This Means War as a Valentine's Day leftover: a droopy love triangle seriously short on sexual chemistry, not to mention the kind of playful self-awareness that can spice up even the blandest romantic comedy. Doesn't help that the principals in this improbable contretemps—CIA agent best buds and partners fall in love with the same woman—come off as attractive androids programmed to act funny and charm the groundlings. Further notes on the contretemps at http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/this-means-war/#Review_0
Kathleen Murphy writes: Traditionally, noir's habitat is urban mean streets, but something about American Heartland snowscapes welcomes the stain of black betrayal and spilled blood. Movies like A Simple Plan, Fargo, and now Thin Ice suggest that long, cold winters offer ordinary folk time to fall into—and for—impossibly sunny plots and promises. Such falls are seldom fortunate. The third film by the Wisconsin-born Sprecher sisters—director Jill and co-writer Karen—Thin Ice plays as mild, less-than-lethal noir. It's clear the Sprechers (Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, Clockwatchers) are far more interested in profiling the quirky types who populate this hinterland farce than in plunging into the dark existential waters that might lie beneath their noir title. Thin Ice chronicles the slow caging of a domesticated weasel, sans intent to maim or kill. That domesticated weasel would be Greg Kinnear, bringing skin-deep charm and knee-jerk venality to the role of Mickey Prohaska, a Kenosha insurance salesman. In Noirland, the notion of buying insurance against any of the ways you can lose everything works as nasty metaphor for humankind's inescapable state of risk. (See Double Indemnity for pointers.) Skate further on thin ice at http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/thin-ice.7/
Set out to write about Academy Award upsets and right away the ground starts shifting under your feet. Oh, some neck-snappers we all remember—like Jack Nicholson coming out to present the award for best picture of 2005, opening the envelope, and saying, "Whoa." Moments when the title of the movie everybody figured to win suddenly wasn't the one being read aloud. But those are ya-hadda-be-there moments. Looking back over Oscar history, you encounter what we might call upsets-in-reverse—instances when a movie or a performance that has long since become part of the racial unconscious did not, in its day, win proper recognition. Then you find yourself in a sort of "What did they know and when did they know it?" situation. How could they have been so blind? We've collected some of that kind of upset as well. Upsets come in all valences, triumphant and appalling. Truly the ways of Oscar passeth understanding. But that needn't spoil the party.1939It was Hollywood's golden year. Stagecoach ... Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ... Ninotchka ... The Wizard of Oz ... Only Angels Have Wings ... Young Mr. Lincoln ... Wuthering Heights ... Of Mice and Men ... Gunga Din ... Midnight ... Drums Along the Mohawk ... Love Affair ... The Four Feathers (OK, made in England, but still). Yet it was the making of one movie that obsessed fans all year long, and when it ended up with a then-record 13 Oscar nominations, no one doubted that David O. Selznick's nearly-four-hour Technicolor megaproduction Gone With the Wind would take the brass ring. A lot of brass rings, including best director for Victor Fleming despite the fact that some half-dozen directors (preeminently George Cukor and Sam Wood) had worked on the film. Most of the major players were nominated (including Thomas Mitchell, albeit for Stagecoach, not GWTW); newcomer-to-Hollywood Vivien Leigh won best actress as Scarlett O'Hara, and Hattie McDaniel edged fellow cast member Olivia De Havilland for best supporting actress. Yet what was wrong with this picture? Although novelist Margaret Mitchell had written the book visualizing Clark Gable as Rhett Butler, Gable had to settle for a nomination merely (best actor went to Robert Donat for Goodbye, Mr. Chips; we'd have given it to Frank Capra's Mr. Smith, Jimmy Stewart). The King took it like a man, of course. But watch GWTW today and try telling us all that Selznickean flapdoodle would be tolerable without Gable's movie-star gravitas to center it.A dozen more years' worth at http://movies.msn.com/academy-awards/oscar-upsets/
When it comes to measuring danger, there's attempting Everest, there's racing stock cars and there's attempting the crosswalk at West Mercer Street and Warren Avenue North.
Queen Anne and Magnolia will see about $3.5 million for Discovery Park, Queen Anne Boulevard improvements, playground restoration at Lawton, Bhy Kracke and Bayview, development of at least two off-leash areas, acquisition of gaps of land along the Northeast Queen Anne Greenbelt and development of community garden space.
Hollywood's annual prize day is a half-week away, and it can't come too soon. We're in another of those seasons when the winner of the top Oscars seems a lock, and that puts a bit of a damper on things even if you agree with the Academy's likely choice. Agree, or at least have come to look fondly on the prospect.
Kathleen Murphy writes: In The Snowtown Murders, first-time feature director Justin Kurzel fictionalizes awful events that took place in an Adelaide housing project during the Nineties. Kurzel's sociopathic "hero" is one John Bunting, Australia's worst serial killer—12 victims at final count—who tortured and butchered pedophiles, homosexuals, junkies, and pretty much anyone else he disliked, stuffing their bodies into barrels hidden in an abandoned bank building. This horrifying history could have been an excuse for an Eli Roth gorefest. Instead, Kurzel aims, with mixed success, to visualize the kind of wilderness that breeds a Bunting—though he fails to exploit any tension between Australia's vast emptiness and its crowded warrens of folks on the dole. Painting, in leached-out color, an environment of such material drear and communal despair that the advent of a merry little serial killer brings perverse life to the party, Kurzel suggests that Snowtown's repressed/oppressed community may have dreamed up their own monster. Not literally, but in the sense of gravitating toward some source of energy that might shock them out of zombie life, satisfying a primal thirst for action and power. Gravitate further at Http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/the-snowtown-murders/#Review_0
The state of Washington may be facing a deficit of $4 billion and maybe up to $5 billion. So when Reuven Carlyle, the newly elected state Rep. of Legislative District 36 gets to Olympia, listening, learning and working to right the economy will be job on