FILM REVIEW: “Blindsight”

From Willamette Week, 4/16/08:

The world needs another story about Mount Everest like Wilt Chamberlain needed another sex partner in the ’70s. But if you thought everything about the planet’s tallest mound o’ powder has been said and done, Lucy Walker’s documentary Blindsight offers a strong, fresh and inspiring narrative.

MUSIC: “Bill Charlap and Jillian Lebeck”

From Willamette Week, 2/13/08 [Portland Jazz Festival Coverage]:

The son of a Broadway songwriter, Blue Note pianist Bill Charlap never seems to have strayed far from his affinity for the whimsy and charm of the Great American Songbook.

MUSIC: “Tim Berne”

From Willamette Week, 2/13/08 [Portland Jazz Festival Coverage]:

The “legend” goes that Syracuse native Tim Berne bought his first sax on a whim, back when he was a student at Lewis & Clark in the ’70s. Now a seasoned and prolific avant-garde saxophonist and composer, Berne draws on influences that range from Julius Hemphill to Sam & Dave to the Kronos Quartet.

MUSIC: “SF Jazz Collective”

From Willamette Week, 2/13/08 [Portland Jazz Festival Coverage]:

The Frisco-based nonprofit SF Jazz is like the Lincoln Center of the West Coast, with a stated mission to advance new forms of jazz and celebrate all the diverse places it’s already been.

FILM REVIEW: “Short Cuts V-The Spaces in Between”

From Willamette Week, 2/20/08 [Portland International Film Festival Coverage]:

Go ahead and call me insensitive. But there’s really not much I’d less rather do than re-watch a film like The Butterfly in Winter, a 30-minute handheld, mostly silent 16 mm film of a German woman caring for her 96-year-old mother, feeding her and giving her sponge baths.

FILM REVIEW: “Shotgun Stories”

From Willamette Week, 2/20/08 [Portland International Film Festival Coverage]:

A substantial part of Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories involves its characters—the brothers Son, Boy and Kid—having King of the Hill moments: just sitting on the porch, in their Chevy conversion van, or down by the river of their slow-as-molasses rural Arkansas hometown, drinking beers, saying jack squat and contemplating their own respective existential crises.