Donald Trump’s favorite film is Citizen Kane by Orson Welles. Don has good taste in films. Or so it seems. Citizen Kane is about an all-powerful man (modeled in part on William Randolph Hearst) who owns a chain of newspapers. He lives in a gigantic tower safely removed from the masses that he purports to […]
Film
Netflix Encourages Binge Viewing With New Below The Beltway Series
It’s been one week and a day since the terribly disappointing season ending episode of “Downton Abbey.” I do like a well made dramatic series, so Downton’s seasonal close leaves a void. One we are attempting to fill by watching “House of Cards,” the newly released series from Netflix. Already, Darby and I have consumed […]
How Adams’ Arrived At His Endless Horizons of Meaning
Thanks to advances in point-and-shoot technology, everyone’s a photographer today, or so we imagine. Of course, taking pictures for fun is a different practice altogether than making images of artistic quality with a camera. For more information on the latter, please see the following documentary from 1958 about Ansel Adams’ technical approach to photography. “Perhaps […]
We Need Magic In Our Lives, And The Magicians Who Provide It
On Friday, Darby and I took a trip to Eugene to celebrate Ken Kesey Day. We looked at old photos and other artifacts including Kesey’s prison journal (he served six months for a marijuana bust). We attended a reading where University of Oregon scholars read passages from unpublished works by Kesey and finally we attended […]
Friday Night Variety: Comedy, Music And Conversation
Portland is home to several live storytelling events. There’s Mortified, BackFence PDX, Ignite Portland and Live Wire! Radio, to name a few. Last night, we attended the taping of Live Wire! episodes 144 and 145 at Alberta Rose Theatre, near our home in Northeast Portland. The guests included Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Bill Rauch, […]
Writers Grapple With New Media, Too Often Failing To Understand It
Novelist and NYU creative writing professor, Zadie Smith, went to see The Social Network and came away with some thoughts on the film and Facebook that she shares in a New York Review of Books piece called Generation Why? Smith is a fan of the film but she doesn’t “Like” Facebook. When a human being […]