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DOUGHNUT KINGPIN TRES SHANNON WANTS TO MAKE THE WHOLE CITY HIS FUN PARK. WWEEK.COM
VOL 38/07 12.21.2011
BY AARON MESH | PAGE 11
P. 32
2
Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
CONTENT
PIZZA, PIZZA: Via Tribunali vs. Oven and Shaker. Page 32.
NEWS
4
FOOD & DRINK
31
LEAD STORY
11
MUSIC
35
CULTURE
21
MOVIES
45
HEADOUT
23
CLASSIFIEDS
52
STAFF Editor-in-Chief Mark Zusman EDITORIAL Managing Editor for News Brent Walth Arts & Culture Editor Martin Cizmar Staff Writers Hannah Hoffman, Nigel Jaquiss, Corey Pein Copy Chief Rob Fernas Copy Editors Matt Buckingham, Kat Merck Assistant Arts & Culture Editor Ben Waterhouse Movies Editor Aaron Mesh Music Editor Casey Jarman Editorial Interns Melinda Hasting, Annie Zak CONTRIBUTORS Classical Brett Campbell Dance Heather Wisner Food Ruth Brown Visual Arts Richard Speer
Erik Bader, Judge Bean, Nathan Carson, Devan Cook, Shane Danaher, Jonathan Frochtzwajg, Robert Ham, Shae Healey, Jay Horton, Matthew Korfhage, AP Kryza, Hannah Levin, Jessica Lutjemeyer, Jeff Rosenberg, Matt Singer, Chris Stamm, Mark Stock
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PRODUCTION Production Manager Kendra Clune Art Director Ben Mollica Graphic Designers Melissa Casillas, Soma Honkanen, Adam Krueger, Brittany Moody, Carolyn Richardson, Dylan Serkin Production Intern Lana MacNaughton
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OPERATIONS Accounting Manager Andrea Manning Credit & Collections Shawn Wolf Office Manager & Receptionist Nick Johnson Office Corgi Bruce Manager of Information Systems Brian Panganiban Publisher Richard H. Meeker
Our mission: Provide our audiences with an independent and irreverent understanding of how their worlds work so they can make a difference. Circulation: 80,000-90,000 (depending on time of year, holidays and vacations.) Though Willamette Week is free, please take just one copy. Anyone removing papers in bulk from our distribution points will be prosecuted, as they say, to the full extent of the law. Willamette Week is published weekly by City of Roses Newspaper Company 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Main line phone: (503) 243-2122 fax: (503) 243-1115 Classifieds phone: (503) 223-1500 fax: (503) 223-0388
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INBOX NOT TAKING UP NIKE’S FIGHT
Is this article [“NikeLeaks,” WW, Dec. 14, 2011] trying to elicit empathy for Nike? At a time when Occupy movements are making efforts to educate people about income disparities, I’m offended WW would even print this article. To note: Nike executives are billionaires, millionaires, and otherwise six-figure income earners. Nike spends millions of dollars each year to stop counterfeiting—why not move the jobs back to the U.S.? Overseas workers earn around $62 per month—in the U.S., that gives them the right to strike and organize with unions. There are child-labor accusations against Nike—hard to monitor from thousands of miles away. Sweatshop complaints rarely make the news these days—because we are apathetic and just want the merchandise. One current U.S. cultural anomaly is that we are duped into caring that a horribly unethical corporation such as Nike isn’t making as much money as it could. I offer that we buy used or U.S.-made shoes until Nike moves everything back here. —“Rob”
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
This is an interesting read, but I take particular issue with the framing of the corruption in Vietnam. While the allegation of corruption might be accurate, it fails to account for a more simple answer. I wouldn’t be surprised if people counterfeiting in a developing nation were simply a much more sympathetic cause to officials than a multinational company that pays average monthly wages that are less than the retail prices of many of the shoes. —“Reid Parham”
So far, biweekly trash pick-up is working for me. But the holidays are coming, and I’m pretty sure the Styrofoam from an Xbox would fill my whole trash bin. Is there any way to get rid of all that Christmas-morning packaging? —Santa Crass I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, Santa, but when it comes to disposing of what is more properly known as expanded polystyrene, you (and the rest of the planet) are pretty much hoho-hosed. It’s not just that you can’t bung it into your curbside recycling bin—you can’t even take it to the dump. Metro’s Jim Middaugh knew of only two places citywide that recycle block Styrofoam (though not the peanuts), and neither of them is a Metro transfer station: Total Reclaim, on Northeast Columbia Boulevard, and Recology’s Southeast Foster Road location will both take it off your hands for around $5 a carload. Mind you, even these places don’t actually
POLITICS AND BUSINESS
All this proves is that Rob [Cornilles] really is a qualified businessman [“It’s All in the Game,” WW, Dec. 14, 2011]. Anyone who has been an entrepreneur for many years will suffer setbacks, hire employees and probably have to downsize at some point. They’ll be flush some years and have trouble making all the payments in other years. They’ll also have a complaint from someone at some point, too.... It appears that Rob has always tried to remedy the situations as they arise. That’s what it means to be in business. Everything here seems perfectly normal. Small-business owners are big risk-takers.... His opponent has been safely tucked away in legal/regulatory/ government work. America needs more Rob Cornilles types and fewer Suzanne Bonamici types if it wants to prosper. —“Matt” So far I fail to understand what having owned a business has to do with being an effective legislator. The skills aren’t necessarily transferable. Having run a business is not an experience that qualifies [Cornilles] to be in Congress, regardless of how successful it is. —“virgil flywater” One can get the impression Cornilles is either a hapless oddball, a serial liar or something equally disturbing in between. —“Phil Decker” LETTERS TO THE EDITOR must include the author’s street address and phone number for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words. Submit to: 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Fax: (503) 243-1115, Email: mzusman@wweek.com
recycle the stuff. “The machinery [to process it] is expensive,” Middaugh says. “It either goes to California or it’s shipped overseas.” I don’t wish to cast aspersions on the environmental practices of our foreign partners, but there’s something about the reassurance “we shipped it overseas to be responsibly recycled” that smacks of “we gave Bandit to a nice farm family.” Moreover, in researching the question of precisely how Styrofoam is recycled, I was struck by how frequently the answer came in the context of “who can banish it from my sight?” and how rarely any mention was made of what actually happens to it. The truth is, Styrofoam can’t really be recycled. It can only be “downcycled” into other nonrecyclable crap, or cooked down into a less-bulky form of waste. It seems this Christmas may bring many Portlanders a more visceral understanding of this problem. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
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ENVIRONMENT: Uranium mining may return to Oregon. POLITICS: Realtors spend big bucks to bury a tax idea. COVER STORY: Voodoo Doughnut’s Tres Shannon.
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
Doubts about the proposed $3.5 billion Columbia River Crossing Project keep spreading. Oregon GOP chairman and potential 2014 gubernatorial candidate Allen Alley raised eyebrows at a Dec. 9 Westside Economic Alliance forum by blasting the Interstate 5 bridge and transit project. Alley—a former venture capitalist, ex-CEO of Pixelworks Inc., and one-time aide to then-Gov. Ted Kulongoski—told the audience he’s soured on the project. “I supported this bridge when I ran for governor [in 2010],” Alley said. “Then I spent a lot of time looking at it, and now I have serious questions and very serious doubts.” The project keeps plunging ahead, even though the Oregon Legislature hasn’t authorized a dime for construction. Project officials said Dec. 20 they’ve ordered a $4.2 million “test” of the foundation work on the Washington side near the current I-5 bridge. Last year, 72 percent of voters said yes to allowing the county to propose a Multnomah County library district on the ballot. But Multnomah County Board Chair Jeff Cogen says he doesn’t believe voters this year are ready to approve the district and permanent funding for the county’s library system. Cogen had considered such a measure for the May 2012 ballot. He told county employees in a letter last week that he instead backs a measure to renew the current levy. That means cuts to Multnomah County library services. The library system, he says, has an $11 million budget shortfall this year, and the county will have to fill gaps with other money. “Unfortunately, this approach will force us to reduce library hours and staff positions,” Cogen wrote. ISABEL
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A Portland State University student is suing the school, claiming it violated her rights by trying to evict her cats— and then her—from student housing earlier this year. Jasmine Batiste, 24, says the cats are companion animals that ameliorate her disabilities (post-traumatic stress disorder and a mood disorder). A PSU staff member found the contraband cats during an inspection one year ago. Batiste refused to get rid of her cats, PSU eventually evicted her, and she sued claiming a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act. Batiste is seeking $153,000 in damages for emotional distress. PSU spokesman Scott Gallagher tells WW in an email that the school “denies any wrongdoing and is committed to working with disabled students to accommodate their needs.” Batiste didn’t return WW’s call. Her complaint does not disclose her cats’ names.
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Trail Blazers junkies! We have not forsaken you (even if the injury gods have). Read part one of WW basketball guy Casey Jarman’s massive, two-part season preview at wweek.com/blazertime. And watch for Casey’s live blogs of Blazers home games. Read more Murmurs and daily scuttlebutt.
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A GLOWING OPPORTUNITY AN AUSTRALIAN COMPANY WANTS TO REOPEN URANIUM MINING IN OREGON, TESTING A STATE LAW AIMED AT PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT. BY CO R E Y P E I N
cpein@wweek.com
Portland
Bend
OREGON
I DA H O Medford
Lakeview
CALIFORNIA
Aurora site
N E VA DA
with arsenic, radium, radon and uranium at the White King and Lucky Lass uranium mines 17 miles from Lakeview in Southern Oregon. Those mines closed in the 1960s. Oregon Energy’s president says the mine will have no trouble meeting the state’s environmental standards. “We already support and operate under the equivalent of Oregon’s mining and environmental regulations in other jurisdictions,” Reynolds says. The nearest town to the Aurora site is 10 miles away: McDermitt, Nev., population 513. The town is next to the reservation of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe. Reynolds says the company has received support from local officials, and that he expects tribal members to “form the core of the project’s local workforce.” Karen Crutcher, the tribal council vice chairwoman, confirms the company attended a council meeting last year and has been talking with tribal chairman Billy Bell. In its presentation to state officials, the company says its mine will create 400 direct jobs in Malheur County, which the U.S. Census Bureau says has the highest poverty rate in Oregon. Tuttle, however, says many of those jobs won’t go to locals. “People that develop mines and operate mines are specialists, and they’re transient,” he says. The veteran activist doesn’t have the power to stop the Aurora mine on his own. But given that he helped create Oregon’s chemical process mining law, Tuttle is confident he can make a case to regulators that the project should not proceed. “We’ll just make sure,” he says, “that all existing laws are rigorously applied.” O R E G O N D E PA R T M E N T O F E N V I R O N M E N TA L Q U A L I T Y
In Malheur County, the poorest in Oregon, there is wealth buried in the ground. It’s uranium—and the county has what may be the biggest sources in the U.S. For the first time in decades, someone wants to mine uranium in the state. Oregon Energy LLC, owned by an Australian company, hopes to extract at least 18 million pounds of uranium oxide from a 450-acre southeast Oregon site called the Aurora property. Uranium oxide, better known as yellowcake, now trades near $52 per pound, six times its value a decade ago. Yellowcake is used to fuel nuclear reactors and can be processed into a form suitable for nuclear weapons. Oregon Energy President Lachlan Reynolds tells WW the mine will provide uranium for domestic nuclear plants, noting the U.S. produces only 5 percent of the uranium it uses. The site, he says, “is very suitable for mine development, with few competing land-use issues or environmental sensitivities, as well as a strongly supportive local community.” But the project, three miles from the Nevada border, worries some industry critics. Uranium mining—not practiced in Oregon since the 1960s—often left hidden poisons in the earth and groundwater. The Aurora project would be the first test of a 1991 Oregon law aimed at policing mining operations that use chemical extraction. Most of the mine’s wealth won’t stay in Oregon, instead enriching corporate shareholders in Australia. Nor would the site, mostly on federal land, bring a dime in mineral royalties to the United States government or the state of Oregon. “I can’t think of a clearer example of what’s wrong with federal mining law,” says Larry Tuttle, director of the Center for Environmental Equity. “No one was talking about nuclear weapons in 1872 when the law was passed.”
The parent company, Energy Ventures Ltd. of Perth, Australia, has filed documents with the Australian Stock Exchange that say as much as 30 percent of the U.S. supply of uranium could come from the Aurora site. (Wyoming, Colorado and Utah are the biggest producers.) Potential buyers of the yellowcake include U.S. allies South Korea, South Africa and India, as well as rivals China and Russia. In 1977, a now-defunct Canadian company discovered uranium on the Aurora property. Records show the site’s mineral rights changed hands many times before Oregon Energy purchased the claim for $2 million in cash last year. Production is years away, even if the project gets all the necessary green lights. Oregon Energy obtained a state exploration permit in August 2010 but has yet to file a “notice of intent” with the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries to mine the site. State Geologist Vicki McConnell says the company had planned to file that notice this month but delayed the application pending further metallurgical study. “They have not determined precisely what chemical process they’d need to concentrate the uranium ore,” she says. A September presentation to state officials by Oregon Energy sketches how the mining will take place. Machines will scrape the earth from an open-pit mine a half-mile in length. The heavy clay soil, placed in vats, will be sprayed with a chemical mixture that probably contains sulfuric acid. The acid bonds with the uranium, which is extracted, dried and sold as yellowcake. The leftover dirt is discarded in a “tailings pile” near the site. The 1991 Oregon law—pushed by Tuttle despite mining industry opposition—was intended to prevent environmental damage that such mining has created elsewhere. In his 2002 book, Yellowcake Towns, historian Michael Amundson links high cancer rates among Native Americans to the legacy of uranium mining. In Moab, Utah, the U.S. Department of Energy expects to spend $1 billion to clean up 16 million tons of tailings from a closed chemical process uranium mine, local news reports say. Groundwater there remains poisoned by heavy metals. Closer to home, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality continues to monitor groundwater contaminated
WA S H I N G T O N
FIVE DECADES LATER: This 2006 photo shows cleanup work at the long-closed Lucky Lass and White King uranium mines outside of Lakeview. Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
7
POLITICS DANIEL ZENDER
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
BY N I GEL JAQU ISS
njaquiss@wweek.com
It’s not every day a special-interest group raises nearly $800,000 to wage a campaign to ban something that’s already illegal. But that’s the situation with a proposed 2012 initiative called “Protect Oregon Homes.” No, the roofs over Oregonians’ heads aren’t in peril. The dire title comes from the group driving the measure, the 14,000-member Oregon Association of Realtors, which is bankrolling a proposed change to the Oregon Constitution that would ban new real estate transfer taxes. The measure raises important public policy questions. A special-interest group—middlemen, in this case—is seeking to use the constitution for financial advantage. And while approval of a new real estate transfer tax is unlikely, a constitutional ban would cut off options for local governments—including Oregon’s poorest counties—looking to help pay for public services. More than 30 states impose some kind of real estate transfer tax—often to pay for infrastructure and the cost of growth. In Oregon, only Washington County imposes a transfer tax: a 0.1 percent fee on every property sold. Paid by the seller, that amounts to $300 on the sale of a $300,000 house. The tax generates about $2.5 million a year for the county. The real estate lobby first got lawmakers to pass a ban on new transfer taxes in 1989, after the cities of Lake Oswego and Eugene looked at them to fund schools and city vehicles. The Realtors’ 2012 measure would put the ban in the Oregon Constitution, beyond the reach of lawmakers. Only voters could lift the ban. Shaun Jillions, a lobbyist for the Oregon Association of Realtors, says his members are willing to spend the money for the ballot measure because they’re concerned a tax would threaten
jobs and Oregon’s fragile economy. Real estate sales have plummeted since 2008, and Jillions says any new tax, especially on homeowners who may already have lost money on their property, would be a disaster. “Our research shows that homeowners don’t like [transfer taxes],” he says. “And renters who want to own homes someday don’t either.” Jillions, whose group has raised $786,000 and expects to raise far more, says Realtors have pushed constitutional measures in four other states in recent years. He’s confident his group will turn in the required 116,284 valid signatures to put the measure on the November 2012 ballot. Jillions says low transfer-tax rates such as Washington County’s are atypical. The national average, he says, is much closer to the nearly 2 percent that Clark County, Wash., property owners pay. (A 2 percent tax on a $300,000 home would cost the seller $6,000.) “Once taxes are on the books, they never seem to go down,” Jillions says. But rural counties are desperate for alternatives to federal timber payments. The U.S. government has been making these payments to counties with federal lands in lieu of the proceeds from timber harvests. The money is under constant threat from congressional budget cutters. The payments were more than $250 million as recently as 2007-08, but have since been cut in half and are slated to disappear. In 2009, a governor’s task force on federal timber payments listed real estate transfer taxes as a top option for rural counties. The report said a 1 percent statewide transfer tax would raise about $300 million annually. “Counties should be freed from restrictions in state law that limit or prohibit their ability to enact transient lodging tax and real estate transfer taxes,” the task force wrote. Multnomah County Commissioner Deborah Kafoury says the Realtors are wasting their money and need to look beyond their own wallets to such broader concerns. “Putting a pre-emption into the constitution is really tying the hands of local voters,” she says. ”It’s already state law, and I don’t see why that’s not good enough.” Critics say putting such a prohibition into the constitution would consign Oregon’s poorest counties to a bleak future. “It’s very bad public policy,” Gil Riddell, a lobbyist for the Association of Oregon Counties, says of the proposed measure. “It really forecloses options that citizens otherwise would have to pay for services they expect.”
Congratulations to Buzz Siler for Artfully Crafting Your Winter!
Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
JAMES REXROAD
Voodoo Child DOUGHNUT KINGPIN TRES SHANNON WANTS TO MAKE THE WHOLE CITY HIS FUN PARK. BY AA R ON MESH
amesh@wweek.com
page 12
Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
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CONT.
At 2:42 am, Tres Shannon decides we need to see if Occupy Portland has shut down the Port of Portland. It’s a Tuesday morning, 30 minutes after Shannon’s weekly set at Dante’s with his Karaoke From Hell band. Shannon—the co-owner of Voodoo Doughnut, the nightlife ringmaster of Old Town, and the man about to unveil a mysterious second venture called the Portland P Palace—is sitting in the back of his 1992 Mercedes 300E in his reserved parking space on Southwest Ankeny Street, bitching that Willamette Week did not endorse his run for mayor in 1992. He looks for the bright side. “Thank God, I don’t have to hang out at City Hall and deal with the Occupy Portland shit,” he says, adding without a pause: “What we should go do is go to the Port and see what the fuck’s going on. I’d love to go do that. You wanna go?” This is a good place to mention that Shannon has spectacular weed. “Hard right,” Shannon tells his designated driver— whose name is Colby, but Shannon calls him Cheese—and we roll east across the Steel Bridge. We have to slow down on Northeast Broadway because Shannon has dropped his roach in the passenger seat of his car. We coast down to Swan Island, where Shannon says Occupy is blocking the Port. The car stereo blasts Rolling Stones bootlegs at top volume. The windows are open and freezing air slaps me in the face and it feels good. “The Stones!” Shannon says. “Are our lights on, by the way?” Tres Shannon is riding high.
GONG SHOW: Tres Shannon performs Mondays at Dante’s with Karaoke From Hell.
ness partner, Kenneth “Cat Daddy” Pogson. “The worse the economy got, the longer our lines got. We are kind of the rock stars of the doughnut world. We show up with the pink box, and it’s like the parting of the Red Sea.” At age 45, Shannon is proof that not only are there second acts in Portlandian lives, but the encore can be far more celebrated and lucrative. Born Richard Shannon III in Portland Adventist Hospital in 1966, Shannon was nicknamed “Tres” by his parents. They split up when he was 4, and Tres moved to Colorado with his dad. As a teenager, he made money in the summer by hanging out at a Dairy Queen and challenging tourists to banana split-eating contests. He attended only one day of college. He moved back to Portland in 1984. Six years later, he and Benjamin Arthur Ellis opened their riotous all-ages club the X-Ray Cafe, an alterna-kid destination where the walls were covered in black velvet paintings and acts ranged from Green Day to Ernest Truly’s Bare Bottom Spanking and Salvation.
JAMES REXROAD
Those responsible for promoting local tourism have a hard time explaining why Voodoo Doughnut has become a phenomenon. “Personally, I couldn’t name another doughnut spot in another city that has national recognition,” says Megan Conway, vice president of communications for Travel Portland. “When you talk about Portland, there’s always someone in the room who says, ‘Oh, have you had a Voodoo doughnut?’” Voodoo will celebrate its millionth customer by March, though it’s probably had more. This summer, Voodoo sold a million doughnuts in June, July and August. Pink boxes are a common sight in the security lines of Portland International Airport. The shop’s website gets 60 million hits a year. In 2009, according to Shannon, Voodoo Doughnut was the eighth most-searched place name in the world on Google. “We struck gold with Voodoo,” says Shannon’s busi-
JAMES REXROAD
VOODOO CHILD
“He literally would give anybody a chance, no matter how little talent they had,” says Tony Green, a spokesman for the Oregon Department of Justice who used to play gigs at the X-Ray. “What most people didn’t see was that he took very seriously being an Old Town business owner.” Shannon and Ellis shuttered the X-Ray Cafe in 1994 for lack of cash. For the next decade, Shannon supported himself by booking shows at rock club Berbati’s Pan, and with his Karaoke From Hell gigs. For 19 years after returning to Portland, he rented a room from his mother. In 2003, Shannon and Pogson opened Voodoo Doughnut because they wanted a business and were too burned out on nightlife to open a bar. They served doughnuts 24 hours a day from an Old Town hole-in-the-wall. Originally, Shannon wanted to theme the shop after Rod Stewart and call it Every Picture Tells a Story Doughnut. Instead, Voodoo painted its walls in the same Day-Glo colors as the X-Ray, and served its pastries in neon pink boxes festooned with dancing witch doctors. It performed weddings ($300 still buys a legal Universal Life ceremony, plus doughnuts and coffee for six people). It created a doughnut topped with M&Ms called the Marshall Matters, and the phallus-shaped, cream-filled Cock ’n’ Balls. The Multnomah County Health Department banned the Nyquil Glazed and the Vanilla Pepto Crushed Tums doughnuts. The city named the Portland Cream the official doughnut of Portland. This summer, Shannon and Pogson set a Guinness world record for the largest box of doughnuts: 666 pounds. They held a wedding ceremony for two housecats. The company now has three locations—it launched Voodoo Doughnut Too in a former Autoland used-car dealership on Northeast Davis Street in 2008, and Voodoo Doughnut Tres in Eugene in 2010. The original Old Town location reopened this summer with a renovated interior carved from the closed Berbati’s Pan, complete with three stained-glass windows and a large neon sign featuring a pretzel-stick Voodoo doll. Like any successful roadside attraction, all three shops are mostly dedicated to roped-off, curling queues. Shannon and Pogson declined to release their annual revenues, but they say they sell at least 10,000 doughnuts a day at the three locations. A little math suggests they could be grossing up to $7 million annually. That’s a lot of money for fried dough. “The magic at Voodoo is not in rolling a doughnut in
GET IN LINE: Voodoo’s renovated Old Town shop includes stained glass and bottles of Rogue’s Voodoo Bacon Maple Ale. 12
Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
CONT. on page 15
Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
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Cap’n Crunch,” says Kohel Haver, Shannon’s lawyer. “That ain’t the magic. People come to Voodoo Doughnut because they want to be part of something.” Standing inside Voodoo on a weeknight—with Lou Reed playing on the speakers and customers lined up beside the collages of New York Times obituaries—it’s easy to see the appeal. Visitors can dabble in bohemian decadence and emerge with a harmless 95-cent treat. But the success also remains counterintuitive: In a town where foodie culture is king, a doughnut isn’t pushing the exotic envelope. Even the Voodoo motto suggests the secret isn’t the doughnut: “The magic is in the hole.” So what is the uncanny allure in the center? “We get to run a circus,” Pogson says. “That was our plan all along. And my friend Tres can run a circus.” Shannon, whose mayoral bid wasn’t even mentioned by name in WW’s 1992 primary endorsements—though he came to the interview with a bullwhip and finished fourth in a field of 12—is now commonly known as the mayor of Old Town. He’s the closest thing Portland has to a mascot. Voodoo has made appearances on Leno, Conan, the Travel Channel, the Food Network and The Simpsons’ 20th anniversary special. Shannon gets a cameo in January’s second season of Portlandia. He plays God. When I call him to ask for an interview, Shannon asks what the piece will say. I cite a scene from the movie Almost Famous, where the young reporter protagonist responds to a rocker’s request to “Just make us look cool” with the reply, “I will quote you warmly and accurately.” He says we should go out drinking.
THE PARTY NEVER ENDS: A woman vomits in the Ankeny Street alley outside Voodoo Doughnut.
He does not like technical details. “I haven’t made a doughnut in three years,” he says. “That was never my strength.” He doesn’t keep the books, either. Pogson is the back-ofthe-shop manager, with a degree in hospitality management. “I was always terrible at math,” Shannon says. “The last thing I want to start doing is numbers.” We walk two blocks from Vendetta to Shannon’s house with his dog, a black Lab named Oprah Winfrey. “Voodoo Doughnut definitely paid for this house,” Shannon says. It’s a modest two-story 1890 foursquare that Shannon purchased in 2009 for $355,000. The parlor is filled with paintings, including a black-velvet Barack Obama portrait and a huge Keith Richards in charcoal. The bathroom is decorated entirely with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey clowns. We drink bourbon in Shannon’s kitchen. We cross the river in his Mercedes, where there are plastic scorecards and a magnifying glass from Shannon’s judging duties at Club Rouge’s Vagina Beauty Pageant in August.
JAMES REXROAD
It’s hard to describe Shannon without thinking of cartoons. He looks like a Matt Groening drawing of Steve Zahn. He dresses like a Keebler elf gone Deadhead. At the North Portland bar Vendetta on a Monday night, he’s wearing a paisley shirt, faux tiger-skin vest, lime green coat, purple corduroy pants, leopard-print thick-rimmed glasses and neon pink leather hat. He’s telling stories in a cowboy drawl that comes just this close to being hick, then dodges away into something that knows better. “I’m texting Courtney Taylor-Taylor about his hair,” he says. The Dandy Warhols frontman is texting back: “We should burn one and rock this shit.” Shannon uses a ruby-colored refurbished Samsung flip phone. He had a smartphone for one day and returned it: “I hated how it felt in my hand.” He rarely uses computers, and has no email address.
VOODOO CHILD JAMES REXROAD
CONT.
P TEST: Tres Shannon kicks back in the Portland P Palace, the Northeast Sandy Boulevard bar he plans to open in January.
Then more bourbon at Old Town strip club Magic Garden. Then to Dante’s for the Karaoke From Hell set, with regulars screaming “Helter Skelter” and crooning “Desperado,” accompanied by the five-piece combo. Shannon plays tambourine, gong and cowbell, and sings backing vocals. At the set break, we walk to Voodoo. A woman in a short gold dress is vomiting in the alley outside. Shannon finds her a bucket. “I think we gotta get back to keeping Portland sketchy,” he says. “All Old Towns in major metropolitan cities are sketchy. We should be rough and rowdy. We should get back to it.” But isn’t Voodoo merely packaging punk vibes into tourism dollars? “We just saw people puking in front of my business,” Shannon replies. The obvious next step is to open a bar. The phone is ringing at the Portland P Palace. When Shannon finds the cordless receiver, it’s a wrong number. “This is the Portland P Palace,” he tells the caller. “Soon to be legendary.” Shannon’s new venture on Northeast Sandy Boulevard and 24th Avenue still looks a lot like the Timberline Tire Factory and Auto Service Center it used to be. But where the ovals painted on the windows once advertised tuneups, they now read: “PUTT-PUTT. POOL. PINBALL.” It’s a Wednesday night, and Shannon is giving me a tour of the dream he’s had since 1988: A bar and fun center where everything starts with the same letter as Portland. There’s a nine-hole putt-putt golf course installed on the concrete floor. Three pool tables, including what Shannon says is the only Fusion table on the West Coast—it looks like two rectangles attached at the hip. Pinball machines. Punching bags. Pop-A-Shot. Glossy photos of Parker Posey, Pope Benedict XVI, Pepe Le Pew and Packy the Oregon Zoo elephant. A floor-to-ceiling mural of Steve Prefontaine. And, of course, there’s a picture of Peter Pan. There will be Pabst Blue Ribbon: Shannon has applied for an OLCC license. The menu will include panini, pierogi, pizza and peanuts. Not everything will be ‘P,’” Shannon says. “We’re going to serve some hot dogs. But maybe they’ll be Polish dogs.” Shannon bought the tire center with two septuagenarian business partners: John Hunt and Buzz Gorder, who he met through his mother. CONT. on page 17 Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
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VOODOO CHILD JAMES REXROAD
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OREGON OPAL “John Hunt and I were kind of questionable years has he been able to celebrate Thanksgiving. about the name,” says Gorder, who builds corpo“He’s probably had to deal with a bunch of sadrate trade-show exhibits at Gorder Designs. “But ness,” says Haver, his lawyer. “I know he has. But how can you go against somebody who sells [mil- he is looking forward, and looking to what’s fun.” lions of ] dollars of doughnuts?” As Oprah Winfrey chases a tennis ball across Shannon wants to open the Portland P Palace the mini-golf holes, Shannon mulls plans. on Jan. 2—his 46th birthday—but he’s still waitHe and Pogson are traveling to Denver this ing for city permits. month to talk with city officials about opening “This is the business plan,” he announces, pull- the first Voodoo location outside of Oregon. ing a sheet of paper from his pocket. It is covered “We’re trying to be wined and dined a bit by the in doodles and what might be a map. “There’s pro- chamber of commerce.” fessors and pornography and pianos.” They’re also talking with Portland InternaHe looks through the Palace’s giant glass win- tional Airport about opening a Voodoo shop in dows into the parking lot, and says he hopes to the terminal. install a deck and fountain. “We’re still not ready for it,” Shannon says. “In an ideal world,” he says, “it’d be like Vegas, “They’ll have to give us some amazing terms for and every hour Mount St. Helens would erupt.” us to do it. We’d probably need to be able to fry Shannon is not the chief investor—he calls out there. You get off the plane in Portland and it himself “the chatty partner”—but he’s setting out smells like doughnuts.” without longtime cohort Pogson, whom he credHe doesn’t like most of the city’s innovations: its as the practical one behind Voodoo’s success. the streetcar, the Burnside couplet, the removal “He’s venturing out a little bit,” Pogson says. of flowering cherry trees from Old Town. “I look “Just to have a solo gig is at all those great old pictures tough. But he’s always been a of Portland, man, and I’m guy who’s had a couple street like, ‘Why?’” he says. “Change “WE GET TO RUN A things going on. It’s just is stupid.” CIRCUS. THAT WAS they’re getting bigger and Pogson calls him “a tradimore powerful now.” tionalist,” and amid his militant OUR PLAN ALL Pogson is staying out zaniness, there’s something in ALONG. AND MY of the Portland P Palace to Shannon that is old-fashioned. FRIEND TRES CAN spend more time with his “He’s like a teenager and an wife and kids. old man at the same time,” RUN A CIRCUS.” Shannon has no chilsays Victoria Porter, a Karaoke —KENNETH “CAT dren. He’s been dating a From Hell bandmate who New Seasons Market deli dated Shannon in the ’90s. DADDY” POGSON manager named Michelle But Shannon admits Voofor more than a year. doo has changed from the early He says his dating relationships always seem days when he and Pogson closed the store briefly at to last roughly three years: “Something happens, midnight to do beer-bong rips in the lobby. or they die, or they break up with me.” “We’re the Man now,” he says. “If pretentious, On Nov. 26, 1998, a Thanksgiving afternoon, finicky Portlanders are over it, their kids still love his girlfriend Catherine “Cassie” Jean Wright it, and grandmas still love it.” drowned when she was sucked into a Willamette As he lets his imagination run in the Portland River whirlpool near Oaks Bottom. News P Palace, Shannon sounds like he really just reports say she dove in the river after Shannon, wants to run one of the Farrell’s Ice Cream Parwho was trying to save her dog, another black lours he remembers from his childhood. lab. All three were pulled into a concrete pipe “If this could be Farrell’s with a bar,” he says, by the flooding river. Shannon and the dog sur- “that’d be pretty great.” vived. He was found in an eddy when passersby He’d prefer the entire city to be an amuseheard his screams. ment park. Shannon won’t talk about it, except to call it “just a shitty day.” Friends say only in the last few CONT. on page 19
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“What they should do is take the old ski lifts from Mount Hood and have them go down the hill at OHSU,” he says. “This town needs a good roller coaster. If it was really scary and great, I bet people from Portland would ride that all the time.” We’re driving somewhere amid the overhead cranes and loading docks of Swan Island at 3 am Tuesday, and Shannon is sure Occupy Portland will be here. It isn’t. What is here is the entrance to the processing shipyard of Service Steel. A dozen hardhatted workers are waiting in the parking lot to start their shifts. “I’ll hop out and talk,” Shannon tells Cheese. “We just wanna keep rolling and be cool.” He gets out of the car and shakes every one of the worker’s hands. “You guys like the Rolling Stones?” he asks. They do. “Could I put in an application or something?” Shannon asks them as we turn the Mercedes around. “I’m a good worker, man.” We drive to another shipyard entrance and stop at the security gate. Shannon is still hunting for Occupy. He tells the guard we’re with WW. “We were kind of wondering if we could see the story,” he says. “The only story you’re gonna find out here are shipbuilders and blue-collar workers,” the guard says. He is very aggrieved about Occupy Portland’s blockade—which is actually at Port of Portland terminals 4, 5 and 6, about seven miles away. “Keep picking on the damn banks and leave the workers alone.” As we drive back to Old Town, Shannon grows pensive, pointing out the locations of his favorite buildings that have been demolished. “They’re blocking the Port and yet they have no idea why it’s called Portland,” he mutters. “Burnside is the best fucking street. We don’t know how cool we are. We tore half of it down. We chopped down the cherry trees.” And for the only time tonight, Tres Shannon—Portland’s own Peter Pan—seems sad he couldn’t preserve more of his youth. “If people are so into this town,” he says, “why are they trying to change it?” But as he drops me off outside my apartment, Shannon cheers up. As the car pulls away, he leans his head out the passenger window and grins, as if the whole night had been an elaborate game. “Just make me look cool!” he calls out. “Almost Famous!”
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NEWS YEAR’S EVE: Our picks for your night. FOOD: The Battle of Naples. MUSIC: Christmas gigs for the holiday averse. THEATER: Off to see the Wizard.
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SCOOP BON JOVI LIVES! (WE TEPIDLY REPORT.) FEATHER FREE: Portland’s getting what is (as far as we can tell) its first vegan bed-and-breakfast. The Cherokee Rose Inn (2924 SE Alder St., cherokeeroseinn.com) was opened by newly transplanted Georgia native Sandy Miller. There’s a full vegan breakfast, of course, but the retired middle-school science teacher goes the extra mile by not providing comfy down pillows. “I use cruelty-free soaps, cleaning products, etcetera” says Miller, a 20-year vegan. “My dream is to offer my fellow vegans a warm welcome and a convenient home base when they come to visit the city.”
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BARISTA BATTLE: Portland will host a national barista competition in April. The United States Barista Championship happens as part of the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s annual shindig, which the Oregon Convention Center is proud to host this year. Locals wishing to protect their home turf will have to qualify in Tacoma on Jan. 27. Alternately, instead of getting serious about competitive coffee-making, they could just try to sell that screenplay and/ or finish their dissertation. Info at usbaristachampionship.org.
DIGIHURST: Portland’s most popular theater pub, the Laurelhurst, has joined the computer matrix, replacing its celluloid projectors with digital ones in its four theaters. The Laurelhurst debuted its digital shows last weekend, but will keep a film projector in its largest hall for repertory movies. VANCOUVERIA: Because Portlandia parodies are inevitable, and because people with Washington license plates drive objectively worse than people with Oregon plates, we chuckled at a new send-up positing that “the dream of the suburbs is alive” across the river. “Remember when going out to dinner meant Applebee’s or Olive Garden? Blooming onions!” Video at wweek.com. URBAN RENEWAL: Interurban, the Mississippi bar shuttered by an electrical fire about a month ago, has reopened its kitchen and is serving its full menu. The bar, largely spared by the fire, again has food from Toro Bravo’s John Gorham matched with booze from Prost! barman Dan Hart. The other owner, Kurt Huffman, is involved with the new downtown pizza joint Oven and Shaker (see review, page 32).
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BECAUSE THIS ISSUE NEEDS MORE Acme Donuts (2929 SE Powell Blvd.) noticed its berry-filled treats tend to disappear a little faster than normal during Hanukkah. So this year it’s taking special orders for strawberry-filled, powdered sugar-topped doughnuts, called sufganiyah in Israel. “I had no idea it was part of the tradition, but we’ve run out of jelly-filled doughnuts the last two years,” says a clerk. “So we put out a sign and we’ve already got an order for 200 for tomorrow evening.”
HEADOUT J - M A LTA . C O M
WILLAMETTE WEEK
WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK IN ARTS & CULTURE
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 21 IN MULIERIBUS [MUSIC] This seven-member allfemale vocal ensemble, drawn from Portland’s pre-eminent large choirs, will sing some of the Renaissance’s most beautiful music, by composers such as Palestrina, Dufay and Praetorius, along with the world premiere of a new work, Lux ex Nocte, that the group commissioned from Colorado composer Richard Toensing. St. Philip Neri Church, 2408 SE 16th Ave., inmulieribus.org. 7:30 pm. $12-$20. THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN 3D [MOVIES] Exactly how popular is Tintin, the boy reporter who travels the world with Captain Haddock in the Belgian comic? This was debated in our office. Exactly how good is Steven Spielberg’s movie adaptation? Real good. Various locations including Century 16 Eastport Plaza, 4040 SE 82nd Ave., 772-1111. Multiple showtimes. $13. THE SANTALAND DIARIES [THEATER] Portland Center Stage’s fifth production of Joe Mantello’s one-man adaptation stars Jim Lichtscheidl, a Minneapolis actor making his Portland debut. Replacing Portland favorite Wade McCollum, he has some big, jingle bell-adorned shoes to fill, but he proves up to the task. Lichtscheidl’s metamorphic impressions of the colorful personalities with whom Crumpet the Elf must contend might even surpass David Sedaris’ own. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700, pcs. org. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 pm Saturdays-Sundays. Noon and 5 pm Dec. 24. $25-$51.
THURSDAY, DEC. 22 ANGELS IN AMERICA: MILLENNIUM APPROACHES [THEATER] Want to see your Mormon cousins squirm for 3½ hours? This will do the trick. World Trade Center Theater, 121 SW Salmon St., 205-0715, portlandplayhouse.org. 7:30 pm Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. $15-$32.
FRIDAY, DEC. 23
THE ALIEN NATIVITY IS OUT OF THIS WORLD. In December 2010, Matt Henderson wanted to have a Christmas open house—an all-inclusive, meet-the-neighbors affair. But Henderson’s house is a small former church in Northeast Portland, so the visual artist and drummer called some friends, made some costumes and held a live nativity, papier-mâché animals and all. “All the participants were more or less professed nontheists, [but] we tried to approach it somewhat seriously,” he says. “We posed for periods of 10- to 20-minute blocks for a couple hours. There was classical Christmas music playing in the background, and we served hot chocolate.” This year, Henderson decided to go for something bigger. He was considering a neon nativity until Halloween, when he had his friend Lauren Carter make a “giant alien head” to fill the empty
shrine space above the church’s stage. “This alien head is so badass that it occurred to me that we should do an alien nativity,” he says. Yes, alien, with a mirrored manger, xenomorph Santa and extraterrestrial magi. When I called Henderson, he was shopping for “androgynous-looking” mannequins to represent Mary and Joseph. “I always like to highlight the fact that there is no one definitive history—that the story of Jesus is no more plausible than some of these alternate histories that are not accepted but nonetheless compelling,” he says. The key verb is “highlight”: Visitors will be issued diffractive glasses and ushered through a series of archways lit with randomly flashing LEDs. The result should be an experience akin to a Christmas rave hosted by Art Bell. I’ll see you there. BEN WATERHOUSE. SEE IT: Alien Nativity is at Xhurch, 4550 NE 30th Ave. 5-9 pm Wednesday-Sunday, Dec. 21-25. Free.
A DANGEROUS METHOD [MOVIES] When he’s not playing a sex addict, Michael Fassbender spanks Keira Knightley in David Cronenberg’s new movie. We’d wonder what Freud would say about this, but we don’t have to, because Viggo Mortensen PLAYS FREUD. Regal Fox Tower Stadium 10, 846 SW Park Ave., 221-3280. Multiple showtimes. $10.50.
TUESDAY, DEC. 27 WOODY ALLEN AND HIS NEW ORLEANS JAZZ BAND [MUSIC] Woody Allen is in the midst of his third or fourth career resurrection thanks to a massively successful film (Midnight In Paris) and a great documentary about him that appeared recently on PBS. What better time then to take a quick jaunt around the U.S. with his New Orleans Jazz Band? Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 7:30 pm. $55-$97. Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
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CULTURE
N E W W I N T E R M E N U . . . beginning December 21st
I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y K AT I E DA I S Y
NEW YEAR’S EVE
Open New Year’s Eve Please call for reservations.
830 N Shaver • 503-460-3333 just east of the corner of Mississippi and Shaver Open: Tue.-Sun. 5pm; Weekend Breakfast 9am-2pm
BY BE N WAT E R H O US E
2 1 0 2 E
NEW Y
bwaterhouse@wweek.com
In a mere 10 days, 2011, with its awful progression of disasters and revolutions and crackdowns and more disasters and dickish politics and more revolutions and more crackdowns will finally come to a close, never again to haunt us. While there will doubtless be plenty of misery to come in 2012—along with some sort of crystal evolution thing, if I’m reading my appropriated Mayan astrology correctly—we are granted one night of respite, at the turning of the year, before the next catastrophe sets in. We’d better make it a good one. Fortunately for us, this year brings an unusually large crop of really great New Year’s Eve parties to Portland. Here are the best 29 of them, organized by your favorite means of coping with misery.
Roaring Twenties Havana New Years
80s Video Dance Attack
VJ Kittyrox plays the early MTV oeuvre. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell, 284-8686, wonderballroom. com. 8 pm. $17-$22. 21+.
Cooky Parker Presents: One Possible History of Dance Music 1961-2011
Parker DJs a survey of modern dance music, all played from the original LP with the exception of an MTV segment, with videos from 1980-89. The Woods, 6637 SE Milwaukie Ave., 890-0408, thewoodsportland.com. 8 pm. $10 in advance, $12 at the door. 21+.
Contigo, Melao de Cuba and the Shanghai Woolies headline a formaldress bash celebrating the good (for Americans) ol’ days between Cuba’s independence and its takeover by brutal gangster politicians. Cuban food will be served. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Tears of Joy Theatre and Portland Youth Jazz Orchestra. TA Event Center, 300 NE Multnomah St., brownpapertickets. com. 8 pm-1:30 am. $75-$100. 21+.
The Miracles Club, Sex Life, Ancient Heat, Sun Angle, Palmas, DJ Copy, DJ Snakks, DJ Hostile Tapeover
Hypnotic house, cheesy electro-pop, nouveau disco and whatever the hell Copy does—this is gonna be the second-best dance party in town, after Talkdemonic. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639, holocene. org. 9 pm. $13. 21+.
GE PACKA E V E AR’S
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Blood Beach, And And And, This Charming Man
An evening of, uh, let’s call them unusual vocals. And a Smiths cover band, for variety. The World Famous Kenton Club, 2025 N Kilpatrick St., kentonclub.com. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
Caleb Klauder Country Band, Foghorn Stringband
The old-school country singer and roots band take the stage of Portland’s best bar. The Spare Room, 4830 NE 42nd Ave., 2875800, spareroompdx.com. 9 pm-2:30 am. $12. 21+.
The Chicharones, the Doo Doo Funk All Stars
The best rap duo in the world and the best funk jam in Portland play the formerly best club in town. Teds, 231 SW Ankeny St., berbati.com. 9 pm. $TK. 21+.
Jerry Joseph & the Jackmormons, I Can Lick any SOB in the House
Two of Portland’s best live bands get hellish. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 226-6630. 9 pm. $30 in advance, $35 day of show. 21+.
Langhorne Slim and the Law, The Builders and the Butchers
Like a dark heart in a wicked town of red-dress preachers who sink and drown, it’s the Builders and the
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Includes: • Bottle of champagne • $30 for evening drinks or breakfast • Free valet parking • Guaranteed late check out! • Plus all guests automatically entered to win a Dream New Year’s Eve Gallery Suite Upgrade, a bottle of upgraded champagne and free overnight valet parking (a value of more than $900) BOOK ONLINE TODAY or call 866 986 8086 866.986.8086 | 503.225.1717 400 SW Broadway, Portland, Oregon, 97205 www.hotellucia.com Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
NEW YEAR’S EVE CONT.
The Reservations, Big Black Cloud, New York Rifles, the Hollywood Tans, Red Ships of Spain
Rex Marshall’s sleazy psychedelic fuzz quartet headlines an all-ages evening of snarling garage rock. Backspace, 115 NW 5th Ave., backspace.bz. 9 pm. $10. All ages.
The Scott Pemberton Superband, The Soul Stew DJs
Guitarist Scott Pemberton makes up for his jam-band tendencies with jawdropping virtuosity. Here he appears with a doubled-up version of his usual trio, with two drummers, two bassists and two guitar players. For the dance-averse, DJs will spin upstairs. The Goodfoot, 2845 SE Stark St., thegoodfoot.com. 9 pm. $10 for DJs, $15 for Scott Pemberton. 21+.
Talkdemonic, DJ Freaky Outty, Deelay Ceelay, Brainstorm
Butchers! Bagdad Theater & Pub, 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., cascadetickets. com. 9 pm. $25 in advance, $30 at the door. 21+.
Nurses, Radiation City, Wild Ones, DJ Beyonda
That’s some real good indie pop! Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., mississippistudios. com. 9 pm. $17. 21+.
The Parson Red Heads, Welfare
Quarterflash, Jon Koonce
Hell, yes, they’re back. Oregon’s biggest band of 1981 reunites for the 30th anniversary of its Billboardtopping single, “Harden My Heart.” Scoff all you like—have you ever toured with Elton John? Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., aladdin-theater.com. 9 pm. $35 in advance, $40 day of show. 21+.
Red Fang, Rabbits, Lord Dying
The Beatles’ album A Hard Day’s Night will be played in its entirety. White Eagle Saloon, 836 N Russell St., cascadetickets.com. 9:30 pm. $10. 21+.
Sizzle Pie celebrates its anniversary in the most metal fashion possible— with Rabbits’ thunder and scream. Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave., startheaterportland.com. 9 pm. $15. 21+.
Pierced Arrows, the Bloodtypes, Iron Lords
The Radical Revolution, Freak Mountain Ramblers
Fred and Toody and Kelly are the best. Go party with them. Ash St. Saloon, 225 SW Ash St., ashstreetsaloon.com. 9:30 pm. $10. 21+.
The rockingest bluegrass around. Kennedy School, 5736 NE 42nd Ave., cascadetickets.com. 9 pm. Free-$35. 21+.
Our 2005 Best New Band survey winner headlines a very arty dance party with fellow dance duos Deelay Ceelay, who make their own video projections, and Brainstorm, who are so rockin’ they sometimes deploy a tuba. Mission Theater, 16241 NW Glisan St., cascadetickets.com. 9 pm. $16 in advance, $18 day of show. 21+.
Tragedy, Night Nurse
Hardcore trio Tragedy is a real big deal just about everywhere but Portland, the Memphis-born band’s adopted hometown. Plan B. 1305 SE 8th Ave. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
Two Beers Veirs, Black Prairie, The Minus 5
Laura Veirs reprises her annual yearend gig at the LaurelThirst, backed by Nate Query, John Moen, Christ Funk, Jon Neufeld and Annalisa Tornfelt, with guest appearances by Willy Vlautin, Sallie Ford, Ritchie Young, Israel
Nebeker and Kevin and Anita Robinson. LaurelThirst Public House, 2958 NE Glisan St., 232-1504. 8 pm. $25. 21+.
Weinland New Year’s Eve Supergroup, Fruit Bats
For the third year running, Weinland and the band’s many friends—Ritchie Young, Brian Perez, Eric Johnson and too many others to list—perform killer covers of Heart, Bowie, Van Halen, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Queen, Prince and the like. Guaranteed to be killer. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., dougfirlounge.com. 9 pm-2 am. 21+. $16 in advance, $18 day of show.
The Winebirds, Tango Alpha Tango
The Winebirds are a moody pop sextet that learned all the right lessons from Pink Floyd and the Cardigans. Tango Alpha Tango sounds kind of like Muse jamming with Matchbox Twenty, without the most annoying parts of either band. Someday Lounge, 125 NW 5th Ave., somedaylounge.com. 9 pm. $15. 21+.
DJ IZM. 306 NW Broadway, 222-4458, giltclub.com. 9 pm. $75. 21+.
Lincoln
Jenn Louis prepares a three-course menu featuring a rabbit-lamb cassoulet. 3808 N Williams Ave., 288-6200, lincolnpdx.com. Dinner 5:30-10 pm. $50.
Teardrop Lounge
The cocktail bar offers a multiple-course dinner with cocktail pairings. 1015 NW Everett St., 445-8109, teardroplounge. com. 5:30-8:30 pm. $100. 21+.
Pix Pâtisserie
The sweet shop brings back its annual chocolate buffet. The first 100 customers who purchase a beverage after 11 pm at either of Pix’s two locations get free chocolate mousse, ice cream ganache, meringue, beer and so on. 3901 N Williams Ave., 2826539; 3402 SE Division St., 232-4407; pixpatisserie.com. Buffet begins at midnight. 21+.
Wafu
Chef Trent Pierce will serve a sixcourse menu of Japanese fare, followed by a party DJ’d by sous chef Lady J featuring $2 beers and $4 punch. 3131 SE Division St., 236-0205. Dinner seatings 5-7:30 pm, party 9 pm-1 am. $50 for dinner, $70 with sake pairings. The party is free. 21+.
Aviary
The innovative Alberta Street restaurant rises like a phoenix from the literal ashes (it was closed by a roof fire July 4) with a new year’s menu featuring duck roulade, slow-poached sturgeon and—ooh!—“quince, cranberry, chamomile anglaise.” 1733 NE Alberta St., 287-2400, aviarypdx.com. 5-11 pm. $65 per person, $90 with wine pairings.
Gilt Club
CULTURE
A five-course dinner featuring trumpets of death gnocchi and music from
Ground Kontrol
One ticket gets you unlimited play on the arcade’s 80-some games. 511 NW Couch St., groundkontrol.com. 5 pm-2 am. $15. 21+.
Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
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RING IN THE REVELERS for NEW YEARS EVE! Vegas Style
SAT, DEC 31 ST
NYE PARTY A
Night Full of Entertainment
BALLOON DROP & CHAMPAGNE TOAST AT MIDNIGHT
80s 90s & TODAYS
Happy Holidays Happy Holidays
Special Events to Celebrate the Season: Christmas Eve Prix Fixe
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NE 30th & Killingsworth 503.227.2669 www.cocottepdx.com
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NYE PARTY! SW 3rd & Salmon • 503.227.6185 lotuscardroomandcafe.com
NW 3RD & COUCH • 503.234.9431 WWW.DIXIEPDX.COM
SE 8TH & MORRISON | 503.236.2695 THEGRANDCENTRALBOWL.COM
NE 30th & Killingsworth • 503.227.2669 • www.cocottepdx.com
New Year’s Eve
EaT: An Oyster Bar’s New Year’s Day Brunch
vie de bohème 1530 SE 7th Ave. PDX
503.360.1233
NS A T L U S SLIDE OF
THE
JOIN US FOR A NEW YEAR'S EVE OF LAUGHTER
FREE serving of Back Eyed Peas, Cabbage & Cornbread*
Wear the clothes you passed out in from New Year’s Eve and get a free oyster shooter! 10 am to 2pm ~ Lunch after 2
ROSE BOWL 2012! Watch OR vs. WI at the Oyster Bar! 1/2/2012 @ 2pm
N EW
plus Zenda Torrey Band
Dance 2011 out the door...
Live Music 7:30-1am midnight toast, party favors! $28 advance/ $32 day of show
bcs
championship monday january 9th 5:30pm it’s bowl season, watch it here!
Y EA R’ S
EVE
AL MADRIGAL
SENIOR LATINO CORRESPONDENT F RO M “ T H E DA I LY S H OW ”
TWO SHOW TIMES!
vs. 3808 N. Williams www.eatoysterbar.com
1510 SE 9th AVE | 888.643.8669 | www.heliumcomedy.com
*while supplies last, 1 serving per customer
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
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Business in the Front...
Restaurant
8115 SE Stark
NOW SERVING BRUNCH. All you can eat buffet. 10am – 2pm Sundays CAN B
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Bar & Grill
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503.654.4423 • 10605 SE Main St. Milwaukie, OR www.CanbyAsparagusFarm.com
410 SE 81st Ave. Directly behind the Observatory
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• Pork Rojo SPARAGUS • Grilled Asparagus F YA • Tamales • Empanadas 40 Varieties Taste the • Cottage Cheese of Gourmet Difference Tamales • Enchilada Roja CASA DE • Enchilada Verde A R LE S R E S TAU • Fruit Cocktail • Mexican Sweet Bread M TA
Party in the Back!
• Beans • Rice • Potatoes • Huevos a la Mexicana • Chicken Verde • Chile Rellenos • Beef Rojo
FOOD & DRINK = WW Pick. Highly recommended. By RUTH BROWN. PRICES: $: Most entrees under $10. $$: $10-$20. $$$: $20-$30. $$$$: Above $30. Editor: MARTIN CIZMAR. Email: dish@wweek.com. See page 3 for submission instructions.
DEVOUR VIVIANJOHNSON.COM
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 21 Holiday Takeout Menu at Kenny & Zuke’s
Everyone’s favorite nuevo Jewish deli will feed your Chrismukkah party this year. Kenny & Zuke’s is offering a special takeout menu through Jan. 1. Latkes, pastrami, chili-dog kits, salmon strudel, whole glazed hams, pies and more could be on your table with 48 hours of notice. Call 503-2223354, or order at catering@kennyandzukes.com. Kenny & Zuke’s Delicatessen, 1038 SW Stark St., 222-3354. Through Jan. 1.
sticky sweet smoky spicy food you’ll want to eat with your hands
Dine-in • Carry out (503) 373-8990
413 NW 21st • Portland OR 97209
smokehouse21.com
SATURDAY, DEC. 24 Acadia Reveillon Dinner
A réveillon is a traditional French dinner held after Midnight mass on Christmas Eve, apparently still popular in New Orleans due to the city’s Catholic and French heritage. Acadia, Portland’s Big Easy-centric bistro, is carrying on the tradition with a three-course meal. Dishes include turtle soup, bronzed Louisiana puppy drum, turducken and apple fritters with eggnog crème anglaise. Acadia, 1303 NE Fremont St., 249-5001. 5 pm. $40.
Christmas Eve at the Country Cat
Break out the bulky Christmas sweater to hide your gluttonous shame: Meaty Montavilla neighborhood eatery the Country Cat will be open for brunch on Christmas Eve for some seasons “eatings,” with rib-sticking specials like shrimp and grits, grilled rib-eye steak and eggs and an open-faced, fried razor clam sandwich. RUTH BROWN. Country Cat, 7937 SE Stark St., 408-1414. 9 am-2 pm. $12-$15 brunch specials.
Christmas Eve at Gilt Club
Old Town’s Gilt Club is hosting a “Ghosts of Christmas” dinner to celebrate the birth of Jesus. For $35, you get a “ghost of Christmas past”: prawn cocktail or tripe stew; a “ghost of Christmas present”: confit pork cheeks or olive-oil poached cod; and a “ghost of Christmas future”: pineapple cake with lychee ice cream, or maybe your dad drunkenly telling everyone what a disappointment you are and that journalism is a dead industry and asking, “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” To prepare yourself before the big day, there will also be cocktail pairings with each course, including one featuring “slapped” basil (yes, it’s a thing), cracked pepper and olive oil. Gilt Club, 306 NW Broadway, 222-4458. 5 pm. $35. Reservations only. 21+.
Christmas Eve at Metrovino
Say “Goodbye” and “Merry Christmas” to Metrovino chef Gregory Denton (he’s leaving the Pearl restaurant to start his own place in January) with a threecourse Christmas Eve dinner. Choices include foie gras torchon, grilled steelhead, roasted beef and black-truffle risotto. Cap it off with a chocolate soufflé for two (nothing says you have to share it) or a fruit cup made with passion-fruit foam and pop rocks. Metrovino, 1139 NW 11th Ave., 5177778. 5 pm. $50.
MOVIN’ MASA: Elizabeth (right) sells another tamale.
ELIZABETH’S TAMALES There are many things I want to know about Elizabeth, the woman who rolled a cooler up to my front door to sell tamales. How she got in the cooler-based tamale business, naturally. Also, who else buys her tamales? Does she know other women selling tamales from an ice chest? Does her business skyrocket around Christmas? Unfortunately, my Spanish is not as good as her tamales—flavorful masa with strips of meat flavored with salsa roja, wrapped in corn husks and served in foil. A co-worker helped translate. She’s been making tamales since July 2010, cooking in a kitchen somewhere along Killingsworth Street and selling them around Southeast Division. She’s originally from Mexico City. She started selling when she Order this: Tamales de carne (12 for $10). couldn’t find other work. She says gabachos like me buy them, “Because they are very hungry and they don’t like to cook.” My curiosity was not sated as well as my appetite. Tamales are arguably the Western Hemisphere’s most traditional dish, eaten everywhere in Mesoamerica before and after the gringos came. They’re a hassle to make, which is why families prepare them in one big batch for special occasions. Elizabeth, apparently, makes them every morning. Her tamales are not fancy, artisan-style pockets of Dungeness crab and apricots. Not that there’s anything wrong with exotic fillings—Aztecs sometimes put tadpoles or bees in theirs, after all—but there’s certainly something to be said for the simplicity of slightly sweet cornmeal, meat and chilies. Especially when delivered to your door. How can you try Elizabeth’s tamales? Well, she gamely suggested we publish her telephone number, but we’ll pass it along via email. Se necesita hablar un poco de Español. MARTIN CIZMAR.
S E AT I N G F O R O M A K A S E 5 Course D I N N E R AT 5 : 3 0 & 8 : 0 0
Late Night F E S T I V I T I E S B E G I N N I N G AT 1 0 : 0 0
5411 NE 30TH AVENUE
503 450 0893
www YAKUZALOUNGE com
VE E S ’ R A E Y NEW Y,
L BOOK EARTE! SLEEP LA
29 from+2 tax
EAT: Email artseditor@wweek.com with “Elizabeth” in the subject line and we’ll reply with her phone number.
DRANK
HOLIDAY SPICED LIQUEUR (DECO DISTILLING) Well, that about says it all, doesn’t it? This new release from Portland’s Deco Distilling is Christmas in a bottle: a very sweet, thick, rum-based liqueur with strong flavors of clove, cinnamon, allspice and mace, with a hint of orange peel. I imagine a crew of elves cramming clove-studded oranges, cinnamon-scented pine cones and eggnog in a tiny wine press to squeeze out this dark brown elixir. A fairly high alcohol content (60 proof ) saves Deco’s product from the syrupy quality of spice liqueurs like Goldschlager. It’s pleasant on its own, chilled, but would also be quite good added to cider, coffee, eggnog or cocoa—or poured over ice cream, or in a hot toddy with lemon juice, or what have you. It’s versatile stuff and, at $16 for 375 ml, quite cheap. Stocking stuffers for everybody! Recommended. BEN WATERHOUSE.
Includes: • Complimentary parking • Party hats, favors • $50 voucher for Driftwood Room or Gracie’s • Free champagne toast at midnight • Guaranteed late check out! BOOK ONLINE TODAY or call 866 986 8085
866.986.8085 | 503.219.2094 729 SW 15th Avenue, Portland, Oregon 97205 www.hoteldeluxe.com Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
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FOOD & DRINK
YOU WANNA PIZZA ME? VIA TRIBUNALI AND OVEN AND SHAKER VIE FOR DOWNTOWN PIZZA DOMINANCE. BY BE N WAT E R H O U SE
bwaterhouse@wweek.com
P H O T O S : C H R I S R YA N P H O T O . C O M
How’s this for timing: Two Neapolitan pizza places happened to open nearly simultaneously in downtown Portland, both serving authentic thin-crust pizza at affordable prices. Each has been packed from the get-go. Despite their surface similarities, the restaurants represent opposite philosophies of cooking and restaurateurship. Via Tribunali, the first to open by three weeks, is the hotly anticipated fourth location of a Seattle chain founded by Mike McConnell, president of Caffe Vita, known for its fetishistic devotion to authenticity. The Associazione Vera Pizza Napoletana-certified pizzaiolo, Gennaro Nasti, comes from Italy. So do the bricks in the oven, the cheese, olive oil and meats on the pizzas, the entire very long wine list, the sole beer on tap and even, absurdly, the tiramisu. These pies have a serious carbon footprint. The Portland outpost, opened by McConnell, local restaurateur Bruce Carey and Presidents of the United States of America drummer Jason Finn, is a big restaurant in a small package, cramming 70 seats into a 1,500-squarefoot storefront across the alley from Voodoo Doughnut. Its opening has brought a second line to the intersection, as the weekend crowd spills out of the cramped waiting area and onto the sidewalk. Inside it is dark and intimate, warmed by the heat of the oven, the dark-stained wood and oil paintings of erupting Vesuvius sparsely lit by cast-iron chandeliers and expensive incandescents. The soundtrack is American—Sinatra.
VI AT RIB
32
UNA LI: Quat tro formaggi.
Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
The space is laid out with capacity, not logistics in mind. The prep area by the restaurant’s enormous wood-fired oven overlaps with the narrow path between bar and booths, forcing diners looking for the bathroom to dodge the 8-foot handle of the pizzaiolo’s swinging paddle. There’s no prep area, so customers tend to wander into the middle of the restaurant, looking for someone to seat them. The bartender and the guy running the meat slicer have to dance around each other behind the bar. g. The restaurant gives an initial impression eg OV an of chaos. EN nd a s AN There seems to be no disorder in the kitchen, en DS gre HA though. Via Tribunali’s oven runs so hot—1,200 degrees d r a K ER coll : Hous Fahrenheit—that pizzas arrive within 10 minutes of orderemade bacon, ing even on a busy night. They are impeccable: thin, very chewy, 12-inch pies, their bottoms charred, their sauces nali, with thousands of dollars worth of liquor behind the fragrant. The house special ($17) is a rolled-edge thing, bar and over a dozen excellent beers on tap. Several wines topped with tomato sauce, smoked mozzarella, cherry are also on tap. Magarian’s cocktail menu is thoughtfully tomato, ricotta, buffalo mozzarella, grana padano and basil, divided into “fresh,” “dry,” “strong” and “nonalcoholic,” that’s about halfway to a calzone. It’s good, but too doughy with enough variety to please drinkers of all stripes. Like for my taste. I prefer the basic Margherita ($13, though it’s juice? Try a Pineapple Trainwreck with rum, lemon, worth paying another $3 to upgrade to springy, tangy buf- ginger and pineapple. Want something more complex? falo mozzarella) or, better, the quattro formaggi. The latter The Corleone, an aromatic mix of gin, grappa, lemon and is among the best things I’ve eaten this year, covered in a white grape juice is Magarian’s masterpiece. Most of the thick-but-not-too-thick stratum of mozzarella, smoked cocktails cost $9, a very fair price given the quality of the provola and grana padano studded with little land mines of spirits. The menu lists not only the ingredients but also Gorgonzola that detonate on the palate. There are things the recipe for each drink—a first for Portland and a boon other than pizza on the menu—a very good mixed salumi to home cocktailians. Lots of drinks call for lots of fried food, which Whims board and pleasant, unremarkable salads—and the bar makes a very fine Negroni, but everything is provides in abundance. Her arancini—deep-fried balls of breaded risotto, $4 for two—are better than most overshadowed by the pizza. Some 13 blocks away, in the Pearl I’ve had in Portland, but they can’t compete with the District, Oven and Shaker takes a very cazzili, a $5 pile of gooey potato and cheese croquettes different approach to the Neapoli- that remain blistering hot for 10 minutes, in defiance of tan pie. A project of ChefStable the laws of thermodynamics. You will scald your mouth group, the “urban saloon” is the on them, but you will have no regrets. Whims does not brainchild of bartender Ryan neglect salads. Either the Insalata Nostrana (a radicchio Magarian and Nostrana chef Caesar, $10) or the Dinosaur Kale salad (shredded with Cathy Whims, an obsessive pecorino and bread crumbs, $11) with a pizza will satisfy student of Italian regional two eaters. Oven and Shaker’s wood-burning oven came, like Via cuisines who, in her 20 years at Genoa restaurant, Tribunali’s, from Italy, but Whims’ devotion to Northwestwas hugely influential in ern bounty is reflected in her thoroughly untraditional the development of the pizza toppings, which include bosc pear, roasted squash city’s local, seasonal culi- and Oregon anchovy. Best of all is the chanterelle, radicchio, fontina, leeks and fried capers pizza ($15), which nary ethos. The restaurant is enor- tastes like a crisp December morning. (If you’d rather not mous, a 3,200-square-foot experiment, you can get a standard Margherita or salami r o o m e m b e l l i s h e d w i t h pie.) Whims’ pizzas are slightly thinner and less chewy stained barnwood, giant mir- than Via Tribunali’s, with a nutty flavor and very crisp rors and little else. It has 76 seats edges. They are also about $4 cheaper. Both Via Tribunali and Over and Shaker serve excepin three long rows: one of booths, one at the bar and one of skinny, tional pizza, so the choice between them comes down to high tables in between. Waiters buzz priorities. If you value a short wait and adventurous flaefficiently up and down the aisles, and vors, go to the Pearl; if you’re more concerned with tradiservice is remarkably fast. On my first tion and atmosphere, head for Old Town. Oven and Shaker visit, I was seated, fed and out the door in is a logistically superior enterprise, and better aligned with 45 minutes. The air of competence is broken the city’s values, but Via Tribunali has more soul. only by the terrible playlist; the last time I was in I heard Tool, Florence and the Machine and some awful EAT: Via Tribunali: 36 SW 3rd Ave., 548-2917, viatribunali. net. 4 pm-midnight Tuesday-Thursday and Sunday, 4 pm-2 country ballad in one 15-minute stretch. am Friday-Saturday. Oven and Shaker: 1134 NW Everett Oven and Shaker has a boozier focus than Via Tribu- St., 241-1600, ovenandshaker.com. 4 pm-midnight nightly.
$2 Domestics $2.50 Micros
Since 1974
Never a cover!
ALL DaY!
friendly. sounds great. best burger. independent. musician-owned /operated
friendly. sounds great. best burger. independent. musician-owned /operated
Sun-Thur
10 Flat Screen TVs
ALL GAMES!
Entertainment
Ron Steen Jam Session
Every Monday 8pm - 11pm all ages no cover
503.288.3895 info@mississippistudios.com 3939 N. Mississippi
Buffalo gap 503.288.3895 info@mississippistudios.com Wednesday, December 21st • 9pm 3939 N. Mississippi
Buffalo Bandstand
presented By: The legendary gospel group, and winner of live artist Network four Grammy Awards, visit us for a unique, and illustrious, one-of-a-kind showcase
Go TellDecember It On The22nd Mountain: Thursday,
QUEERLANDIA $40 Adv WED DEC 21st
The Sale
THUR DEC 22nd
Adv Hailing a gritty and elusively haunting$5 voice, Seattle’s Star Anna rocks Americana gems with sensitive passion “Sounding occasionally like John Mellencamp’s older, wiser and psychologically mixed-up sibling, Jerry Joseph writes complex, image-laden songs and infuses them with plenty of attitude, soulfulness and swagger.” – Washington Post
Saturday, December 24th
Christmas Eve Hours:
Hailing a gritty and elusively haunting voice, 8aM – 6pM Seattle’s Star Anna rocks Americana gems with sensitive passion
Saturday, December 25th
STAR ANNA
6835 SW Macadam Ave | John’s Landing
RED FANG
+THE MINUS 5 $8 Adv $15 Adv
Mississippi Studios, Star Theater, and Relapse Records Presents “Sizzle Pies 1st Anniversary Party” Woodchuck cider sweet n local presents: with a New Year’s Eve lineup featuring: a showcase of music rooted in the folk revival tradition, with a dose of indie thrown in
RED SWEENEY FANG ADAM & THE JAMBOREE
+LORD DYING
@ STAR THEATER (13 NW 6th Ave)
+LORD DYING
@ STAR THEATER (13 NW 6th Ave)
$15 Adv
Find out just why The Liberators are called one of the best improv groups in town
The LIBERATORS COMEDY SHOW
ALAMEDA +TERRIBLE $15 BUTTONS Adv SAT DEC 31st $5 Adv FRI JAN 6th Find out just why The Liberators are called one of the best improv groups in town
The LIBERATORS COMEDY SHOW
ADAM SWEENEY
TRANSIENT
ALAMEDA
DANIEL MENCHE (Record Release) EIGHT BELLS +TAURUS
& THE JAMBOREE TRANSIENT +TERRIBLE BUTTONS
$5 Adv FRI JAN 6th (Record Release) DANIEL MENCHE EIGHT BELLS
SAT JAN 7th
SAT JAN 7th
$5 Adv
NPR has called him one of the best living songwriters, and Dondero lives up to the hype, a classic folk troubadour who weaves a captivating, mesmerizing song
NPR has called him one of the best living songwriters, and Dondero lives up to the hype, a classic folk troubadour who weaves a captivating, mesmerizing song
WED JAN 11th
DAVID DONDERO
$8 Adv
THUR JAN 12th
WED JAN 11th
THUR JAN 12th
$10 Adv
$8 Adv
QUIZZY
$5 Adv
+TAURUS
LUCAS FIELD
$12 Adv
$15 Adv
Woodchuck cider sweet n local showcase presents: dark and progressive rock music from local favorites
DAVID DONDERO
TUESDAYS
QUIZZY
Woodchuck cider sweet n local presents: a showcase of music rooted in the folk revival tradition, with a dose of indie thrown in Woodchuck cider sweet n local showcase presents: dark and progressive rock music from local favorites
@ MISSISSIPPI STUDIOS
SAT DEC 31st
LUCAS FIELD SUN JAN 8th
$12 Adv
RADIATION CITY +DJ BEYONDA $15 Adv FRI DEC 30th@ MISSISSIPPI STUDIOS $15 Adv SAT DEC 31st
THUR DEC 29th FRI DEC 30th
RABBITS
TUESDAYS
A not-to miss New Year’s Eve showcase featuring a spectacular quadruple lineup:
JERRY NURSES WILD ONES JOSEPH RADIATION CITY +DJ BEYONDA
& THE +KASEY ANDERSON & JACKMORMONS THE HONKIES
Mississippi Studios, Star Theater, and Relapse Records Presents “Sizzle Pies 1st Anniversary Party” with a New Year’s Eve lineup featuring:
FREE!
“Sounding occasionally likeEve John Mellencamp’s A not-to miss New Year’s showcase featuring older, wiser and psychologically a spectacular quadruple mixed-up lineup: sibling, Jerry Joseph writes complex, image-laden songs and infuses them with plenty of attitude, soulfulness and swagger.” – Washington Post
ONES +THE WILD MINUS 5
& THE DOGS WINLAUGHING $50!!
SUN JAN 8th
6:30pm & 8:30pm
FRI DEC 23rd
& THE JACKMORMONS
Tuesday, December 27th • 9pm
SAT DEC 31st
$5 Adv FREE!
JERRY NURSES STAR ANNA & THE LAUGHING DOGS JOSEPH
6pM – 2:30aM
RABBITS
2012 6:30pm & 8:30pm
FRI DEC 23rd22nd THUR DEC
2012
(americana Reggae 7:00 folk) Doors, 8:00 Show $40 Adv WED DEC 21st
THUR Hosted By: DEC Scott 29th gallegos $8 Adv
www.sylvansteakhouse.com
BY HOME ALONE 2 QUEERLANDIA
BY 8:00 Show 7:00 Doors,
friday, December 23rd • 9pm
HOME ALONE & HOME ALONE 2
END OF THE WORLD HOME ALONE & COUNTDOWN
THE WORLD COUNTDOWN
The BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA lIVE MuSIC! Christmas Show
Celebrate the holidays with a 90’s comedy classic
Celebrate the holidays THE with a 90’s comedy classic
Go Tell Itpresents On The Mountain: Queerlandia the first installment in a of five dances for end of days The series BLIND BOYS OF the ALABAMA Christmas Show THE END OF
+KASEY ANDERSON & THE HONKIES opEN MIC NIgHT
5515 SW Canyon Court 503-297-5568
all shows 21+
8pm doors 9pm show in a Queerlandia presents the first installment where noted) series of five(except dances for the end of days
The legendary gospel group, and winner of four Grammy Awards, visit us for a unique, and illustrious, one-of-a-kind showcase
Christmas Day Hours:
Great food, Spirits, Sports, and Music
all shows 21+ 8pm doors 9pm show (except where noted)
$10 Adv
6:30-8:30 FREE - PRIZES! at Bar Bar w/ Quizmaster ROY SMALLWOOD
6:30-8:30 FREE - PRIZES! Coming Soon: ROY SMALLWOOD at Bar Bar w/ Quizmaster
1/13 & 1/14 - FOREST PARK 1/15 - BLOOD BEACH 1/19 - A LULL 1/13 & 1/14 - FOREST PARK 1/20 & 1/21 - JOEY PORTER’S TRIBUTE TO STEVIE WONDER 1/15 - BLOOD BEACH 1/25 - STEPHEN ASHBROOK 1/19 - A LULL 1/26 - COYOTE GRACE 1/20 & 1/21 - JOEY PORTER’S TRIBUTE STEVIE WONDER 1/27 TO - FUJIYA & MIYAGI 1/25 - STEPHEN ASHBROOK 1/29 - THE PARSON RED HEADS 1/26 - COYOTE GRACE www.mississippistudios.com 1/27 - FUJIYA & MIYAGI 1/29 - THE PARSON RED HEADS Coming Soon:
www.mississippistudios.com
Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
33
m cm enami ns m u s i c
CRYSTAL
THE
M
C
M
E
N
A
9 PM $5 21+OVER
THEE D TH DA DAYS AYS TH THEE NIGHTS NNII GH GHTS TS
WITH VJ KITTYROX
SAT DEC 31 21 & OVER
w/ NEW YEARS EVE
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21 “UNFILTERED” INDIE ROCK SHOWCASE!
FREE
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22 5:30 p.m. is “eagle time” • free
SUPERSUCKERS The Suicide Notes
WILL WEST & TANNER CUNDY PHEASANT FREE
5:30 p.m. is “eagle time” • free
LLOYD MITCHELL CANYON SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, DECEMBER 24 & 25
FRI DEC 30 ALL AGES
NO MUSIC HAPPY HOLIDAYS
Featuring VJ Kittyrox
MONDAY, DECEMBER 26
SAT JAN 7 21 & OVER
ROOT JACK JOHN BROWN BAND FREE
an evening with
Mike Thrasher presents
SAT JAN 28 ALL AGES
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27
WILL WEST FREE
TUE JAN 17 ALL AGES
DANCEONAIR.COM
Portlandia
Thursday, January 19
PDXJazz presents: Cyrille Aimée & Diego Figueiredo: “Django To Jobim”
Tuesday and Wednesday, February 14 & 15
Mortified Portland Call our movie hotline to find out what’s playing this week!
(503) 249-7474
& THE LAW THE BUILDERS AND THE
DOORS 8pm MUSIC 9pm UNLESS NOTED
MUSIC AT 8:30 P.M. MON-THUR 9:30 P.M. FRI & SAT (UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED)
Come in for a cocktail at Zeus Café! Pucker up for a Tilly’s Kiss, made with Calvados, Edgefield Pear Brandy, Green Chartreuse, Benedictine and orange bitters.
FREE LIVE MUSIC nIghtLy · 7 PM 12/21-24
DJ’S · 10:30 PM 12/22 DJ Anjali & the Incredible Kid 12/23 DJ Rescue 12/24 Sorry, No Music
12/26-31
RAY ON THE TARANTINO STAIRS
CRYSTAL HOTEL & BALLROOM Ballroom: 1332 W. Burnside · (503) 225-0047 · Hotel: 303 S.W. 12th Ave · (503) 972-2670
CASCADE TICKETS 34
Friday, January 6
LANGHORNE SLIM
SIMPLE SWEET CD RELEASE-lola’s 1/7 HAPPY HOUR MUSIC RETURNS WITH BINGO-RINGLERS SCHOOL OF ROCK-BEST OF PORTLAND 1/14 JAI HO! 2ND YEAR ANNIVERSARY-lola’s 1/21 BEARD & MUSTACHE AWARDS 1/22 PORTLAND MUSIC AWARDS 1/29 DANNY BARNES-lola’s 2/13 DR. DOG 2/14 CHALI 2NA-lola’s 2/17 BIG HEAD TODD & THE MONSTERS 2/24 PDX JAZZ FESTIVAL: BILL FRISELL PDX JAZZ FESTIVAL: VIJAY IYER, PRASANNA & NITTIN MITTA (3 PM) 2/25 PDX JAZZ FESTIVAL: CHARLIE HUNTER (9:30 PM) 3/2 & 3 RAILROAD EARTH 3/15 NEEDTOBREATHE 3/22 KAISER CHIEFS 3/23 OF MONTREAL 3/24 GALACTIC 3/31 DARK STAR ORCHESTRA 4/4 MARCH FOURTH MARCHING BAND 1/13
at CRYSTAL HOTEL
DEELAY CEELAY BRAINSTORM DJ FREAKY OUTTY
BAGDAD THEATER New Years Celebration with
FRI JAN 27 ALL AGES
1/7
AL’S DEn
TALKDEMONIC
Event and movie info at mcmenamins.com/mission
moe. 2/25
New Year’s eve 2012
THE SALE A HEALTHY DOSE WHERE DIVISION ENDS
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23
END S W 0 THEE 8N TH NI NIGHTS IOVEGH GHTS TS EEK ILABLE RNIGHT PACKAGES AVA
M
LIVE STAGE & BIG SCREEN! McMenamins and Monqui present
REVERB BROTHERS
FRI JAN 6 THE E DAYS DA D AYS 21TH & OVER
C O
1624 N.W. Glisan • Portland 503-223-4527
nearly new year’s
FLOATER
.
MISSION THEATER
FRI DEC 30 ALL AGES
FLOATER
S
The historic
14th and W. Burnside
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23 CRYSTAL BALLROOM
N
282-6810
CRYSTAL BALLROOM nearly new year’s
I
836 N RUSSELL • PORTLAND, OR • (503)
HOTEL & BALLROOM
80s VIDEO DANCE ATTACK
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cascadetickets.com 1-855-CAS-TIXX
OUTLETS: CRYSTAL BALLROOM BOX OFFICE, BAGDAD THEATER, EDGEFIELD, EAST 19TH ST. CAFÉ (EUGENE)
Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
Find us on
BUTCHERS
21 & OVER
Saturday, December 31
DEC. 21-27 PROFILE
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
ADAM KRUEGER
MUSIC
Prices listed are sometimes for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and socalled convenience charges may apply. Event lineups are subject to change after WW’s press deadlines. Editor: CASEY JARMAN. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, go to wweek.com/ submitevents and follow submission directions. All shows should be submitted two weeks or more in advance of event. Press kits, CDs and especially vinyl can be sent to Music Desk, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Please include show or release date information with all physical mailings. Email: cjarman@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 21 Shut Your Animal Mouth, Ballz Deep, VAJ, Mirado
[RAWK] Portland’s Shut Your Animal Mouth has only one song available online, but it’s one of those tracks that efficiently sums up everything the band’s about: spiraling riffage, bulletpaced momentum, and tough, bellowing female vocals. In short, it’s rock and fucking roll, and I can’t imagine the group deviates much from that missive on its other songs. Unfortunately, I couldn’t turn up any conclusive information about Ballz Deep—there’s a surprising number of bands across the country with that same name, it turns out—but a good guess says it’s not gonna be pretty. MATTHEW SINGER. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 226-6630. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
Sons of Huns, Mongoloid Village, The Ax
It is heartwarming to see such unaffected rock bands being booked at the Doug Fir. Perhaps it’s due to holes in the calendar during the off-season (nobody tours in late December), but whatever the case, here’s a great opportunity to catch some loud rock in Portland’s best-sounding room. Sons of Huns plays an infectious blend of stoner and garage rock. The vocals are drenched in reverb, the riffs sound like nuggets from the vault, and the guitar run in “House of Groan” almost sounds like an 8-bit death knell from an old Castlevania game. Also on the bill is Mongoloid Village—a group that wouldn’t try to be cool if it knew how—that can play circles around pretty much every band in town. NATHAN CARSON. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $6. 21+.
David Lynch Tribute: Rachael Jensen and Matt Carlson, Charlie Salas, Marius Libman, E*Rock, Swahili and more
[THE OWLS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM] As a longtime David Lynch fan, I want to give a severed ear to whoever came up with this brilliant tribute night. Dubbed “Christmas at the Black Lodge,” the evening’s entertainment looks at Lynch’s career from a variety of angles, including a set of songs written by the director for vocalist Julee Cruise for Twin Peaks (per-
formed here by former Parenthetical Girls Matt Carlson and Rachael Jensen), and a screening of a very disturbing short, The Grandmother, with a soundtrack provided by the new ensemble Regular Music (made up of Marius Libman, Charlie Salas-Humara and E*Rock). ROBERT HAM. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 8:30 pm. $5. 21+.
The Blind Boys of Alabama
See Primer, page 37. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 2883895. 8 pm. $45. 21+.
Tony Starlight Christmas Extravaganza
[SWINGIN’ CHRISTMAS] With all due respect to Charlie Brown, Frosty, Scrooge and Handel, some holiday traditions get old with repetition. Yet the Tony Starlight Christmas Extravaganza remains fresh despite its shamelessly nostalgic time-warp nature. Maybe it’s because the era it’s nostalgic for is more boozesoaked than a suicidal George Bailey, with Vegas-style numbers, swinging big-band versions of holiday songs, dapper gents and voluptuous dames, corndog comedy and a blitzkrieg of random guests. All of which makes Starlight’s Rat Pack throwback holiday show a welcome new tradition. AP KRYZA. Tony Starlight’s, 3728 NE Sandy Blvd., 517-8584. 7:30 pm. $12. Continues through Friday.
THURSDAY, DEC. 22 Magical Strings Celtic Yuletide Concert
[CELTIC HOLIDAY] A group every bit as credulous as its name implies, Magical Strings has spent more than 30 years combining traditional Celtic music with a smattering of world music flavorings to create albums that, if not groundbreaking, at least show a handsome expertise in their chosen genre. Magical Strings was founded in 1980 by combining the Celtic harp and hammered dulcimer of Philip and Pam Boulding, respectively. The duo’s children have gradually added their talents to the group, joining the lineup at annual Magical Strings galas such as this one. With Irish dancers, storytelling and audience-inclusive caroling, this concert is probably a safe bet for melting your yuletide cynicism like
TOP FIVE
CONT. on page 36
BY WW MUSIC EDITOR CASEY JARMAN
SANTA, PLEASE DELIVER ME THESE XMAS MIRACLES. A new Trail Blazers rap song Because “Bust a Bucket” is finally getting old and I want to hear Kurt Thomas’ legendary skills on the mic. Come on, Santa, I know you can make this happen. A Kickball reunion show You’re probably sick of me asking every year. An undiscovered case of original-formula Sparks Booze + caffeine + sugar = the best New Years’ Eve party ever. I know, because I was at that New Year’s Eve party in 2007. A new M. Ward album I’m sorry, but Zooey Deschanel is way too cute and I can’t handle it anymore. Remember when M. Ward was kind of a weirdo? I miss that. World peace I’m not sneaking this last one in to “put things in perspective”; it’s just really the fifth item on my list. You probably won’t get to it this year.
HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS STAYING IN TOWN THIS CHRISTMAS? HERE ARE SIX SHOWS FOR YOU. BY JON ATHA N FR OCHTZWA JG CASEY JA R MA N
AND
243-2122
It can be a thankless job playing shows on the holidays: A lot of your potential audience is home with family, and those who brave the clubs are often massively drunk. So why do it? That’s what we wanted to know. PANSEXUAL DANCE MONTHLY BLOW PONY, CHRISTMAS EVE AT ROTTURE
As a middle finger to Rick Perry! Kidding. Actually, Blow Pony is almost always held the fourth Saturday of the month. This month, that just happens to be Christmas Eve, and the “Pony Kru” planners apparently reschedule for no man (or son of God). “We wanna WRECK THE HALLS and be ‘MARY’!,” organizer/DJ Airick X writes. “Here’s to face-f*cking Santa’s beard.” HOLIDAY SURPRISES? “Of course, babe,” writes Airick. Fannie Mae Darling, of local drag troupe Sissyboy, “is gonna sing us some carols, and we always have hundreds of hot ‘packages’ to open.” WHY PLAY ON XMAS EVE?
DJ WELS SPINNING HIP-HOP ON CHRISTMAS EVE AT TUBE
WHY PLAY ON XMAS EVE? It’s the well-regarded local turntablist’s standard monthly night at Tube, which, again, just happened to fall on Christmas Eve this month. What’s more, “I do have a Santa hat, and it might make an appearance,” Wels says. Hey now, that’s the holiday spirit we’re looking for! HOLIDAY SURPRISES? Oh, maybe one or two, including Run-DMC’s classic, “Christmas in Hollis.”
R&B-COVERS OUTFIT COOL BREEZE, CHRISTMAS EVE AT THE SPARE ROOM
It’s tradition, says Spare Room booker (and possible teen-girl detective) Sally Drew. “This will be Cool Breeze’s third Christmas Eve show at the Spare Room.” Less a band than an R&B service provided and fronted
WHY PLAY ON XMAS EVE?
by Malcolm Noble of famed Portland funk group Shock, Cool Breeze pays soulful homage to such artists as Barry White, Tyrese and the Sugarhill Gang. HOLIDAY SURPRISES? Surprise! You’re listening to R&B covers at a dive bar on Christmas Eve! EYE CANDY VJs ON CHRISTMAS EVE AT GREELEY AVE. BAR & GRILL
WHY PLAY ON XMAS EVE? Eye Candy, which boasts an impressive collection of vintage music videos served up by request, is here every Saturday. “The staff is so awesome and the clientele is...oh no. Some of them get really raw by the end of the night,” says Danny Norton, who will probably employ his partner Nick Wells for this gig, seeing as how Christmas is Norton’s birthday and working the night before would be “like, a quadruple bummer.” HOLIDAY SURPRISES? “I did find some pretty amazing stuff from mid-1990s Yo! MTV Raps,” Norton says. “So there will be some Christmas raps dropping.”
CELTIC DUO KATHRYN CLAIRE AND HANZ ARAKI, CHRISTMAS DAY AT EDGEFIELD
WHY PLAY ON XMAS DAY? As the coda to a concert series in support of their new disc, A Winter Solstice Celebration. “When we got the call to play Edgefield on Christmas, we thought it would be a perfect, intimate and quiet finish to our run of shows,” Araki says. HOLIDAY SURPRISES? The twosome will shed the full band that usually backs them, and Araki promises a “very old and uncommon version of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ that is strikingly beautiful.”
DJ COOKY PARKER SPINNING SOUL 45s AT DOUG FIR LOUNGE ON CHRISTMAS DAY
WHY PLAY ON XMAS DAY? It’s a test-run before Parker—
aka Portland musician Scott Magee—moves his monthly soul night away from the Woods in Sellwood. “I think it’ll either be a totally dead room or all the orphans in town will decide they want to go out and have a good time. I’m hoping just by the lack of competition that it’ll be a fun time.” HOLIDAY SURPRISES? A few seldom-spun holiday 45s, including one from the late James Brown. “I’m going to attempt to be festive,” Magee says. SEE IT: For details, see Music Calendar, page 39. Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
35
THURSDAY-FRIDAY
an ice sculpture in a sauna. SHANE DANAHER. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 719-6055. 7:30 pm. Children $12, adults $18. All ages.
PROFILE R AY M O N D A H N E R
SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE
MUSIC
Drew Grow and the Pastors Wives, Kelli Schaefer, Birds and Batteries, Jason Dodson (of the Maldives)
R RYAN ADAMS Ashes & Fire
COLDPLAY Mylo Xyloto
NICK LOWE The Old Magic
$13.95-cd
$15.95-cd/$18.95-lp
$13.95-cd/$14.95-lp
JONSÍ We Bought A Zoo
M83 Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
GILLIAN WELCH The Harrow & The Harvest
$11.95-cd
$14.95-cd/$18.95-lp
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V VARIOUS ARTISTS Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams
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[WELL-BUILT POP] Drew Grow is a fine songwriter, but it’s not the songwriting that strikes you on first listen. It’s the pristine (or intentionally filthy) layers of piano, distorted guitar, ambient noises, vocals and percussion that are stacked up high like a Jenga tower that’s just starting to sway. It’s only after repeated listens—or in concert, where Grow exudes stage presence—that one notices just how well the guy can put a bluesy, swaggering rock song together. He and his Pastors Wives are probably due for a new disc, if their productive past release schedule is any indication. The friends and labelmates on tonight’s Amigo/ Amiga showcase have similarly high sonic ambitions. It should be a good night for soaking oneself in sound. CASEY JARMAN. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $8. 21+.
DMN SLYR, Sleeve, SHK THT, Quary, Photon!, Business Mayne
[FUTUREMUSIC] I am not particularly well-versed in electronic music’s multitude of subgenres, and thus I occasionally receive mail from those who are, scolding me for confusing one region’s House music for another’s, or for that capital crime of using “techno” as shorthand for any electronic dance music (sometimes I do that one just to poke at the hornets’ nest). So my endorsement of Southern California producer/DJ DMN SLYR, you understand, is of the “I know good music when I hear it” variety. Dan Nguyen’s forwardthinking beats go from bright and cuddly orchestral techno (gotcha!) to druggy down-tempo dirges, and his brazen genre-hopping—and his just-as-varied means of production— makes me think he’s less interested in labels than creating something unique, gorgeous and danceable. The same can be said of Portland’s Dropping Gems label/collective, which co-presents tonight’s show. CASEY JARMAN. Tonic Lounge, 3100 NE Sandy Blvd., 238-0543. 9 pm. $3. 21+.
Pheasant
[SIMPLE SYRUP] Evoking a more sugary version of fellow Portland folk-poppers Future Historians’ shtick, and skewing to the Isaac Brock school of jagged melody, quintet Pheasant is driven by simple hooks. On this summer’s three-song EP—a primer for the upcoming Black Field—the band flexes its strengths via the repeated brass punctuation on the slightly morose “The Guns and the Moon” and the giddily driving piano signature of “Dead Stars.” The songs are all testaments to the effectiveness of repeating what sounds good. The stripped-down songs are undeniably sweet, pointing to a band that could explode if it molded its rhythms as creatively as its simple flourishes. AP KRYZA. White Eagle Saloon, 836 N Russell St., 282-6810. 8:30 pm. Free. 21+.
USED NEW &s & VINYL VD CDs, D
FRIDAY, DEC. 23 Efrything Drive: Mic Crenshaw, Bad Habitat, Veteran Kings, J-Ritz and Saywords, Mighty Misc., Young X, Fogatron, Chris Marquand, DJ Wels, DJ Spark, DJ Ozrock, DJ Zone
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
[AMBITIOUS HIP-HOP] If I’m going to be totally honest with you—which is my job—I should admit that these gargantuan local hip-hop bills can be a bit of a disaster. One has to go into these things with an open mind: You’ll see a lot of talented artists tonight (for free) and you’ll be supporting a great cause (bring warm clothes or blankets for donation),
BLACK COBRA TUESDAY, DEC. 27 [BRINGING HEAVY BACK] Metal and other forms of heavy rock haven’t had this good a year since the 1991 heyday of Metallica’s black album and Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I and II. Granted, nothing released in the past year has sold as many copies as the aforementioned discs, but in terms of critical attention in mass media, these are the glory days for dudes with Marshall stacks and double-kick drums. And it’s not just having an effect on big-name bands. The comers are also seeing more attention from bloggers, writers and new fans outside the metal sphere. “It’s a combination of a lot of things,” says Rafael Martinez, drummer for the L.A.-based doom/thrash metal duo Black Cobra. “Bands like Mastodon leave kids wanting to hear more. So they get curious and start digging around. And when you get reviewed in The New York Times, that’s the kind of thing that really helps get the word out about what you’re doing.” Martinez is understating his point. He and guitarist Jason Landrian did get written up in the Times on Dec. 12, when the band played Brooklyn’s new metal club, St. Vitus. A glowing review like that could get mainstream audiences to notice Black Cobra. Not that the duo really needs the help. Landrian and Martinez have been slugging it out on the road and in the studio for the past decade, picking up admirers along the way while perfecting a snarling, brutal sound that has all the intense burn of a pepperspray blast. Black Cobra has evolved its sound from slow, droning sludge à la Sunn 0))) to the unholy force of speed and volume that shoots through the band’s most recent album, Invernal (released in October and featuring artwork by Sam Ford, drummer for Portland band Wizard Rifle). The eight-song disc showcases both the band’s ability to layer sounds into a massive sonic edifice and the work that Martinez and Landrian are doing to challenge themselves as musicians. “When we started, I barely played the drums,” says Martinez, who came through the ranks of the Bay Area metal scene as the bassist for Acid King. “I couldn’t play the beats that I’m doing now, even five years ago. But with every album, I try to make things a little weirder and write beats that I can’t play yet.” You’d never guess Martinez was anything other than a drummer when you see him attack the kit live. Nor would you believe that all that racket is coming from just two people. Granted, these days the band is using loop pedals and some backing tracks. But even when the two are free of such accouterments, Black Cobra’s sound is overwhelming. If 2011 was a banner year for metal and Black Cobra, 2012 looks to be even more exciting. The band will play the Netherlands’ prestigious Roadburn Festival and re-release Invernal in Japan, where metal has gained a huge following over the past decade. And then? “We’re stretching it out and not thinking about new music for a while,” says Martinez. “Some people put out three albums in two years, and it all comes out the same. The longer you wait, [what] you absorb along the way will affect your sound.” ROBERT HAM. A rising tide lifts all snakes.
SEE IT: Black Cobra plays the Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave., on Tuesday, Dec. 27. 9 pm. $8 advance, $10 day of show. 21+.
FRIDAY-TUESDAY but there are bound to be hiccups in the schedule, problems with the sound and maybe even a couple unannounced acts that will try and hijack the microphone. It’s a massive undertaking, after all. But if you’re ready to shrug off the occasional train wreck (just smile like you’re on TV and say “hip-hop!”), tonight will offer an awful lot of treats, from the sharp mind and tongue of Portland legend Mic Crenshaw to the magic mouth of Fogatron and the towering glory of this evening’s much-hyped “eight turntable extravaganza,” which collects a lot of this city’s best turntablists. Plus another big surprise we can’t mention. Hiphop! CASEY JARMAN. Bossanova Ballroom, 722 E Burnside St., 2067630. 8 pm. Free with blankets/ warm clothes donations. 21+.
AgesandAges, Old Light, 1939 Ensemble
[HARMONIOUS FOLK POP] When you think of the instruments that make up a band, it’s easy to forget that the vocals are just as important as any. But with Portland’s AgesandAges, the deep and rich vocal harmonies are the standout instruments that the sevenpiece group is not afraid to flaunt. On Alright You Restless, the band’s debut album released earlier this year, AgesandAges’ vocals hit with the strength and punch of a full horn section. Everything else— the catchy claps, melodic piano, echoing guitar and driving drums— is supplemental. EMILEE BOOHER. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $8 advance, $10 day of show. 21+.
Boy and Bean Holiday Party
[ACOUSTIC SWING] It’s refreshing to find a jazz trio that doesn’t regard its toils as background music: Portland’s Boy and Bean is a fine example. Composed of guitarist-vocalist Luke Short, vocalist Amber Short and bassist Andrew Jones, Boy and Bean writes songs with the lackadaisical charm of a front-porch folk band and the technical ease of a group of session players. This show brings the trio into what should be its natural habit: a stylish social club upholstered in Prohibition-era swank. The trio specializes in Depression-era tunes, so with any luck it’ll have a few lesser-known Christmas standards hidden up its sleeve (hint). SHANE DANAHER. Secret Society Lounge, 116 NE Russell St., 4933600. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
Bison Bison, Aranya, Marmits
[WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM] When Lewis and Clark traversed the continent, American bison—known scientifically as Bison bison—were ubiquitous: The “senery already rich pleasing and beautiful,” Lewis journaled, “was still farther heightened by immence herds of Buffaloe… which we saw in every direction.” Today, wild bison are well-nigh extinct. Portland trio Bison Bison, meanwhile, represents a band species not so much extinct as vestigial, plying their red-blooded, straight-shootin’ jams (and unselfconscious instrumental showboatsmanship) in basements and dives while awaiting the return of the once and future rock ’n’ roll. Bison Bison does stray from the herd into metalish territory—and stands out: The group won the first round of East End’s Portland Metal Winter Olympics this month. JONATHAN FROCHTZWAJG. The Foggy Notion, 3416 N Lombard St., 240-0249. 9 pm. Cover. 21+.
And And And, No Tomorrow Boys, Boom!
[CACOPHONOUS ROCK] This year was a big one for And And And: The garage-y, punch-drunk-sounding outfit hosted a citywide vanmounted basketball (“rigsketball”) tournament, split with co-frontman Tyler Keene, and headlined a flood of shows around town, including this month’s Underbelly Bender, a series of performances with other local acts in homely bars. Next year
should continue the trend: The prolific Portlanders, known for feverishly hammering out mixtapes and full-length releases since they founded the band in 2009, are planning a tour for their newest 10-inch (recorded with Blitzen Trapper’s Eric Earley) that’s due out some time near February. Tonight the band will present a mix of unreleased songs, as well as older And And And tracks sung by Nathan Baumgartner. To get a feel for the new material, check out “Get Lost,” a syrupy, lo-fi ode to getting back to basics that’s featured on the Underbelly Bender Compilation. NIKKI VOLPICELLI. The Know, 2026 NE Alberta St., 4738729. 8 pm. Cover. 21+.
SATURDAY, DEC. 24 See music feature, page 35. SUNDAY, DEC. 25 See music feature, page 35. MONDAY, DEC. 26 Tunnels, Mori, Jef Drawbaugh
[COLD WAVE CONTEMPORARY] Of a noisy pedigree that includes Jackie-O Motherfucker and Eternal Tapestry, Nick Bindeman has cacophony and experimentation in his blood. The Portlander’s solo project Tunnels is an engaging, downtempo mix of druggy ’80s gloss and chilly electronica. Debut The Blackout burns itself into your memory via nontraditional routes— abstract song structures, droning guitar work and buzzing synthesizers. While sparse, Tunnels digs deep for a one-man band, strengthened further by the fetching imperfections inherent in the DIY approach. MARK STOCK. Valentine’s, 232 SW Ankeny St., 248-1600. 9 pm. Cover. 21+.
MUSIC
career resurrection thanks to a massively successful film ( Midnight in Paris) and a great documentary about him that appeared recently on PBS’s American Masters series. What better time then to take a quick jaunt around the U.S. with his New Orleans Jazz Band? For those unaware, Allen spends every Monday night that he’s in New York at the Carlyle Cafe performing with this group. The ensemble takes on a variety of jazz standards from the ’20s to the ’40s, giving each one a lazy river spin punctuated by Allen’s sharp clarinet tones. ROBERT HAM. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 7:30 pm. $55-$97. All ages.
Black Cobra, Dog Shredder, Norska
See profile, page 36. Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave. 9 pm. $8 advance, $10 day of show.
The Woolen Men, The Bubs, I Copy Your Copy
[POP UNIVERSITY] Bands like the Woolen Men figure rather prominently in my fantasies about how life was lived by certain sensitive strains of undergraduate in the early 1980s. I hear such clever lo-fi pop and I see smart boys and girls in sweaters surreptitiously smoking cigarettes while listening to their college radio station, which plays Flying Nun Records bands and the Feelies exclusively. I see girls quoting Schopenhauer in love letters, boys quoting love letters in Schopenhauer seminars. I see the Woolen Men playing a coffee shop, accompanied by the clatter of spoons in mugs, the sweet and earnest songs merging with and documenting the whole wonderful mess of youthful exuberance. I want to go there. CHRIS STAMM. Valentine’s, 232 SW Ankeny St., 2481600. 9 pm. Cover. 21+.
TUESDAY, DEC. 27
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THE BLIND BOYS OF ALABAMA Formed: In 1939 in Talladega, Ala. Sounds like: The wind on a warm summer’s night in the rural deep South, circa 1940-something. For fans of: Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Blind Willie Johnson, Mahalia Jackson. Latest release: Take the High Road, a country-inspired album featuring Willie Nelson and Hank Williams Jr. among others. Why you care: The Blind Boys of Alabama have been performing gospel music for over 70 years. To put that in context, the boys started singing together at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind—the school’s name kind of puts things in perspective itself— four years before Keith Richards was born. Although the group’s seven-man lineup has understandably changed quite a bit since 1939 (four of the original members have passed), the band’s staying power in the music biz is undeniable—competing with legacies like that of Frank Sinatra and Cab Calloway. How have they managed to stay relevant for so long? For starters, they’re originators: Along with Ray Charles, the Boys were some of the first singers to mix gospel hymns with hard-driven R&B melodies, blues and doo-wop. They’re also open-minded; for each decade they’ve been around, the Boys have embraced the popular music of the time. They sang alongside Curtis Mayfield during the civil rights movement in the ’70s, rocked arenas with Prince in the ’80s and have recently performed with everyone from Ben Harper to Bob Dylan. The Boys’ sound has not changed much, though, which is really their main appeal: In these times of protest, their haunting Southern hymns of salvation are as relevant as ever. SEE IT: The Blind Boys of Alabama play Mississippi Studios on Wednesday, Dec. 21. 8 pm. $45. 21+.
+FRUIT BATS Stoli presents the best FREE patio party Portland has to offer upstairs in our heated, covered tent! We’ll have outdoor bars, drink specials and DJ Safi will be spinning records to help dance your way into 2012!
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CASEY NEILL & THE NORWAY RATS 1/7 • BLOUSE 1/11 • PICKWICK 1/13 THROWBACK SUBURBIA 1/14 • LARRY & HIS FLASK 1/15 THE MILK CARTON KIDS 1/18 • PACK A.D. 1/19 • YOUTH LAGOON 1/21 ADVANCE TICKETS AT TICKETFLY - www.ticketfly.com and JACKPOT RECORDS • SUBJECT TO SERVICE CHARGE &/OR USER FEE ALL SHOWS: 8PM DOORS / 9PM SHOW • 21+ UNLESS NOTED • BOX OFFICE OPENS 1/2 HOUR BEFORE DOORS • ROOM PACKAGES AVAILABLE AT www.jupiterhotel.com
Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
37
Q&A MEGAN HOLMES
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Q&A, RITCHIE YOUNG In last week’s WW, we reported that the Woods—the Sellwood neighborhood’s only real music venue and a staple of Portland’s club scene—was likely to close its doors in January after 2½ years. This week, the club’s co-founder, Ritchie Young (who moonlights as frontman for Portland band Loch Lomond), confirmed the bad news. Young, along with co-owners Vivien Lyon and Yoni Shpak, has been unsuccessful in negotiating a new lease. The venue’s online calendar has been cleared of future show dates, and in WW’s conversation with Young, he gave the business a “5 percent” chance of remaining open after January. (Shortly before WW’s press deadines, however, Lyon estimated that late-breaking developments put that number up to “about 30 percent.”) Young and Lyon say their landlords intend to eventually move the Woods’ building (an ex-funeral home built in 1929). Unless a new agreement is reached this week, the club will host its final show Jan. 7. We spoke to Young via telephone. CASEY JARMAN. The Woods’ co-owner talks about his club’s likely closure next month.
NIRVANA NEVERMIND ABBA – SUPER TROUPER ALLMAN BROTHERS – AT FILLMORE EAST FILLMORE CONCERTS EAT A PEACH BECK – ODELAY THE BIG CHILL – SOUNDTRACK DAVID BOWIE – DAVID BOWIE
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
It’s a big space, too—did that made it tough to book? Definitely. There’s Mississippi Studios and Doug Fir and other medium-sized clubs in town, and we would have to fight for shows. Like, we would put in a bid for Cass McCombs, and they wouldn’t even consider it, even though our overhead per night was low and bands could make money. It was just this thing, where they thought, “You’re not a real venue, you’re just a clubhouse.” [Touring agencies, like] the Agency Group and Billions, they didn’t take us seriously at all. But it shifted for us when Sean Lennon was here [in January]. He just told everybody, and suddenly the flow of emails started coming in. Is it harder to close now that you’ve built a reputation? Yeah, it’s disappointing. I know that everything has got a shelf life and that you only have a certain amount of energy before you get greedy or weird or whatever, but I really wanted to hit the five-year mark. We spent 2½ years trying to prove that we were reliable, that we don’t screw bands over, ever, that it’s a good place to go dance or see good music. So it kind of feels like the rug is being pulled out from underneath us. But at the same time, I think I can walk away not being jaded or pissed off. We had tons of fun. I’d imagine you’re leaving this with some debt. In the age of Kickstarter, why not throw yourselves a benefit? That’s something we discussed, but I think just out of stubbornness and pride, we didn’t want to do that. I don’t want us to go out begging, you know?
OFFER GOOD THRU: January 31st
38
WW: Would you still open a club this far from downtown if you had it to do over again? Ritchie Young: The first couple days after we opened the door, we were like, “Oh fuck, we’re so far south.” But over the last 2½ years, I’ve been totally impressed by people from Portland riding their bikes all the way from North Portland to see Breathe Owl Breathe. I love being around music. I would consider doing this again.
KEEP UP: Go to wweek.com for more with Ritchie Young and updates on the Woods.
MUSIC CALENDAR
[DEC. 21-27]
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Editor: Jonathan Frochtzwajg. TO HAVE YOUR EVENT LISTED, send show information at least two weeks in advance on the web at wweek.com/submitevents or (if you book a specific venue) enter your events at dbmonkey.com/wweek. Press kits, CDs and especially vinyl can be sent to Music Desk, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Please include show or release date information with all physical mailings. Email: music@wweek.com. For more listings, check out wweek.com.
WED. DEC. 21
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave.
Afrique Bistro
Brooks Robertson
102 NE Russell St. The Javier Nero Quintet
Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave.
Buffalo Gap Saloon
6835 SW Macadam Ave. Buffalo Bandstand
Camellia Lounge 510 NW 11th Ave.
Ray Tarantino
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St.
350 W Burnside St.
Open Mic
Shut Your Animal Mouth, Ballz Deep, VAJ, Mirado 830 E Burnside St.
Toshi Onizuka
Sons of Huns, Mongoloid Village, The Ax
Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St.
Earendil, ZODIAC, Patria Jodida
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Desert of Hiatus, The Secret Whistle, Ghost Toy Castle
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Ron Hughes
Biddy McGraw’s
Dante’s
Doug Fir Lounge
1314 NW Glisan St.
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
Ivories Jazz Lounge and Restaurant
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro
1435 NW Flanders St.
Open Jazz Jam
Andina
David Lynch Tribute: Rachael Jensen and Matt Carlson, Charlie Salas, Marius Libman, E*Rock, Swahili, White Hinterland, Ethiopiate, Orca Team, DJ Cuica
The Chuck Israels Jazz Orchestra (8:30 pm); Jim Templeton (5:30 pm)
Jade Lounge
2346 SE Ankeny St. Jeffree White Music Showcase
Jimmy Mak’s
Duff’s Garage
221 NW 10th Ave.
1635 SE 7th Ave.
The Mel Brown Quartet
Suburban Slim’s Blues Jam (9:30 pm); High Flyer Trio (6 pm)
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St.
Ella Street Social Club 714 SW 20th Place
Sporay, Roselit Bone, Aymeric Hainaux
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St.
6000 NE Glisan St.
Damn Glad to Meet You, Noise Agency, AUX 78
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Counterfeit Cash (9 pm); Michael Hurley & the Croakers (6 pm)
Lents Commons
9201 SE Foster Road
Half-Step Shy
2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Kris Deelane
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern Billy D
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. The Pale Players Hannukah Show
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. The Blind Boys of Alabama
Mt. Carmel Church
515 SW Maplecrest Dr. Trillium Voices Vocal Ensemble, Murray Hills Bell Choir
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave.
Sleepy Eyed Johns
CONT. on page 40
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MUSIC
CALENDAR
ROSNAPS.COM
BAR SPOTLIGHT
Sleepwalk Kid, The Autonomics
Thirsty Lion
Fez Ballroom
Merrill Lite
316 SW 11th Ave. ZoneWire
Ford Food and Drink 2505 SE 11th Ave.
7850 SW Capitol Highway Kit Garoutte
8700 SW Sweek Drive, Tualatin
Palace of Industry
Nancy Conescu, Matthew Hayward-MacDonald
Flat Rock String Band
Vie de Boheme
5426 N Gay Ave.
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Welfare, Messy Jacksons
Portland Saturday Market
Southwest Ankeny Street and Naito Parkway Shoehorn Hat Trio
The Blue Diamond
2016 NE Sandy Blvd. The Fenix Project Jam Session
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar
1530 SE 7th Ave. Circle 3 Trio
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St.
Where Division Ends, A Healthy Dose, The Sale
Wilfs Restaurant and Bar 800 NW 6th Ave.
Ron Steen Trio with Linda Lee Michelet
Yukon Tavern
5819 SE Milwaukie Ave. Open Mic
The Old Church
1422 SW 11th Ave. Michael Allen Harrison (7:30 pm); The JoySingers (12 pm)
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. Anthony Brady
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway Gunfighter, Violet Isle
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd.
Tony Starlight Christmas Extravaganza
Touché Restaurant and Billiards 1425 NW Glisan St.
LaRhonda Steele, Tyrone Hendrix
Trail’s End Saloon
1320 Main St., Oregon City Danny O’Brien & Ken Brewer
40
Hawkeye, 1776, The Shivas
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Jesse Layne
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St. Biddy’s Open Bluegrass Jam
Branx
320 SE 2nd Ave. The Reeds Mill Investigation, Hands for Battle, Stories and Sountracks, Delta!Bravo
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave.
John “JB” Butler & Al Craido
Camellia Lounge
1001 SW Broadway Bre Gregg
115 NW 5th Ave.
THURS. DEC. 22 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Ray Tarantino
Alberta Rose Theatre 3000 NE Alberta St.
Magical Strings Celtic Yuletide Concert
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Borikuas
Andrea’s Cha Cha Club 832 SE Grand Ave.
Dina & Bamba Y Su Pilon D’Azucar with La Descarga Cubana
Artichoke Community Music 3130A SE Hawthorne Blvd.
Songwriters Roundup
Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St.
Ditch Digger, Separation of Sanity, Two-Headed Beast
Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
510 NW 11th Ave.
Andrew Oliver Trio
Chapel Pub
430 N Killingsworth St. Steve Kerin
Clyde’s Prime Rib
5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Mesi & Bradley
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Dinner for Wolves, The Burning Bridges, Party Trigger
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St.
Drew Grow and the Pastors Wives, Kelli Schaefer, Birds and Batteries, Jason Dodson (of the Maldives)
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Rogue Valley Blues Band (9 pm); Tough Lovepyle (6 pm)
Ella Street Social Club 714 SW 20th Place
Tiger Bar
The Sportin’ Lifers Trio, Mateo Bevington
Karaoke from Hell
Greeley Avenue Bar & Grill
317 NW Broadway
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd.
DMN SLYR, Sleeve, SHK THT, Quary, Photon!, Business Mayne
Airshow
Hawthorne Theatre
Hawthorne Theatre
Tony Starlight’s
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
3728 NE Sandy Blvd.
F.G.U., Flight 19, Stoneworker, Tip, Terminal Damage
Tony Starlight Christmas Extravaganza
Regiment 26, Wild Boar Cannery, Sisyphean Conscience, Skies Above Reason, Gaia, The Entity
Ivories Jazz Lounge and Restaurant
1320 Main St., Oregon City
1435 NW Flanders St.
Rae Gordon
Jim Templeton with Karla Harris (8:30 pm); Laura Cunard (5:30 pm)
White Eagle Saloon
Trail’s End Saloon
836 N Russell St.
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave.
Pheasant (8:30 pm), Will West and Tanner Cundy (5:30 pm)
The Mel Brown B3 Organ Group
Wilfs Restaurant and Bar
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Holiday Friends, Horse Thieves, New Century Schoolbook
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Bingo (9:30 pm); Lewi Longmire Band (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Crown Point
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
800 NW 6th Ave.
Randy Porter Trio
FRI. DEC. 23 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave.
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
Ivories Jazz Lounge and Restaurant 1435 NW Flanders St.
Templeton Trio, Carey Campbell (8:30 pm); Kerry Politzer (5:30 pm)
The Old Church
1422 SW 11th Ave. Michael Allen Harrison
The Rock Side of the Moon 7901 SE Powell Blvd.
Collected Souls (Collective Soul tribute), Deathtrap America
The Woods
6637 SE Milwaukie Ave. Ruby Pines, Worth, Goose and Fox, 1000 Fuegos
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. Christie and the Kings
Tiger Bar
221 NW 10th Ave.
317 NW Broadway
Hit Machine!
Set in Stone
Vie de Boheme 1530 SE 7th Ave.
Dawid Vorster and Hikaru Okada
SUN. DEC. 25 Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Fredericks Nordic Thunder
Benson Hotel
309 SW Broadway Mark Simon
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale
Hanz Araki & Kathryn Claire (5 pm)
Mock Crest Tavern 3435 N Lombard St. Suburban Slim, Jim Wallace
Kelly’s Olympian
Tony Starlight’s
426 SW Washington St.
3728 NE Sandy Blvd.
Sam Adams, Mojave Bird, Ryan A. Miller
Tony Starlight Christmas Extravaganza
8105 SE 7th Ave.
Touché Restaurant and Billiards
NEPO 42
Kenton Club
2025 N Kilpatrick St. The Stocking Stuffers
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St.
Ray Tarantino, Krista Herring
Alberta Street Public House
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
Spitzer Space Telescope (9:30 pm); Mikey’s Irish Jam (6:30 pm)
And And And, No Tomorrow Boys, Boom!
Jimmy Mak’s
Jim Boyer, Lynn Conover, Billy Kennedy Band (9:30 pm); Alice Stuart (6 pm)
1036 NE Alberta St.
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St.
1425 NW Glisan St.
David Friesen with Greg Goebel and Charlie Doggett
Trail’s End Saloon
1320 Main St., Oregon City Jim Mesi
2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale
Vie de Boheme
Murial Stanton
Kode Bluuz
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
1530 SE 7th Ave.
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar
Muddy Rudder Public House Irish Music 5403 NE 42nd Ave. Open Mic
Tillicum Club
8585 SW BeavertonHillsdale Highway Johnny Martin
Trail’s End Saloon
1320 Main St., Oregon City Robbie Laws
MON. DEC. 26 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro
Andina
Danny Romero Trio
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro
2929 SE Powell Blvd.
Richard Cranium & the Phoreheads with Margaret
Robbie Laws
303 SW 12th Ave.
James Faretheewell & the Foolhardy
White Eagle Saloon
On the Stairs
Mississippi Pizza
Artichoke Community Music 3130A SE Hawthorne Blvd.
Mississippi Pizza
1314 NW Glisan St.
Friday Night Coffeehouse
Andrea Algieri, Border Crossing (9 pm); Backyard Blues Boys, Oslo in September (5:30 pm)
Lloyd Mitchell Canyon (9:30 pm); Reverb Brothers (5:30 pm)
Wilfs Restaurant and Bar
225 SW Ash St.
3552 N Mississippi Ave.
Mock Crest Tavern Backspace
2505 SE 11th Ave.
Goodfoot Lounge
Redcast (9:30 pm); Quizissippi: The Christmas Song Edition (7 pm)
Tualatin Heritage Center
Ford Food and Drink
The Low Bones
The Goodfoot All-Stars
O’Connors
Sugarcane String Band
5421 N Greeley Ave.
2845 SE Stark St.
ENSO URBAN WINERY: “Until last year we were in a garage,” says the sprightly woman pouring a flight of Enso wine. She means to elicit surprise. The effect is muted since the cavernous warehouse is still, technically, a garage with a polished cement floor and roller door. Enso (1416 SE Stark St., ensowinery.com) is part of a newish crop of urban wineries buying grapes in the hinterlands, then barreling and selling them here. Enso is comfortable not trying too hard. There’s a giant logo painted on the wall, assorted pine furniture and Sufjan’s deep cuts playing loudly from a pair of tinny speakers. The open barrel room is brighter than the bar, an interesting and pleasant effect. An electric fireplace is cute, but for the orange extension cord running to it. The woman pouring the flight ($5) suggests it’s “too cold” to drink white wine. Indeed, something’s amiss. We enjoyed the dry, leathery Mourvèdre better. MARTIN CIZMAR.
71 SW 2nd Ave.
3435 N Lombard St. Kinzel & Hyde
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Lauren Sheehan
O’Connor’s Vault 7850 SW Capitol Highway
Organ LeRoi and the Donors
1314 NW Glisan St.
Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St.
Heaven Generation, Hopeless Jack & The Handsome Devil, Dusty Santamaria
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Burnside Heroes, 48 Thrills, Mourning Bed Head, The Electric Sheep, Tip
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St.
Original Halibut’s II
Old Flames (9:30 pm); Billy Kennedy & Jim Boyer (6 pm)
Terry Robb
Bipartisan Cafe
2527 NE Alberta St.
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Gateway, Zmoke, Oden
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. The Warshers, Taint Misbehavin’, Bronson
Sellwood Public House 8132 SE 13th Ave. Open Mic
Ted’s (at Berbati’s) 231 SW Ankeny St.
Cut, Cut, Loose! with Christopher Neil Young
The Blue Diamond
7901 SE Stark St. Lewi Longmire
Bossanova Ballroom
722 E Burnside St. Efrything Drive: Mic Crenshaw, Bad Habitat, Veteran Kings, J-Ritz and Saywords, Mighty Misc., Young X, Fogatron, Chris Marquand, DJ Wels, DJ Spark, DJ Ozrock, DJ Zone
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave.
Al Craido & Tablao
2016 NE Sandy Blvd.
Buffalo Gap Saloon
Tom Grant Jazz Jam Session
The Sale
6835 SW Macadam Ave.
3552 N Mississippi Ave.
Mock Crest Tavern 3435 N Lombard St. Reverb Brothers
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. BassMandolin
836 N Russell St.
800 NW 6th Ave.
Devin Phillips Quartet
Wonder Ballroom 128 NE Russell St.
The Show II with Seeznin’ and Loose Ends
SAT. DEC. 24
Andina
Pete Krebs
Ash Street Saloon Open Mic
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Battery-Powered Music
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Karaoke from Hell
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave.
Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel
Suzie and the Sidecars
Ray Tarantino, Goose and Fox, Chris Boone
Portland Metal Winter Olympics
Andina
Goodfoot Lounge
Pints Brewing Company
Toshi Onizuka Trio
Open Mic
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
Jade Lounge
Galen Fous
2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale
Noho’s Hawaiian Cafe 4627 NE Fremont St. Traditional Hawaiian Music
Original Halibut’s II 2527 NE Alberta St.
Alan Hager, Katey Angel
412 NW 5th Ave.
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Hyborian Rage, Foal, Endsus, Echoic, Blood Magic
Secret Society Lounge
303 SW 12th Ave.
1314 NW Glisan St.
Chris Margolin’s Tunes & Talk
Noho’s Hawaiian Cafe
East End
203 SE Grand Ave.
2845 SE Stark St.
2346 SE Ankeny St. Jaime Leopold
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Dan Balmer Band
4627 NE Fremont St.
Kelly’s Olympian
Traditional Hawaiian Music
David Gerow, Phase Four
116 NE Russell St.
Ravenz Roost Cafe
Boy and Bean Holiday Party
6bq9
11121 SE Division St.
Slim’s Cocktail Bar
Spare Room
8635 N Lombard St.
4830 NE 42nd Ave.
The Chancers, Brutal Tinkers
Cool Breeze (9 pm) 2026 NE Alberta St.
The Know
426 SW Washington St.
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Skip vonKuske with Michael Shapiro
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
The Blue Monk
Camellia Lounge
Spare Room
3341 SE Belmont St.
510 NW 11th Ave.
4830 NE 42nd Ave.
Chemicals, Light Brigade
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro
Alan Jones Jam
Andrew Goodwin
Paul Brainard
The Old Church
Bob Shoemaker 3552 N Mississippi Ave.
1422 SW 11th Ave.
Mississippi Pizza
The Crown Room
Clyde’s Prime Rib
Ted’s (at Berbati’s)
205 NW 4th Ave.
5474 NE Sandy Blvd.
231 SW Ankeny St.
Sy Smith & Zo! (of The Foreign Exchange), Philly’s Phunkestra, DJ Zimmie
Ocean 503
Portland George
Michael Allen Harrison (8 pm, 5 pm and 2 pm)
The Blue Monk
Thirsty Lion
830 E Burnside St.
3341 SE Belmont St.
71 SW 2nd Ave.
Eight53, NeverAwake (9 pm); Bluegrass Jam (6:30 pm); Mr. Ben (5 pm)
AgesandAges, Old Light, 1939 Ensemble
Rocket Stove Workshop
Johnny Smokes
The Foggy Notion
Tony Starlight’s
Muddy Rudder Public House
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar 1001 SW Broadway
Doug Fir Lounge
Duff’s Garage
3728 NE Sandy Blvd.
1635 SE 7th Ave.
3416 N Lombard St.
Neil Diamond Tribute
The Old Church
Bison Bison, Aranya, Marmits
1422 SW 11th Ave.
Greg Georgeson Band (9 pm); Honey and the Hamdogs (6 pm)
Touché Restaurant and Billiards
Michael Allen Harrison
East Burn
Johnny Martin
1800 E Burnside St.
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar 1001 SW Broadway Shirley Nanette
1425 NW Glisan St.
Kelley Shannon with John Stowell
8105 SE 7th Ave. Lloyd Jones
O’Connors
7850 SW Capitol Highway Kit Garoutte
The Old Church
1422 SW 11th Ave.
CALENDAR Michael Allen Harrison
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St.
Lesser Known Characters, Little Beirut, Kaleidoskull
Tunnels, Mori, Jef Drawbaugh
Duff’s Garage
White Eagle Saloon
Dover Weinberg Quartet (9:30 pm); Trio Bravo (6 pm)
836 N Russell St.
Root Jack, John Brown Band
TUES. DEC. 27 15th Avenue Hophouse
1517 NE Brazee St. Ron Hughes
Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel
303 SW 12th Ave. On the Stairs
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Neftali Rivera
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway
Woody Allen and His New Orleans Jazz Band
Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St.
Krack Sabbath, Space God Ritual, Revolution Overdue, Battle Axe Massacre
1635 SE 7th Ave.
Goodfoot Lounge 2845 SE Stark St.
Scott Pemberton Trio
Hawthorne Hophouse 4111 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Steve Cheseborough
Jade Lounge
2346 SE Ankeny St. Colin Johnson
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Kate Davis Trio
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Bingo (9 pm); Jackstraw (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Blackberry Hall 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale
Mark Simon Benefit
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale
Buffalo Gap Saloon
Caleb Klauder & Sammy Lind
Open Mic
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
6835 SW Macadam Ave.
Bunk Bar
1028 SE Water Ave.
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro
The Hugs, Ruby Feathers, Adventure Galley
Open Bluegrass Jam
Camellia Lounge
Dogtooth
510 NW 11th Ave.
Ben Scholz, Tom Grant, Dave Captein
Doug Fir Lounge 830 E Burnside St.
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave.
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Foal, Deep Sea Vents, Raw and Order
Someday Lounge 125 NW 5th Ave.
Songwriter Showcase
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave.
Black Cobra, Dog Shredder, Norska
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Pagan Jug Band
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. PDX Singer-Songwriter Showcase
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway Crooked Toad
Twilight Café and Bar 1420 SE Powell Blvd. Open Mic with The Roaming
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. The Woolen Men, The Bubs, I Copy Your Copy
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar
2929 SE Powell Blvd.
WED. DEC. 21 Devils Point
5305 SE Foster Road ‘80s Night with DJ Brooks
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. DJ Smooth Hopperator
Ground Kontrol
111 SW Ash St. Shameless Thursdays: DJs Easter Egg, 3X
Fez Ballroom
316 SW 11th Ave. Shadowplay: DJs Horrid, Ghoulunatic, Paradox
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. Sex Life DJs, DJ Vision Quest, DJ Stoned Werewolf
232 SW Ankeny St. AV Club Music-Video Night
FRI. DEC. 23
Dig a Pony
Greeley Avenue Bar & Grill
Matador
Mississippi Studios
Ella Street Social Club
1967 W Burnside St. DJ Whisker Friction
Slim’s Cocktail Bar 8635 N Lombard St. DJ DirtyNick
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Krillim
The Crown Room
White Eagle Saloon
The Whiskey Bar
31 NW 1st Ave. Whiskey Wednesdays: American Girls, Danny K, A-Train, Josh Burn$
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. Gentleman Matthew Yake
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave. Paint It Black: Noah Fence, Freaky Outty (11 pm); DJ Loyd Depriest (early set)
Yes and No
20 NW 3rd Ave. Death Club with DJ Entropy
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Queerlandia
Palace of Industry 5426 N Gay Ave. DJ Tanner
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave. Mixer: Perfect Cyn, Tom Mitchell, Mercedes, Keane, Mr Romo, Darling Instigatah, Grimes Against Humanity
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. Dance-o-rama: DJs Isaiah Summers, A Train
Swift Lounge
1932 NE Broadway Funky Broadway with DJ Drew Groove
The Whiskey Bar
31 NW 1st Ave. Damage: Dillon Francis, Doc Adam, Evan Alexander
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Womb Service
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave.
SAT. DEC. 24 Beauty Bar
1332 W Burnside St. ‘80s Video Dance Attack with VJ Kittyrox 736 SE Grand Ave. Holiday Happy Hour with Drew Groove
511 NW Couch St. Joystick
Valentine’s
Crystal Ballroom
Ground Kontrol
Arthur “Fresh Air” Moore Harmonica Party
Will West
Beauty Bar
Hoodrich with DJ Ronin Roc (10 pm); DJ Neil Blender (early set)
511 NW Couch St. TRONix: Mike Gong, Bliphop Junkie
205 NW 4th Ave. Pop-Up Club: Lions Den, DJ Nick Dean
836 N Russell St.
THURS. DEC. 22
Expressway to Yr Skull with DJ Mistina La Fave (10 pm); DJ Sethro Tull (7 pm)
714 SW 20th Place DJ Bad Santa
Fez Ballroom
316 SW 11th Ave. Decadent ‘80s: DJ Jason Wann, DJ Non
Goodfoot Lounge 2845 SE Stark St. Soul Stew with DJ Aquaman
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. DJ Nate C
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Snap!: Dr. Adam, Colin Jones
Palace of Industry 5426 N Gay Ave. DJ Holiday
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. Blank Fridays
111 SW Ash St. Rad Santa: DJ Rad, Lionsden
5421 N Greeley Ave.
Eye Candy with VJ Rev. Danny Norton (9 pm)
511 NW Couch St. DJ Tibin
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. Into the Void with DJ Blackhawk
TUES. DEC. 27 East End
203 SE Grand Ave. DJ Linoleum
Mount Tabor Theater
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Stahlwerks: DJs Non, SIN, Zufall & J. Alexander
Rotture
315 SE 3rd Ave. Blow Pony: DJ Airick, Kinetic, Jodi Bon Jodi, Lustache, Mr. Charming, Katey Pants (9 pm)
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave. DJ Wels (10 pm); Saturdazed: DJs GH, Czief Xenith (early set)
SUN. DEC. 25 Doug Fir Lounge
Matador
18 NW 3rd Ave.
MON. DEC. 26 Ground Kontrol
Mount Tabor Theater
Tiga
Tube
421 SE Grand Ave. Black X-Mas
Kelly’s Olympian
511 NW Couch St. Roxy’s Ego Hour
830 E Burnside St. Heart & Soul X-Mas with DJ Cooky Parker (9 pm)
1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Bad Wizard
The Lovecraft
Ground Kontrol
The Lovecraft
421 SE Grand Ave. Darkness Descends
MUSIC
Hive with DJ Owen
1967 W Burnside St. Next Big Thing with DJ Donny Don’t
426 SW Washington St. DJ Rescue 4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Old Skool
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Bradley
The Crown Room
205 NW 4th Ave. See You Next Tuesday: Kellan, Avery
The Lovecraft
421 SE Grand Ave. Black Metal Night
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Nate C.
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway Good Music for Bad People with DJ Entropy
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave. Tubesday with DJ Ronin Roc (late set); DJ Dirty Red (7 pm)
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave.
Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
41
DEC. 21-27
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Most prices listed are for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and so-called convenience charges may apply, so it’s best to call ahead. Editor: BEN WATERHOUSE. Stage: BEN WATERHOUSE (bwaterhouse@wweek. com). Classical: BRETT CAMPBELL (bcampbell@wweek.com). Dance: HEATHER WISNER (dance@wweek.com). TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit information at least two weeks in advance to: bwaterhouse@wweek.com.
THEATER Angels in America: Millennium Approaches
Much has changed since Tony Kushner’s Angels in America premiered 20 years ago. AIDS is now a manageable disease, and no longer exclusively gay or male. But much also remains the same: The Republican party is still loaded with closeted gay men, and the Latter-Day Saints still have a homo problem. Angels has much to say about contemporary America, but its most interesting characters is no longer Prior Walter, the dying young protagonist, but Roy Cohn, the right-wing operative whose AIDS diagnosis Kushner casts as a sort of divine justice, and Joe Pitt, his young Mormon protégé struggling to suppress his own sexuality. Brian Weaver’s production at Portland Playhouse rightly emphasizes the importance of these two roles. Ebbe Roe Smith is delightfully villainous as Cohn, giving the wretch an easy magnetic charisma that explodes in brief, intense bursts of violence, but he is nonetheless upstaged by Chris Harder as Joe. Harder, a lively performer who has eyes like Paul Newman and a grin like Jimmy Stewart, looks like he might have stepped out of an LDS advertisement. He’s calm and affable until, suddenly, the scaffolding he’s assembled to survive as a gay man attempting to live a straight, Mormon life collapses. “Everyone tries very hard to live up to God’s strictures, which are very...strict,” he tells Cohn. “The failure to measure up hits people very hard.” In Joe’s case, the impact is near-fatal, and Harder makes us feel his anguish. BEN WATERHOUSE. World Trade Center Theater, 121 SW Salmon St., 205-0715. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays; 7:30 pm Wednesday, Dec. 21; and 2 pm Friday, Dec. 30. No show Christmas day. Closes Dec. 31. $15-$32.
Cavalia
Cirque du Soleil co-founder Normand Latourelle’s horse show is pure spectacle: The acrobats and aerialists have rubber bands for bodies and are seemingly immune to gravity, but the real performance is by the “four-legged artists.” EMILEE BOOHER. Cavalia Big-top, Northwest 12th Avenue and Pettygrove Street, 866-999-8111. 8 pm Dec. 21-23, 26, 28 and 30. 3 pm Dec. 24, 27, 29 and 21 and Jan. 2. $24.50$189.50. All Ages.
A Christmas Carol
Bag&Baggage plays up the humor in Dickens’ chestnut. The Venetian Theatre, 253 E Main St., Hillsboro, 3459590. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, Dec. 21-23. $20-$27. All Ages.
A Christmas Story
For those in need of your annual fix of A Christmas Story, there are a couple options: You can wait for the 24-hour Ralphie-fest on TNT, or you can watch Portland Center Stage’s adaptation of the flick. EMILEE BOOHER. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, noon and 5 pm Saturday, Dec. 21-24. $29-$64.
Ebenezer Ever After
Stumptown Stages reprises the company’s musical sequel to Dickens’ story. PCPA Brunish Hall, 1111 SW Broadway, stumptownstages.com. 7:30 pm Friday, Dec. 23, 2 pm Saturday, Dec. 24. $26.30-$34.30.
Hamlet
Northwest Classical Theatre gets rotten in Denmark for the third time since 2003. Shoe Box Theater, 2110 SE 10th Ave., 971-244-3740. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. No performances Dec. 24-25. Closes Jan. 22. $18-$20.
42
Leilani’s Secret Christmas Wish
Portland playwright Scott White presents his kids’ show about five children who carry an injured friend’s letter to the North Pole. The CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 205-0715. 6:30 pm Thursday-Friday, Dec. 22-23. $10.
Roald Dahl’s Willy Wonka
Northwest Children’s Theater visits the chocolate factory, complete with songs from the 1971 film starring Gene Wilder. NW Neighborhood Cultural Center, 1819 NW Everett St., 222-4480. 2 pm Dec. 21-24, 27-31 and Jan. 1; 7 pm Dec. 21-23 and 28-30. $13-$22.
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol
This latest Christmas Carol perversion at Artists Rep, by Seattle playwright John Longenbaugh, achieves the dubious feat of being even more long-windedly dull and moralistic than the usual version. A morose Holmes (Michael Mendelson) takes the place of Scrooge, who is visited at 221B Baker Street on Christmas Eve by a chaindraped Moriarty, who warns that hellfire awaits the great detective because he, like his dead nemesis, “[has] never loved, and that is the greatest sin of all.” Then on come the spirits, who whisk Holmes through scenes both mawkish (a stop by the 1914 Christmas truce) and corny (a cameo by an aged Tiny Tim), each ending in an obvious epiphany. Humbug! BEN WATERHOUSE. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Saturday, Dec. 21-24. $20-$50.
The Santaland Diaries
Portland Center Stage’s fifth production of Joe Mantello’s one-man adaptation stars Jim Lichtscheidl, a Minneapolis actor making his Portland debut. Replacing Portland favorite Wade McCollum, Lichtscheidl has some big, jingle bell-adorned shoes to fill, but he proves more than up to the task. Lichtscheidl’s metamorphic impressions of the colorful personalities with whom Crumpet the Elf must contend might even surpass Sedaris’ own. Nobody, though— and I mean nobody—does Billie Holiday like Sedaris does. JONATHAN FROCHTZWAJG. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 pm SaturdaysSundays. Noon and 5 pm Dec. 24, no show Dec. 25. Closes Dec. 31. $25-$51.
ZooZoo
Boy Meets Drum Machine; and Friday will see “all previous guests” on stage to close the show. That’s a lot of guests. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 226-6630. 9 pm Tuesday-Friday, Dec. 27-30. $3-$5. 21+.
A Slice of Fruitcake
The Curious Comedy Players improvises sketches from audience holiday stories. Curious Comedy, 5225 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 477-9477. 8 pm Friday, Dec. 23. $12-$15.
CLASSICAL Classical Revolution
A revolutionary holiday tradition continues with the annual “Bachxing Day,” in which local classical players convene to perform music of Johann Sebastian in sometimes unusual arrangements— including, this year, a chaconne on two baritone ukuleles. In this MMA (mixed musical arts) smachdown, only three rules apply: Any Bach. Any instrumentation. Any interpretation. Prizes go to audience members perpetrating the most egregious Bach puns and haikus. Someday Lounge, 125 NW 5th Ave., 248-1030. 9 pm Monday, Dec. 26. $5. 21+.
For the 21st time, the pianist returns to the Old Church to perform holiday music with some of Portland’s most popular musicians. The Old Church, 1422 SW 11th Ave., 255-0747. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday; 2, 5 and 8 pm Saturday, 7 pm Monday, Dec. 21-26. $29.50-$46.50.
Oregon Symphony, Pacific Youth Choir
The family-friendly concert includes music from Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker, Bizet’s “Children’s Games,” J.S. Bach, various other choral works and, of course, a singalong. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 228-1353. 7:30 pm Thursday, Dec. 22. $10-$40.
Portland Chamber Orchestra
COMEDY
The Ed Forman Show says farewell to Portland for good—creator Aaron Ross is moving to L.A.—with a fourday block of shows. Tuesday’s guest is Tony Tapatio, Portland’s air-guitar champion, with music by Basketball Jones; Wednesday’s guest is TBD, with music by Vursatyl and Lifesavas; Thursday is TBD, too, with music by
Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
For more Performance listings, visit
REVIEW
Michael Allen Harrison and Friends
Rather than repeat the same old carols everyone’s heard enough of by the day after Christmas, conductor David Hattner has chosen to focus on dance music, including the clever rumba-charged 1932 New Dance, the most popular work of the American modernist composer Wallingford Riegger (who’s probably best known for his dance compositions for choreographers such as Martha Graham), and Aaron Copland’s lively Danzon Cubano. But the big fun comes with Italian opera composer Ponchielli’s “Dance of the Hours,” probably most famous as the soundtrack to one of the dance of the hippos and alligators in Fantasia. PYP alumni will also play Tchaikovsky’s stirring “Slavonic March.” Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 223-5939. 7:30 pm Monday, Dec. 26. $11-$40.
The Ed Forman Show Farewell Week
Do Jump!’s holiday show is a greatesthits collection from the company’s last three decades. Ahhh Ha! offers artistic director Robin Lane’s signature blend of contemporary dance, aerial and acrobatic work, live music and theatrical flourishes. The costumes are colorful, the subject matter and staging are family-friendly and a Nutcracker send-up is included. Ahhh Ha! features music from Do Jump! resident composer, Joan Szymko. Echo Theater, 1515 SE 37th Ave., 231-1232. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Thursday, Dec. 21-22; 3 and 7:30 pm Friday, Dec. 23; 3 and 7:30 pm Monday, Dec. 26; 7:30 pm Tuesday, Dec. 27; noon and 4 pm Wednesday, Dec. 28, 7:30 pm Thursday, Dec. 29; 3 and 7:30 pm Friday, Dec. 30; 4 pm Sunday, Jan. 1. $20-$32.
Like all good institutions, The Nutcracker has inspired years of nostalgia, parody and reinvention. If you like your Nutcracker set at a ’60s-era cocktail party, in Harlem or underwater, there is a production for you, but it isn’t happening here. Oregon Ballet Theatre stages the classic George Balanchine/New York City Ballet version, which has all the traditional trappings, from scary mice to swirling sweets. It’s best enjoyed when the orchestra plays live, so check the company’s website. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 800-745-3000. 2 and 7:30 pm Wednesday, Dec. 21; 2 pm Thursday, Dec. 22; 7:30 pm Friday, Dec. 23; noon Saturday, Dec. 24. $21-$140. All Ages.
In Mulieribus
The baritone Richard Zeller joins other soloists (soprano Sarah Parnicky, mezzo Beth Madsen Bradford, tenor Daniel Buchanan, boy soprano Mike Meo), Oregon Chorale and Portland Boychoir in Handel’s immortal, seasonally inevitable oratorio, Messiah. St. Mary’s Cathedral , 1716 NW Davis St., 205-0715. 7:30 pm Wednesday, Dec. 21. $5-$25.
Comedy by Kristine Levine and Lonnie Bruhn. They’re good. Crush, 1400 SE Morrison St, 235-8150. 8 pm Wednesday, Dec. 21. $7 and two cans of food for the Oregon Food Bank. 21+.
Do Jump!
Oregon Ballet Theatre: The Nutcracker
The longest night of the year will seem a lot shorter when soothed by the sublime sounds of Portland’s allwomen vocal ensemble. The sevenmember chorus, drawn from the city’s preeminent large choirs, will sing some of the Renaissance’s most beautiful music, by composers including Palestrina, Dufay and Praetorius, along with new sounds for the impending new year. Abetted by percussionist and PSU prof Florian Conzetti, the choir will sing the world premiere of a new work, Lux ex Nocte, that the group commissioned from Colorado composer Richard Toensing, whose music has been performed by Cappella Romana. St. Philip Neri Church, 2408 SE 16th Ave., 283-2913. 7:30 pm Wednesday, Dec. 21. $12-$20.
Imago pulls together favorite scenes from the company’s two puppet/ pantomime/mask shows, Frogz and Biglittlethings, for a tour-friendly bundle of surprising visual delights. This year’s edition features a new piece, “Cats!” Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., 224-8499. 7 pm Dec. 21, 23, 28 and 30; 2 pm Dec. 22, 26-27 and 29-31; noon and 3 pm Dec. 24 and Jan. 1. $16-$29.
Blue Blue Christmas Comedy Show
DANCE
PIXIEDUSTSHOWS.COM
PERFORMANCE
Portland Youth Philharmonic
THE WIZARD OF OZ (PIXIE DUST PRODUCTIONS) It probably isn’t fair to fault Pixie Dust Productions’ staging of The Wizard of Oz for not doing something it’s not even trying to do. Nonetheless, in a world with, at minimum, one Wizard book, three movies and four plays, this curmudgeonly reviewer can’t help having wanted something more—divergence from the story told in the 1939 film; something contemporary, or edgy—from the production. Some historians argue L. Frank Baum, the novel’s author, concealed a populist political allegory within his apparent children’s story. The Yellow Brick Road allegedly represents the gold standard, bane of turn-of-the-century 99-percenters; Wikipedia it. How about an adaptation bringing that center stage? Anyone? Oh, go see Wicked, you say—and you’re probably right. It’s the holidays. Pixie Dust’s The Wizard of Oz, directed by Greg Tamblyn and based on John Kane’s adaptation for the Royal Shakespeare Company, is Christmas-season theater—fun for the whole family, as they say— that’s got nothing to do with Christmas, and God bless it for that. With many cast members (including local luminaries Erin Charles, Leif Norby, Dale Johannes and Joe Theissen) and even more costumes, this production is obviously expensive, but it never feels extravagant. In fact, it’s clear Pixie Dust is making technical reaches: The Wicked Witch’s broomstick flights look just a little turbulent, but the company gets an A for ambition. It also gets good marks for casting real kids as the Munchkins and a real dog (Happy, a cairn terrier) as Toto. It’s freaking adorable. The play actually does stray from the old script in a few instances, typically so characters can deliver groan-worthy puns (and once for the Cowardly Lion to make a Lion King reference). In the main, though, The Wizard of Oz is devoutly faithful to the best-known film version, and that ain’t so bad. It’s a well-worn story, sure, but a timeless one, too, about finding our smarts, heart and nerve within ourselves— and finding Oz wherever we may be. JONATHAN FROCHTZWAJG. Hello again, Yellow Brick Road.
SEE IT: Newmark Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, pixiedustshows.com. 7:30 pm
Dec. 23 and 28-30; 7 pm Dec. 21-22; 2 pm Dec. 31; 4 pm Jan. 1. $15-$55. All ages.
VISUAL ARTS
DEC. 21-27
NEWSPACE
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY
By RICHARD SPEER. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit show information—including opening and closing dates, gallery address and phone number—at least two weeks in advance to: Visual Arts, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: rspeer@wweek.com. Fax: 2431115. Emailed press releases must be backed up by a faxed or printed copy.
Wednesday, Dec 21st PHOTO CLASSES•DIGITAL LABS DARKROOMS•STUDIO•GALLERY HOLIDAY GIFT CERTIFICATES
www.newspacephoto.org 503-963-1935 1632 SE 10th Ave
SHED CULTURE LIVE! Thursday, Dec 22nd
MAGICAL STRINGS
CELTIC YULETIDE CONCERT
Wednesday, Dec 28th
THE BOBS NURSE SHARK BY BLAKELY DADSON
False Starts, Repairs, and Overhauls
A ramshackle train barrels through a lightning storm in Mark Licari’s False Starts, Repairs, and Overhauls. The ink, graphite and acrylic drawing is so large-scale, so feverish, so hallucinogenic, so downright gonzo, it singlehandedly fills Disjecta’s cavernous main gallery, even though it’s a strictly two-dimensional wall piece. Meanwhile, in the far more intimate Vestibule installation space, Vanessa Calvert’s False Cover continues the artist’s exploration of melty, Jabba the Hut-like sculpture in which distorted furniture and upholstery create an atmosphere of quasi-surrealist grotesquerie. Calvert’s first forays into this territory were hindered by a crafty, DIY execution, but in recent shows she has beefed up her technique, resulting in first-rate works that are materially complex and formally cohesive. Closes Jan. 7. Disjecta, 8371 N Interstate Ave., 286-9449.
The Horse
After Froelick’s and Butters’ equine-themed exhibitions this past summer, it’s time for a moratorium on horses on gallery walls. A big whinny of disapproval, then, for Blackfish’s The Horse, a sixmonths-behind-the-curve celebration of a noble animal which has, through no fault of its own, become a hackneyed artistic muse. Curator Steve Tilden adds his own take to this group show featuring 13 additional artists. Tilden contributes cringe-worthy sculptures of unicorns, Trojan horses and other variations on the theme in steel, wood, ceramics and old automobile parts. The works appear to hail from a junkyard and would meet a welcome end in similar environs after the show ends. The only works that begin to recontextualize this weary trope are Friderike Heuer’s digital collages, which update the immediacy of cave drawings and pictographs with welcome postmodern pastiche. Closes Jan. 31.Blackfish Gallery, 420 NW 9th Ave., 234-2634.
Tom Hardy at 90
Freelance curator Mark Woolley fills the old Ogle Gallery space with paintings, drawings and sculpture by one of the Northwest’s most beloved artists. Tom Hardy at 90 celebrates the nonagenarian’s
AFTER CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY SHOW Thursday, Dec 29th
prolificacy across diverse media and styles: jauntily rhythmic sculptures, Asian-influenced landscapes and elegant nudes. But Hardy’s most impactful pieces are astounding gestural abstractions, such as Abstract With Rust. The work practically leaps off the picture plane with bravado, motion and raw verve. Closes Dec. 31. Tom Hardy at 90, 310 NW Broadway.
JERRY JOSEPH
& THE JACKMORMONS
Transmutations
With woozy, synesthetic panache, painter Paula Keyth conjures iconic images of human/animal/ spirit hybrids. As in the work of Froelick Gallery’s Rick Bartow, Keyth’s paintings present an evershifting world where the lines between species and specters blur in pansexual, polymorphously perverse fluidity. Keyth shows us voluptuous women and anthropomorphic cows suggestively cradling rabbits and snakes, and a female body supporting a kachinalike medicine man’s head. By virtue of both her technique and vision, Keyth avoids New Age kitsch and achieves a haunting neo-expressionist exploration of the tenuous links between worlds. Closes Dec. 31. Launch Pad, 534 SE Oak St., 971-227-0072.
Werd Scho Wida
The intrepid, inexhaustibly inventive Blakely Dadson advances his artistic evolution with the drawing show Werd Scho Wida (colloquial German for “things will get better”). Conjuring a mad, inspired pastiche, Dadson combines Bavarian townscapes, film stills from Disney’s Pinocchio, a portrait of Bette Davis and imagery from the execrable 1986 comedy Three Amigos, tying the incongruous elements together in a loose retelling of the Book of Revelation. Somehow, it all works. Dadson makes virtuosic use of negative space and adds doses of ribald wit in Nurse Shark, in which a busty, latter-day Florence Nightingale protrudes from the jaws of a great white. Tasty stuff, indeed. Closes Dec. 23. Chambers @ 916, 916 NW Flanders St., 227-9398.
For more Visual Arts listings, visit
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with
BLACK PRAIRIE
Dec 30th and 31st
NEW YEAR’S EVE
3 SHOWS!
WITH
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CATIE CURTIS
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Friday, Jan 13th
DAVID GRISMAN FRANK VIGNOLA
“MELODY MONSTERS” Alberta Rose Theatre (503) 764-4131 3000 NE Alberta AlbertaRoseTheatre.com
Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
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BOOKS
DEC. 21-27
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By WW STAFF. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit lecture or reading information at least two weeks in advance to: WORDS, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: words@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
WIN A DOWNTOWN NIGHT OUT FROM
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 21 Ten Poets
SCAN TO ENTER
PACKAGE INCLUDES: A NIGHT AT ACE HOTEL, TWO TICKETS TO ARTIST REPERTORY THEATRE AND A $25 GIFT CARD TO GRACIE’S RESTAURANT
How many poets does it take to make a journal? The Mountain Writers Series presents a reading by 10 poets featured in the first few issues of the Corvallisbased Cloudbank: Journal of Contemporary Writing. Press Club, 2621 SE Clinton St., 233-5656. 7:30 pm. $5 suggested donation.
GO TO WWEEK.COM/PROMOTIONS
Kids’ Storytime
NEWS
Uh oh. The kids are out of school but “Santa” hasn’t quite finished the shopping. What to do? Park the little ones in the Rose Room to listen to Llama Llama Holiday Drama and race around picking up a few titles to wrap up under the tree. Kids’ Storytime will take
place in the Rose Room each day through Christmas Eve. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W. Burnside St., 228-4651, powells.com. Dec. 21-24. 11 am.
SUNDAY, DEC. 25 Portland Poetry Slam
The Portland Poetry Slam runs every Sunday at Backspace. Each show opens with an open mic at 8 pm, followed by a featured poet, then the slam, where eight poets battle it out for $50. RUTH BROWN. Backspace, 115 NW 5th Ave., 248-2900. 7:30 pm. $5 suggested donation. All ages.
For more Words listings, visit
REVIEW
HOW GEORGIA BECAME O’KEEFFE UPCOMING EVENTS BROUGHT TO YOU BY
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
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newshound wweek.com
Bookstores already dedicate whole shelves to Georgia O’Keeffe. That didn’t stop Portland author Karen Karbo from adding one more book, How Georgia Became O’Keeffe: Lessons on the Art of Living, to the shelf. Her third in a series of books about seriously influential women, including Coco Chanel and Katharine HepNot to mention how burn, the recently published, Karen became Karbo. untraditional biography awakens the subject by drawing life lessons from the O’Keeffe model. Within the first few pages, Karbo writes, “One aspect of the myth is that there’s an objective truth about her life,” letting the reader know that she’s steering clear of straightforwardly rehashing the hard facts of the painter’s life. She’s not really looking to analyze O’Keeffe’s work. Instead, Karbo digs, and often speculates, through a set of circumstances. If you’re hankering for an art history lesson, this is not your book. There are some references to O’Keeffe’s celebrated style and to husband Alfred Stieglitz’s impact on modern art and the art of photography. But mostly, Karbo dissects O’Keeffe’s personal life—the lonesome upbringing, wandering tendencies, fascinating love affairs, dysfunctional marriage, and artistic struggles and triumphs of the woman behind the flower paintings. Problems start with Karbo’s interjections of her own opinions and narratives. She jumps into stories about meeting her husband through the video game EverQuest and undergoing surgery the day before Thanksgiving, making the difference between insightful lessons and unnecessary self-referencing difficult to distinguish. Her striving for relevancy to current generations is muddled in the excessive hopping back and forth between how Georgia became O’Keeffe and how Karen became Karbo. Thankfully, Karbo has her moments of humor. Those familiar with her writing know her voice is witty and clever, which adds a much-needed spin to such an academically regarded artistic figure. In the end, her lighthearted undertone, along with O’Keeffe’s intriguing experiences, are the two successes of the book. Despite sometimes feeling that Karbo’s retelling is like that of a storyteller who is easily hung up on tangents born from sparked memories, she still delivers an entertaining portrayal of O’Keeffe’s eccentric personality and bohemian lifestyle. Although not the ideal gift for all Portlanders this holiday season, Karbo’s take on O’Keeffe could be the perfect stocking stuffer for art-loving, middle-aged women seeking inspiration. EMILEE BOOHER. BUY: How Georgia Became O’Keeffe is available at bookstores now.
MOVIES
DEC. 21-27
T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y F OX F I L M C O R P O R AT I O N
REVIEWS
WE BOUGHT A ZOO: Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson and Co. SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
FUNNY FARMS
IT’S A VERY OLDE FILMMAKERS’ TREASURY OF CHRISTMASTIME ANIMALS! BY AA R ON MESH
DREAMWORKS II DISTRIBUTION
A DANGEROUS METHOD: Keira Knightley and Michael Fassbender.
M E R R I C K M O R T O N / C O L U M B I A T R I S TA R
WAR HORSE: Jeremy Irvine and Joey.
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO: Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig.
amesh@wweek.com
The media campaign for We Bought a Zoo has been met with of a foreseeable volley of mockery (including an exceedingly funny Twitter feed: @WEBOUGHTAZ00), but this is hardly the only new movie offering a menagerie as holiday healing for a distressed nation. The multiplexes are a giant session of pet therapy. Four esteemed directors—and one lauded tenderfoot—are debuting films that prescribe animals or the release of animalistic urges as a cure for trauma and depression. Steven Spielberg gives us a horse as a tranquilizer. Cameron Crowe buys the zoo. David Cronenberg shows the benefits of rough sex. French interloper Michel Hazanavicius saves the day with a Jack Russell terrier. David Fincher kills a cat, but he’s David Fincher, and what are you going to do? The net effect of all this wildlife, however, is very tame. None of the pictures is a fiasco, and they are all thankfully unassuming by Oscar-season standards. But there is the overall sensation of filmmakers falling back on their own staid tendencies and other movies that have clicked. Spielberg actually has directed a twin bill (The Adventures of Tintin is reviewed on page 48), but the ostensibly more mature entertainment, War Horse, has the exact same plot as a children’s film: 1945’s Son of Lassie. In both pictures, a British Isles pet—substitute plow horse for collie—is dropped behind German enemy lines, and has encounters with innocents who promptly die. The echoes may be accidental, and are partly the responsibility of War Horse’s book and Broadway lineage, but Spielberg has very consciously made a 1940s family picture. The Irish greenscapes are as gossamer and fake as the sets of Brigadoon. It is typical of Spielberg to make a World War I picture where the central players emerge unharmed, like E.T. and Elliott on the Western Front. Even without the stage version’s famed puppets, War Horse has moments of wordless power—a cavalry changing into a Gatling gun, the mounts galloping on, riderless—but it is skill devoted to grating nonsense. So is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, a movie all too proud of its refurbished shock value. Fincher’s take on Stieg Larsson’s froth of woman-killing and woman’s revenge is less repellent than the flat nose-rubbing of the Swedish version, maybe because Fincher mostly gets
his jollies from digital showboating. The movie looks like somebody found the pornography stash of Steve Jobs; the snow and the torture chamber both look like they were designed by Apple. The enterprise has a necrotic vibe that is distancing, and in some shots, the characters’ skin is nearly purple. Fincher’s best jokes are all sick ones: A killer carves his victims to Enya, the opening credits are a Bond montage caked in a spew of power cords and crude oil, and he gets us awfully attached to that cat. The only human element is Rooney Mara. As the hacker detective Lisbeth Salander, she benefits from lucky miscasting: Her big, emotive eyes belie the heroine’s traumatized unfeeling. Everybody feels oh so very much in We Bought a Zoo, but that’s to be expected from Crowe, whose heart has been perpetually on his sleeve since Say Anything. The movie is explicitly about risking embarrassment: the possibility of ridicule that comes from carrying a capuchin on your shoulder, playing Cat Stevens songs loudly, or...well, buying a zoo. It’s not quite the glop of Elizabethtown, but no humane sentiment goes unremarked (or un-reiterated) and, with Matt Damon playing a newly single parent trying to salve his kids’ bereavement, it’s essentially The Descendants for people who don’t get subtlety. I must be one of those people: Large sections of We Bought a Zoo worked me over. (Not the parts with the monkey.) Crowe is didactic, and thinks too highly of Sigur Rós’ Jonsi as a composer, but he’s also unafraid to work through relationships in dialogue. There’s a marvelously unsteady yelling match between father and son midway through, where Damon’s kid asks his dad why he’s forcing this dream on him, and Damon cries out: “Because it’s a great dream! With cool animals!” That naked optimism is disarming. So...tell me about your father. The new Cronenberg film about the salad days of psychoanalysis, A Dangerous Method isn’t a horror movie until you consider what isn’t shown. There are terrible memories of childhood beatings, recounted by Keira Knightley as Carl Jung’s patient-turned-protegée Sabina Spielrein, as the specter of European genocide looms over the talking cures. The movie’s first 30 minutes take place in nearly unbroken sunshine, in the setting of Swiss lake holidays, punctuated by screaming. (Some of Knightley’s fits push the film toward a Gothic melodrama that is embarrassing in its own way; the picture is better when it’s more repressed.) What makes Method the most engrossing of the season’s releases is how the characters are grappling with bestial parts of themselves through ornate words—and often justifying savage betrayals or king-of-the-jungle pride the same way. “All those provocative discussions helped crystallize a lot of my thinking,” Michael Fassbender’s Jung tells Viggo Mortensen’s Freud. And while the movie includes lots of sex and spanking, it’s chiefly about the thrills, arousals and perils of conversation. Repressed memories also drive The Artist. It’s a silentfilm homage to silent films—or, rather, the fond, slightly condescending recollection of silent films. Already the Oscar front-runner, the comedy from Michel Hazanavicius (who directed the two OSS 177 spoofs) is yet another take on A Star is Born, with a slam-bang energetic Jean Dujardin trading places in the spotlight with flapper Berenice Bejo at the cusp of talkies. The period is apt, since most of the movie’s charms are technical gimmicks: the interstitial cards, the tight aspect ratio on glamorous black-and-white marquees, and the sneaky intrusion of ambient noises into the soundtrack. Days after seeing The Artist, I find it hard to place any individual moments that resonated (aside from the doggie heroism) and I suspect that, title aside, the movie feels a complacent cynicism toward art. Its pitfall is much like that of its four companions: It can’t resist showing off, and in those moments it feels like so much artificial product. Let’s get back to nature. SEE IT: 58 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opened Tuesday, Dec. 20. 70 We Bought a Zoo, 81 A Dangerous Method and 64 The Artist open Friday, Dec. 23. 48 War Horse opens Sunday, Dec. 25. Find locations for these five movies in the listings. Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
45
MOVIES
DEC. 21-27
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Editor: AARON MESH. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, send screening information at least two weeks in advance to Screen, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: amesh@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
REVIEW F O C U S F E AT U R E S
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked!
Dancing rodents on an island. WW did not brave the horror. G. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinetopia Mill Plain, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Cinema 99, City Center, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy.
Arthur Christmas
An Aardman animation about the son of Santa. Look, WW doesn’t go to a lot of these kids’ movies. There’s going to be a theme here. PG. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Forest, Cinema 99, Division, Evergreen, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Tigard. NEW
The Artist
64 See feature review on page 45.
PG-13. Fox Tower. NEW
The Big Black Dark
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, FILMMAKER ATTENDING] A gorgeous-looking local noir. Someday Lounge. 7 pm Wednesday, Dec. 21.
The Big Lebowski
NEW
[ONE WEEK ONLY, REVIVAL] For those foolish holdouts who remain unconvinced that The Big Lebowski is the funniest movie ever made, here are the perennial 12 reasons: a check made out for 69 cents, Marty the Landlord’s dance cycle, lingonberry pancakes, Jesus and the Gipsy Kings, Sobchak Security, “How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm once they’ve seen Karl Hungus?”, whale songs, the proximity of the In-N-Out Burger, Logjammin’, Branded or at least the bulk of the series, the Malibu Police Department coffee mug, “Dude’s car got a little dinged up.” Really, I could go on like this for years. R. AARON MESH. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9:15 pm Friday-Thursday, Dec. 23-29. White Russians available. NEW
Christmas in Space
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] A cornucopia of tacky ’70s seasonal TV, with yuletide commercials hawking Planet of the Apes and Star Trek toys. Also, even though the programmers aren’t free to say they’re showing the Star Wars Holiday Special, they totally are. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Friday, Dec. 23.
A Dangerous Method
NEW
81 See feature review on page 45. R.
Fox Tower. NEW
The Darkest Hour 3D
Something from space tries to turn Emile Hirsch into confetti and POKE YOU IN THE EYE. Not screened for critics. PG-13. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cornelius, Living Room Theaters, Cinema 99, City Center, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy.
The Descendants
72 George Clooney, who may be
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WWEEKDOTCOM Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
the closest thing we now have to a Cary Grant, seems of late to be reversing Grant’s career trajectory. While Grant went from pratfalling acrobat to ironically self-aware sex symbol, Clooney has recently made room in his usual Teflon-suave scoundrel persona for roles that place him more as a bruised emotional clown. In Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, Clooney puts in a nuanced, wincing performance as the Dickensianly named Matt King, a workaholic real-estate lawyer and haole heir of Hawaiian royalty, who finds himself suddenly at sea when his wife of many years is knocked into a terminal coma by a highspeed motorboating accident. Not only does he not know how to relate
NO ONE EXPECTS THE BRITISH INQUISITION: Gary Oldman as George Smiley.
TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY The movie’s star, Gary Oldman, studies us through stylish 1970s spectacles, adjusting them with a stylishly leather-gloved hand. Printed below his left eye are words: “The enemy is within.” We are being sold some combination of nostalgia and cynicism. Think of the movie’s poster as a spy’s cover that’s already been blown. No intelligence here. British author John le Carré answered James Bond fantasy with his realistic sense of class politics and moral disillusionment in a faded empire. His 1974 novel, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, filled six hours when the BBC adapted it for television. In this version, a mere two hours are supposed to convey agent George Smiley’s search for a Soviet mole among his colleagues at MI6, or “the Circus.” Because the English actors look distinctive, you can almost follow the plot, beginning with Mark Strong as a fellow agent who gets ambushed in Budapest. Before we know anything about the guy, we’re expected to fear for his life because the film’s director, Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In), turns up the earthquake sound effects. Like many young boys, Alfredson seems enamored with the movies of David Fincher, in which pale, paranoid men discover horrible corpses, and all the politics and emotions of adult life have conveniently taken place off camera. This English spy version is especially disingenuous. Again, like a young boy, we’re supposed to be impressed by the men’s cool emotional repression, but also impressed with ourselves for leading happier lives than theirs. Their personal history together is summarized in flashback rather than being explored in drama and decors we can really feel. The camera turns Oldman’s Smiley into a monster as he confesses his wavering faith in the West, complete with a reference to American torture. When the traitor is unmasked, he explains to Smiley: “I had to pick a side, George. It was an aesthetic choice as much as a moral one.” In the book, Smiley hides his mixed feelings about this betrayal as a social tragedy, but the movie excludes them altogether. There’s more subtlety in Smiley’s boss (John Hurt), who bellows resentment at a Scottish rival who favors America: “Your bloody Yanks!” “You penny-pinching Scot!” But most details of class and nationalism get dropped. Does the filmmaker realize the irony of his own immoral aesthetics? He’s more interested in those stylish glasses Smiley wears, or the vintage burger joint where he might have eaten, or the way a bullet can puncture a man’s cheek like a gruesome tear. That image is part of the “serious” final montage, with a maudlin, homosexual love-death, and a conflicted patriot becoming the Godfather. Unserious disco music turns it into a cartoon about other people, instead of the painful choices we all face. R. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF.
Smiley, though your heart is aching.
23 SEE IT: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy opens Friday, Dec. 23, at Fox Tower.
DEC. 21-27
MOVIES T H E W E I N S T E I N CO M PA N Y
to his two daughters—stock indiequirky 10-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller) and acid-tongued boarding-school teen Alex (Shailene Woodley)—but he is left to discover that his lonely, stay-at-home wife had fallen in love with another man behind his back. Clooney makes the most of his underwritten role—it is a comedic wonder to watch him lope awkwardly in flip-flops, or register his polite, pride-sucking pain over and over—but it is difficult nonetheless for the viewer to invest emotionally in the film, despite its easy charisma. R. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, City Center, Evergreen, Fox Tower, Lloyd Mall.
Drive
NEW
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
58 See feature review on page 45. R.
Lloyd Center, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, CineMagic, Cinetopia Mill Plain, Cornelius, Lake Twin, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Cinema 99, City Center, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy.
The Hedgehog
80 The morbid yet sentimental
cult classic Harold and Maude lives on in the tangled blond hair of an 11-year-old Parisian girl named Paloma. The Hedgehog, a French coming-of-age drama, opens with the clichéd (and videotaped) monologue of this young, wealthy and intelligent child who says she’d rather die than succumb to the adult conformity that surrounds her. It gets better. SHAE HEALEY. Living Room Theaters.
Hugo
80 Martin Scorsese’s decision to
helm the 3-D adaptation of Brian Selznick’s Caldecott-winning novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, seemed an odd and possibly addled one at first blush. But look at Scorsese’s filmography sideways and this august director’s late-career digression into family-friendliness makes a strange sort of sense, for beneath the blood and unpardonable French of films like Goodfellas and Casino, one finds a freewheeling and wide-eyed reverence for the antic, the cartoonish, the downright silly. (Two words: Joe Pesci.) Set in a vivid version of 1930s Paris so edibly adorable it might as well have been born in a crocodile tear sliding down Amélie’s pristine cheek, Hugo drapes its bittersweet study of broken dreams over a plot of fairy-story simplicity. The titular pipsqueak (played by extraterrestrially cute Asa Butterfield) is an orphan living inside the rather capacious walls of a sprawling train station patrolled by a guttersnipe-hunting station guard (Sacha Baron Cohen) and enlivened by a Tati-esque flow of murmuring humanity. Scorsese pulls off a few wonderful tricks with Hugo. It is a film populated by uncanny visions— dreams, films, dummies, trompe l’oeil expanses—and resonant with wonder, dolor and regret. The message: Life, though brief, admits of magic. The messenger: a master magician still. PG. CHRIS STAMM. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Living Room Theaters, Cornelius, Cinema 99, City Center, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy.
® ®
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KEIRA
KNIGHTLEY
VIGGO
MORTENSEN
MICHAEL
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VINCENT
CASSEL ©HFPA
“AN EROTIC MINDBENDER! AN EXHILARATING PROVOCATION! THE ACTORS GIVE IT THEIR ALL, ESPECIALLY KEIRA KNIGHTLEY. MICHAEL FASSBENDER IS OUTSTANDINGLY GOOD. A PURRING, STELLAR VIGGO MORTENSEN HAS A HIGH OLD TIME PLAYING A MAN WHO LIKES TO HAVE THE LAST WORD. LEAVE IT TO DAVID CRONENBERG TO MAKE THE CEREBRAL SIZZLE!” Peter Travers
95 Drive, the luxurious new L.A.
noir from Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, is the most brutally antisocial movie of the year. It is also the most romantic—but it is primarily spellbound by the romance of isolation. It is also exhilarating filmmaking, from soup to swollen nuts. It contains half a dozen white-knuckle action sequences—starting with a Ryan Gosling robbery getaway timed to the final buzzer of an L.A. Clippers game—yet its closest relative is the lightheaded, restrained eroticism of Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love. R. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre, Fox Tower, Academy, Laurelhurst.
GOLDEN GLOBE AWARD NOMINEE
THE ARTIST
J. Edgar
66 Spread over four decades and
leached of any bright hues, Clint Eastwood’s biopic of intelligencehoarding FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) is complex and brave, if at times almost comically misguided. Though filled with lurid material—Hoover intimidating Robert F. Kennedy with a tape recording of his brother screwing, Hoover trying on his mother’s nightgowns and necklaces—it never lapses into exploitation. Such tastefulness is Eastwood’s hallmark as a filmmaker, and also his great weakness: It makes him almost as humorless as the man he’s chronicling. Eastwood’s big miscalculation is shooting nearly half the movie with Hoover and confidante Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) in liver-spotted old-age makeup, so that by the end it looks like crotchety Muppets Statler and Waldorf are heckling Martin Luther King Jr. Despite this fundamental hitch (and a 137-minute aimlessness), J. Edgar has the virtue of being penned by Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who takes the shamed relationship between Hoover and Tolson and finds a real love story. R. AARON MESH. Clackamas, City Center, Movies on TV, Tigard.
Melancholia
90 Lars von Trier’s restless formal
experimentation makes him difficult to pin down, but the Dane responsible for Dancer in the Dark and Dogville tends toward an obsession with wretchedness. The results are often insane (the fate of Willem Dafoe’s poor penis in Antichrist), sometimes painfully funny (the absurd theater of The Idiots) and frequently just plain stupid (almost everything else he’s touched). With Melancholia, von Trier has finally struck on a subject and a story perfectly suited to his fixation on the epically fucked; he has, at last, made a masterpiece. Von Trier begins at the end, with surreal eschatological visions rendered in extremely slow motion: Birds fall from the sky, and a woman sinks into a golf course’s pristine lawn as two planets, one of them our own, move in for a potentially cataclysmic meeting. A planet called Melancholia hurtling toward Earth at 60,000 mph while a Wagner plaint plays the entire species off and Kirsten Dunst scowls? Ridiculous, I know. But listen: There really are soul-searing kinds of sadness that can stretch minds to cruel and impossible limits, and perhaps such states can only be comprehended with the help of something as absurd and terrifying as a new blue planet rising on Earth’s horizon. What is certain is that von Trier brings us perilously close to understanding the horrible shape of utter disconsolation. It hurts to watch. It should. R. CHRIS STAMM. Hollywood Theatre, Living Room Theaters.
Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol NEW
83 In only three magnificent films—
The Iron Giant and Pixar smashes The Incredibles and Ratatouille— director Brad Bird has honed an
“AN INTELLECTUALLY VIGOROUS, OCCASIONALLY KINKY TERM PAPER ON THE RIDDLE OF SEXUAL DESIRE AND THE DANGERS OF SCIENTIFIC AMBITION.” A.O. Scott
eye: one of uncanny imagination, LOS ANGELES FILM CRITICS ASSOCIATION one that envisions a chaotic urban battlefield and a small kitchen as scenes of similar peril. That’s essenMICHAEL FASSBENDER - BEST ACTOR tial to a film in which crawling BASED ON THE TRUE STORY OF JUNG, FREUD through a ventilation shaft and dangling from the world’s tallest buildAND THE PATIENT WHO CAME BETWEEN THEM ing are equally dangerous. Luckily, Bird’s eye for the real world more than matches his animated ingenuity. Mission: Impossible—Ghost BASED ON THE TRUE STORY A DAVID CRONENBERG FILM Protocol finds Tom Cruise’s generic OF JUNG,DIRECTOR FREUD AND THE PATIENT OF ‘A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE’ & ‘EASTERN PROMISES’ super-agent Ethan Hunt sprinting WHO CAME BETWEEN THEM from set piece to set piece to stop a WWW.SONYCLASSICS.COM SOUNDTRACK AVAILABLE madman from blowing up the world. ON That’s it. No talky exposition. Just kinetic action (much of it shot in On glorious IMAX), gadgetry of the Wile Visit iTunes.com/SPC E. Coyote variety and the requifor a look at REGAL FOX TOWER STADIUM 10 A Dangerous Method site goofy disguises. Ghost Protocol 846 SW Park Avenue, Portland (800) FANDANGO and other SPC films starts with a Russian prison break VIEW THE TRAILER AT WWW.ADANGEROUSMETHODFILM.COM and immediately Cruise, comic relief Simon Pegg, vixen Paula Patton and heir apparent Jeremy Renner are 3.825” X 5.25" WED 12/21 framed for blowing up the Kremlin PORTLAND WILLAMETTE WEEK (a nice nod to the series’ Cold War origins) and forced to kick ass and DUE MON 5PM clear their names. Bird fluidly guides ENTER FOR A the mayhem with the eye of an aniTO WIN AN mator and the humor of a child AE: (circle one:) CHANCE Artist: (circle one:) ADVENTURES OF unleashed on a new playground. With Ghost Protocol, he accomAngela Maria TINTIN Josh PRIZE PACK! Aurelio Heather Staci Freelance 2 plishes the unlikely by taking a stagnant franchise and molding the Tim McCool Emmett Jay Steve Philip best action film of the year. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, EMAIL CONTESTS_SEA@ Eastport, Cinetopia MillConfirmation Plain, ALLIEDIM.COM WITH Deadline: #: Cornelius, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, THE SUBJECT LINE Cinema 99, City Center, Division, WWEEK PRIZE PACK! Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Sherwood, PRIZE PACK INCLUDES: Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy, St. Johns A PASS TO SEE Twin Cinema-Pub.
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TINTIN IN THEATRES
The Muppets
85 Every Muppet movie—hell, even the ’70s television show—is about pining for a bygone era, whether it be that of the vaudevillian variety show that The Muppet Show romanticized so well, or the caper flick, or even Treasure Island. This reboot, coordinated by Jason Segel, asks: Can’t we just be happy with an old-fashioned, MGM-style musical number (with puppets)? The tear stains on my jacket are proof I’m not too hard to please. Some of my favorite moments were the original songs by Flight of the Conchords’ Bret McKenzie. Conchords fans will notice parallels to his other stuff, but these compositions are a delight. (The only misstep is when Chris Cooper’s villain goes all rappin’ granny on us.) Amy Adams is upstaged by the new Muppet, Walter, who is 2 feet tall and her rival for Segel’s companionship. Walter’s a perfect addition to the gang, serving as an avatar for all us grown children who still love the plush. I have quibbles: In a movie that had an a cappella “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and chickens clucking Cee-Lo’s “Fuck You,” why were “The Rainbow Connection” and “Mahna Mahna” the only songs from the older movies included? But this film made me feel the same joy that The Muppet Movie stirs decades later. That’s pretty impressive. PG. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, 99 Indoor Twin, Eastport, Forest, Division, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Tigard.
CONT. on page 48
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My Week With Marilyn
44 Michelle Williams steps off the
Oregon Trail to play Marilyn Monroe, and gets about halfway there. She has the look of Marilyn—her features are like a portrait of Tinker Bell carved from a ripe peach—and nails the calculated-naif pout of the public persona, but she’s never quite convincing as Norma Jeane Baker. Her efforts to seem wounded and confused are always a smidgen too knowing and telegraphed. The surrounding movie looks at Monroe from the least interesting possible angle, that of snooty Anglos. It is a typical Weinstein Company property in the wake of The King’s Speech: light, British and shapeless. Director Simon Curtis, a BBC vet, might be trying to win a bet over how much of the Empire’s acting talent he can waste. He plows through Julia Ormond, Toby Jones, Emma Watson and Dominic Cooper with terrible editing—uniformly clumsy and groping. R. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre, City Center, Fox Tower.
band of bros and their harpy wives, and she’s haunted by the horrormovie specter of his ex-flame Briann (Large). I admired Westby’s previous pictures, Film Geek and The Auteur, where he celebrated a similar outsider outrageousness, and I don’t mind that Rid of Me is telling a creation myth of Portland’s alterna-culture. It’s Fugitives and Refugees: The Movie. This isn’t a bad idea, but the execution is slapdash and not very attuned to actual human behavior. It knows who it wants to be for,
but not what it wants to be. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.
Shame
86 “I find you disgusting.” These
are the first substantive words spoken in director Steve McQueen’s sex-negative new film, aptly titled Shame. They are a misdirection, delivered after a crafty cut to a luxe office meeting, but they are spoken immediately after the film’s subject—Brandon Sullivan, played by a Bale-intense Michael
REVIEW
New Year’s Eve
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT
DEC. 21-27
W E TA D I G I TA L / PA R A M O U N T P I C T U R E S
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23 The latest in a tide of seasonal ensemble films that play like Short Cuts or Magnolia for people with strong feelings about annual festivities, New Year’s Eve insists that nothing ennobles the human spirit like partying all night. It is a tenaciously stupid movie, one where Lea Michele gets stuck in an elevator with Ashton Kutcher and berates him about hope and magic until he agrees to make out with her. Still, there are positive things to say. Hilary Swank is required to deliver several speeches that are basically a series of mawkish nouns strung together like refrigerator poetry, and she does not have a seizure or fall down or anything. Zac Efron’s character is supposed to be a callow douchebag, and he does this thing where he talks into his smartphone and shifts it squarely in front of his mouth each time he wants to emphasize a word, which is quite convincingly douchey. Someone hands Josh Duhamel a tiny bichon frisé to hold at a dinner party, and he neither drops it nor gets fur on his tuxedo. The girl from Little Miss Sunshine gets to be in another movie. So do Sarah Jessica Parker and Katherine Heigl. (Nice thing about her: There actually are a lot of women in the world who are rigid and needy and inexplicably hostile, and I think she makes them feel better.) Robert De Niro performs a meta-commentary on the trajectory of his career by playing a man who just wants to die as soon as possible. “What’s the difference?” he asks. “Why delay the inevitable?” Which also nicely summarizes New Year’s Eve. PG-13. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Fox Tower, Cinema 99, City Center, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville.
Rid of Me
45 Portland director James Westby’s
Rid of Me is targeted very narrowly at a certain audience, and you will know whether you are part of it from the very first scene, in which Storm Large is attacked by a vagina. To be precise, a righteously pissed-off Katie O’Grady reaches into her jeans and smears a daub of menstrual blood across the diva’s cheek. If you find this sequence amusingly brazen, and gain double enjoyment as you remember that Westby directed the music video for Large’s pussypower ode “8 Miles Wide,” you are that audience. If you aren’t especially charmed by the taboo-busting aggression (or, worse, if you’re wondering, “Who is Storm Large?”), this movie does not want to play with you. Rid of Me makes cliques its subject, and becomes a demonstration of the exclusionary tendencies it condemns. O’Grady plays the mortifyingly deferential Meris Canfield, who moves with hubby Mitch (John Keyser) from California to his childhood hamlet of Laurelwood, Ore. Meris is reviled by her husband’s
AVAST, ’TIS A POLAR EXPRESS: Tintin (Jamie Bell) and Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis).
THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN There has been some debate around the WW office whether American kids even recognize Belgian comics legend Hergé’s teen journalist protagonist, Tintin, when they see him. After this week—when Steven Spielberg brings his take on the spiky-haired sleuth to theatergoers—it’ll probably be a moot point. Spielberg’s CGI Tintin film, like Christopher Nolan’s Batman pictures or Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, will soon define Hergé’s cast of iconic characters for a generation. That turns out not to be such a bad thing. While Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin is a tad higher-octane than its comic-book progenitors, the director clearly has a soft spot for the books, which he honors in the spectacular opening credits and the film’s opening scene (where he goes so far as to cast a CGI version of Hergé as a portrait painter). The director’s love for his source material translates quite well in scenes with bit players like bumbling twin investigators Thompson and Thomson or kindly Nestor the butler. Tintin himself, though, is an inherently tough leading man to tackle. Hergé never really gave the boy reporter a backstory and refused to peg his age or family history in the books. Instead of filling in the blanks with melodrama, though, Spielberg assays his wide-eyed protagonist with seasick camera sweeps and soundtracks every moment with emotionally exploitative John Williams scoring. In the film’s early scenes, even Tintin’s lovable dog, Snowy—unimpeachably cute in the books—seems to have gone Hollywood. But as we prepare ourselves for another action movie by the numbers, something funny happens. Something really funny. His name is Captain Haddock. Haddock, Tintin’s partner in adventure journalism and a hopeless drunk, is played by Andy Serkis. Haddock is the film’s true lead, and he is absolutely brilliant. It should surprise no one that Serkis, the leading go-to guy for CGI work from Gollum to the Planet apes, lends Haddock incredible expressions, but I didn’t know he could put a film on his shoulders. I also didn’t know that devastating alcoholism could be so amusing. Booze is to Haddock what spinach is to Popeye, something that should raise the ire of AA types. As soon as Haddock is introduced, we start to care. Then The Adventures of Tintin takes off and Spielberg brings us the most inspired action sequences since Inception: Epic, funny, Rube Goldberg-style cavalcades of comic chaos and destruction that honestly thrill and make fine use of 3-D technology without engaging in overtly cheesy camera tricks. It may be classic Spielbergian spectacle more than Hergé understatement, but damn it feels good, whether you’re familiar with Tintin or not. PG. CASEY JARMAN. Try the Haddock.
82 SEE IT: The Adventures of Tintin opens Wednesday, Dec. 21, at Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinetopia, Cornelius, Pioneer Place, Cinema 99, City Center, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville and Sandy.
MOVIES R A L P H M C Q U A R R I E / S TA R WA R S H O L I D AY S P E C I A L . C O M
DEC. 21-27
VISUAL ARTS
CHRISTMAS IN SPACE Fassbender—has bought himself a high-end prostitute. And thus, the main focus and dichotomy in the movie: a constant swing between Sullivan’s clinically posh New York life and his lonely, seamy, uncontrolled sexual obsessions. In early scenes, his life amid stylized, minimalist spaces is a hyperaestheticized odyssey through the pages of Dwell magazine or unhappyhipsters.com, albeit one with lots of full frontal nudity. And it all proceeds terribly slowly. As in Hunger, McQueen’s first movie, we are made to live through onscreen extremity in all its sometimes tedious detail. But the ugliness remains so lovely that we are not only at its mercy but wholly compelled by it. Fassbender’s Sullivan is a fascinating creature: He is a grotesque sex addict whom women constantly want to sleep with. He is aloof, self-contained, upfront with his desires and enormously charismatic as a failed human specimen, even as he gets beaten up outside a bar and ends up blankly orgasming in a gay sex club, even as he meticulously cleans a toilet before masturbating into it. His visiting sister (Carey Mulligan) provides the true heart of this very controlled, near tour-de-force by director McQueen. NC-17. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Cinema 21.
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
42 While watching Guy Ritchie’s
new entry in the Sherlock Holmes franchise, it was difficult not to think of Hairspray. Not the seminal camp John Waters feature, but the slapstick John Travolta version based on the subpar Broadway musical that was, in turn, loosely adapted from the original. In a similar unholy game of telephone, the two characters in Ritchie’s Sherlock have nothing to do with Conan Doyle or Basil Rathbone but rather are rooted in Drs. Wilson and House (who himself lives in the Holmesian apartment 221B) from Fox’s House, M.D. So Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law) are here polymathic Victorian fratboys, prone to pranking, with earnest do-gooder Watson terminally at the mercy of his sociopathic-with-a-heart-ofgold, game-obsessed friend. This is not a Holmes who first discovers a mystery and then sets about solving it with uncanny precision; Downey is a dimly wisecracking blunderbuss whose main talents seem to be intellectual bullying, all-around ass-kicking and the art of disguising himself as women or furniture. And so we travel from action-packed setpiece to actionpacked setpiece along a distressingly loose causal chain, and with any luck we don’t care much why. But each scene carries essentially zero momentum or tension from the last and the plotlines come from outer space, leaving us essentially indifferent to who gets shot or who wins or anything else. And so despite all the steampunky whizzbangery and drolly narrated action, the movie’s duller than Christmas Tofurky and just
as indigestible. PG-13. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Lloyd Center, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinetopia Mill Plain, Cornelius, Lake Twin, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Cinema 99, City Center, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville, Roseway, Sandy, St. Johns Twin Cinema-Pub.
Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness
54 Professors of Jewish literature looking for an easy lesson plan will no doubt be thrilled by Joseph Dorman’s Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness, a book report of a documentary about the life and impact of the writer, who, at the turn of the 20th century, rose from poverty in revolutionary Russia to become the premier chronicler—and rib poker—of the conflict between Jewish values and the rapidly changing world engulfing them. A humorist called “the Jewish Mark Twain,” Aleichem made a Huck Finn from Tevye the Milkman, the lovable traditionalist immortalized on stage and screen in Fiddler on the Roof. Like his characters, Aleichem spent his life finding glints of happiness in dark times, all while achieving literary superstardom. AP KRYZA. Living Room Theaters.
The Sitter
62 Probably about two dozen people (all of them film critics) are going to notice that David Gordon Green directed this scattershot homage to Adventures in Babysitting with Jonah Hill as Elisabeth Shue. Still, we can take a measure of heart in seeing evidence that, after Pineapple Express and Your Highness, Green remains interested in the tropes of vulgar comedy only so far as he can subvert or ignore them. This means that, as a comedy, The Sitter barely bothers to show up: Central plot points and character arcs are simply ignored, giving the farce an anarchic sloppiness that borders on incoherence. But there’s inexplicable strangeness here—especially in Sam Rockwell’s dancing, lonely drug dealer—and the warm multicultural humanism of George Washington is pitted against the standard gay- and race-baiting of mainstream Hollywood, so that Hill builds easy allegiances with African-American gangbangers and gives genuine affirmation to a closeted tween. The boy, who gobbles anti-anxiety pills and dresses like he wants to be Richie Tenenbaum, is well played by Portland’s own Max Records, from Where the Wild Things Are. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Living Room Theaters, Oak Grove, City Center, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Sherwood.
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this Week: don unrau’s hanoi street work. pg 55.
A French film in which Emily Browning is used for sex while she naps. So, not the Disney cartoon? Living Room Theaters.
CONT. on page 50 Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com
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The Skin I Live In
86 Very particular body-image issues are at the core of The Skin I Live In, Pedro Almodovar’s violently outre new movie. It proves that the director’s penchant for physical modification has only grown more pointed—or rounded. It is perhaps the most twisted and unsettling film Almodovar has made (and this is a director whose Talk to Her featured a nurse tenderly raping his comatose patient), but it is not exactly a horror movie. Instead, it is a throwback to golden-age Hollywood’s mad-scientist movies, as if the dress-up games of Vertigo had been conducted by James Whale around the time he made Bride of Frankenstein. The mad scientist, a plastic surgeon to be exact, is played by Antonio Banderas, and he is most certainly insane. Other characters keep mentioning this to him, in case he had forgotten. But Banderas’ understated performance recalls the pained dignity of James Mason in Lolita. Likewise, the movie proceeds calmly, through elision and implication, until it becomes a study of how sexuality can be formed through victimization, yet leave room for a sense of self to emerge triumphant. Almodovar takes the elements of classic films—the doctor playing God, the grand staircase, the femme fatale—and splices them into unexpected shapes that turn out to be exactly what you wanted. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.
NEW
SpokAnarchy!
[ONE NIGHT ONLY] A documentary about alt-rock in Spokane, Wash. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Thursday, Dec. 22.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1
29 The Twilight saga is finally
getting to the good stuff. And by good stuff I mean the vampire batshit crazy stuff: rough girl-onvamp sex, demon babies, blood health tonics and wolf mind links. And yet, with all this delightfully bizarre fodder, much of the fourth movie (otherwise known as “the one where Edward and Bella get married, finally do it and Bella gets impregnated with his vampire baby”) is about as fun as a pelvic exam. All three leads—scowl-faced Kristen Stewart, sad alabaster puppet Robert Pattinson and shirtshredder Taylor Lautner—act as if they were expecting another press junket and wandered on to a movie set by mistake. And yet, it’s not all terrible. Or, to be clear, the last third of the film is so fabulously awkward and silly as to approach camp-classic status. Forced to endure an insatiable fetus draining her body from the inside out, Bella looks truly chilling. As her due date nears, her body is reduced to a skull attached to what looks like a wind chime made of gnawed chicken bones. It’s the only unsettling image the movie franchise has ever produced. Even better, the much anticipated birthing scene (a fan favorite during which, true
to the book, Edward performs Bella’s emergency C-section with his teeth) is a masterpiece of the histrionic and the ridiculous that ends with both Team Edward and Team Jacob artfully covered with smears of blood and womb goo. It’s the kind of scene that makes you want to invent a drinking game and watch it a half-dozen times on repeat while you laugh uncontrollably and squirt whiskey out of your nose. PG-13. KELLY CLARKE. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Forest, Cinema 99, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy. NEW
War Horse
48 See feature review. PG-13. Cedar
Hills, Eastport, Cinetopia Mill Plain, Cornelius, Fox Tower, Cinema 99, City Center, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy. NEW
We Bought a Zoo
70 See feature review. PG. Cedar
Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinetopia Mill Plain, Cornelius, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, Cinema 99, City Center, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy.
Young Adult
82 It is a hazardous undertak-
ing to look in the mirror during a hangover. Yet this is a motif repeated throughout Young Adult: Somewhere between swigging from a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke and cracking a tin of dog food for her Pomeranian, Charlize Theron’s Mavis Gary will lock contemptuous gazes with the raccoon lids caked with last night’s eye shadow. But she doesn’t seem to recognize the woman in the glass. Recognition would ruin everything. The reunion of Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody with director Jason Reitman, Young Adult is a movie with many antecedents—it recalls John Cusack’s grasp-at-the-past pictures Grosse Point Blank and High Fidelity, as well as the bottoms-up despondency of Sideways. As if modeling her life on those Cusack characters, Mavis listens repeatedly to the same Teenage Fanclub song on a cassette tape—the movie’s very clever opening credits play “The Concept” three damn times—and uses it as a pep talk to return to her hometown of Mercury, Minn., and reclaim her high-school quarterback boyfriend (Patrick Wilson). His marriage and baby are but minor obstacles, and all other people are attendants in the royal court of her drunken imagination. Young Adult isn’t quite the nasty chortle it first appears to be, and it isn’t some Very Special Episode about the perils of booze. After some easy laughs in its first half, it becomes a realist horror about the universal need to maintain a few illusions about yourself. R. AARON MESH. Lloyd Center, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Fox Tower, Movies on TV.
MOVIES
DEC. 21-27 SKIN I LIVE IN Fri-Sat-Wed 11:50, 02:20, 04:55, 07:30, 10:05 MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE Wed 12:00, 02:30, 05:10, 07:40, 10:00 THE IDES OF MARCH Wed 11:55, 02:10, 04:30, 07:10, 09:25 DRIVE Fri-Sat-Wed 12:15, 02:40, 04:45, 07:35, 09:45 THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 1 Wed 12:40, 04:20, 07:20, 09:55 THE ARTIST Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 11:50, 12:25, 02:15, 02:55, 04:35, 05:25, 07:10, 07:50, 09:35, 10:00 TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 11:40, 12:35, 02:20, 04:15, 05:05, 07:00, 08:00, 09:50 A DANGEROUS METHOD Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue 11:55, 02:30, 05:15, 07:40, 10:05 WAR HORSE Sun-Mon-Tue 12:30, 02:10, 04:05, 05:10, 07:05, 08:10, 10:00 NEW YEAR’S EVE Sun-Mon-Tue 11:45
HEY BATTER: Before his touted weight loss made everyone notice how outsized his ears are, Jonah Hill showed a knack for active listening in Moneyball. The business-of-baseball movie recognizes that the romance of the onetime national pastime is mostly in its chatter—why else sign Aaron Sorkin for the script?—and the tension hinges on whether any Oakland A’s executives will heed Brad Pitt’s statistical sales pitch. Hill gives his performance in reaction shots, a difficult if not Dadaist task, and he is rewarded with the movie’s most unabashedly Sorkin-y speech, a film-room parable where Pitt finally listens to him. AARON MESH. Showing at: Academy, Kennedy School, Laurelhurst, Mission, St. Johns. Best paired with: Lucky Lab Superdog IPA. Also showing: Drive (Academy, Laurelhurst).
Pioneer Place Stadium 6
M E L I N DA S U E G O R D O N / C O L U M B I A T R I S TA R
BREWVIEWS
807 Lloyd Center 10 and IMAX
1510 NE Multnomah Blvd., 800-326-3264 WE BOUGHT A ZOO Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed THE MAGIC FLUTE: MET OPERA HOLIDAY ENCORE Wed 06:30 THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: AN IMAX 3D EXPERIENCE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 11:35, 02:15, 04:55 MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE -- GHOST PROTOCOL: THE IMAX EXPERIENCE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:35, 10:40 MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE -- GHOST PROTOCOL Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 11:50, 12:30, 02:50, 03:45, 07:00, 10:05 THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:30, 03:00, 06:40, 10:15 SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:15, 03:15, 06:30, 09:40 HUGO 3D Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 06:55, 10:00 YOUNG ADULT Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:05, 02:30, 05:00, 07:25, 09:55 THE MUPPETS Fri-Sat-Wed 11:45, 02:25, 05:05, 07:45, 10:25 THE SITTER Wed 12:55, 03:10, 10:10 WAR HORSE Sun-Mon-Tue 11:55, 03:20, 06:40, 10:15
Regal Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema
2320 Lloyd Center Mall, 800-326-3264 THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN 3D Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:05, 03:10, 09:15 THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: THE SECRET OF THE UNICORN Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 06:25 ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: CHIPWRECKED Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:35, 03:35, 06:35, 09:35 HUGO Fri-Sat-Sun-Wed 12:15, 03:05, 06:20, 09:25 THE MUPPETS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:20, 03:15, 06:10, 09:30 THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 1 Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed
12:10, 03:30, 06:30, 09:05 NEW YEAR’S EVE Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 06:15, 09:10 ARTHUR CHRISTMAS Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 12:30, 03:25 THE DESCENDANTS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:25, 03:20, 06:05, 09:20 THE SITTER Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue 06:00, 09:00 THE DARKEST HOUR 3D SunMon 12:25, 03:15, 06:10, 09:30
Bagdad Theater and Pub 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-249-7474 HOME ALONE Wed 01:00 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Wed 06:00 A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR CHRISTMAS Wed 08:20
Cinema 21
616 N.W. 21st Ave., 503-2234515 SHAME Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 04:30, 07:00, 09:15
Clinton Street Theater
2522 SE Clinton St., 503238-8899 THE OTHER F WORD Wed 09:00 MY REINCARNATION Wed 07:00 THE BIG LEBOWSKI Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 07:00, 09:15 THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW Sat 12:00
Lake Twin Cinema
106 N State St., 503-6355956 SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:30, 07:10, 09:40 THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 05:00, 08:00
Laurelhurst Theatre
2735 E Burnside St., 503232-5511 THE GUARD Wed 06:45 TAKE SHELTER Fri-MonTue-Wed 09:00 50/50 FriMon-Tue-Wed 07:20, 09:30 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS FriMon-Tue-Wed 07:00 THE RUM DIARY Fri-Mon-Tue-
Wed 09:15 THE HELP Wed 06:30 CONTAGION Wed 09:40 A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR CHRISTMAS Fri-Mon-Tue 04:45, 09:45 MONEYBALL Fri-Mon-Tue 06:45 DRIVE Fri-Mon-Tue 04:15, 09:30 THE IDES OF MARCH Fri-Mon-Tue 04:30, 09:15 NO FILMS SHOWING TODAY Sat-Sun PUSS IN BOOTS Mon 01:45
Roseway Theatre
7229 NE Sandy Blvd., 503282-2898 SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:15, 04:30, 08:00
CineMagic Theatre
2021 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-231-7919 THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 05:30, 08:40
Kennedy School Theater
5736 NE 33rd Ave., 503249-7474 FOOTLOOSE Wed 12:30 PUSS IN BOOTS Wed 05:30 A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR CHRISTMAS Wed 02:30, 07:35 THE RUM DIARY Wed 09:35
Hollywood Theatre
4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503281-4215 MELANCHOLIA Fri-SunMon-Tue-Wed 06:45, 09:15 DRIVE Fri-SunMon-Tue-Wed 07:15, 09:30 HAMMER CITY Wed 07:00 MY WEEK WITH MARILYN Fri-Sun-Mon-Tue 07:15, 09:15 CHRISTMAS IN SPACE Fri-Mon-Tue 07:30 NO FILMS SHOWING TODAY Sat PORTLANDIA Tue 07:00
Regal Fox Tower Stadium 10
846 SW Park Ave., 800326-3264 YOUNG ADULT Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:20, 02:45, 05:00, 07:25, 09:40 MY WEEK WITH MARILYN Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:05, 02:25, 04:40, 07:15, 09:30 THE DESCENDANTS Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:10, 02:35, 05:05, 07:45, 10:10 J. EDGAR Wed 12:50, 04:10, 07:00, 09:50 THE
340 SW Morrison St., 800326-3264 WE BOUGHT A ZOO FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:30, 03:00, 07:00, 10:30 MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE -- GHOST PROTOCOL FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:00, 03:15, 07:15, 10:15 THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: THE SECRET OF THE UNICORN Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 05:00 THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN 3D Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 11:45, 02:30, 07:40, 10:10 SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:30, 03:30, 07:30, 10:40 ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: CHIPWRECKED Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:15, 02:45, 04:50, 07:20, 09:50 NEW YEAR’S EVE Wed 12:45, 03:45, 07:45, 10:25
Academy Theater
7818 SE Stark St., 503-2520500 MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET Wed 04:50, 07:00 SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS Wed 02:20, 09:10 THE HELP Wed 04:35 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:30, 07:30, 09:40 PUSS IN BOOTS Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 03:00, 05:00 MARGIN CALL Wed 07:15 IN TIME Wed 09:30 SCROOGED Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 04:50, 09:50 MONEYBALL Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 02:05, 07:00 THE IDES OF MARCH FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 07:15 TOWER HEIST Fri-Mon-Tue 09:30 DRIVE Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 05:15, 09:40
ONE OF THE TOP 10 FILMS OF THE YEAR
‘‘ dAvId FINCHER HAS CRAFTEd THE MOST
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Living Room Theaters
341 SW 10th Ave., 971-2222010 RID OF ME Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:20, 02:40, 05:20, 07:30, 09:40 SHOLEM ALEICHEM: LAUGHING IN THE DARKNESS Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:00, 03:10, 05:30, 07:40, 09:45 THE SITTER Fri-Sat-Wed 12:30, 02:50, 05:00, 07:15, 09:10 INTO THE ABYSS Wed 08:50 THE HEDGEHOG Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:10, 06:45 HUGO 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 11:50, 01:10, 03:00, 04:00, 06:00, 07:00, 09:00 MONEYBALL FriSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 09:35 MARGIN CALL Wed 11:40, 04:20 SLEEPING BEAUTY Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 11:40, 02:15, 04:30, 06:45, 09:10 MELANCHOLIA Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 04:40, 09:30 THE DARKEST HOUR 3D Sun-Mon-Tue 12:30, 03:10, 05:30, 07:40, 09:40
COLUMBIA PICTURES AND METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER PICTURES PRESENT A SCOTT RUDIN/YELLOW BIRD PRODUCTION A DAVID FINCHER FILM DANIEL CRAIG ROONEY MARA “THEMUSICGIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO” CHRISEXECUTIVE TOPHER PLUMMER STELLAN SKARSGÅRD STEVEN BERKOFF ROBIN WRIBASED GHT ONYORITHECK VAN WAGENINGENORIGINALLY JOELY RICHARDSON BOOK BY STIEG LARSSON PUBLISHED BY NORSTEDTS BY TRENT REZNOR & ATTICUS ROSS PRODUCERS STEVEN ZAILLIAN MIKAEL WALLEN ANNI FAURBYE FERNANDEZ SCREENPLAY PRODUCED BY STEVEN ZAILLIAN BY SCOTT RUDIN OLE SØNDBERG SØREN STÆRMOSE CEÁN CHAFFIN DIRECTED BY DAVID FINCHER
CHECK LOCAL LISTINGS FOR THEATERS ANd SHOWTIMES
2 COL. (3.825") XWillamette 12" =Week 24"DECEMBER 21, 2011 wweek.com WED 12/2151 PORTLAND WILLAMETTE WEEK