Give!Guide ends at midnight December 31, 2011.
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EED N T ’ N ID YOU D NY OUTFIT A FUN KE NEWS TO MA EAR, BUT THIS Y E HELPED. IT SUR PAGE 7
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VOL 38/08 12.28.2011
W W P H OTO I L L U S T R AT I O N S
BACK COVER
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INBOX KEEPING PACE WITH TRES
Expires 1/5/2012
He should win a key to the city just for listening to the whiny karaoke renditions of “Creep” by aging hipsters [“Voodoo Child,” WW, Dec. 21, 2011]. Over and over and over and over. And applauding them afterward. We could do worse than having a few Tres Shannons around. Time was—when Portland was actually weird—the city had many such people and adventures going on. Now it’s some puke-fest of hipster tweeness and iPod Lite and “condo boxes.” Bring back the gritty to our city. —“Get Off, Get Back” What the hell is going on with Willamette Week lately? Do you guys have nothing better to write about? This guy is a nuisance who happens to own a landmark business. Big fucking deal. If it wasn’t for the idiocy of the masses, as in tourists who don’t know better, he’d still be living with his mommy. —“Nat” Nice write-up. I have been on the same ride, and every time it’s a fucking trip. Tres, people love him or they deal with him. I love the dude and what he has and does for Portland. Keep Portland interesting! —“Anthony Sanchez” This guy is an attention whore...and his doughnuts suck. —“Chuck Buscuit”
MINE YOUR OWN BUSINESS
Great article, thanks [“A Glowing Opportunity,” WW, Dec. 21, 2011]. Hopefully, someday soon [uranium] will be so invaluable that no one would think to mine it. Till then, guess we have to do what we can to fight back and protect our environment from further destruction. And our air from further pollution. —“Albert Kaufman”
REALTORS AND TAXES
Commissioner [Deborah] Kafoury is right about this (as she usually is) [“Burying a Tax Idea,” WW, Dec. 21, 2011]. This is a brazen attempt by Realtors to pad their own bank accounts. The fact that they’ve already raised nearly $800,000 to push this ballot measure proves they don’t need the money. When will business interests stop trying to use public policy to satisfy their greed? —“wetbird” I think this [proposed measure] is a great idea to protect taxpayers from people like Kafoury, who would love to find new ways to raise our taxes. — “Stuart” 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
The world needs more clowns and optimists. God bless Tres for keeping the fire burning. —“Fever Dog”
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
In your column on 911 services [“Dr. Know,” WW, Dec. 14, 2011], you say renters don’t pay property taxes. I’m sure you realize those taxes are passed on to renters in the form of rent. Those services are paid for by everyone, one way or another. —Melia D. If you’d been the only person to say this, Melia, I might be tempted to agree with you. But so many folks have taken me to task on this point that I must demur: Anything that so many people are so sure about has got to be wrong. The column in question said that, since Portland Fire & Rescue is funded by property taxes, renters don’t pay for it directly. You’d think that I’d asserted that Chinese Democracy was Guns N’ Roses’ best album. I was soon hip-deep in emails claiming that, since landlords pay property taxes, and renters pay landlords, renters pay property taxes.
But then where do you draw the line? If you eat in a restaurant that pays property taxes, are you paying them? If your landlord is Charlie Sheen, does that mean you’re paying for hookers and blow? And do you really believe your rent would go down if your landlord’s tax bill did? The truth is that landlords, like all business people, charge what the market will bear. “If business were as simple as just passing along all your costs to the customer, nobody would ever lose money,” says economist Bob Whelan of ECONorthwest. Shortly after telling me that I was “100% right” (I love this guy), Whelan explained the concept of “tax incidence,” which is where economists try to calculate how the actual burden of a tax is spread around. It’s a complex business, and seldom as simple as you (or, to be honest, I) make it sound. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com
NEW YEAR, NEW LANGUAGE! Learn a new language in 2012. Six and Eight week sessions starting on January 9th. Small group classes or personal instruction available.
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Fulfill your New Year’s resolution in a supportive environment!
DATES: January 8th - February 26th, 2012 COST: $50. If you complete the entire program, you will receive a $25 Bike Gallery gift card and a chance to win a free bike.
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REGISTER AT: Bike Gallery (4235 SE Woodstock) by January 6th. Enrollment is limited to the first 20 people. Please contact us to see if space allows for late registrations (503-774-3531). PROGRAM DETAILS: 1. Weekly weigh-ins (Sundays at 11:00AM) 2. Weekly workout: choose from a bike ride or boot camp 3. A bike is not required if boot camp option is selected For more information, visit bikegallery.com
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COVER STORY: 2011, the Costume Party. MEDIA: The top 10 stories of 2011 on wweek.com.
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
Occupy Portland reportedly did $85,000 in damage during its 39-day stay in Lownsdale and Chapman squares—this according to the Parks & Recreation Bureau. But a retired Parks Bureau plumber challenges those numbers. Dan Forner, who retired in June, says the city is unfairly blaming Occupy for long overdue repairs. Case in point: $23,000 to replace and fix plumbing in the Lownsdale restroom. Forner says the toilets needed fixing long before the Occupation. “At one time we thought it might even be cheaper to tear down these restrooms and put in one of those loos,” Forner says. Parks spokesman Mark Ross says experts vetted the Occupy-related repair estimates; city records don’t list the Lownsdale restroom on a pre-Occupy list of deferred maintenance. Megan Hise of Laborers Local 483, which publicized Forner’s claim, says the city simply didn’t list everything the park needed. “The parks budget is being significantly cut,” Hise says. “The city is using this [Occupy] movement to raise money to make those repairs. We think it’s unfair.” The City of Portland has launched what it calls an “integrated pest management plan” for city buildings. Sustainable building coordinator Wendy Gibson says that means a “proactive” approach: An exterminator makes regular visits to apply less-toxic pesticides. (The old practice: call exterminators as needed, with no limits on the chemicals applied.) For the first time, the city publishes pest-control reports on nearly 40 of its buildings. The city-owned Southwest 10th Avenue and Yamhill Street parking garage was a relative hotbed, with exterminators making several visits to treat roaches for one tenant, a restaurant. Other discoveries: fruit flies in the Portland Police Bureau’s East Precinct community room, a mouse at North Precinct, rats at the Mounted Patrol Facility and—yuck—silverfish in a sergeant’s office at the Police Training Division. Inspections of City Hall revealed—would you believe it?—“no [rodent] activity inside.”
A L E X E Y K R A S AV I N
GIFT WITH PURCHASE -
Give!Guide 2011 Update: Thanks a million—and more—to the thousands of WW readers who have made this year’s effort a success for 100 participating local nonprofits. G!G’s total hit $1 million just after 3 pm on Dec. 27. Please visit wweek.com/ giveguide before midnight Saturday, Dec. 31, to contribute. At this late date, two small organizations could benefit from your special attention: Defunkt Theatre, a Drammy Award-winning, all-volunteer company that produces adventurous, challenging and genre-defying theater at low cost to Portland audiences, and Playworks, which provides “coaches” to improve the learning, health and well-being of low-income elementary students before, during and after school. Read more Murmurs and daily scuttlebutt.
2O11: THE COSTUME PARTY YOU DIDN’T NEED A FUNNY OUTFIT TO MAKE NEWS THIS YEAR, BUT IT SURE HELPED. the nation. But our attention to the economy deepened to consider issues of basic fairness. Income inequality—a growing problem for decades—has become front-page news and the commerce of debate about our future. The Occupy movement—disorganized and diffuse, but posing a challenge to Portland’s comfy posture—has made it happen in a way we couldn’t have predicted last year. Frustration toward government has intensified, as had the city’s search for leadership. Mayor Sam Adams—who foresaw little hope of re-election next year—surprised most people by quitting his campaign before it started. City Commissioner Randy Leonard, who many believe has really been running City Hall, is also leaving office. Meanwhile, Portland Police Chief Mike Reese, whose bureau is under federal investigation for civil-rights issues, had a fling with the idea of running for mayor—but sat back down at his desk after he couldn’t get his story straight. It all makes for an odd crosscurrent, a city in search of leadership and economic hope, at a time Portland continues to ascend as a culture factory. The city, it seems, has never been cooler. We’re the stars of our own TV series, a show created by a local rock grrrl that lovingly mocks our unique foibles while holding us out as the ultimate example of all that’s hip. New Yorkers line up to drink the coffee we’ve been sipping for years. People fly to town for a box of our bacon-topped doughnuts. So get your costume on. Welcome to the party. CONT. on page 8 W W P H OTO I L L U S T R AT I O N
David Wu’s tiger suit was the tip-off that 2011 was going to be a strange one. The year opened with a sitting congressman posing in a child’s orange-and-black striped costume. It ended with angry protestors and their vinegarsoaked bandanas, gas masks and hand-lettered signs of dissent facing down a black wall of riot police. As we looked back over the year, a theme emerged: The people making big news all seemed to want to dress up to do it. It wasn’t just Wu and Occupiers in our parks. Portland Timbers fans painted their faces and draped themselves in green scarves. A band that walked out of a Dickens novel and claims to travel by dirigible scored Portland’s first No. 1 album in a long time. Stumptown’s baristas kept muttering “nothing’s changed” as their iconic local coffee company got swallowed by a buyout firm. Given this parade of, shall we say, “interesting” wardrobes, we decided to organize our year-in-review issue around the strange outfits and eccentric attire that might populate a party celebrating 2011. Here’s what the party might look like. As you walk in, Rebecca Black’s “Friday” rattles the speakers. There’s someone dressed as a pile of food waste drinking a flute of Champagne, talking to a 1-percenter who looks like he just popped off a Chance card in Monopoly. Is that the girl from Sleater-Kinney in the corner? All in good fun, yes, but the costumes we saw in the news drew attention to the underlying anger and anxiety that marked 2011. Oregon’s jobless rate remains one of the worst in
Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
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CONT. W W P H OTO I L L U S T R AT I O N S
2011: THE COSTUME PARTY
8
PORTLAND OCCUPIED
STUMPTOWN SELLS
THE OTHER PORTLAND
COSTUME: Bandanna, gas mask, kitten on shoulder, cardboard sign expressing personal status and solidarity (“Snotty journalists are the 99%”). WHAT HAPPENED IN 2011: The people rose up, then settled in. For 39 days, the anti-Wall Street protest turned Chapman and Lownsdale squares into a tent city, home to hand-twinkling activists, warring street kids and one shivering WW reporter (“Notes from the Occupation,” Oct. 26). When Mayor Sam Adams set a Nov. 12 midnight eviction deadline, at least 4,000 people flooded downtown streets. The crowds went home at dawn, the cops strolled in and—with some tough tactics on the holdouts—cleared the parks (“Chaos to Checkmate” and “The Fall of the 420 Hotel,” Nov. 16). UPDATE: For several weeks after the eviction, Occupy Portland continued its marches through the streets, debuting a Bat Signal projector and provoking police to deploy pepper spray. The most practical effect of these protests was to derail Police Chief Mike Reese’s political ambitions. His nascent mayoral campaign died somewhere between the moment a cop pepper-sprayed a bank protester in the mouth, and when the chief opened his mouth to falsely claim the protests had kept police from responding to a rape victim. In December, Occupy Portland held events—which felt as much like camp reunions as protests—at the Port of Portland and Shemanski Fountain on the South Park Blocks, each blocking roads until wee hours, then dissipating. One protester was arrested Dec. 16 at the world’s smallest park, 452-square-inch Mill Ends Park. Occupy is still conducting its meticulously bureaucratic general assemblies twice a week in Director Park. It’s also become an established interest lobbying City Hall, testifying on issues like police oversight and homelessness. “They’re still here,” says Jim Blackwood, a staffer for Commissioner Nick Fish. “But they seem to be focusing on issues differently.” They’re also looking to collect their stuff. A former Occupier sent a tweet from Florida on Dec. 21: “Anyone who knows the whereabouts of the white Medics tent of the former Beta Camp plz call Laura.” AARON MESH.
COSTUME:
Flannel, skinny jeans, Clark Kent glasses, temporary tattoos for arms, neck and knuckles, liberal arts degree. WHAT HAPPENED IN 2011: Duane Sorenson, founder of Portland’s iconic coffee roaster Stumptown, sold a majority share in the company to a San Francisco investment firm. Sorenson and Stumptown repeatedly denied the deal, only backing away and reverting to a “no comment” after a number of coffee industry executives confirmed to WW that TSG Consumer Partners told them it owned a 90 percent stake in the company (“The Selling of Stumptown,” June 8). UPDATE: Stumptown has, on its face, so far bucked predictions that it would become more “corporate.” The coffee hasn’t changed, nor have the employees, and they’re still blaring heavy metal. Selling branded mugs and travel cups at the counter are the only whiffs of Starbucks-ization. But it’s hard to know what’s really going on at Stumptown given all the corporate secrecy. In a rare interview with Entrepreneur magazine in June, Sorenson said critics were just “haters” and that the sale would allow the company to “move into markets like Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Europe.” He told the magazine he continues to “run and operate” the business. More recently, Sorenson opened a 56-seat restaurant called the Woodsman Tavern, with an adjoining specialty food market, next to the Stumptown on Southeast Division Street. TSG, which typically buys brands, ups their value and sells them off for big profits, raised $1.3 billion for a new fund in October. Its typical MO is to flip brands after five to seven years, so we don’t expect to see anything dramatic happen soon. RUTH BROWN.
COSTUME: Sweatpants,
Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
trucker hat (un-ironic), Old Gold cigarettes, fast-food wrappers, $2.10 bus fare in small change. WHAT HAPPENED IN 2011: East Portland, a fast-growing and underserved part of Portland that many Portlanders don’t even know falls within the city limits—the 50 square miles between Interstate 205 and Gresham— got new attention from local officials and City Hall candidates. WW shed light on East Portland’s problems and challenges in an Oct. 12 cover story, “The Other Portland.” UPDATE: The three top mayoral candidates—Charlie Hales, Eileen Brady and Jefferson Smith—continue to stump for East Portland’s issues. The City Council focused on East Portlanders in its annual Spirit of Portland Awards, honoring, among others, Centennial Community Association president Tom Lewis, who was featured in WW’s story. And the Rosewood Initiative, a shoestring volunteer group that had opened a new community space in a vacant storefront on rough-and-tumble Northeast 162nd Avenue, received a $10,000 grant this month from the Portland Development Commission. The grant will allow the Rosewood Cafe to stay open at least through January. Much of the news from East Portland was bad, including the Nov. 7 shooting death of 13-year-old Julio Cesar Marquez. He died in an alley off Northeast 107th Avenue near Halsey Street from what police called multiple gunshot wounds and blunt-force trauma. The boy’s brutal death brought renewed attention to the crime and gang problems east of I-205—and exposed tensions just beneath the surface. East PDX News, a website covering the area, headlined its story “Teen gangster murdered in Gateway.” On Dec. 2, local AM radio talker Lars Larson harangued Mayor Sam Adams about a proposal to lower the flags in honor of youth shooting victims. Larson demanded to know why the city was honoring a dead gangbanger. Adams grew increasingly livid, then hung up on Larson. COREY PEIN. CONT. on page 10
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
9
CONT. W W P H OTO I L L U S T R AT I O N S
2011: THE COSTUME PARTY
THE TAX CODE BENEFITS THE RICH—WHO KNEW?
THE KING IS NO. 1
POLICING PORTLAND’S POLICE
Gentlemen should wear a Huntsman bespoke suit, Brooks Brothers shirt, Hermes tie and Edward Green shoes. Women should simply choose whatever Vogue is currently featuring, accessorizing with a Pucci scarf and jewelry from Tiffany. WHAT HAPPENED IN 2011: In April, when the words “Occupy Wall Street” had yet to be uttered, WW published “9 Things the Rich Don’t Want You to Know About Taxes.” The story, reported by Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, was picked up by 39 other weeklies around the country and became WW’s most read story of the year. UPDATE: The increasing number of Americans who are seething at the growing gulf between the rich and the rest of us has informed both the Tea Party and the Occupy movement. And with good reason—the richest 1 percent of Americans now control 35 percent of the wealth in this country. It is this development—along with a recession that is soon to enter year five, and a Congress that reaffirmed “In God We Trust” as the official national motto but can’t bring itself to balance the budget—that has some wondering if America is headed for an Arab Spring of it own. How does Johnston feel about the reaction to his story? He tells WW by email: “After many years of writing about these issues, and often feeling I was holding up a hand of truth against a tsunami of misinformation, it was wonderful to discover a huge new audience eager to learn how the few manipulate our tax system at the expense of the many. [It’s] part of the awakening of democratic values that now fuels the Occupy movement and offers the first chance in more than three decades that we will get a government responsive to the people and not just the oligarchs.” MARK ZUSMAN.
COSTUME:
Gentlemen should don a musty top hat, silk cravat and freshly waxed mustache. Ladies should wear a woolen dress with petticoat. WHAT HAPPENED IN 2011: The King Is Dead, the sixth album from Portland indie-folk outfit the Decemberists, took the top spot on the Billboard chart in February by selling 94,000 copies in its first week. The Decemberists became the first Oregon-based group to hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in recent memory—unless you count Washington-bred Modest Mouse. UPDATE: The Decemberists decided to follow up their huge hit with a hiatus. Multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk isn’t fond of that description. “There has been quite a bit of press on a ‘hiatus,’ which kind of makes me cringe,” he says. The band is, he says, “taking a break from recording and touring.” Not a total break—the Decemberists recently recorded a track for The Chieftains’ 50th anniversary album—but they’re all pursuing other projects. “I think we played less shows on this record than we ever have on an album,” Funk says. “Don’t ask me why we aren’t seizing our moment. I guess we are complex.” In the meantime, singer Colin Meloy is promoting his book, Wildwood, and writing a new one. Jenny Conlee continues to recover from cancer and is opening a teaching studio. She’s also part of bluegrass outfit Black Prairie with bassist Nate Query and Funk. Black Prairie is scoring a play for the Oregon Children’s Theater called “The Storm in the Barn,” which will be out in April, around the time the band releases a record. Drummer John Moen is working on a record for his band, Perhapst. “I think we all are in a period of trying to just live in Portland, have community and focus on other music and family, so when we come back to the band it will feel fresh again,” Funk says. “We had been hitting it—promoting and touring, then coming home for two, three months off, then start another record, then the entire process starts again—for over 10 years.” MARTIN CIZMAR.
Aviator glasses, badge, Taser, fake mustache, get-out-of-jail card. WHAT HAPPENED IN 2011: The U.S. Justice Department’s top civil rights enforcer, Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, came to town in July to announce a federal investigation of the Portland Police Bureau. Perez said the investigation would seek to determine whether the Portland police had engaged in a “pattern or practice” of civil rights violations, especially in cases involving the mentally ill. Flanked by Mayor Sam Adams, Police Chief Mike Reese and interim U.S. Attorney Dwight Holton, Perez promised a “collaborative” investigation, and welcomed tips from the public. (Send tips to community.portland@usdoj.gov or call 877-218-5228.) UPDATE: Many activists say the Justice Department’s investigation has barely been a presence in the city, as far as they can tell. Jo Ann Hardesty (née Bowman) of the Albina Ministerial Alliance says she’s concerned federal investigators haven’t spoken to enough people. “They were only here for a few days in August, and they interviewed a few people in 20-minute time slots,” Hardesty says. “One of our concerns was that they only talked to people the Police Bureau told them to talk to.” Chris O’Connor, a public defender who works with the Mental Health Association of Portland, says the feds’ communication with the group ended when it made it clear the group would attend only public, not private, meetings. Both groups sent letters to the Justice Department following Perez’s visit; he says neither group got a reply. “The hope was these outsiders would come in without all the political baggage, but so far, it hasn’t happen,” O’Connor says. “For all we know, they’re sitting there typing away furiously, coming up with this amazing report. Or they’re just doing nothing.” A Justice Department civil rights division spokesperson did not return WW’s messages. COREY PEIN.
THE COSTUME:
10
Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
COSTUME:
CONT. on page 13
E V R E S D L O C D L CO H T O O SM D L I W Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
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2011: THE COSTUME PARTY W W P H OTO I L L U S T R AT I O N S
CONT.
DAVID WU QUITS
ONE MAN’S TRASH...
MARCH OF THE TIMBERS ARMY
A too-small tiger suit with hoodie, and mittens for paws. WHAT HAPPENED IN 2011: U.S. Rep. David Wu (D -Portland) should have quit while he was ahead. The only Taiwanese-born person ever to serve in Congress, the Stanford-, Harvard- and Yale-educated lawyer put in his time without distinction from 1999 through his resignation in early August. In February, WW reported that Wu, during the 2010 general election, evaded security at PDX, sought pain medication from a campaign supporter and required two “interventions” from staff before disappearing from the campaign trail. Wu’s increasingly erratic behavior led to nonstop media scrutiny during the first half of 2011, and an Oregonian story in July about Wu’s alleged unwanted sexual encounter with a supporter’s daughter forced him to quit. UPDATE: Wu is living in Washington, D.C., with his two children and looking for work, says his Portland-based divorce lawyer, Jody Stahancyk. Given his 12-year Congressional career and his unique position in the Taiwanese-American political community, Wu should be able to land a lobbying gig. He’s got $325,000 left in his campaign account, and while he cannot spend that money on himself, strategic contributions could ease his re-entry into the working world. He’s beginning to get back out in public. Dressed in a dark suit and red tie, Wu rose from the audience at a Dec. 12 televised panel discussion at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, and asked why Chinese Internet censors are allowing online discussion of Taiwanese politics when they blocked coverage of the “Arab Spring.” He is, however, playing no role in the Jan. 31 special election to fill his seat. NIGEL JAQUISS.
COSTUME: Hop in a big green cart and cover yourself in banana peels, old lettuce and rancid lunch meats. WHAT HAPPENED IN 2011: By 2015, Portland wants to recycle or compost 75 percent of its trash. To that end, the city encouraged residents to start putting food scraps, tea bags and coffee filters in green compost bins. The bins are now collected every week, while the city only picks up the remaining 25 percent of regular garbage every other week. Despite an elaborate PR campaign leading up to the Oct. 31 switch, this move angered and confused Portlanders who had nothing better to bitch about. UPDATE: The city’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability hasn’t yet analyzed the percentage increase in compost loads—yes, it’s going to hire people to dig through piles of garbage to see how many people are tossing food in the trash and trash in the food—but Solid Waste and Recycling Manager Bruce Walker says the angry calls and questions have gone back down to normal in the two months since the program began. “It’s close to regular levels of about 400 calls a week, and it was up to about 1,400 above that,” Walker says. “We certainly [still] get calls from people who are not happy about garbage being picked up every other week.” So how are Portlanders doing with their compost? Feedback from facilities like Nature’s Needs has been positive. “The residential material is really clean,” Walker says. “Well, maybe that’s not how most people would describe food scraps, but people are doing a really good job.” The next step is expanding the city’s commercial composting program, which works with about 700 small businesses, though Walker says the city is making up its strategy as it goes along. “There has been no federal leadership on this,” he says. “But in Portland, we’re not going to wait around for the federal government, or we probably wouldn’t even have traditional curbside recyclables.” CASEY JARMAN.
COSTUME: Timbers Army scarf, green-and-yellow face paint, muttonchops (not paste-ons—grow real ones, because authenticity matters). Timbers T-shirt, preferably with the old team logo, circa 1975. WHAT HAPPENED IN 2011: The unofficial supporters’ group of the Portland Timbers soccer team (never call the Army a “fan club”) demonstrated its growing clout as a force in Oregon sports. It got a financial stake as well, thanks to a special ticket sales deal the Army cut with team owner Merritt Paulson. WW looked at the Army’s evolution in its cover story, “Gang Green,” which ran. Aug. 31. UPDATE: The Army broke onto the national stage this year as soccer fans around the world tuned in to televised Timbers games as much to soak up the atmosphere as watch an expansion team struggle against far better teams. The Army’s opening-night rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner”—a cappella, 3,000plus voices strong—got 123,000 YouTube hits. (Major League Soccer has nominated the national-anthem performance as one of its moments of the year.) The Army’s sold-out sections at the north end of Jeld-Wen Field guaranteed a sonically dominating experience for the rest of the fans (there’s no drowning out the Army, whether you like it or not). The Army’s Operation Pitch Invasion has donated tens of thousands of dollars to build fields and renovate playgrounds in the Portland area. Meanwhile, the Timbers won over Portland in their inaugural MLS season with inspired moments (a 3-0 wipeout of the eventual league-champion Los Angeles Galaxy), and despite habitual mediocrity (a leaky defense, erratic strikers, and winning only two road games). BRENT WALTH.
COSTUME:
CONT. on page 15
Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
2011: THE COSTUME PARTY
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THE COSTUME: The emperor’s new clothes: Go naked and see if anyone has the courage to point out your flaws. WHAT HAPPENED IN 2011: WW revealed serious problems with the proposed $3.6 billion highway project linking Portland and Vancouver. (See “A Bridge Too False,” June 1). The project won’t fix many problems it claims it will address, and the plan for paying for it is filled with bogus numbers. UPDATE: The CRC, as this project is known, won all of its local approvals late this year, after spending more than $130 million without building a single foot of the project (and continuing to burn through cash provided by the states of Oregon and Washington). On Dec. 7, the Federal Highway Administration issued a “record of decision” for the project, which means proponents have satisfied federal planning requirements. There’s still no money for the project, however, either at the federal or state levels. The project’s backers couldn’t even muster enough votes in the 2011 Legislature to pass a toothless feel-good measure exhorting Congress to bankroll the proposed project. Oregon lawmakers didn’t consider raising the $450 million in new gas taxes intended for the project. In Olympia, Wash., lawmakers didn’t authorize tolling for the project or approve their state’s $450 million contribution. Meanwhile, experts hired by Oregon Treasurer Ted Wheeler found the Oregon and Washington transportation departments have overestimated traffic projections (as WW had earlier reported). That means the revenue available from tolling was off $500 to $600 million. NIGEL JAQUISS.
COSTUME: Bedeck clothes with fabric birds then stare at yourself in a mirror until you are sick of your own face. WHAT HAPPENED IN 2011: Carrie Brownstein happened. In January, the former Sleater-Kinney axewoman premiered Portlandia, her sketchcomedy mockery of the city “where young people go to retire” on the Independent Film Channel. Lines to watch Portlandia at the Mission Theater and Pub stretched around the block. National Nielsen ratings showed 725,000 people saw the premiere, stellar numbers by IFC standards, and the show was renewed. Meanwhile, local business guilds devoted entire afternoons to studying bullshit concepts like “the Portlandia effect.” UPDATE: Other than the 10-episode second season and the live stage show (launched in Portland on Tuesday)? Well, there’s reason to believe Portlandia, like everything it skewers, is about to become a sensation across the country the year after it was a sensation in Portland. The New Yorker sent Margaret Talbot to profile Brownstein and co-creator Fred Armisen, who is the subject of a three-page interview in January’s Esquire. Portlandia: The Tour hits Los Angeles and Chicago in January, culminating in a Brooklyn show (say hello to Adrianne Jeffries!) on Jan. 20. That’s the same day Brownstein, costar Armisen and YACHT’s Claire Evans will host a panel at WebVisions’ “Oregon Day”—an online-business recruiting event hosted in New York City by the cities of Gresham, Hillsboro and Beaverton. As for the show itself, Brownstein tells WW the second season will consider “living in a place that caters to one’s sense of entitlement and uniqueness. It’s the inverse of the norm, wherein special needs are no longer fringe needs; not only are they addressed, they are also celebrated.” So the second episode features an “Allergy Pride Parade.” Season 2’s first episode premieres Jan. 6, so we guess it’s OK to tell you one secret—but please heed our MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT— Bryce Shivers and Lisa Eversman, the enthusiastic artisans who coined the phrase “put a bird on it,” have discovered pickling. AARON MESH.
2011: THE COSTUME PARTY cont. on page 16
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CONT. B E R K L E Y I L L U S T R A T I O N . E T S Y. C O M
2011: THE COSTUME PARTY
WE KNOW WHAT YOU’RE READING THE MOST POPULAR STORIES ON WWEEK.COM IN 2011. BY R U T H B R OW N
rbrown@wweek.com
Among its many other crimes against journalism, the Internet has shown writers and editors what people really want to read when no one is looking. We now know that a slide show called “10 Reasons Tim Tebow Is Hotter Than Justin Bieber” will draw more hits than an excellent 3,000-word investigative piece any day. As WW’s web editor, I spend all day watching in real time what you are reading on our site, and it doesn’t exactly fill me with hope for the future of the fourth estate. But looking at our top 10 online stories of the year, I’m pleased to report there might be some life in the old girl yet.
1. 9 THINGS THE RICH DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT TAXES
Far and away the most popular WW article of the year. Eight months on, it remains one of the most read articles on any given day. This David Cay Johnston piece appeared in 39 other alt-weeklies across the country. So why was ours the most popular? A near-perfect, search engineoptimized headline that few could resist sharing on Twitter and Facebook.
SHOW CONGRESSMAN DAVID WU’S STAFF “THREAT2. DOCUMENTS ENED TO SHUT DOWN HIS CAMPAIGN”
Yes, it’s the “tiger suit” one, the blog post that first showed Rep. David Wu in his now-infamous costume, and the bizarre email exchanges that surrounded it.
3. I AM BETTER THAN YOUR KIDS
This book review by a WW intern is still generating big traffic after the author posted it on his blog and multiple Facebook accounts. The book is I Am Better Than Your Kids by “Maddox,” the blogger behind the website The Best Page in the Universe (which we sincerely believed no one had actually read since 2005). The book is literally 300 pages of the author insulting children’s drawings. People continue to leave charming comments about the review. Some of our favorites include: “i hope your kids die in a car crash” and “Seriously your complaints are retarded. I’m pretty sure you might be retarded.”
4. STUMPTOWN COFFEE HAS BEEN SOLD, INDUSTRY SOURCES TELL WW 6. THE OTHER PORTLAND
Although WW published several longer-form pieces on the sale of Stumptown Coffee to an investment firm, we also sbroke the news in this blog post late one Sunday night. It was originally intended for the following week’s paper, but with a rumor that The New York Times was about to run a similar piece the next day, we decided to beat the Gray Lady to the scoop.
5.
WHAT IS “PLANKING” AND WHEN IS IT GOING AWAY?
It started with an email from another WW writer, titled just “explain, please” with a link to 2011’s stupidest Internet meme, “planking,” in which people take photos of themselves lying face down in stupid and/or dangerous places. Because the trend originated in Australia, I, as the office antipode, was tasked to explain it in a blog post. Turns out my hastily written headline was a stroke of accidental genius, as Google hits for “what is planking” flowed in all year. 16
Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
Finally, an article that wasn’t popular because of gimmicks, populism or clever headlines. This piece by WW staff writer Corey Pein on often-ignored but soon-to-bepolitically significant East Portland went viral purely on its own journalistic merits.
7.
BEST NEW BAND 2011
WW’s annual Best New Band issue is always a big draw, as readers flood the site with comments to tell us how wrong we got it and why their friend’s band is really the best in Portland. But suck it up, haters: The winner, And And And, was victorious in a vote by 161 local music experts, not by us.
8.
ELIZABETH LYNN DUNHAM: MAY 12, 1961-JAN. 16, 2011
In a story more than 30 years in the making, WW chose to reveal the identity of Elizabeth Lynn Dunham, the woman then-Portland Mayor Neil Goldschmidt raped in the mid-1970s, after she died in January. WW staff writer
Nigel Jaquiss’ portrait of Goldschmidt’s victim brought her out of the shadows and directed new lines of accountability toward people who knew of the crime but remained silent for years.
9. CHEAT LOCAL
Corey Pein’s look at the impact of online deals site Groupon on Portland businesses, this article proved particularly polarizing among readers—divided over whether Groupon is evil or Portland’s small-business owners are stupid. But the article also pulled in a lot of traffic from people Googling “groupon horror stories.”
10. ROGUE’S VOODOO DOUGHNUT MAPLE BACON ALE
This review of Rogue Ales’ disgusting Voodoo Doughnut Maple Bacon Ale on our blog was all over Twitter and beer forums. We enjoyed reading all the beer nerds snitting that we didn’t know enough to understand such a complex brew. Yes, our food critics’ palates are too immature to appreciate doughnut-flavored beer.
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CULTURE: Our year in numbers. DRANK: Oregon’s best beers of the year. VISUAL ARTS: Richard Speer’s favorite shows. BOOKS: Marianna Hane Wiles’ favorite Oregon books.
Stormtroopers Vs Klingons Blood Drive
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FOOD FOR FOUGHT: The Oregonian continues to troll for foodie outrage with A&E cover stories such as “The Top 10 Previously Frozen Corn Dogs in the Portland Area,” and “The Culinary Delights of Pioneer Place Mall,” along with A-plus reviews of Outback Steakhouse, Claim Jumper and the Eastport Plaza Izzy’s. “A lot of snobby foodies eat fancy artisan corn dogs made from only one or two animals, but The O knows real people like traditional slurry-based corn dogs the way their mothers made them—nuked for 45 seconds and topped with ketchup,” Michael Russell will write.
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ANNIE BOY: Portland Center Stage announces a season of “unprecedented ambition” for 2012-13, beginning with an all-male, all-adult production of Annie and concluding with Cucumber Castle for the Union Dead, a multimedia extravaganza “featuring the music of the Bee Gees and the poetry of Robert Lowell.” The latter will be replaced by Just Country Boys and Girls, a revue tracing the history of country music from Appalachian hillbillies to Taylor Swift. Both shows will be huge successes, compensating for the critically praised but sparsely attended January production of Martin McDonagh’s A Melanoma in Tacoma. SOULED OUT: The trend of beloved local chains selling themselves to enormous national corporations continues. Laughing Planet will be picked up by Altria, Voodoo Doughnut will sell to Yum! Brands and Berkshire Hathaway will pay $200 million for a 30 percent share of Little Big Burger. STORMY TIMES: When Portlandia is renewed again, its producers grow desperate for local celebrities to perform brief cameos. Season three will feature Amanda Fritz as a zebra-striped centaur, Storm Large as her own notoriously large vagina and newly elected Mayor Jefferson Smith as a highly articulate and arrogant cannibalistic serial killer. Storm’s catchphrase, “put a hoo-haa on it,” finally makes her famous in Beaverton, a break she’s able to parlay into a role as the “young” version of Kim Cattrall’s character in Sex and the City 3. BEAN COUNT: The hot new trend in coffee will be artisan K-Cups. Baristas handcraft the tiny cups out of reclaimed plastic, filling them with single-origin grinds, then brewing them on hacked Keurig machines, retrofitted with sawn-off Hario kettle spouts. New York Times writer Oliver Strand will offer blanket coverage, chastising locals for chafing at the cups’ “very reasonable” $8.50 price. THE FORMAT: As cassettes replace CDs and vinyl as the go-to release format for Portland bands, a group of underground experimental musicians takes the retro trend to new extremes by starting a boutique laserdisc label. “There’s something really tangible about laserdisc,” one obscure fuzzcore producer will say. “And they’re fucking huge. And you have to turn your television on to listen to them. And no one is ever going to buy them. So it’s pretty much the perfect format.”
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
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WILLAMETTE WEEK
WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK IN ARTS & CULTURE
SATURDAY DEC. 31 COOKY PARKER PRESENTS: ONE POSSIBLE HISTORY OF DANCE MUSIC 1961-2011 [NOSTALGIA] Parker spins a survey of modern dance music, all played from the original LPs except for an MTV segment, with videos from 1980-89. The Woods, 6637 SE Milwaukie Ave., 890-0408, thewoodsportland.com. 8 pm. $12. 21+. THE MIRACLES CLUB, SEX LIFE, ANCIENT HEAT, SUN ANGLE, PALMAS, DJ COPY, DJ SNAKKS, DJ HOSTILE TAPEOVER [DAAANCIN’] 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+. THE CHICHARONES, THE DOO DOO FUNK ALL-STARS [BOW CHICKA] The best rap duo in the world and the best funk band in Portland play the formerly best club in town. Teds, 231 SW Ankeny St., berbati.com. 9 pm. $20. 21+. TALKDEMONIC, DJ FREAKY OUTTY, DEELAY CEELAY, BRAINSTORM [ARTY DANCE] Our 2005 Best New Band survey winner plays with fellow dance duos Deelay Ceelay, which makes its own video projections, and Brainstorm, which is so rockin’ it sometimes deploys a tuba. Mission Theater, 16241 NW Glisan St., cascadetickets.com. 9 pm. $16 in advance, $18 day of show. 21+.
The Lucky Bowl
Serves four as an entree
THE NORTHWEST DOESN’T HAVE A LUCKY NEW YEAR’S DISH—SO WE CREATED ONE. American regional cuisine is peppered with examples of “lucky” New Year’s Day foods: ham and black-eyed peas in the South, sauerkraut in the Midwest, a dozen grapes in Puerto Rico. The Pacific Northwest, however, has largely passed on such traditions. Until now. Believing we can use all the luck we can get in 2012, Willamette Week tapped local culinary anthropologist Ken Rubin, who will open the Portland branch of the Natural Epicurean Academy of Culinary Arts in October, to develop our very own lucky New Year’s Day dish. “There are a lot of traditions of lucky foods to eat at the start of the new year,” he says. “I wanted something sweet, which is often associated with luck, and something that uses things we have in abundance here.” So here’s our own Lucky Bowl, built from beets, kale and lentils. It’s vegetarian with an optional meat add-in. (“Perhaps 2012 will usher in a new year where Portland’s pork fetish gives way to another food,” Rubin says.) Prepare and consume this meal and you’ll live forever, get rich and have lots of sweaty sex. (Or, at least, eat a nice dinner.) MARTIN CIZMAR.
12 oz. baby golden beets, scrubbed 2 tsp. olive oil 2/3 cup onion, minced 2 tsp. cider vinegar 2 bunches kale, washed and coarsely chopped 1 1/2 cups brown lentils, cooked 1/2 cup pear, diced 1/4 cup water or stock Salt and pepper to taste In a large saucepan, simmer beets in salted water for 25-40 minutes or until fork tender. Drain, cool and slough of beet skins. Slice the peeled beets into 1/4-inch rounds and set aside. Heat olive oil in a large sauté pan over a medium flame until it shimmers. Add onion and cook for 2-3 minutes to soften. Add vinegar and stir. Add kale, a few handfuls at a time, and cook until just wilted, 2 minutes or so. Add lentils and pears and fold in to incorporate. Reduce heat to low, gently add sliced beets and water or stock to moisten. Cover and cook for 7-10 minutes to allow kale, pears and beets to incorporate and mingle flavors. Season to taste. Meaty variations: The Squawker: Top with a fried local egg. The Fat Pig: Use bacon instead of olive oil, rendering the bacon crispy before adding onion.
TRAGEDY, NIGHT NURSE [HARDCORE] 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 [ALL-STAR PARTY] Laura Veirs reprises her annual year-end gig at the LaurelThirst, backed by Nate Query, John Moen, Chris 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 [RAWK] 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. GROUND KONTROL [GAME ON] One ticket gets you unlimisted play on the arcade’s 80-some games. 511 NW Couch St., groundkontrol.com. 5 pm-2 am. $15. 21+.
Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
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CULTURE
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INDEX
Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
WHAT ARE YOU WEARING?
STREET
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FOOD & DRINK DRANK
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Oregon makes—and drinks—a lot of beer. No one keeps a comprehensive list of every Oregon beer released, but informal estimates suggest at least 2,000 brews were crafted here this year. From that absurd number, three Willamette Week writers argued out the 10 best. These beers run the gamut stylistically and hail from across the state. 1. Fresh Hop Seizoen Logsdon Farmhouse Ales, Hood River Authentic Belgian saisons are low-alcohol pale ales for working farmers. American brewers, naturally, amp up the alcohol. Yet the best American saisons, like the one Logsdon brewed with nine hop varieties grown and harvested in Durfur, keep the crispness. Logsdon’s fresh-hop saison pours a muted yellow with a big, rocky head and lots of lemon zest. The regular saison—same recipe, minus the field-fresh hops—is also excellent. 2. Killer Green Fresh Hop IPA Double Mountain, Hood River Like witnessing the aurora borealis or a grunion run, experiencing the hop harvest is all about being in one place at one moment. The most dazzling Oregon IPA in an impressive spectrum was Killer Green, which wowed us at fresh-hop fests with wet and sticky Brewers Gold. The versatile Humulus lupulus made this beer pop with spicy and herbaceous notes, yet it stayed balanced. 3. Doggie Claws Barley Wine Style Ale Hair of the Dog, Portland Alan Sprints’ bold barley wine has been a winner since it debuted a decade ago. Maybe it’s the cold weather, but this year’s release is especially good, even without the year of bottle-aging that’s practically mandatory: deep copper, with a heady aroma of pine sap, honey and butterscotch. 4. Vlad the Imp Aler NW Sour Cascade Brewing Barrel House, Portland The New York Times rated Cascade’s Kriek the No. 1 sour beer in America. That isn’t blasphemy, but we think they simply weren’t around when Vlad was on tap. Sour beer fans vacillate on their favorite draw of alchemy from sourmaster Ron Gansberg, but we like Vlad’s interplay of strong and spiced blonde ales matured in choice barrels. 5. De La Six Upright, Portland Upright sometimes plays it straight, à la Wynton Marsalis. Other times, it improvises like Miles frickin’ Davis. That’s the case with soulful De La. Using its Six rye ale as a launch pad, Upright blends in safflower, lemon peel and rooibos tea, then ages the whole shebang in gin barrels for a mellifluous aroma and semi-tart taste. 6. Black Butte XXIII Imperial Porter Deschutes, Bend Deschutes tinkers with the recipe for this higher-alcohol version of Black Butte Porter, first released to celebrate the brewery’s 20th birthday in 2008. Sometimes this backfires: Last
year’s batch was spiked after added chocolate left a layer of undissolved material. This year’s variation is a home run. Brewed with bitter Spanish orange peel, black pasilla chilies and cacao nibs from Theo Chocolate, the beer has notes of vanilla and orange on the nose and tastes like a chocolate mousse from the kitchen of the Mountain King. 7. Dunkelweizen Occidental Brewing Co., Portland Portland’s Occidental brews traditional German styles like alt, hefeweizen and kölsch. The brewery’s fall brew was a cheerfully traditional Dunkelweizen. This dark wheat beer is mature and bready, with bananas that have gone spotty and red apples that have surrendered their crispness. 8. La Ferme’ de Demons Dark Farmhouse Ale Block 15, Corvallis The body of La Ferme’ de Demons’ black farmhouse-style ale is bottom-heavy from roasted malt and candi sugar yet lightened by Belgian Pilsner malt and French wheat. The beer made an odyssey through three spent barrels (Pinot Noir, bourbon and Oregon Oak) before getting wild Brettanomyces cultures and local tart cherries. 9. Turmoil Cascadian Dark Ale Barley Brown’s, Baker City Known elsewhere as Black IPA, this beer is a dance crew battling on your palate: first popping with piney Northwest hops then locking in a rich macchiato mouthfeel. Pungent hops oils temper coffee notes, making a perfect Thermos-filler. 10. Summer Squeeze Ale BridgePort, Portland Remember that weeklong heat wave? We’d have liked to wade through an inflatable kiddie pool of this citric summer ale—or maybe just sip a bottle in a pool. Northwest hops and lemongrass made it less like a lemonade-cut Radler than lemon pepper shaken over summer barbecue. H AW K K R A L L
2011’S FINEST BREWS FROM PORTLAND AND THE REST OF THE STATE.
FOOD & DRINK C H R I S T A C O N N E L LY
JAROD OPPERMAN
LIST
TWO GOOD: Shigezo’s Toyko ramen (left) and Central chef Jake Martin’s tuna crudo rank among Portland’s favorite dishes.
THE BEST THING I ATE THIS YEAR... OUR FOOD WRITERS PICK THEIR FAVORITE PORTLAND MEALS OF 2011. On a miserable, soggy day in mid-November, my wife and I sought shelter from the cold at Five Spice (2446 SE 87th Ave.), a Cantonese restaurant that opened this spring. It’s a pleasant, under-decorated sort of place with a menu that rewards adventurism. The cold sliced beef tendon was good, if you don’t mind the chewiness, but the real gem was the goose hot pot off the specials board($16). It came out bubbling—a wide, shallow bowl of thick brown broth with islands of bean curd skin, lotus root and big hunks of chopped roast goose. As the rain turned to sleet, we scalded our mouths and fingers as we gnawed on the tender bird and slurped the savory broth. For a moment, winter evaporated; our world was all hot goose. BEN WATERHOUSE. I grew up in Milwaukie. Although the suburb is only minutes outside of Portland proper, for decades the best—or only, really—thing to crave around that culinary wasteland were the pumpkin milkshakes that popped up at Mike’s Drive-In every October. Everything changed when I bit into one of Pascal Sauton’s roasted lamb sandwiches ($8.75). The French chef, who spent years cooking for the Keller crowds at his downtown bistro Carafe, opened his specialty market, deli and cooking-class haven Milwaukie Kitchen & Wine (10610 SE Main Street, Milwaukie) last month. The lamb was perfect: thick slices of pinky leg meat with a crunchy little crust redolent of rosemary and piment d’Espelette smothered in garlicky harissa aioli and a mellow piperade of onions, tomato and peppers all wrapped up in pillowy Ken’s ciabatta. There wasn’t any
simply too rich on its own. It’s as if gravy had been distilled to its most ethereal essence, and it makes me homesick for a place I’ve never called home. AARON MESH.
cheese; it didn’t need cheese. And I’ve never said that before about a sandwich. There isn’t anything particularly fancy about this—or most of Sauton’s country Frenchified deli grub—it simply tastes exactly as a sandwich should. Going home again never tasted so good. KELLY CLARKE. For me, this was the year of the mackerel. Or, at least, it was the year I discovered that mackerel is truly the bacon of the sea—a fatty, salty heart attack of a fish that massages the umami-starved reptile brain into sweet submission. It is izakaya food, and so it was at Syun, Shigezo and Biwa I found the best of the form. Nonetheless, I’m giving the nod to the tuna crudo ($11) at downtown’s Central (220 SW Ankeny St.). The dish is a blending of raw sushi-grade tuna, miso and cucumber, topped with thin-sliced radish and a scattering of shiso (an Asian minty-spicy herb). It’s quite simple, but the flavors and textures blend complexly, delicately—I’d described it in an earlier review as being flavored almost like a good gin, through subtle aromatics. “I don’t think it’s that subtle,” a recent dining companion told me, “but it’s really good.” MATTHEW KORFHAGE. “Oh, that’s smoky,” Matthew Korfhage said when he tasted my soup at Shigezo (1005 SW Park Ave.), and all of a sudden I felt better about thieving his favorite restaurant of 2011. Slurping the Tokyo ramen ($9.50) at this izakaya in the Roosevelt Building, the first and only American incarnation of a popular Japanese pub chain, is like riding a log flume. The splashdown lands you in a thicket of green onions, snappy seaweed and ramen noodles hand-pulled on the Park Blocks. There’s a slice of chashu pork on top, and it’s possible to gussy up the bowl with extras like boiled egg or corn. I never have. The chicken and shoyu broth is
Shandong
The best thing I ate in Oregon this year? Probably a quart of fresh marionberries from Sheridan Fruit Company (409 SE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.). I’m new to town, having moved from Phoenix in October. The best things I ate in 2011 were back there, maybe a bowl from Pho Thahn or a machaca burro from Carolina’s. But in the desert they grow oranges and iceberg lettuce, not plump berries. Those marionberries were hyper-real: giant, nearly the size of walnuts, with a complexly tart sweetness. I’ve since learned the marionberry is pure Oregonia, a blackberry cultivar created by our state ag school. There has, in fact, been a proposal to make the marionberry a state symbol. So far, it’s been thwarted. That’s a damn shame. If I had my druthers, they’d be enshrined next to the tree on my new license plates. MARTIN CIZMAR. Can I do two? I’m gonna do two. The single best thing I ate in Portland this year, the dish that just made me say “fuck yes,” was a head of radicchio, roasted with—I think—fontina cheese, melted between the leaves, at Olympic Provisions (107 SE Washington St.). There may or may not have been a touch of balsamic vinegar. Clearly my memory of this is a bit fuzzy, but I do remember with perfect clarity how immensely satisfying it was: a simple, inspired combination of bitter, salty, creamy, savory and fatty that hit my gastronomic G-spot. However, I must give an honorable mention to the egg sandwich ($5) at Bingo Sandwiches at the PSU Farmers Market (875 SW Harrison St.), which has consistently made my Saturday morning all year. They fry that egg so over easy, it splodges out of the English muffin and drips down your fingers in a perfect, gooey mess of mustard, pickled jalapeños, cheese and yolk. It will be a long winter without one. RUTH BROWN.
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
MUSIC
DEC. 28-JAN. 3 YEAR-END
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. 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. 28 Oh Darling, We Are Not Shadows, Adventure Galley
[POP GOES PRO] Oh Darling’s music is infectious, cute and straight-up pop. After getting its start in Portland, the quartet migrated south to the land of sunshine and opportunity— Los Angeles. The band has come a long way, especially considering that frontwoman Jasmine Ash didn’t start playing music until she was almost out of college. Oh Darling (the band chose its name while flipping through the novel Watership Down) released its fun and upbeat third album, Brave the Sound, earlier this year, and if Ash’s high-pitched, delicate voice sounds annoyingly familiar, it probably is. Oh Darling has been featured on television shows such as One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl and Bones, as well as commercials for Volkswagen and Kia. And that’s why you move to L.A. EMILEE BOOHER. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $6. 21+.
Farnell Newton Group plays the music of Freddie Hubbard
[JAZZ] It comes as no surprise that Freddie Hubbard is an influence for local trumpet player and beats producer Farnell Newton. Hubbard, like Newton, was a technically thrilling player who took on projects of all stripes—the former played everything from straight-ahead jazz to funky-as-hell CTI Records sessions, and made key appearances on some of the seminal discs of the free-form movement. Newton is well equipped to cover any of these styles, but if this year’s excellent Class Is Now in Session is any indication, he’ll probably lean toward the funky stuff tonight at new jazz bar Ivories. CASEY JARMAN. Ivories Jazz Lounge and Restaurant, 1435 NW Flanders St., 241-6514. 8:30 pm. $7. 21+.
Hollywood Tans, Welsh Bowmen, DJ Ken Dirtnap
[MOODS FOR MODERNS] Hollywood Tans frontman Wayne Pritzker proudly announces his band’s raison d’être on “Fuck Up Sons,” the second song on Stolen Stereo, an effervescent tease of an EP that packs innumerable pop tricks into 15 sweet minutes. “Everybody likes to party, but no one wants to host,” Pritzker sings, before the band launches into the tune’s rousing chorus one last time, brightly underlining Pritzker’s point: The shindig’s already underway, and we’re keeping it going. The five songs on Stolen Stereo recall Elvis Costello’s early forays into pop’s past, but minus the bile—the folks in Hollywood Tans sincerely want us to get happy. CHRIS STAMM. The Know, 2026 NE Alberta St., 473-8729. 8 pm. Cover. 21+.
THURSDAY, DEC. 29 Ngalula Dodier, Salary, Leek and Yung HD, Jlew, Thief Scarfico, Yung Mook, Portland George, Black Rose, Black Bizness, The Real J-ROCC, The Krisis
[R&B] Anyone who says Portland is lacking in young divas with explosive lung capacity need look no further than up-and-comer Ngalula Dodier, who headlines an impressive onslaught of lesser-known hip-hoppers at Ash Street tonight. Dodier doesn’t sing the typical indie funk and soul-based R&B, either. The velvet-voiced siren’s recent single, “Bad for Me” (from an in-theworks album), contains enough layered vocals, “oooh baby” choruses and radio-friendly thumps to give Beyoncé
pause. Dodier is effectively targeting the modern R&B crowd that has the Billboard charts on Google alert, offering skillfully produced club-bangers without breaking, or aspiring to break, much new ground, instead focusing on the singer’s powerful vocal cords. AP KRYZA. Ash Street Saloon, 225 SW Ash St., 226-0430. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
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Duover, Mike Coykendall, Highway Acoustic
[FOLK COUPLET] After an extended holiday celebrating last year’s yulethemed, full-length stocking stuffer, Nathan Junior and Rebecca Rasmussen will now return to secular, unseasoned set lists blending those gorgeous harmonies first unveiled on the local lovebirds’ eponymous 2009 folk-pop debut. As well, expect first airings of (still untitled) tunes from their upcoming, equally affecting third collection of unhurried strolls ’midst darkened narratives and expanded soundscapes. Celebrated producer and singer-songwriter Mike Coykendall is among the roots-tinged guests. JAY HORTON. Kelly’s Olympian, 426 SW Washington St., 228-3669. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
Sir Michael Rocks (of the Cool Kids), Logics, Jay Kin, Blaze
[SWAG] Today’s hip-hop landscape can be summed up in one word: swag. The constant use of the word by mainstream MCs shows how now more than ever in the genre, style is edging out substance in importance. With that said, having some swagger is not always a bad thing: Take Chicago rapper Sir Michael Rocks, for example. His group, the Cool Kids, is entertaining not only for its face-scrunching music built on thudding 808 drums and funky synth squirts—perfect soundtracks for showing off a new pair of kicks—but also for its members’ bravado. Sir Rocks and partner Chuck Inglish are so cool they made those awful T-shirts covered in wolves and moons that your mullet-rocking uncle stylishly wears—that takes some serious coolness, to say the least. After the group finally released its proper debut, When Fish Ride Bicycles in August, Rocks began to make some moves on the solo tip, releasing two mixtapes and signing to Curren$y’s Jet Life imprint. From what I gather, this marks his first solo show in Portland. Expect some Stumptown swag. REED JACKSON. Peter’s Room, 8 NW 6th Ave., 219-9929. 6 pm. $20. All ages.
FRIDAY, DEC. 30 Ramble On (Led Zeppelin tribute), Ants in the Kitchen, Morgan Grace
[THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME] Even my parents (who saw Zeppelin with Grand Funk Railroad back in ’69) didn’t have the chance to get the Led out in a venue so intimate. Doug Fir’s ideal acoustics can only complement a tribute act as dedicated as Ramble On. The star here is vocalist Rich Ray, whose locks are as golden as his throat. Strong male vocalists seem to be a dying breed, and Ray is giving his role a whole lotta love. Ramble On stresses that its focus is on the music, using not just the studio versions but live concerts and bootlegs as cheat sheets for capturing the vibe. Don’t expect wigs or period costume— just boogies, stomps, breakdowns and good times. NATHAN CARSON. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $8. 21+.
CONT. on page 27
YOU’RE THE BEST—AROUND! WW MUSIC EDITOR CASEY JARMAN’S TOP 15 LOCAL ALBUMS OF THE YEAR. BY CASE Y JA R MA N
cjarman@wweek.com
This was the year Portland came face-to-face with its blossoming, narrowly defined international reputation for “keeping it weird.” Portland then slouched, dropped its head and let out a long sigh of defeat. We’re not all underemployed artisan cheesemakers who moonlight in tall-bike polo leagues, but damn if everybody’s not in a band. And while the local indie-rock world’s prevailing winds aren’t too far off the national average—with many of our fine local groups producing rock of the dreamy, spacey, electronic variety—many of Portland’s metal and experimental artists are gaining national acclaim for making masterful music that resides right on the edge of accessibility. My tastes, however, run a bit palatable. I hope you find something you like here, but if not—try turning the page. Oh, and happy new year. 15. Tony Ozier, BeatsGalore The multi-instrumentalist at the center of Portland’s fast-rising R&B and funk worlds surprises with a top-notch beat collection. 14. Dolorean, The Unfazed If Al James had been born 30 years earlier, he’d be a widely heralded national treasure. 13. Talkdemonic, Ruins A rejuvenated Talkdemonic drops an epic disc full of avant beats and distorted soundscapes. 12. Starfucker, Reptilians A grower, to be sure, but there’s a five-song stretch toward the beginning of the disc that is, in itself, better than most records I heard this year. 11. Cloudy October, The Metal Jerk A smart and occasionally challenging second disc from an MC who is perhaps more Portland than Portland. 10. Unknown Mortal Orchestra (self-titled) If I didn’t desperately miss UMO godhead Ruben
Nielsen’s incredible punk band, the Mint Chicks, this one might have topped my list. 9. AgesandAges, Alright You Restless Churchy harmonies and Southern rock riffs will always steal my heart, but Tim Perry’s great songwriting really made this a Shinsian local classicto-be. 8. Nurses, Dracula Probably the consensus favorite local indie-pop album of the year, and for very good reason. Nurses is bright, unique and pretty fucking strange. 7. Serge Severe, Back on My Rhymes It’s hard to do throwback, DJ Premier-style hiphop any better than this. 6. Typhoon, A New Kind of House A well-built and haunting collection that expands Typhoon’s already loaded sonic playbook. 5. Your Rival, Seven Sparkling Children EP A fine combination of quirky songwriting and tweepunk energy from this up-and-coming trio. 4. Deelay Ceelay, Sunset Drumsets After an extended hiatus, drum ’n’ laptops duo Deelay Ceelay returned to drop an album just as colorful and explosive as its multimedia productions. 3. Radiation City, The Hands That Take You I don’t think a better-sounding disc dropped all year than this one from Radiation City, the dreampop outfit that will probably have my top Best New Band vote next year. 2. St. Even, Spirit Animal The more time I spend with this gorgeous, whip-smart collection of puzzle songs from the vastly underrated Steve Hefter, the more I love it. “Long Distance Call,” in particular, is a generation-defining song. 1. Illmaculate and G_Force, The Green Tape An ambitious, free download EP that showcases the smoother and more introspective side of decorated local battle MC Illmaculate, who is poised for a long-rumored breakout year in 2012. MORE Give us your top pick (and listen to songs from most of these artists) at wweek.com. Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
25
Are you planning a pregnancy? Are you… · Under 40 years of age, planning to have your first child? · Not yet pregnant? · Planning to become pregnant in the next year?
If so, you might qualify for a study to find out what changes occur to the muscles and nerves of the pelvis after delivering a baby.
If you are interested in participating, please contact the Women’s Health Research Unit confidential recruitment line, 503-494-3666. Qualified participants will receive at no cost: · MRI of pelvis · Pelvic nerve & muscle studies · Up to $710 compensation for time and travel For more information call 503-494-3666 eIRB #3196
26
Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
FRIDAY-SATURDAY
Throat Blower, Candle Massacre, Shroud of the Heretic, Cron, Night Nurse, DJ Smooth Hopperator
[TRIBUTUS EPICUS METALLICUS] The last time U.K. metal warmasters Bolt Thrower played in Portland was 1991. Since this legendary group prefers German metal festivals and U.K. children’s cancer benefits to U.S. tours, Seattle tribute act Throat Blower is as close as you’re likely to get without an international flight. Sweden’s most epic doom act, Candlemass, actually did make it to Portland in 2008, but the show was so badly mismanaged only 75 people showed up; we probably won’t see the band here again. Step up to the demon’s gate, Candle Massacre, and show us no mercy! NATHAN CARSON. East End, 203 SE Grand Ave., 232-0056. 9 pm. $6. 21+.
Leftover Salmon, Cracker, Poor Man’s Whiskey
See Saturday listing, page 30. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 224-2038. 8:30 pm. $40. 21+.
Motorthrone, Sarcalogos, Aethyrium, Ritual Healing, Tanagra
[PRIMITIVE BEER ROCK] For a town nicknamed Beervana, there are few bands in Portland that could be described as “boozy.” Well, drunks, here’s a band just for you. Following in the footsteps of resurrected Northwest speed freaks Wehrmacht, Motorthrone has two primary obsessions: thrash and beer. Its name is something of a giveaway for its sound. Indeed, the group trades in a Motörhead-y blend of punk and metal, replacing the methamphetamine rush with blurry, wasted tantrums. The members call it “primitive beer rock,” and I couldn’t have put it any better myself. MATTHEW SINGER. Rotture, 315 SE 3rd Ave., 234-5683. 9:30 pm. $5. 21+.
Squalora, Age of Collapse, Order of the Gash
[PUNK ROCK] Squalora’s new EP, Growth, captures the sound of a band hitting its stride and doing everything just right. The numbers are initially off-putting—16 minutes divided among four tunes is not the kind of equation you’d usually want punks with crusty predilections fooling around with—but the sprawling songs on Growth twist and turn at perfectly timed intervals, with violent diatribes winding down into melancholy breaks that build back up to epic purges. Short, namedropping version: Any band that evokes Filth and His Hero Is Gone in the same song is totally rad. CHRIS STAMM. The Know, 2026 NE Alberta St., 473-8729. 8 pm. Cover. 21+.
SATURDAY, DEC. 31 Storm Large, Holcombe Waller
[JACKIE OF ALL TRADES] It’s a pity all empires aren’t as ravishing as the Storm Large brand. The Portland mogul is a born entertainer, crossing off career landmarks like her days are numbered. The musician, playwright and new author brings her boisterous, brassy vocal ability to quieter contexts, sharing an acoustic evening with citymate and troubadour Holcombe Waller. No word whether the two will partner for a duet, but given their shared love for composition and rivaling vocal personalities, I’d say the chances are very good. MARK STOCK. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 719-6055. 7:30 pm. $65. (10:30 pm show is sold out.) 21+.
Pierced Arrows, Iron Lords, The Bloodtypes
[PUNK AND RAWK] Portland’s Iron Lords is a band to pump your fist to, preferably while wearing a chainmail glove. Playing a thoroughly medieval brand of riff-heavy, femalefronted rock ’n’ roll, the band is a great complement to the backwoods punk of Fred and Toody Cole’s
CONT. on page 30
MUSIC
MAKE IT A NIGHT Present that night’s show ticket and get $3 off any menu item Sun - Thur in the dining room
YEAR-END
THE REST OF THE BEST ALBUMS OF 2011 Well, we put our heads together, and this is what we came up with. Not a complete list, to be sure, but a collection of our favorite local and national music of the year. EMILEE BOOHER, NATHAN CARSON, DEVAN COOK, JONATHAN FROCHTZWAJG, ROBERT HAM, ARYA IMIG, REED JACKSON, CASEY JARMAN, AP KRYZA, MATTHEW P. SINGER, CHRIS STAMM, MARK STOCK, NIKKI VOLPICELLI.
WW’s music writers share their year-end favorites.
DOUG FIR RESTAURANT + BAR OPEN 7AM - 2:30AM EVERYDAY SERVING BREAKFAST, LUNCH, DINNER, LATE-NIGHT. FOOD SPECIALS 3-6 PM EVERYDAY COVERED SMOKING PATIO, FIREPLACE ROOM, LOTS OF LOG. LIVE SHOWS IN THE LOUNGE...
AN EVENING OF PERFECT POP WITH PDX/LA FAVES
Bryan John Appleby, Fire on the Vine The Seattle songwriter made his introspective and arresting debut album of slowly unfolding indie-folk songs with help from Kickstarter. (EB) Atriarch, Forever the End A feat of sustained malevolence, the album’s bleak 36 minutes of gothic doom established Atriarch as the underworld’s new dark lords. (CS)
WEDNESDAY!
60’S INSPIRED FOLK-POP BAND CELEBRATES THEIR DEBUT FULL-LENGTH
THURSDAY!
OH DARLING
THE
WE ARE NOT SHADOWS +ADVENTURE GALLEY
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 28 • $6 ADVANCE SATURDAY!
LOWER 48
FUTURE HISTORIANS +GREAT WILDERNESS
THURSDAY DECEMBER 29 •
$8 ADVANCE
DOUG FIR PRESENTS A SPECIAL NYE BLOWOUT, PDX STYLE
Beastie Boys, The Hot Sauce Committee Part Two The B-Boys drop politics and hone three decades of influence—from jazz to punk to reggae—to craft their best album since Check Your Head. (APK) James Blake, James Blake The London electronic music producer marries ambient dub with soulful R&B for a strange and beautiful union. (JF) Blouse, self-titled On its debut, Blouse combines ethereal synthpop with breathy female vocals. Not to be confused with fellow Kate Bush-loving groups like College, Chromatics or the Drive soundtrack. (DC) BOAT, Dress Like Your Idols Not BOAT’s catchiest record, but a very strong and even kind of mature (!) effort from our favorite Seattle pop-punk group. (CJ) Rachel Taylor Brown, World So Sweet The intimacy of a woman and her steadfast piano, succumbing to frequent fits of tender, jazzy rock and super-collaborative jangle pop. (MS) Danava, Hemisphere of Shadows Forward-thinking ’70s throwback metal played with the intensity of Karp or High on Fire. Thin Lizzy for the ADD generation. Organ solos that would make Arthur C. Clarke lose sleep. (NC) Alela Diane, Alela Diane & Wild Divine Trading her sparse, acoustic finger-pickings for a full-band sound, Diane’s new disc is rich with down-home twang and rich vocals. (EB) Fucked Up, David Comes to Life “Epic” and “punk” don’t normally go together, but this is an epic fucking punk album, all intertwining guitars and singer Damien Abraham’s grizzlyman growls. (MPS) PJ Harvey, Let England Shake From fallen dictators to political uprisings, the world shook in 2011. Harvey’s protest album provided a poignant soundtrack. (DC) Nick Jaina, The Beanstalks That Have Brought Us Here Are Gone The most impressive thing about this special, guest-loaded disc isn’t all the gorgeous voices on it, but (sometime WW contributor) Nick Jaina’s compelling, deep songwriting. (CJ) YEAR-END FAVORITES CONTINUED ON PAGE 29
+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! A NYE TUNE-UP WITH PDX’S PREMIER LED ZEPPELIN TRIBUTE BAND
FRIDAY!
SATURDAY DECEMBER 31 •
$16 ADVANCE
PDX’S OWN SOUL DIVA AND MEMBER OF THE NPG
LIV WARFIELD
RAMBLE ON FRIDAY DECEMBER 30 •
$8 ADVANCE
A CD RELEASE CELEBRATION WITH INDIE-PSYCHE ROCK DUO
BEAR & MOOSE
BACARDI PRESENTS THE BACK TO BASICS SERIES
PIGEONS +MIKE COYKENDALL
THURSDAY JANUARY 5 •
$8 ADVANCE
CLEVER SONGWRITING FROM PDX’S FAVORED SON
CASEY NEILL
& THE NORWAY RATS
SASSPARILLA
+JARROD LAWSON
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 4 • $10 ADVANCE
ARCHEOLOGY
TANGO ALPHA TANGO +ADAM SHEARER (WEINLAND)
FRIDAY JANUARY 6
•
$5 ADVANCE
MOODY DREAM POP FROM PDX BUZZ-BUILDERS
BLOUSE
+JACKRABBIT
SATURDAY JANUARY 7 •
$10 ADVANCE
WAMPIRE
+THE CROW
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 11 •
$8 ADVANCE
BELOVED COSMOPOLITAN FOLKTRONICA PIONEER
EMILY WELLS
BUZZ-WORTHY INDIE ROCK SOUL FROM SEATTLE
PICKWICK BRYAN JOHN APPLEBY +JESSICA DOBSON
+TIMMY STRAW
THURSDAY JANUARY 12 •
$10 ADVANCE
AN ALBUM RELEASE PARTY WITH PDX POWER POP KINGS
THROWBACK SUBURBIA
BY FRAME STEREOVISION +FRAME (feat CHRIS MARGOLIN)
SATURDAY JANUARY 14 •
$7 ADVANCE
FRIDAY JANUARY 13
•
$10 ADVANCE
LOST LANDER + BRAINSTORM - 2/4 GARY CLARK Jr. - 2/14 SAUL WILLIAMS - 3/12 MR. GNOME - 3/23 COEUR DR PIRATE - 5/25 All of these shows on sale at Ticketfly.com
LARRY & HIS FLASK 1/15 • THE MILK CARTON KIDS 1/18 • PACK A.D. 1/19 YOUTH LAGOON 1/21 • AUGUSTANA 1/22 • ATOMIC TOM 1/25 JESSIE BAYLIN 1/26 • SCARS ON 45 1/27 • THE ALABAMA SHAKES 1/28 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 28, 2011 wweek.com
27
Corner of SE 7th & Madison • Check out our daily specials • Open M-F 5:30am–5:30pm & Sat 7am–4 pm
Friday 12-30
DSL COMEDY Hosted by
Brisket Love-Cox FREE IN THE SIDESHOW LOUNGE, 21+ 9PM
FREE UP
REGGAE NIGHT IN THE SIDESHOW LOUNGE, 21+ 10PM
Give!Guide ends at midnight December 31, 2011.
MORGAN GREEN-HOPKINS
Only 4 days left to GIVE!
Saturday 12-31
END OF THE WORLD DANCE PARTY
W/ MARS RETRIEVAL UNIT exCeLLent GentLemen GARCIA BIRTHDAY BAND 21+ 8PM
also on sale now: STOMP
MUSIC & FASHION PARTY
GORDON AVENUE ANTHONY B PIMPS OF JOYTIME GIFT OF GAB
(BLACKALICIOUS) & DNAE BEATS
MOTHER HIPS DARK FAIRY & FANTASY BALL Give!Guide features 100 nonprofits you should support. HEAD TO WWEEK.COM/GIVEGUIDE TO GIVE NOW! Follow us: facebook.com/giveguide twitter.com/giveguide youtube.com/giveguide 28
Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
tickets and info www.thetabor.com • 503-360-1450 facebook.com/mttabortheater twitter.com/Mt_Tabor
MUSIC
DATES HERE friendly. sounds great. best burger. independent. musician-owned /operated
Zola Jesus, Conatus These beats are equal parts ancient and electronic. It’s hard to believe Zola Jesus’ supernatural howl comes from her tiny frame. (NV) Key Losers, California Lite Katy Davidson and company’s first full-length is alternately pretty, funny and so damn smooth. (CJ) Log Across the Washer, 2009-2010 Collection Lo-fi recordings from a garage-pop singer-songwriter with the humble, self-deprecating style of Elliott Smith. (NV) Luck-One, True Theory Luck spits like a syllabic machine gun, but he balances his passion, wisdom, swagger and emotion to craft a bar-setting local album. (APK) Other Lives, Tamer Animals A surrealist’s masterful portrait, set to boneshaking orchestral sketches. Vast, cinematic and ruggedly sophisticated, this record haunts. (MS) The Physics, Love Is a Business Seattle-based hip-hop trio the Physics crafted the perfect soundtrack to a Northwest summer—warm, breezy and full of nostalgic tales of barbecues and love flings under the branches of a Douglas fir. (RJ) Pulse Emitter, Spiritual Vistas Daryl Groetsch has made another coldly beautiful, modular synth soundtrack to an asyet-unrealized sci-fi epic. Eat your heart out Vangelis. (RH) Red Fang, Murder the Mountains Oh, Portland isn’t manly, huh? Tell that to the burly riffs on this masterpiece of mountainous crunch. As pulverizing as Red Fang’s metal can be, though, the band never forsakes a good melody. (MPS) Kelli Schaefer, Ghost of the Beast Through songs at turns mournful and fervent, the PDX singer-songwriter’s versatile voice is the firm yet lovely linchpin of this emotionally raw, stunning debut. (JF)
503.288.3895 info@mississippistudios.com 3939 N. Mississippi
all shows 21+ 8pm doors 9pm show (except where noted)
NEW YEAR’S EVE
the way you want it!
NURSES WILD ONES
RADIATION CITY +DJ BEYONDA SAT DEC 31st
$15 Adv
“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
JERRY JOSEPH
& THE JACKMORMONS
+THE MINUS 5
FRI DEC 30th
$15 Adv
Woodchuck Cider Sweet ‘n Local Showcase Presents: dark and progressive rock music from local favorites
TRANSIENT
DANIEL MENCHE (Record Release) EIGHT BELLS +TAURUS
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
DAVID
RED FANG RABBITS
SAT DEC 31st
$15 Adv
SUN JAN 8th
$12 Adv
MORE: Weigh in on your favorite records of 2011, and hear music from some of these artists at wweek.com.
ADAM SWEENEY & THE JAMBOREE
ALAMEDA
+TERRIBLE BUTTONS
FRI JAN 6th
$5 Adv
Former frontman for Low vs Diamond, this Seattleite spins soul inflected pop melodies, showing why Seattle isn’t just a home for folk rock anymore
LUCAS FIELD
+KENDL WINTER
WED JAN 11th
Local four piece Forest Park celebrate an anticipated record release, showcasing dynamic guitars and vocals that make for one of the most dynamic bands around
$8 Adv
Our monthly dance night
FOREST
PARK
+YOUTH FREE!
MRS w/ DJ BEYONDA SAT JAN 14th
$5 DOS
6:30 Doors, 7:00 Show ALL AGES!
SAT JAN 14th
$5 Adv
Our favorite locals return with swarming rock songs channeling a heavy metal influence
BLOOD BEACH
HAUNTED HORSES
Something Fierce, Don’t Be So Cruel Houston’s punk classicists took it back to ’79 with this exhilarating collection of anthems reminiscent of the Clash’s slickest pop moves. (CS)
Virus, The Agent That Shapes the Desert Cult Norwegian post-black metal/post-rock weirdness from a founding member of Ulver. A musical mirage that combines Die Kreuzen, Voivod and Unwound—and it swings! (NC)
$8 Adv
Woodchuck Cider Sweet ‘n Local Presents: a showcase of music rooted in the folk revival tradition, with a dose of indie thrown in
COMEDY SHOW
Paul Simon, So Beautiful or So What Simon turned 70 this year. His poetry and percussive pursuits are as precise as ever, exploring new rhythms and empathetic musings. (AI)
Tycho, Dive The perfect antidote to dubstep mania: A calm, effective downtempo record that seeps into your pores and infects your whole being. (RH)
THUR DEC 29th
The LIBERATORS
DUCK LITTLE BROTHER DUCK +YOUR RIVAL $10 Adv
+KASEY ANDERSON & THE HONKIES
Find out just why The Liberators are called one of the best improv groups in town
FRI JAN 13th
+VIKESH KAPOOR
STAR ANNA
& THE LAUGHING DOGS
+LORD DYING
@ STAR THEATER (13 NW 6th Ave)
AAN
DONDERO THUR JAN 12th
NEW YEAR’S EVE
Hailing a gritty and elusively haunting voice, Seattle’s Star Anna rocks Americana gems with sensitive passion
SUN JAN 15th
+ANNE FREE!
A Chicago quintet of multi-instrumentalists who create an experimental sonic landscape that gracefully encompasses a multitude of genres
A LULL TUESDAYS
QUIZZY
6:30-8:30 FREE - PRIZES! at Bar Bar w/ Quizmaster ROY SMALLWOOD
DELETED SCENES +RAVENNA WOODS
THUR JAN 19th
$8 Adv
Coming Soon: 1/4 - Brandi Carlile RESCHEDULED, SOLD OUT 1/20 & 1/21 - JOEY PORTER’S TRIBUTE TO STEVIE WONDER 1/22 - JOHNNY A. 1/24 - FERTILE GROUND FESTIVAL 1/25 - STEPHEN ASHBROOK 1/26 - dKOTA 1/27 - INTO THE WOODS 2nd ANNIVERSARY PARTY 1/28 - FUJIYA & MIYAGI
www.mississippistudios.com Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
29
SATURDAY TYLER KOHLHOFF
MUSIC
Wednesday, Dec 28th
THE BOBS
BACK IN BLACK: Nurses play Mississippi Studios on Saturday.
AFTER CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY SHOW Thursday, Dec 29th
JERRY JOSEPH
Pierced Arrows. Even better is the Bloodtypes’ hard-charging, no-frills garage punk, outfitted by subtle keyboard riffs and belted vocals courtesy of the fantastically named Schneck Tourniquet. Ring in the new year with ringing in your ears. MATTHEW SINGER. Ash Street Saloon, 225 SW Ash St., 226-0430. 9:30 pm. $10. 21+.
Weinland NYE Supergroup, The Fruit Bats
&
THE JACKMORMONS WITH BLACK PRAIRIE Dec 30th and 31st
NEW YEAR’S EVE
SAVE ON THE
BEST OF 2011!
3 SHOWS!
WITH
STORM LARGE
with special guest HOLCOMBE WALLER
Saturday, Jan 7th
THE DECEMBERISTS The King Is Dead
PJ HARVEY Let England Shake
$15.95 cd or lp
$12.95-cd/$14.95-lp
BON IVER Bon Iver
CATIE CURTIS
$11.95-cd/$15.95-lp
JENNA LINDBO
WITH SHABAZZ PALACES Black Up
tUnE-Ya tUnE-YaRdS Y RdS Ya whokill
$11.95-cd/$14.95-lp
$12.95-cd/$13.95-lp
ST. VINCENT Strange Mercy
$12.95-cd/$14.95-lp
Friday, Jan 13th
DAVID GRISMAN FRANK VIGNOLA
Sale prices good thru 1/8/12
USED NEW &s & VINYL VD CDs, D
FOR ANY & ALL USED CDs, DVDs & VINYL OPEN EVERYDAY AT 9A.M. | WWW.EVERYDAYMUSIC.COM Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
The Miracles Club, Sex Life, Ancient Heat, Sun Angle, Palmas, DJ Copy, DJ Snakks, DJ Hostile Tapeover
[RAVE CRAVE] New Year’s Eve is usually disappointing. Every year, someone you’re with gets too drunk too quick and you find yourself holding her hair back in an alley before midnight. It seems the best thing to avoid this annual predicament is to plan ahead. First, choose some sturdy friends that can hold their alcohol. Second, decide on a venue large enough to meet new friends if they can’t. Third, check out the Miracles Club, a dreamy house outfit with plenty of experience hosting all-night dance parties (including a secret rave in a Southeast Portland warehouse last summer). Tonight, the psychedelic electronic outfit will play with sunny Sex Life and enough inventive DJs to keep you on the dance floor for hours, which is the perfect excuse not to follow that stumbling drunk into an alley in the first place. NIKKI VOLPICELLI. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 9 pm. $13. 21+.
Laura Veirs, Black Prairie, members of Loch Lomond, Viva Voce and Blind Pilot
DOWNTOWN • 1313 W. Burnside • 503.274.0961 EASTSIDE • 1931 NE Sandy Blvd. • 503.239.7610 BEAVERTON • 3290 SW Cedar Hills Blvd. • 503.350.0907
30
[THE METAMORPHOSIS] Whether because of the clock tocking midnight-ward or, you know, all the booze, everybody becomes someone a little different on New Year’s Eve. Take Weinland: Any other day of the year, the Portland scene mainstays are a reasonably mild-mannered folk-rock quintet. But on the 31st, for the third year running, the group will swell its ranks with its many pals in local music to become: the WEINLAND NYE SUPERGROUP (note the caps), purveyor not of reflective folk tunes but of dance jams from the ’70s through today. This year, Weinland will undergo its transformation with a little help from its friends, including Johanna Kunin, aka Bright Archer; Ritchie Young of Loch Lomond; and Dave Depper, whose band Fruit Bats commences the festivities. JONATHAN FROCHTZWAJG. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $16 advance, $18 day of show. 21+.
“MELODY MONSTERS” Alberta Rose Theatre (503) 764-4131 3000 NE Alberta AlbertaRoseTheatre.com
[NEW YEAR’S VEIRS] I’m a little skeptical of the star-studded, quintessential Portland lineup playing such a small venue— but, hey, it’s New Year’s Eve, and rubbing shoulders with strangers in crowds is inevitable. The uncharacteristically high cover charge might thin the herd a bit. Laura Veirs recently released her
eighth album, Tumble Bee, a compilation of American folk songs for children that’s received quite a bit of adult attention, too. But tonight she’s bringing the fourth annual Two Beers Veirs NYE celebration at LaurelThirst. Singing alongside Veirs ’til it’s 2012 are guests Black Prairie, the side band of Decemberists and Dolorean members; Ritchie Young of Loch Lomond; Israel Nebeker of Blind Pilot; and Sallie Ford. EMILEE BOOHER. LaurelThirst, 2958 NE Glisan St., 232-1504. 9 pm. $25. 21+.
Talkdemonic, Deelay Ceelay, Brainstorm, DJ Freaky Outty
[EPIC INSTRUMENTALS] It’s been a big year for Talkdemonic. Bandmates Kevin O’Connor and Lisa Molinaro both quit their jobs to focus on music; signed with Isaac Brock’s label, Glacial Pace Recordings; released their fourth album, Ruins; and recently wrapped up a tour with the Flaming Lips. The duo is changing things up musically as well by boosting Molinaro’s electric viola and laying more synth than banjo over its looping drumbeats. Talkdemonic has plenty to look forward to, but for now the band is ending its busy year with a show featuring local outfits Deelay Ceelay and Brainstorm, plus a soul set by DJ Freaky Outty. EMILEE BOOHER. Mission Theater, 1624 NW Glisan St., 223-4527. 9 pm. $16 advance, $18 day of show. 21+.
Nurses, Radiation City, Wild Ones, DJ Beyonda
See Nurses and Radiation City in Casey Jarman’s year-end music feature, page 25. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 9 pm. $17. 21+.
Tragedy, Night Nurse
[END OF DAYS] Tragedy’s despairing D-beat seems a rather inauspicious soundtrack for tacking a new calendar to the wall, but considering 2012 is going to be a year of apocalyptic daydreaming, it makes perfect sense. Those crossing their filthy fingers for a grand tailspin would do well to watch the balloons drop with Portland’s kings of eschatological crust for a hint of what’s in store come next December: depredation, shame, terror and suffering. Or maybe the apocalypse will actually be a barely perceptible shift in consciousness that renders us all infinitely blissed out. Ha! Nope. Just pain and death. Listen and learn. CHRIS STAMM. Plan B, 1305 SE 8th Ave., 230-9020. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
Leftover Salmon, Elephant Revival
[JAM FOLK NEW YEAR’S] For the past couple of years, my wife and I have stayed home on New Year’s Eve, pulling out a bottle of Champagne and watching MST3K episodes. What could pull me off the couch this year is the thought of dancing my way to 2012 to some funked-up, jam-band bluegrass by way of Leftover Salmon. Even more tempting is the prospect of catching the unheralded
SATURDAY-TUESDAY Colorado act Elephant Revival. The group overcomes its cumbersome moniker by finding a strange and vibrant common ground where Celtic folk, bluegrass, psychedelia and reggae meet and share a stiff drink. ROBERT HAM. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 224-2038. 8:30 pm. $40. 21+.
The Caleb Klauder Country Band, The Foghorn Stringband
[HONKY-TONK] We’re fortunate to live in a town where playing for art’s sake is still the norm. That’s always been the case with Northwest native Caleb Klauder, the traditional country songwriter who plays with the straightforward bluegrass charm the title of his most recent record, Western Country, evokes. With Klauder having spent many years commingling with billmates the Foghorn String Band, one should plan for a larger than normal sound—a crosspollination of local Americana. You’ll get the highs of Stephen Lind’s fiddle and the lows of Paul Brainard’s steel, all with the cozy guidance of Klauder’s scratchy voice…and maybe a shot of whiskey. MARK STOCK. Spare Room, 4830 NE 42nd Ave., 503-287-5800. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
New Year’s Eve Ball with DJ Cooky Parker
[MUSIC HISTORY LESSON] DJ Cooky Parker has a pretty extensive 45 collection, and he’ll be pulling from it tonight to craft a five-hour set tracing 50 years of
MUSIC The Giant After Holiday Sale!
pop-music history. That’s right, Parker will start out spinning soul jams from 1961 and slowly work his way into the ’80s (if our calculations are correct, the ball should drop somewhere between Prince and MJ jams). It’s an ambitious set, and a great chance to enjoy one of Portland’s friendliest and coolest venues, the Woods, before its likely closure in early January. CASEY JARMAN. The Woods, 6637 SE Milwaukie Ave., 890-0408. 8 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
DATES HERE
December 28th - January 31st SAVE 20% OFF ALL SONY TITLES BY THESE ARTISTS
Typhoon, Tu Fawning, Brainstorm (scoring The Cassandra Cat live)
ALBUM REVIEW
DUO DENIM HEAT ROCKS VOL. 1 (SELF-RELEASED)
BOB DYLAN
ON SALE $8.99 CD
ON SALE $8.99 CD
JOHNNY CASH
LEONARD COHEN
ON SALE $6.99 CD
ON SALE $6.99 CD
HIGHWAY TO HELL
TUESDAY, JAN. 3 [PICTURES WITH SOUND] The Fin de Cinema series at Holocene, which brings in a wide, stylistic variety of local bands to provide scores for classic arthouse movies, has often been one of the venue’s more ambitious ventures. But there’s something about this latest installment that seems even more daring than usual. Not only because of the choice of film—the 1963 Czech allegory known as The Cassandra Cat—but also the catholic choice of bands, including a stripped-down version of floorshaking pop group Typhoon, offkilter jazzy pop act Tu Fawning, and African-inspired groove gymnasts Brainstorm. ROBERT HAM. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 8:30 pm. $6. 21+.
AC/DC
BLONDE ON BLONDE
AT FOLSOM PRISON
AC/DC AEROSMITH ALICE IN CHAINS JEFF BECK HERB ALPERT BLACK CROWES DAVE BRUBECK JEFF BUCKLEY BYRDS JOHNNY CASH
CLASH LEONARD COHEN MILES DAVIS BOB DYLAN EARTH WIND & FIRE JEFFERSON AIRPLANE JUDAS PRIEST CAROLE KING KINGS OF LEON LOVIN’ SPOONFUL
SONGS FROM A ROOM
MODEST MOUSE HARRY NILSSON OZZY OSBOURNE ALAN PARSONS RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE LOU REED MARTY ROBBINS RONETTES SADE
SANTANA SIMON & GARFUNKEL PAUL SIMON SLAYER SLY & THE FAMILY STONE PATTI SMITH SOCIAL DISTORTION JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN TOOL PETER TOSH TRIBE CALLED QUEST JIMMIE VAUGHAN STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN MUDDY WATERS BILL WITHERS WU-TANG CLAN
OFFER GOOD THRU: 1/31/12
[MINIMAL ELECTRO-FUNK] When you get two musicians as talented as keyboardist Ben Darwish (Commotion, Ben Darwish Trio, recently christened Shook Twins collaboration DSTNT VNTRS) and drummer Drew Shoals (Dan Balmer, Tony Furtado) together, the temptation is for them to show off to one another. Which is why their debut as Duo Denim surprises: Beautifully played, to be sure, the Heat Rocks Vol. 1 EP is far more interested in clean instrumental songwriting and melodic clarity than it is in showing off. Maybe it’s the intimate nature of the combo that keeps them in line: After all, elongated solos from either player (there are no solos taken on the five-song EP) would just seem a little bit indulgent. So instead, Darwish and Shoals focus on making atmospheric, genreless tunes that feel inspired by vintage funk, ’70s soundtracks, math rock and video games. What do you call this stuff? I don’t know. Each song is its own little universe. But each song works. “Purple Drank” is almost as gangsta as it sounds, a vaguely threatening and decidedly West Coast hip-hop instrumental that occasionally breaks into a dirty funk groove. “Let It Pass” has the bounce-along vibe and melodic simplicity of Vince Guaraldi’s Charlie Brown tunes, with Shoals’ drumming ever on the edge of explosion. “Don’t Say Namaste” is soulful but distant—it feels like an elegy for someone the duo respected but never actually met, and it’s the loosest, most rocking song in the collection. But it’s closers “Spud Webb” and “P-Town Rivals” that get really interesting, if only because the songs seem more a product of Portland’s indie-rock scene than something two jazzbred players would dream up. Both tunes retain a dose of swing, but Starfucker fans could make perfect sense of this stuff. Hell, Starfucker fans could even dance to it. So where does Duo Denim fit into the Portland music scene? Eh, just file it in the “great music” category. CASEY JARMAN. SEE IT: Duo Denim plays Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., on Thursday, Dec. 29, with Reva DeVito and Luck-One. 8:30 pm. $8. 21+. Get the EP for free at duodenim.bandcamp.com.
Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
31
The Giant After Holiday Sale! December 28th - January 31st SAVE 20% OFF ALL UMGD TITLES BY THESE ARTISTS ON SALE $7.99 CD
ON SALE $11.99 CD
JOHN HIATT
BOB MARLEY
BRING THE FAMILY
TRAFFIC
PARLIAMENT
TOM WAITS
RAIN DOGS
JOE COCKER COMMODORES SAM COOKE ELVIS COSTELLO CREAM CREEDENCE CLEARWATER DEF LEPPARD DEREK & THE DOMINOS STEVE EARLE
FLYING BURRITO BROTHERS MARVIN GAYE GUNS ‘N’ ROSES JOHN HIATT HOWLIN’ WOLF HUMBLE PIE JAMES GANG ELTON JOHN JACK JOHNSON
MOTORHEAD ACE OF SPADES
ON SALE $11.99 CD
ON SALE $7.99 CD
MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION
ON SALE $9.99 CD
TRAFFIC
AND THE WAILERS – LEGEND
ON SALE $4.79 CD
RYAN ADAMS ALLMAN BROTHERS ANIMALS JOAN BAEZ BLIND FAITH JAMES BROWN JIMMY BUFFETT CAMEO ERIC CLAPTON PATSY CLINE
ON SALE $7.99 CD
ON SALE $7.99 CD
VAN MORRISON TUPELO HONEY
KINKS KISS MOODY BLUES MOTORHEAD NINE INCH NAILS NIRVANA OHIO PLAYERS TOM PETTY POLICE PORTISHEAD
GRACE POTTER PRIMUS QUEEN QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE R.E.M. ROLLING STONES RUNAWAYS RUSH SCORPIONS ELLIOTT SMITH
URIAH HEEP
DEMONS & WIZARDS
SONIC YOUTH SOUNDGARDEN STEELY DAN CAT STEVENS SUBLIME SUPERTRAMP TEMPTATIONS THIN LIZZY TV ON THE RADIO U2
VELVET UNDERGROUND MUDDY WATERS THE WHO HANK WILLIAMS, SR. LUCINDA WILLIAMS WISHBONE ASH STEVIE WONDER & MANY MANY MORE!
OFFER GOOD THRU: 1/31/12
The Giant After Holiday Sale! December 28th - January 31st SAVE 20% OFF ALL EMD TITLES BY THESE ARTISTS
LIVE MUSIC FULL BAR FOOD FUN
Friday December 30th
The Ocular Concern Trio Subtonic
Saturday December 31st
THE BEATLES RUBBER SOUL
ON SALE $13.99 CD
TEN YEARS AFTER SPACE IN TIME
ON SALE $7.99 CD APRIL WINE BADFINGER JOAN BAEZ CHET BAKER THE BAND SYD BARRETT BE BOP DELUXE BEACH BOYS BEASTIE BOYS BEATLES PAT BENATAR ART BLAKEY
JOHN COLTRANE BLUE TRAIN
ON SALE $7.99 CD
THE BEACH BOYS SMILE SESSIONS ON SALE $27.99 2CD
$131.99 DELUXE BOX SET • LP ALSO AVAILABLE
BLONDIE DAVID BOWIE BUZZCOCKS GLEN CAMPBELL CAN CANNED HEAT ROSANNE CASH NICK CAVE JOHN COLTRANE COUNTRY JOE & THE FISH DAFT PUNK MILES DAVIS
DURAN DURAN BRIAN ENO PETER GABRIEL GENTLE GIANT DEXTER GORDON GRAND FUNK RAILROAD GRANT GREEN MERLE HAGGARD BEN HARPER GEORGE HARRISON HEART BILLY IDOL
JETHRO TULL
PINK FLOYD
ON SALE $19.99 2CD
ON SALE $23.99 2CD
AQUALUNG: 40TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL EDITION DARK SIDE OF THE MOON – EXPERIENCE EDITION
SMASHING PUMPKINS GISH
ON SALE $10.99 CD $27.99 2CD/DVD • LP ALSO AVAILABLE
WANDA JACKSON JETHRO TULL JUNIP FREDDIE KING KRAFTWERK LCD SOUNDSYSTEM AMOS LEE JOHN LENNON GORDON LIGHTFOOT MASSIVE ATTACK MAZZY STAR STEVE MILLER BAND
LP ALSO AVAILABLE
FRANK SINATRA
THE BEST OF THE CAPITOL YEARS
ON SALE $9.99 CD
MISSION S/T RICK NELSON NITTY GRITTY DIRT BAND EDITH PIAF PINK FLOYD QUICKSILVER RADIOHEAD BONNIE RAITT JOHNNY RIVERS ROXY MUSIC LEON RUSSELL BOB SEGER
WAYNE SHORTER FRANK SINATRA SMASHING PUMPKINS JIMMY SMITH JOSS STONE TEN YEARS AFTER GEORGE THOROGOOD ROBIN TROWER UFO VENTURES BOBBY WOMACK
OFFER GOOD THRU: 1/31/12
32
Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
New Year’s Eve • 9pm HITSVILLE: PDX - NYE CELEBRATION
w/Tahoe Jackson & Philly’s Phunkestra + Guests $10
every mon: Renato Caranto Project 8pm every tues: Pagen Jug Band 6:30pm every weds: Arabesque & Belly Dance 8pm every thurs: Alan Jones JAM 8pm Now serving home made NY pizza!
MUSIC 7 NIGHTS A WEEK
Portland’s best happy hour 5pm—7pm Daily and All Day Sunday
3341 SE Belmont thebluemonk.com 503-595-0575
MUSIC CALENDAR Phantasmagoria
= 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.
Afrique Bistro
102 NE Russell St. The Javier Nero Quintet
Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. On the Stairs
Alberta Rose Theatre 3000 NE Alberta St. The Bobs
Alberta Street Public House
Buffalo Gap Saloon
6835 SW Macadam Ave. Buffalo Bandstand
Camellia Lounge 510 NW 11th Ave. Open Jazz Jam
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Oh Darling, We Are Not Shadows, Adventure Galley
Duff’s Garage
1036 NE Alberta St. Open Mic
1635 SE 7th Ave. Suburban Slim’s Blues Jam (9:30 pm); High Flyer Trio (6 pm)
Andina
Ella Street Social Club
1314 NW Glisan St. Toshi Onizuka
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. AlbinoGorilla, Clodewerks, How to Build a Fire
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Lowell J. Mitchell
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. Mary Flower
714 SW 20th Place Towering Trees
Goodfoot Lounge 2845 SE Stark St. Moon by You, The Vernons
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Top-Hat Confederacy, Master Sultan, Stone Boats, The Big Sleep
Ivories Jazz Lounge and Restaurant 1435 NW Flanders St.
The Blue Diamond
2016 NE Sandy Blvd. The Fenix Project Jam Session
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar 1001 SW Broadway Bre Gregg
For more listings, check out wweek.com.
WED. DEC. 28
[DEC. 28-JAN. 3]
Farnell Newton Group (Freddie Hubbard tribute)
Jade Lounge
2346 SE Ankeny St. David Walker
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown Quartet
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. Cary Novotny
Kelly’s Olympian
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Billy D & the HooDoos
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. The Free Theater
O’Connors
7850 SW Capitol Highway Kit Garoutte
426 SW Washington St. Edge of Land, Mark MacMinn, The Seaport Beat
Palace of Industry
LaurelThirst
2621 SE Clinton St. Swing Papillon
2958 NE Glisan St. Lynn Conover & Little Sue (9 pm); Michael Hurley & the Croakers (6 pm)
Lents Commons
9201 SE Foster Road Open Mic
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Michelle Van Kleef
5426 N Gay Ave. Flat Rock String Band
Press Club
Red Lion on the River 909 N Hayden Island Drive John Mark McMillan, The Neverclaim, Taylor Reavely
Red and Black Cafe
400 SE 12th Ave. Music for the Working Class
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave.
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Hollywood Tans, Welsh Bowmen, DJ Ken Dirtnap
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. PDX Singer-Songwriter winners with Suzanne Tufan and the Tummybuckles
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Bo Ayars
Touché Restaurant and Billiards
Wilfs Restaurant and Bar 800 NW 6th Ave. Ron Steen Trio with Nancy Curtin
Yukon Tavern
5819 SE Milwaukie Ave. Open Mic
THURS. DEC. 29 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. On the Stairs
Alberta Rose Theatre 3000 NE Alberta St. Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons, Black Prairie
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Yet Cut Breath
1425 NW Glisan St. Nancy King with Steve Christofferson
Andina
Trail’s End Saloon
Andrea’s Cha Cha Club
1320 Main St., Oregon City Danny O’Brien & Ken Brewer
Vie de Boheme 1530 SE 7th Ave. Jay Koder
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Redwood Son
1314 NW Glisan St. Tracy Kim Trio 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.
Ngalula Dodier, Salary, Leek & Yung HD, Jlew, Thief Scarfico, Yung Mook, Portland George, Black Rose, Black Bizness, The Real J-ROCC, The Krisis
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St. Open Bluegrass Jam
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. John “JB” Butler & Al Craido
Buffalo Gap Saloon
6835 SW Macadam Ave. Acoustic Minds
Camellia Lounge 510 NW 11th Ave. Randy Porter, Tree Palmedo
Chapel Pub
430 N Killingsworth St. Steve Kerin
Clyde’s Prime Rib
5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Mesi & Bradley
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. The Lower 48, Future Historians, Great Wilderness
Duff’s Garage
Ford Food and Drink 2505 SE 11th Ave. Jenn Rawling, Basho Parks
Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. Brad Parsons, The Jay Cobb Anderson Band, The Simon Tucker Group
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Call Us Forgotten, We Rise the Tides, Fear the Slaughter, Bury Your Horses, How the West Was Won
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Duo Denim, Reva Devito, Luck-One
Ivories Jazz Lounge and Restaurant
1435 NW Flanders St. Jim Templeton with Chris Gabriel (8:30 pm); Laura Cunard (5:30 pm)
Jade Lounge
2346 SE Ankeny St. Justin Rayfield
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown B3 Organ Band
1635 SE 7th Ave. Johnny Payola’s Hayride (9 pm); Tough Love Pyle (6 pm)
Kells
Ella Street Social Club
426 SW Washington St.
714 SW 20th Place Gay Ghost, Pheasant
112 SW 2nd Ave. Cary Novotny
Kelly’s Olympian
CONT. on page 34
RINGING IN THE APOCALYPSE: Talkdemonic plays the Mission Theater on Saturday. Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
33
MUSIC
CALENDAR
BAR SPOTLIGHT ROSNAPS.COM
Ramble On (Led Zeppelin tribute), Morgan Grace, Ants in the Kitchen
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Get Rhythm (9 pm); Honey and the Hamdogs (6 pm)
East Burn
1800 E Burnside St. Boy and Bean
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. Throat Blower, Candle Massacre, Shroud of the Heretic, Cron, Night Nurse, DJ Smooth Hopperator
Ella Street Social Club 714 SW 20th Place Seizure, Neill Von Talley
Ford Food and Drink 2505 SE 11th Ave. Jason Okamoto
Hawthorne Theatre
MEAT IN THE MOUNTAINS: For those of us generally stuck commuting between Portland’s inner East and West sides, a trip through the woods of Southwest Portland to the Sylvan Steakhouse and Saloon (5515 SW Canyon Court, 297-5568, sylvansteakhouse.com) feels like an international vacation. Sylvan looks like an oversized German cottage from the outside, and depending on which of its three main rooms you’re in, the place can feel like a cozy Irish pub, a family-style Mexican joint or a Denny’s. Really, though, it’s all-American. There’s a surprisingly good live music schedule (including the long-running Ron Steen Jam on Mondays), and the menu errs on the hearty side with the titular steaks, plus nachos and excellent sweet potato tots ($5.95 with chipotle ketchup). Special libations like the candy-sweet raspberry lemondrop ($7) are nice enough, but those anytime $2.50 micro pints are hard to beat. Just bring a designated driver, because it’s probably a long way home. CASEY JARMAN.
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Idiot Science (Incubus tribute), Sweat (Tool tribute), Mohawk Yard (Dave Grohl tribute)
Ivories Jazz Lounge and Restaurant
1435 NW Flanders St. Templeton Trio with Shirley Nanette (8:30 pm); Kerry Politzer (5:30 pm)
Jade Lounge
2346 SE Ankeny St. Justin Lantrip with The Shook Twins
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Linda Hornbuckle Band
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. The Chancers
Kelly’s Olympian Duover, Mike Coykendall, Highway Acoustic
Kennedy School
5736 NE 33rd Ave. Brad Creel & the Reel Deel (kids’ show)
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Billy Kennedy/Dan Haley Band (9:30 pm); Lewi Longmire Band (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Jon Koonce
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
Sellwood Public House 8132 SE 13th Ave. Open Mic
Slim’s Cocktail Bar 8635 N Lombard St. Jobo Shakins
The Blue Diamond
2016 NE Sandy Blvd. Tom Grant Jazz Jam Session
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Alan Jones Open Jam
The Source
12120 SW Garden Place, Tigard Medicine for the People
On the Stairs
Alberta Rose Theatre 3000 NE Alberta St. Storm Large, Holcombe Waller
Alberta Street Public House
1036 NE Alberta St. Lone Madrone, Spitzer Space Telescope, Anodyne Gearheart (9:30 pm); Mikey’s Irish Jam (6:30 pm)
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Danny Romero Trio
Artichoke Community Music
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Jack McMahon Trio
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway Karaoke from Hell
3130A SE Hawthorne Blvd. Friday Night Coffeehouse
Mississippi Pizza
Tonic Lounge
Ash Street Saloon
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Sarah Gwen Peters & Scott Weddle, Mike Midlo (9 pm); The New Five Cents, The Macrae Sisters (6 pm)
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Star Anna & The Laughing Dogs, Kasey Anderson & The Honkies
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Jerry Zybach
O’Connor’s Vault
7850 SW Capitol Highway Kathy James Quintet
Original Halibut’s II 2527 NE Alberta St. Terry Robb
Peter’s Room
8 NW 6th Ave. Sir Michael Rocks (of the Cool Kids), Logics, Jay Kin, Blaze
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Blood Owl, Blue Iris
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Diamond Catalog, Cutter Filtoff, Black with Ants, Daddy Longlegs & the Poisonous Spiders
Tony Starlight’s
34
Backspace
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Lisa Forkish
115 NW 5th Ave. School of Rock Holiday Punk-Rock Showcase
Touché Restaurant and Billiards
Biddy McGraw’s
1425 NW Glisan St. Rebecca Kilgore, Dave Frishberg
6000 NE Glisan St. Jimmy Boyer Band (9:30 pm); Billy Kennedy & Jim Boyer (6 pm)
Trail’s End Saloon
Bipartisan Cafe
1320 Main St., Oregon City Rae Gordon
Vancouver Brickhouse 109 W 15th St., Vancouver, Wash. Jerome Kessinger
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St. Garcia Birthday Band (8:30 pm); Will West & Tanner Cundy (5:30 pm)
Wilfs Restaurant and Bar 800 NW 6th Ave. Greg Goebel Trio
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Dead Remedy, Stepper, Manx, Working Class Zeroes
225 SW Ash St. Stone the Murder, Pinkzilla, A((wake)), A Blinding Silence
FRI. DEC. 30 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave.
Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
7901 SE Stark St. Whiskey Puppy
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. Al Craido & Tablao
Buffalo Gap Saloon
6835 SW Macadam Ave. The Sale, Will West
Camellia Lounge
510 NW 11th Ave. The Disappointments
Clyde’s Prime Rib
5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Randy Star Band
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St. Floater, The Days the Nights, Slow Children
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St.
426 SW Washington St. Log Across the Washer, The We Shared Milk, Weather Exposed, Pedal Home
Kenton Club
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Chase the Shakes, Hepsi, Mouthwash Enema, Mr. Plow, Ramblin’ Rod’s Bastard Children
Roseland Theater
Biddy McGraw’s
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
Someday Lounge
Brasserie Montmartre
125 NW 5th Ave. Starlight & Magic, DJ Roane, The Verner Pantons, The Hugs
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave. DC Malone & The Jones
Ted’s (at Berbati’s)
231 SW Ankeny St. Good Year, Ninjas with Syringes
The Blue Diamond
2016 NE Sandy Blvd. The Shoehorn Trio
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. The Ocular Concern, Trio Subtonic
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar 1001 SW Broadway Johnny Martin
The Know
2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale John Bunzow
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. Sugarcookie
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway Deathtrap America, Truth Vibrations 3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Kopath Bear, Sioux Falls
Tony Starlight’s
Touché Restaurant and Billiards 1425 NW Glisan St. Richard Arnold Quartet
Trail’s End Saloon 1320 Main St., Oregon City Return Flight
White Eagle Saloon
Wilfs Restaurant & Bar
Mock Crest Tavern 3435 N Lombard St. The Adequates
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Terry Robb & Lauren Sheehan
Noho’s Hawaiian Cafe 4627 NE Fremont St. Traditional Hawaiian Music
Original Halibut’s II 2527 NE Alberta St. Lloyd Jones
Peter’s Room 8 NW 6th Ave. Sugarcane
Press Club
2621 SE Clinton St. The Pete Krebs Swing Trio
Buffalo Gap Saloon
6835 SW Macadam Ave. Redcast, Sarah Billings
800 NW 6th Ave. Tony Pacini Trio
3 Doors Down
1429 SE 37th Ave. Dennis Hitchcox
Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. On the Stairs
Alberta Rose Theatre
3000 NE Alberta St. Storm Large, Holcombe Waller (7:30 and 10 pm)
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Dim Peepers, The Nutmeggers
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Tracy Kim, Toshi Onizuka Trio
Andrea’s Cha Cha Club 832 SE Grand Ave. Pilon D’Azucar Salsa Band
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St.
Mission Theater
1624 NW Glisan St. Talkdemonic, Deelay Ceelay, Brainstorm, DJ Freaky Outty
Mississippi Pizza
Camellia Lounge
Clyde’s Prime Rib
Mississippi Studios
510 NW 11th Ave. Lew Jones
5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Cool Breeze
Crystal Ballroom
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Nurses, Radiation City, Wild Ones, DJ Beyonda
1332 W Burnside St. Reverend Horton Heat, Supersuckers, The Suicide Notes
Mock Crest Tavern
Dante’s
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Mars Retrieval Unit, Excellent Gentlemen, Garcia Birthday Band
350 W Burnside St. Jerry Joseph & The Jackmormons, I Can Lick Any SOB in the House 736 SE Grand Ave. Artifice, Purple ‘N’ Green
Doug Fir Lounge
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. The Buckles, The Sentimental Gentlemen
Eagles Lodge, Southeast
3435 N Lombard St. NoPo Mojo
Mount Tabor Theater
Noho’s Hawaiian Cafe 4627 NE Fremont St. Traditional Hawaiian Music
Original Halibut’s II 2527 NE Alberta St. Jim Wallace
Peter’s Room 8 NW 6th Ave. Fruition
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Tragedy, Night Nurse
Press Club
4904 SE Hawthorne Blvd. New Iberians Zydeco Blues Band
2621 SE Clinton St. Swing Papillon
Goodfoot Lounge
2530 NE 82nd Ave. The Mentors, Nemesis, American Roulette, Nekro Drunkz, Grim Ritual, Bulletwurm, Bunk Dope
2845 SE Stark St. The Scott Pemberton Superband, Soul Stew DJs
Holocene
Red Room
Refuge
Contigo, Melao de Cuba, The Shanghai Woolies, DJ Shadow, DJ Flak
Ted’s (at Berbati’s)
231 SW Ankeny St. The Chicharones, The Doo Doo Funk All-Stars
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Tahoe Jackson, Philly’s Phunkestra
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. Brian Odell, DJ Soul Shaker
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway Thunderstruck (AC/DC tribute), Ace of Spades
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. The Band Who Fell to Earth, Mosby
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Tony’s AM Gold Seventies Soft Rock Show (10:30 pm and 8 pm)
Touché Restaurant and Billiards 1425 NW Glisan St. Kelley Shannon
Trail’s End Saloon
1320 Main St., Oregon City The Rae Gordon Band
Vie de Boheme 1530 SE 7th Ave. Sultans of Slide
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St. The Parson Redheads, Welfare, Jacob Arnold (performing the Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night; 9:30 pm); The Student Loan (4:30 pm)
Wilfs Restaurant & Bar 800 NW 6th Ave. Ron Steen Trio with Rebecca Kilgore
SUN. JAN. 1 Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. The Hunt, Flat Black Tomato
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Kingnik and Bad Music
1001 SE Morrison St. The Miracles Club, Sex Life, Ancient Heat, Sun Angle, Palmas, DJ Copy, DJ Snakks, DJ Hostile Tapeover
116 SE Yamhill St. Tipper, Rigzin, Dubtribe, Heyoka, Vagabond Opera, Kaminanda, Solovox, Manoj, E3
Ella Street Social Club
Ivories Jazz Lounge and Restaurant
Roseland Theater 8 NW 6th Ave. Leftover Salmon, Elephant Revival
2958 NE Glisan St. Freak Mountain Ramblers
1435 NW Flanders St. The Chuck Israels Jazz Orchestra (9:30 pm); Jim Templeton, Carey Campbell (6:30 pm)
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. Soul Vaccination (10 pm and 7:30 pm)
Katie O’ Brien’s
SAT. DEC. 31
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Old Elbows
3552 N Mississippi Ave. The Jim Jams (10 pm); Mr. Ben & His Band (5 pm)
830 E Burnside St. Weinland NYE Supergroup, The Fruit Bats
421 SE Grand Ave. Golden Gardens, DJ Horrid, DJ Frank
Mississippi Pizza
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Jerry Joseph & The Jackmormons, The Minus 5
626 SW Park Ave. Mary Flower Band (10 pm); Al Craido & Tablao (6 pm)
The Lovecraft
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Puddletown Ramblers
Mississippi Studios
6000 NE Glisan St. Funk Shui (9:30 pm); Twisted Whistle (6 pm)
Dig-A-Pony
836 N Russell St. The Defendants, Three Finger Jack (9:30 pm); Reverb Brothers (5:30 pm)
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Ruby Pines (9 pm); Cary Samsel Band (6 pm)
2201 N Killingsworth St. Robbie Laws, Facho
2026 NE Alberta St. Squalora, Age of Collapse, Order of the Gash
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. The Best of the Tony Starlight Show
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
315 SE 3rd Ave. Motorthrone, Sarcalogos, Aethyrium, Ritual Healing, Tanagra
Rotture
LaurelThirst
9201 SE Foster Road Will Coca
115 NW 5th Ave. The Reservations, Big Black Cloud, Hollywood Tans, New York Rifles, Red Ships of Spain
1967 W Burnside St. The Satin Chaps, DJ Drew Groove
Beaterville Cafe
8 NW 6th Ave. Leftover Salmon, Cracker, Poor Man’s Whiskey
Tonic Lounge
Lents Commons
Backspace
Matador
2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Billy D. & the HooDoos, The Quick & Easy Boys, Sonny Hess Band
2025 N Kilpatrick St. Fruit of the Legion of Loom, Bad Move, Turbo Perfecto 2958 NE Glisan St. Twisted Whistle (9:30 pm); Tree Frogs (6 pm)
Pierced Arrows, Iron Lords, The Bloodtypes
2809 NE Sandy Blvd. The Hot LZs, Pitchfork Motorway, Muddy River Nightmare Band
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. The Chancers
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. VTRN, Water & Bodies, White Orange, Serious Business
Kennedy School
5736 NE 33rd Ave. The Radical Revolution, Freak Mountain Ramblers
Kenton Club
2025 N Kilpatrick St. And And And, Blood Beach, This Charming Man
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Laura Veirs; Black Prairie; members of Loch Lomond, Viva Voce and Blind Pilot
Rotture
315 SE 3rd Ave. Addison Groove, Starslinger, Sepalcure, Machinedrum, Salva, Danny Corn, Tyler Tastemaker, Natasha Kmeto, Ghost Feet, DJAO, Citymouth, Brown Bear Live Band, Timeboy
Secret Society Lounge 116 NE Russell St. The Saloon Ensemble, The Ukeladies
Slim’s Cocktail Bar
8635 N Lombard St. My Autumn’s Done Come, Dirty Words, Held Up Hands, Birth Right
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave. The Winebirds, Tango Alpha Tango, DJ Pharo
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave. The Caleb Klauder Country Band, The Foghorn Stringband
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. Chemicals, Therapists
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave. Red Fang, Rabbits, Lord Dying
T-A Event Center
300 NE Multnomah St.
714 SW 20th Place Erik Gage, Skrill Meadow, Penny Dreadfuls
LaurelThirst
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Lynn Conover & John Mitchell
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Hanz Araki & Kathryn Claire
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Irish Music
NEPO 42
5403 NE 42nd Ave. Open Mic
Slim’s Cocktail Bar 8635 N Lombard St. Suburban Slim
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St. Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons, JR Ruppel, Steve Drizos, Jenny Conlee-Drizos, Walter Salas-Humara
MON. JAN. 2 Alberta Street Public House
1036 NE Alberta St. Harmed Brothers, Calamity Cube (9:30 pm); Willy Tea Taylor, Tom VandenAvond (6:30 pm)
CALENDAR Ash Street Saloon
Lloyd Jones
225 SW Ash St. Open Mic with DJ Streetz
Music Millennium
Backspace
Tiger Bar
115 NW 5th Ave. Battery-Powered Music
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Karaoke from Hell
Ella Street Social Club 714 SW 20th Place Feeding Frenzy, Brandon Reid
Goodfoot Lounge 2845 SE Stark St. Open Mic
Jade Lounge
2346 SE Ankeny St. Elie Charpentier
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. Tom May
Kelly’s Olympian
3158 E Burnside St. Songwriters Circle 317 NW Broadway Metal Monday
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. John Shipe
TUES. JAN. 3 15th Avenue Hophouse
1517 NE Brazee St. Big North Duo
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Justin Stang
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. The Commons, Sioux Falls, Spruce Goose
112 SW 2nd Ave. Tom May
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Caleb Klauder & Sammy Lind
Mock Crest Tavern
3435 N Lombard St. Johnnie Ward & Eagle Ridin’ Papas
Plan B
Thirsty Lion
The Whiskey Bar
2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Skip vonKuske, Will West
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Bob Shoemaker
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Bluegrass Jam, Mr. Ben
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave.
Hawthorne Hophouse 4111 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Jack Dwyer
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge 1503 SE 39th Ave. Whistle Punk!
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Typhoon, Tu Fawning, Brainstorm (scoring The Cassandra Cat live)
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown Septet (8 pm); David Watson (6:30 pm)
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway Sarah Moon & The Night Sky
Twilight Café and Bar 1420 SE Powell Blvd. Open Mic with The Roaming
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar
2929 SE Powell Blvd. Arthur “Fresh Air” Moore Harmonica Party
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Bottlecap Boys
18 NW 3rd Ave. DJ Sethro Tull
125 NW 5th Ave. Mixer: Kai, Spencer D, Scifisol, Selectress Instigatah
232 SW Ankeny St. DJ Tropical Depression
SAT. DEC. 31
2845 SE Stark St. Soul Stew with DJ Aquaman
Beauty Bar
111 SW Ash St. Club Crooks, Doc Adam
Ground Kontrol
18 NW 3rd Ave. Muscle Milk (10 pm); DJ Loyd Depriest (early set)
Someday Lounge
Valentine’s
Goodfoot Lounge
1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Maxamillion
5426 N Gay Ave. DJ Roxie Stardust
18 NW 3rd Ave. DJ Rad
412 NE Beech St. DJ Drew Groove
Tiga
Palace of Industry
Tube
Beech Street Parlor
31 NW 1st Ave. Whiskey Wednesdays: American Girls, One30, Dan Croket, Saint James
THURS. DEC. 29
18 NW 3rd Ave. DJ Neil Blender
111 SW Ash St. Fa$t Life: Danny Merkury, Yo Huckleberry, DJ Shoelace
421 SE Grand Ave. Psychopomp
Tube
Tube
Beauty Bar
511 NW Couch St. DJ Liz B
Holocene
Bossanova Ballroom
1001 SE Morrison St. Girl Trouble: DJs New Moon Poncho, Linoleum, Cuica, Womb Service, Troubled Youth, Doug Ferious (9 pm); Aperitivo Happy Hour with KM Fizzy (5 pm)
Lola’s Room at the Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St. ‘80s Video Dance Attack in Lola’s Room
316 SW 11th Ave. VJ Gigahurtz, DJ TJ, DJ Kennedy
SUN. JAN. 1 Matador
Greeley Avenue Bar & Grill
Groove Suite
1465 NE Prescott St. Beacon Sound
FRI. DEC. 30
Fez Ballroom
The Crown Room
Tiga
1967 W Burnside St. Next Big Thing with DJ Donny Don’t
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Hive with DJ Owen
440 NW Glisan St. DJ HazMatt, Mr. Wu, Sporeganic
The Lovecraft
Ground Kontrol
421 SE Grand Ave. DJ Sandy
Palace of Industry
18 NW 3rd Ave. Honky Tonk with Tennesse Tim
Tanker
Ground Kontrol
4825 SE Hawthorne Blvd. DJ HazMatt, Mikey B
511 NW Couch St. Service Industrial Night with DJ Tibin
The Crown Room
Star Bar
205 NW 4th Ave. DJ Zimmie, The Love Loungers
639 SE Morrison St. Into the Void with DJ Blackhawk
The Lovecraft
The Know
421 SE Grand Ave. DJ Horrid
2026 NE Alberta St. DJ Just Dave
The Whiskey Bar
Tube
Tube
511 NW Couch St. Landau Boyz, DJ Ghostdad 5426 N Gay Ave. DJs Pippa Possible, LankyLad, BangTidy
MON. JAN. 2
18 NW 3rd Ave. DJ Toilet Love
31 NW 1st Ave. Heaven and Hell
The Woods
722 E Burnside St. DJ Anjali & The Incredible Kid
6637 SE Milwaukie Ave. New Year’s Eve Ball with DJ Cooky Parker
East Burn
Tiga
TUES. JAN. 3 The Crown Room
1800 E Burnside St. ‘80s Dance Party: DJs Retrograde, Magnolia Bouvier
1465 NE Prescott St. Count Lips, Champagne Jam, KM Fizzy
East End
18 NW 3rd Ave. DJ Ronin Roc (late set); Saturdazed: DJs GH, Czief Xenith (early set)
203 SE Grand Ave. DJ Gregarious
Ella Street Social Club 714 SW 20th Place
MUSIC
‘80s Video Dance Attack with VJ Kittyrox
639 SE Morrison St. Blank Fridays
31 NW 1st Ave. The Beasts at Night, SPL, Triage, Jaden
232 SW Ankeny St. TLC Country Night
DJs Ikon, Entropy
5421 N Greeley Ave. Eye Candy with VJ Rev. Danny Norton
The Whiskey Bar
Valentine’s
Star Bar
Star Bar
205 NW 4th Ave. Blown: A.K.A., Saltfeend, Bones, D. Poetica
Tube
8635 N Lombard St. DJ AMGold
The Lovecraft
Goodfoot Lounge
1465 NE Prescott St. Sweet Jimmy T
511 NW Couch St. TRONix with Logical Accession
The Lovecraft
LaurelThirst
Tiga
Ground Kontrol
639 SE Morrison St. DJs OverCol, Moderhead
3341 SE Belmont St. Pagan Jug Band
205 NW 4th Ave. Whoo Ha with DJ Wels
203 SE Grand Ave. Last Wednesday on the Left with DJ Dennis Dread
The Blue Monk
927 SE Morrison St. DJ HazMatt
The Crown Room
East End
Slim’s Cocktail Bar
71 SW 2nd Ave. PDX Singer-Songwriter Showcase
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
WED. DEC. 28
1305 SE 8th Ave. Eddie Valiant, Public Drunken Sex, K-Dizzy, Jimmi Stone
421 SE Grand Ave. Tom Waits Night
2845 SE Stark St. Scott PembertonTrio
Sassy’s Bar and Grill
2958 NE Glisan St. Jackstraw
Ella Street Social Club
2958 NE Glisan St. Kung Pao Chickens
1305 SE 8th Ave. Catsup and Musturd DJs
LaurelThirst
426 SW Washington St. Science!, Christopher Worth, Andrew Gorny (9 pm); David Gerow (7 pm)
714 SW 20th Place Year of the Rabbit, Fever, Yet Cut Breath
Plan B
Kells
Tube
Wonder Ballroom
205 NW 4th Ave. See You Next Tuesday: Kellan, Avery
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave. DJ Dirty Red
Yes and No
20 NW 3rd Ave. Idiot Tuesdays with DJ Black Dog
128 NE Russell St.
The Giant After Holiday Sale! December 28th - January 31st
SAVE 20% OFF ALL WARNER/ELEKTRA/ATLANTIC TITLES BY THESE ARTISTS ON SALE $14.99 2CD
ON SALE $9.99 CD
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THE BAND
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THE CARS CHICAGO ERIC CLAPTON JUDY COLLINS RY COODER ALICE COOPER BILL COSBY CROSBY STILLS NASH & YOUNG THE CURE BOBBY DARIN DEAD WEATHER DEEP PURPLE DELANEY & BONNIE IRIS DEMENT
ON SALE $7.99 CD
GRATEFUL DEAD GREEN DAY ARLO GUTHRIE EMMYLOU HARRIS DONNY HATHAWAY IRON BUTTERFLY GEORGE JONES JOY DIVISION ALBERT KING KINKS MARK KNOPFLER
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TOM PETTY
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RUM SODOMY & THE LASH
ON SALE $9.99 CD
JONI MITCHELL
AMERICAN BEAUTY
THE LAST WALTZ
ON SALE $9.99 CD
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LED ZEPPELIN GORDON LIGHTFOOT LITTLE FEAT STEVE MARTIN MELVINS METALLICA JONI MITCHELL MONKEES MONTROSE VAN MORRISON MUSE
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OFFER GOOD THRU: 1/31/12
Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
35
$2 Domestics $2.50 Micros
ALL DaY!
PERFORMANCE
DEC. 28-JAN. 3
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
Sun-Thur
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.
ALL GAMES!
Sexy Talent and Original Music Party NW Music and Fashion Rock, models, beer and more!
Entertainment
COMEDY
JOAN MARCUS
10 Flat Screen TVs
Best of Curious Comedy
Curious Comedy previews its New Year’s Eve extravaganza with a roundup of the high points of its year of stand-up, sketch and improv. Curious Comedy, 5225 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 477-9477. 8 pm Friday, Dec. 30. $12-$15. All ages.
Every Monday 8-11pm
Ron Steen Jam
Curious Comedy New Year’s Eve Extravaganza
Every Friday
Lucas Cozby 6-8 pm
80s Night 9pm - Mid
Mt. Tabor Theater
MAMBO!: West Side Story on tour.
THEATER
Sat. Jan 7th. 8pm
Angels in America: Millennium Approaches
$10 at the door $7 in advance soullaproductions.com
5515 SW Canyon Court 503-297-5568 www.sylvansteakhouse.com
BEAR & MOOSE
WEDNESDAY 1/4 @ 6PM
Bear & Moose is guitarist, singer and songwriter Eric Mueller and drummer/percussionist Simon Lucas, who also contributes backing vocals. Bear & Moose has been playing together for two years and has made a name for themselves with their high energy, indefatigable shows. Bear & Moose has captured the power of their live show on ‘Bear/Moose,’ their aptly named double album debut.
4 DAYS LEFT!!
GET YOUR FREE COUPON BOOK NOW THRU DECEMBER 31st
PACKED FULL WITH
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INCLUDING A FREE SODA (No Purchase Necessary)
COMING SOON THROWBACK SUBURBIA SATURDAY 1/14 @ 3PM THE CRESCENDO SHOW SUNDAY 1/15 @ 5PM JACKSTRAW WEDNESDAY 1/18 @ 6PM LAURA GIBSON THURSDAY 2/2 @ 6PM
HAVE A SAFE & HAPPY NEW YEAR
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 are 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’s and a grin like Jimmy Stewart’s, 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 nearfatal, and Harder makes us feel his anguish. BEN WATERHOUSE. World Trade Center Theater, 121 SW Salmon St., 205-0715. 7:30 pm ThursdaySaturday, Dec. 29-31. $15-$32.
Cavalia
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.” In one of the most touching acts, a trainer coaxes six loosely running horses into a perfect concentric trot around her and, with the slightest change in her body, the steeds simultaneously turn the other direction as if all seven figures are one breathing, moving entity. EMILEE BOOHER. Cavalia Big-top, Northwest 12th Avenue and Pettygrove Street, 866999-8111. 8 pm Dec. 28 and 30; 3 pm Dec. 29 and 31 and Jan. 2. $24.50$189.50. All ages.
Hamlet
Northwest Classical Theatre gets rotten in Denmark for the third time
36
Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
and Biglittlethings, for a tourfriendly bundle of surprising visual delights. This year’s edition features a new piece, “Cats!” Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., 224-8499. 7 pm Wednesday, 2 pm Thursday, 2 and 7 pm Friday, 2 pm Saturday, noon and 3 pm Sunday, Dec. 28-Jan. 1. $16$29. All ages.
since 2003. Shoe Box Theater, 2110 SE 10th Ave., 971-244-3740. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Jan. 22. $18-$20.
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 and 7 pm Wednesday-Friday, 2 pm Sunday, Dec. 28-31. $13-$22. All ages.
The Santaland Diaries
Since debuting on Morning Edition two decades ago, this all-tootrue story of David Sedaris’ stint as an elf at Macy’s has become, at least among the public-radio set, an unlikely Christmas classic—and rightly so. Reporting from the beast’s belly, Sedaris casts his withering gaze upon latter-day Christmas’ commercialism and pageantry while still reminding his audience what the holiday’s really about. With source material this good, it’s hard to go wrong. 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 Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 5 pm Saturday, Dec. 28-31. $25-$51.
The Wizard of Oz
Greg Tamblyn, Portland’s own David Merrick, returns to the Newmark Theatre with a new production starring Erin Charles, Leif Norby (as Scarecrow), Dale Johannes (as Tin Man) and Joe Theissen (as Cowardly Lion). It’s bound to be a big, glitzy show. Newmark Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, pixiedustshows.com. 7:30 pm Dec. 28-30; 2 pm Dec. 31; 4 pm Jan. 1. $15-$55. All ages.
West Side Story
The recent Broadway revival is on tour, and will stop for six days at Keller Auditorium thanks to Fred Meyer Broadway Across America. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 241-1802. 7:30 pm Tuesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday, 1 and 6:30 pm Sunday, Jan. 3-8. $24.50-$86.50.
ZooZoo
Imago pulls together favorite scenes from the company’s two puppet/ pantomime/mask shows, Frogz
Curious Comedy rings in the new year with a highlights show and fundraiser. There will be Champagne, desserts and dancing, along with sketch and stand-up comedy. Curious Comedy, 5225 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 477-9477. 8 pm Saturday, Dec. 31. $45-$50. All ages.
The Ed Forman Show Farewell Week
The Ed Forman Show says farewell to Portland for good—creator Aaron Ross is moving to L.A.—with a fourday block of shows. Wednesday’s guest is TBD, with music by Vursatyl and Lifesavas; Thursday is TBD, too, with music by Boy Meets Drum Machine; and Friday will see “all previous guests” on stage to close the show. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 226-6630. 9 pm Wednesday-Friday, Dec. 28-30. $3-$5. 21+.
Micetro Championship Tournament
Eighteen winners of the Brody Theater’s popular elimination improv competition return to battle for comedy dominance. It’s like Iron Chef with more mime. The secret ingredient: faaart jooookes! Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 8 pm Friday, Dec. 30. $12, $10 students. All ages.
A Very Brody New Year
A New Year’s Eve improv bash at the Brody. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 8 pm Saturday, Dec. 31. $10-$12.
DANCE Ahhh Ha!
A patchwork retrospective of work from Do Jump’s 34 seasons. Echo Theater, 1515 SE 37th Ave., 231-1232. Noon and 4 pm Wednesday, 7:30 pm Thursday, 3 and 7:30 pm Friday, 4 pm Sunday, Dec. 28-30 and Jan. 1. $20-$32. All ages.
CLASSICAL Oregon Renaissance Band
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the 12-plus-member ensemble, which doesn’t perform nearly often enough, will play and sing a wideranging concert of Christmas and New Year’s music from the 16th and 17th centuries. Composers include some of the tuneful and danceable of the age: O’Carolan, Charpentier, Praetorius, Playford, Holborne and Banchieri (his splendid Magnificat). The musicians re-create the sound of the time by playing French, Celtic, English, German, Welsh, Spanish and other music on reproductions— some they made themselves—of piquant historical instruments of the period: cittern, violin, bagpipes, krummhorns, recorders, sackbut and various percussion, creating quite a rackett (ha!). Community Music Center, 3350 SE Francis St., 6312973. 7:30 pm Thursday-Friday, 2 pm Saturday, Dec. 29-31. $10-$12.
For more Performance listings, visit
VISUAL ARTS
DEC. 28-JAN. 3
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. 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: 243-1115. Emailed press releases must be backed up by a faxed or printed copy.
December Group Show
G. Lewis Clevenger’s abstract paintings stand out in Pulliam’s group show. Ever freer and more intuitive, Clevenger’s works are veering further away from his customary grid-based compositions toward something looser and more Stuart Davis-like. Meanwhile, Jeffry Mitchell’s precious elephantinscribed ceramics aim for whimsy but achieve only cheesiness, while Linda Hutchins’ graphite scrawls, more on the mark, have minimalist panache to burn. Finally, Richard Hoyen’s oil paintings of Oregon landmarks distill Oregoniana in grittily picturesque fashion. His depiction of Latourell Falls has a morosity reminiscent of Gus van Sant and Walt Curtis, minus the rough trade and squirting penises. Closes Dec. 30. Pulliam Gallery, 929 NW Flanders St., 228-6665.
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.
Gamic Magic
Like painters Chris Haberman and Jennifer Mercede, Jesse Reno suffers from overexposure, exhibiting so often that his work’s impact can be watered down. But a fresh look at Reno’s work shows that the artist’s high-volume output need not deflate his aesthetic currency. Paintings such as The Horse and the Rider exude a neo-primitivist urgency, while It’s More the Magic Than the Wand shows chromatic sophistication and a gift for imagery melding human, animal and spirit creatures in his part of the Gamic Magic show that also features Theodore Holdt. Closes Dec. 30. Graeter Art Gallery, 131 NW 2nd Ave., 477-6041.
Gang of Four
The underwhelming group show, Gang of Four, includes nebulalike abstract paintings by David Coyne, interlacing geometric etudes by K. Scott Rawls, mixed-media works by Zach Kosta and some truly unfortunate wall reliefs by Emily Kosta that look like maritime-
themed bric-a-brac from a Key Largo souvenir shop. Can you say “tacky”? Closes Jan. 2. galleryHOMELAND @ The Ford Building, 2505 SE 11th Ave., 819-9656.
Jeffrey Conley: Winter
Seasonally themed group shows are overdone, but we must grant an exception to Jeffrey Conley’s Winter. A rhapsody of snow-blanketed tree boughs and frosty cliffsides, the exhibition commemorates the season with fondness but without preciousness. Closes Jan. 14. Charles A. Hartman, 134 NW 8th Ave., 287-3886.
The Horse
After Froelick’s and Butters’ equinethemed 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 six-months-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. 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 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.
For more Visual Arts listings, visit
YEAR-END
10 FAVORITE SHOWS OF 2011 BY R IC HA R D SP E E R
243-2122
Despite the nation’s economic woes, the Portland art scene remained vibrant in 2011. This isn’t a town where artistic health trickles down from wealthy collectors. Rather, it’s a place where challenging work bubbles up from collectives and nonprofits like Disjecta, Rocksbox and Gallery Homeland, which don’t depend on sales. Combine that with a willfully anticommercial DIY streak and a sophisticated array of locally based artists and curators, and you have a motor that drives artistic excellence even during the worst of times. Here are some of the artists and shows that turned our heads in 2011, along with one special request for 2012: For the love of God, no more group shows themed around horses or the Portland Trail Blazers! Are you listening, Froelick, Butters, Land and Compound Galleries? Best show of 2011: Matt McCormick’s elegiac The Great Northwest at Elizabeth Leach retraced a 1958 road trip taken by four young women. In photographs and a digital video installation, McCormick juxtaposed old travel journals with jawdropping shots of Northwest landmarks
as they appear today. With heartbreaking poignance, the show evoked the power of friendship and the unstoppable passage of time. Best painting: For Portland Art Museum’s APEX series, Adam Sorensen created his biggest painting ever: a 7-by-10-foot masterpiece called Tabernacle. In impossibly saturated jewel tones, it presented a landscape resplendent with waterfalls, mountains and rivers that looked more like the stuff of psychedelia or fantasy than reality. Best photography: Brad Carlile’s Tempus Incognitus at the Independent took us on a tour of brightly colored hotel rooms, rendered in eerie long exposures. Best sculpture: Cows licking a sculpture of a woman’s breast? Yep. Malia Jensen sculpted a tit out of salt for Elizabeth Leach’s 30-year anniversary group show, then filmed cows going at it with gusto. Disturbing? Fascinating? Double yep. Best mixed media: Also at Liz Leach, Sean Healy used steel, cigarettes and maple wood to take viewers on a journey back to his childhood in the thoughtful exhibition Upstate. Best work on paper: Kris Hargis’ me and you at Froelick Gallery depicted the haunted faces of U.S. military service members freshly home after tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
BEV, SISSIE AND CLARICE BY MATT MCCORMICK
Best glass: At Bullseye Gallery, Carrie Iverson’s Correspondence led viewers through a powerful abstracted meditation on her father’s memory loss. Best installation: For Collective Object, Christine Clark lined the walls of Nine Gallery with welded wire objects. From one object to the next, the forms shifted shape until they became unrecognizable—a kind of visual reinterpretation of an Exquisite
Corpse game. Best group show: With thoroughness and flair, Bullseye’s Crossover showed how artists transliterate their visions across diverse media. Best museum show: At Portland Art Museum, the Contemporary Northwest Art Awards distilled regional art into a perfect roux, expertly cooked up by curator Bonnie Laing-Malcolmson.
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BOOKS
DEC. 28-JAN. 3
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By MARIANNA HANE WILES. 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.
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Classics Book Group
Oregon Archaeological Society
This month’s title for discussion is Looking Backward: 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy. A 19th-century youth is put into a hypnotic sleep and awakens in the year 2000 in a world without war or crime. (Wouldn’t it have been amazing if we’d accomplished that world a decade ago?) Hopefully the conversation won’t be focused on what could have been. Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., Beaverton, 228-4651. 7 pm. Free.
Geek out about Native American housing at this month’s Oregon Archaeological Society meeting. Noted authority on the lower Columbia River region, Melissa Darby will lecture about Native American architecture of the lower Columbia River, Willamette Valley and Oregon coast. OMSI, 1945 SE Water Ave., 503-727-3507. 7 pm. Free.
The Writing Workout
good about keeping those resolutions for a few more days), join writing coach Christina Katz at the first Willamette Writers meeting of 2012. She’ll detail five writing habits to keep and five to lose in the new year while discussing her book, The Writer’s Workout: 366 Tips, Tasks & Techniques From Your Writing Career Coach. Willamette Writers is the largest organization of writers in the state; members now have access to a dedicated writing house in West Linn, which could be just the thing you need to get that memoir/shortfiction/poetry chapbook finished this year. The Old Church, 1422 SW 11th Ave., 222-2031. 7 pm. Free for members and full-time students; $10 non-members and $5 for guests of members.
For more Words listings, visit
To jump-start your writing habits in the new year (or at least feel
YEAR-END
TOP 10 LOCAL BOOKS FROM 2011 BY MA R IA N N A HA N E WILE S
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The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch [Memoir] Chuck Palahniuk has read this book a dozen times, which should be enough of a recommendation for many Portlanders. For the rest of us, it’s said to be a heart-searing memoir by a swimmer and writer who narrates a lifetime of challenges with beautiful poise and prose.
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The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt [Fiction] A comic Western set in the 1850s, deWitt’s novel tells the story of brothers Charlie and Eli Sisters, hired thugs heading from Oregon City to California on a murderous mission. Based on so many strong recommendations, there might be multiple copies waiting under my Christmas tree. A Simple Machine, Like the Lever by Evan P. Schneider [Fiction] The “simple machine” of the title is a bicycle, a ubiquitous accessory for so many Portlanders. The protagonist of this memorable first novel is a carless thirtysomething, trying to move forward in a world where many roads seem like dead ends.
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Portland is a city of writers and readers. It’s sometimes overwhelming how much talent we’ve got crammed into this town. To wrap up 2011, I thought I’d offer a list of 10 very notable titles published by local authors. I’ll be honest: I haven’t read all of these books yet, but they’re the ones my friends are buzzing about and have made it to my bedside table or my eternal list of library holds.
Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
Curses and Wishes by Carl Adamshick [Poetry] Adamshick has rightfully gotten a lot of press for his first book, especially after winning the Walt Whitman Award. His sparse, enigmatic poems make the reader pause to consider what’s being said and what’s missing. Out Here: Poems & Images from Steens Mountain Country by Ursula K. Le Guin [Poetry] I’m cheating a little, as this book came out in late 2010, but I can justify it: Le Guin’s cof-
fee-table book makes me pine for a region in the southeast corner of the state that I’ve never visited. Oregon’s high desert is unearthly, especially as seen in Roger Dorband’s photos. Le Guin’s love poems for this landscape are enough to make me grab my camping gear and head out. Voodoo Vintners by Katherine Cole [Nonfiction] Oregonian wine writer Katherine Cole has spent some time with Oregon’s biodynamic wine growers, who go beyond organic farming to time plantings to the phases of the moon. This well-researched book on a unique and almost spiritual style of farming is engaging and eye-opening. Pairs well with Oregon Pinots. Rethinking Paper & Ink by Ooligan Press [How-To] All of us paper-andink–loving book fiends must justify not only our e-book phobia but the environmental costs of the format we prefer. Ooligan Press’ Rethinking Paper & Ink provides a look at how publishers and consumers can make responsible, eco-friendly choices in their reading material. Habibi by Craig Thompson [Graphic Novel] A very thick book, Habibi could double as an ornamental paperweight— if you could put it down long enough. Graphic novelist Craig Thompson has kept us waiting for years for his next major work after 2003’s Blankets. The time was put to good use as Thompson spent some of it learning the Arabic calligraphy that plays such an important role in Habibi. Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor [Young Adult] A naturally blue-haired teen gets mixed up in some crazy business involving strange, unworldly monsters. Apparently it’s riveting even for adults who normally scorn young-adult books, and will help fans pass the time while waiting for The Hunger Games movie to come out. Wildwood by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis [Young Adult] Unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ve already heard about this title from illustrator Carson Ellis and her husband, Colin Meloy of the Decemberists (WW published an excerpt in August). It makes going for a stroll in Forest Park seem infinitely more dangerous and scary.
DEC. 28-JAN. 3 YEAR-END
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
RICHARD FOREMAN
MOVIES
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.
A Dangerous Method
81 So...tell me about your father. The
new David 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 patientturned-protégée 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. 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. And while the movie includes lots of sex and spanking, it’s chiefly about the thrills, arousals and perils of conversation. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.
The Adventures of Tintin
82 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. It’s probably 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 comicbook 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. 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. Cornelius, Oak Grove, Wilsonville, Sandy.
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked! Dancing rodents on an island. WW did not brave the horror. G. Cornelius, Oak Grove, Wilsonville, Sandy.
The Artist
64 Repressed memories drive The Artist. It’s a silent-film 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 Bérénice 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. Its pitfall is that it can’t resist showing off, and in those moments it feels like so much artificial product. Let’s get back to nature.
AARON MESH. Fox Tower. NEW
Blood and Sex Double Feature
[THREE NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] Two vintage horror-porny things: The Sexorcist’s Devil and The Turk, which apparently (um) finishes strong. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm, Friday and Sunday-Tuesday, Dec. 30 & Jan. 1-3.
The Darkest Hour
Something from space tries to turn Emile Hirsch into confetti. Not screened for critics. PG-13. Cornelius, Oak Grove. NEW
Day of the Dead
[ONE DAY ONLY, REVIVAL] George A. Romero’s study of zombie breeding is dragged out on 35 mm for the day everyone feels like death. Hollywood Theatre. 3 pm Sunday, Jan. 1.
The Descendants
72 In Alexander Payne’s The
Descendants, George 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 high-speed motorboating accident. 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. Fox Tower.
Drive
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.
The Hedgehog
80 The morbid yet sentimental cult
classic Harold and Maude lives on in the tangled blond hair of an 11-yearold 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 fairystory simplicity. 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. Cornelius, Wilsonville, Living Room Theaters.
Ian Berry Mixtape
75 [ONE NIGHT ONLY, DIRECTOR ATTENDING] ] Ian Berry understands the motivating power of a camera. The best of his short documentaries capture everyday human struggles, whether it’s overcoming an irrational fear, gathering the courage to ask a girl out on a date, or trying to ejaculate 10 times in a single day. Well, maybe that last one, made for the annual amateur porn contest Humpfest, is less a “struggle” than a freakish endurance test, but it still fits Berry’s theme of examining how people react to being put on film performing a task they normally wouldn’t attempt. Not everyone succeeds: Brenda Dives is pretty heart-
CONT. on page 40
BEHIND THE WHEEL OF DOOM: Ryan Gosling in Drive.
LAST LAPS
AT THE END OF 2011 (AND CELLULOID), DRIVE FINISHES FIRST. BY AAR ON MESH
amesh@wweek.com
Late in the documentary Bill Cunningham New York, the street-fashion photographer chokes up as he offers his personal credo. “He who seeks beauty will find it,” says the 86-year-old Cunningham, and any veteran moviegoer will recognize an urgent common cause. We sit in the multiplex instead of cycling between taxi cabs, but we too are looking for the burst of color, the shimmer of life. The advice is especially apt this year, when the overwhelming bulk of films were dreary commodity. Even the medium conveying the stories changed to the crisp airlessness of digital. But maybe final gulps of breath are the most precious, and the discovery of fleeting art correspondingly more rewarding. 1. Drive “Doom is fun.” That’s how James Ellroy boiled down the essence of noir as he introduced an anthology of the giddy, bleak shit this year. In the sensationally florid L.A. crime homage Drive, ultraviolent Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn amended Ellroy’s maxim: Doom is fun and noble. Can Ryan Gosling have his cake and smash somebody’s face with it, too? Only if you accept the one lesson that condemned celluloid has left to teach: Doom is everything. 2. The Tree of Life If Drive is the way of nature—red in toothpick and claw—then this is the way of grace. By which I mean that Terrence Malick wrestles with God, his family, dinosaurs and Jessica Chastain, then simply dances with all of them. He grants his memories a kind of aching immortality. 3. Take Shelter In the beginning, there was Chastain…and here she is again at the (possible) end of days. An entire continent of anxiety is compressed into the faces of her and Michael Shannon: Few movies have conveyed the alarm that American righteousness could amount to oily rags. In an intimate drama about digging a tornado basement, Jeff Nichols has made a time capsule of how helpless we felt in 2011.
4. Source Code Another movie about trying to save something that has been lost—but director Duncan Jones operates within the structure of video games to explore the cultural fantasy of hitting the reset button. It’s escapist action, but with awful implications. 5. Terri They say Portland is an extended adolescence, but local writer Patrick deWitt teamed with director Azazel Jacobs to make a tiny, vivid picture about how nobody is ever ready for adulthood. 6. Meek’s Cutoff Out in the Oregon desert, Kelly Reichardt and Jon Raymond solved the conundrum of the historical epic. We think we know how it ends, but we’ll never know how it ends, because it doesn’t end. 7. Heartbeats Behold the French-Canadian New Wave. Xavier Dolan used all the formal tricks in his toolbox to show young love as that glorious moment when you know you’ll never be this sad again. 8. Vengeance Like Drive, Johnnie To’s spiral staircase of Hong Kong genre tropes treats revenge as a moral responsibility. The movie sums itself up in the image of massive cubes of garbage rolled in synchronicity to shield from bullets. 9. Moneyball There’s no crying in baseball! But this study of the Oakland A’s’ positive-thinking penury contains the most affecting speech of the year—an Aaron Sorkin homily in front of a highlight reel, about how our best moments all seem like failures. 10. How to Die in Oregon In some way, every great movie of 2011 tries to answer this question in its own place and time. But no person did so with more honesty and courage than Oregon Health and Science University employee Cody Curtis, who allowed Peter D. Richardson to film her physician-assisted suicide. RUNNERS-UP: Bill Cunningham New York, Tabloid, Cold Weather, The Skin I Live In, Shame, Young Adult, The Descendants, Bobby Fischer Against the World, Win Win. GO: For more WW critics’ top 10 lists, visit wweek.com. Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
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® ®
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR • VIGGO MORTENSEN
KEIRA
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MORTENSEN
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CASSEL ©HFPA
AN INTELLECTUALLY VIGOROUS, OCCASIONALLY KINKY TERM PAPER ON THE RIDDLE OF SEXUAL DESIRE AND THE DANGERS OF SCIENTIFIC AMBITION.” A.O. Scott
BASED ON THE TRUE STORY OF JUNG, FREUD AND THE PATIENT WHO CAME BETWEEN THEM
A DANGEROUS METHOD BASED ON THE TRUE STORY OF JUNG, FREUD ANDATHE PATIENT DAVID CRONENBERG FILM DIRECTOR OF ‘A HISTORY WHO CAME BETWEEN THEMOF VIOLENCE’ & ‘EASTERN PROMISES’ SOUNDTRACK AVAILABLE ON
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66 Spread over four decades and leached of any bright hues, Clint Eastwood’s biopic of intelligence-hoarding 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. R. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.
ART APPROVED AE APPROVED Melancholia 90 Lars von Trier’s restless formal experimentation makes him difficult CLIENT APPROVED ®
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breaking for what’s basically just seven minutes of a girl consistently failing to dive into a pool; in Movie Madness, Berry amusingly chronicles his effort to woo a clerk at the titular Southeast Portland video store, an 18-minute saga that ends in disappointment. Taken together, Berry’s movies are about coming to terms with personal limitations. As the curator of his own festival, however, he knows the importance of sending the audience home happy: In Citizen Came, our chronic masturbator passes his endurance test with flying, er, colors. MATTHEW SINGER. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Wednesday, Dec. 28.
DRAMA
BEST ACTOR MICHAEL FASSBENDER
CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARD NOMINEE BEST ACTOR
MICHAEL FASSBENDER BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
CAREY MULLIGAN
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. R. CHRIS STAMM. Hollywood Theatre, Living Room Theaters.
Mission: Impossible— Ghost Protocol
83 In only three magnificent films— The Iron Giant and Pixar smashes The Incredibles and Ratatouille— director Brad Bird has honed an eye: one of uncanny imagination, one that envisions a chaotic urban battlefield and a small kitchen as scenes of similar peril. That’s essential to a film in which crawling through a ventilation shaft and dangling from the world’s tallest building are equally dangerous. Luckily, Bird’s eye for the real world more than matches his animated ingenuity. Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol finds Tom Cruise’s generic super-agent Ethan Hunt sprinting from set piece to set piece to stop a madman from blowing up the world. That’s it. No talky exposition. Just kinetic action (much of it shot in glorious IMAX), gadgetry of the Wile E. Coyote variety and the requisite goofy disguises. With Ghost Protocol Bird accomplishes the unlikely by taking a stagnant franchise and molding the best action film of the year. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Cornelius, Oak Grove, Wilsonville, Sandy, St. Johns.
The Muppets
85 Every Muppet movie—hell, even
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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. PG. AP KRYZA. Forest.
My Week With Marilyn
44 Michelle Williams steps off the
ROB BRYDON (LEFT) AND STEVE COOGAN IN THE TRIP
10 MEMORABLE SCENES FROM 2011 1. Drive: The Elevator In three minutes and about 6 square feet, Ryan Gosling’s nameless protagonist delivers two swift actions that define the year’s best film and cement director Nicolas Winding Refn in the master class: an act of tenderness and an act of protective brutality. It’s serene in its beauty and jarring in its ugliness. 2. The Interrupters: Duke’s Funeral Former gang leader Ameena Matthews—one of three “violence interrupters” profiled in documentarian Steve James’ searing chronicle of Chicago gang violence—stands beside the casket of a slain teenager, his mother wailing in a funeral parlor full of gangbangers frothing for revenge. She delivers an impassioned, simple plea: “Cease the fire. Call a truce.” 3. Take Shelter: The Lions Club Dinner Fear, love and faith converge during an average Midwestern feeding frenzy in which Michael Shannon’s mental illness becomes public knowledge. It might as well be a witch trial. Eyes belt Shannon like stones in a scene of stark vulnerability. 4. The Muppets: “Pictures in My Head” “The Rainbow Connection” provides nostalgic tear gas, but as Kermit strolls through a lonely mansion, singing about past glories as portraits of his Muppet pals come to life, we’re reminded that we missed Fozzie, the Swedish Chef and company as much as the frog did. 5. The Trip: Dueling Michael Caines Sometimes you just need to point a camera at funny people to make a great comedy. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon bickering at a quaint bed and breakfast—as each uncannily traces the evolution of Michael Caine’s voice from Get Carter to Batman Begins—is simple bliss. 6. 13 Assassins: The Final Battle Japanese provocateur Takeshi Miike follows an hour of uncharacteristically subdued and nuanced samurai drama with an eyepopping, 45-minute, 13-on-200 battle full of flaming oxen, clanging swords and endless mini-melees. Kurosawa would have approved. 7. Armadillo: Shell Shock Afghanistan doc Armadillo is filmed so fluidly it could be mistaken for a Hurt Locker clone. Then the world slows, and the camera hits the ground. Cinematographer Lars Skree has been shot in battle. 8. Attack the Block: Moses’ Hero’s Run With a dead alien and a katana in tow, teen hoodrat Moses (John Boyega) rolls through a claustrophobic high rise in glorious slow motion, fireworks blazing all around him. Those rockets aren’t just the demise of the “big gorilla-wolf motherfucker” aliens. They herald the arrival of a slick new talent in director Joe Cornish. 9. Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol: Burj Khalifa Tom Cruise’s vertigo-inducing ascent of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa tower is magnificent on its own, but it’s just the beginning of a riveting sequence that also includes a catfight and a car chase through a sandstorm. Hear that knocking, Mr. Cameron? It’s Brad Bird raising the stakes. 10. I Saw the Devil: Knives in the Car South Korean wunderkind Kim Jee-Woon’s serial-killer opus was too twisted even for my fucked-up tastes, but the gruesome three-way knife fight filmed with breathless, 360-degree precision in the blood-soaked interior of a speeding car is a technical marvel. AP KRYZA.
DEC. 28-JAN. 3
MOVIES DEAD FILMS INC.
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. R. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre.
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Mysteries of Lisbon
90 [FOUR DAYS ONLY] Raoul Ruiz’s
epic, four-hour Portuguese bodice ripper Memories of Lisbon is a confection in every sense of the word. Ruiz, best known of late for his high-profile rendering of Proust’s Time Regained (1999), has concocted a languorous, old-fashioned filmic enjoyment out of passionate costume melodrama and odd fragments of dream, with a slowrolling camera and stories that fold out of stories into yet more stories. Nobles behave badly; peasants become nobles and vice versa; and any misfortune hies one to the monastery, the convent or the dangerous New World. We begin with the story of an orphan named “just João” (who is quickly revealed to be a countess’s bastard), move back in time to an assassin named the Knife-Eater whose heart is dubiously redeemed by a gypsy, move forward to a spurned and vengeful (and beautiful, because everyone here is beautiful) French widow. Although the number of terrible secrets indulged over afternoon tea can at times be overwhelming, the tapestry is all held together by a priest with the magical ability to show up at precisely the right moment to stick his fingers in everyone else’s pie. Like the late work of seemingly all the old experimentalists, Ruiz’s sometimes Brechtian, sometimes Borgesian, often Sirkian fantasy seems designed to show the artifice behind the art, the extremity of forced coincidence, the terribly dishonest dream that is film. But it is done with such obvious relish, and the dream is so beautiful, one sees no need to wake up. And indeed, it could have lasted longer. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 6:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, Dec. 28-30; 1 pm Saturday, Dec. 31.
New Year’s Eve
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. PG-13. AARON MESH. Forest.
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 pussy-power 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. 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.
DAY OF THE DEAD 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 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. 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. As Holmes, Robert Downey, Jr. is a dimly wisecracking blunderbuss whose main talents seem to be intellectual bullying, allaround asskicking and the art of disguising himself as women or furniture. 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. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Cornelius, Moreland, Oak Grove, Wilsonville, Sandy, St. Johns.
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. That’s a hearty life to cover in the span of 90 minutes, so Dorman sticks to what works best: a series of talking-head interviews with scholars and descendants interspersed with excerpts from Aleichem’s works and wellworn photos depicting the author’s life and the world he inhabited. The result is a fairly ho-hum, PBS-style doc examining an undeniably brilliant figure. 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 The Sitter is a piece of disposable junk ennobled by half a dozen emotionally honest vignettes—and I’m not sure I can think of another comedy this year that had more than three emotionally honest vignettes, so keep the
GARY OLDMAN
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BENEDICT
COLIN
TOM
JOHN
TOBY
SIMON
MARK
CUMBERBATCH FIRTH HARDY HURT JONES McBURNEY STRONG
faith. R. AARON MESH. Forest.
The Swell Season
67 Remember Glen Hansard and
Markéta Irglová? The ones who were in that movie, then won an Oscar? It turns out the Irish singer and Czech jailbait didn’t handle the fame that sprang from Irglová’s touchingly incoherent acceptance speech particularly well. On the long tour that followed, her carping about the hassles of fame and his childish pouting led to the end of the pair’s romantic relationship and very nearly their creative one as well, and directors Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins and Carlo MirabellaDavis were along for the ride. This would all be pretty enticing stuff if Irglová and Hansard, who are fine performers, weren’t also the dullest couple of rockers ever to break down on camera. Their quarrels consist mostly of intense frowning, which the filmmakers fittingly capture in wan shades of gray. The brief appearance of Hansard’s sad, alcoholic ex-boxer father promises to inject a little interest, but the man abruptly dies, and Hansard mourns as he does everything else: frowning through his beard, and then singing. BEN WATERHOUSE. Living Room Theaters.
PORTLAND_TTS_1222 BASED ON THE John le carré CLASSIC THAT REDEFINED THE SPY THRILLER A FILM BY toMas aLFreDson
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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
23 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
CONT. on page 42
Winter Wildlands Alliance • info@winterwildlands.org Take a stand for winter, join us at www.winterwildlands.org Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
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MOVIES
DEC. 28-JAN. 3
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. R. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Fox Tower.
YEAR-END
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. PG-13. KELLY CLARKE. Check wweek.com for showtimes.
War Horse
48 Steven Spielberg has directed
a twin bill of holiday films, 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 in which 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. PG-13. AARON MESH. Cornelius, Oak Grove, Wilsonville, Sandy.
We Bought a Zoo
70 Everybody feels oh so very
much in We Bought a Zoo, but that’s to be expected from Cameron 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 unreiterated), 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. . PG. AARON MESH. Cornelius, Oak Grove, Wilsonville, Sandy.
Young Adult
82 The reunion of Juno screen-
writer Diablo Cody with director Jason Reitman, Young Adult is a movie with many antecedents—it recalls John Cusack’s grasp-at-thepast pictures Grosse Point Blank and High Fidelity, as well as the bottoms-up despondency of Sideways. It 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. Fox Tower.
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Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
MICHAEL SHANNON
10 MEMORABLE PERFORMANCES 1. Michael Shannon, Take Shelter Michael Shannon comes to us from another realm, a dark corner of the universe we’d do well to leave alone. His face, a likeness of which will be carved into the side of a mountain one day, registers pains and fears that usually go unseen, unnamed. Forget Take Shelter’s oily rain—it is Shannon who will destroy us all. 2. Jeong-hie Yun, Poetry Cinema this year was rife with people attempting graceful exits. No performer brought such grace to life’s slow waning as Jeong-hie Yun, whose turn as a woman coping with the early stages of Alzheimer’s lingers in my memory as 2011’s most efficient jerker of tears. 3. Brad Pitt, Moneyball Brad Pitt as Billy Beane as Brad Pitt: cocksure, orally fixated, easing too gracefully into his middle years, a little bit annoying, not quite as sharp as he thinks he is, and the wily kind of charming that almost hurts to look at. This is why we love/hate/love Brad. 4. Cast of The Arbor This odd documentary demanded athletic feats of memorization and emotional accuracy from its performers, who played quasifictional versions of real people while lip-syncing audio interviews with said real (and very sad) people. 5. Juliette Binoche, Certified Copy Although Abbas Kiarostami’s ponderous meditation on art and love and how both can get pretty confusing (and dull) was not the director’s finest hour-and-a-half, Juliette Binoche’s performance of stricken longing was enthralling. 6. John Hawkes, Martha Marcy May Marlene Elizabeth Olsen’s slow unraveling was certainly noteworthy, but without John Hawkes’ magnetic presence as the gentle psychopath who turns pretty young adults into robotic supplicants, Martha Marcy May Marlene would have fallen apart. 7. Werner Herzog, Cave of Forgotten Dreams I could listen to Werner Herzog read Google search results for “grass + growing” and be sufficiently entertained, but give the guy something profound to rhapsodize about, and the Teutonic flights attain glorious heights. 8. Andy Serkis, Rise of the Planet of the Apes The real star of this slick reboot was Andy Serkis, whose motioncaptured movements and facial expressions made for a digital figment worth caring about. 9. Sacha Baron Cohen, Hugo Sacha Baron Cohen, drawing Hugo’s short straw, was tasked with turning a potentially grating role into something subtle, even fragile. Mission accomplished. 10. Miranda July, The Future Miranda July adopted a pathetic whimper to give voice to a sickly caged cat in the wildly uneven The Future. It should not have worked. And yet here I am—with you, maybe?—haunted by that cat’s lonely monologues. It worked. Kill me. CHRIS STAMM.
MOVIES
DEC. 30-JAN. 5
BREWVIEWS S A E E D A D YA N I
PROTOCOL Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 12:30, 03:30, 06:40, 09:40 ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: CHIPWRECKED Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 12:00, 02:15, 04:30, 06:50, 09:10 SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 01:20, 04:10, 07:10, 10:05
oNE of t�E bESt
Portlander Cinema
10350 N Vancouver Way, 503-240-5850 MONEYBALL Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed CALL THEATRE FOR SHOWTIMES Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed PUSS IN BOOTS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed THE IDES OF MARCH Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed
Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing
IT’S IN THE NOTEBOOK: If you’ll permit us a parting pun—why not, at this point?—2011 was the year the Gosling hatched. Ryan Gosling’s acting in Drive and Crazy, Stupid, Love. was probably more memorable, but his greatest challenge was The Ides of March, a wail of political despair that included as many switchbacks as the Republican primary. In light of that ongoing farce, George Clooney’s movie now doesn’t seem quite cynical enough: There’s no way to outpace current events without having a candidate set his opponent on fire while singing a country song about fast food. But Gosling’s PR flack endures unlikely transformations while remaining appalled, guilt-stricken and smart enough to win. All qualities that seem like a thing of the past, no? AARON MESH. Showing at: Academy, Laurelhurst. Best paired with: Cascade Lakes 20” Brown Ale. Also showing: Drive (Academy, Laurelhurst).
3200 SW Hocken Ave., 800326-3264 THE METROPOLITAN OPERA: RODELINDA ENCORE Wed 06:30
Cinema 21
616 NW 21st Ave., 503-223-4515 SHAME Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 04:30, 07:00, 09:15 THE ROOM Fri 10:45
Clinton Street Theater
2522 SE Clinton St., 503-238-8899 BLOOD AND SEX DOUBLE FEATURE Fri-Sun-Mon-Tue 07:00, 09:00 NO FILMS SHOWING TODAY Sat SILVER STATE SINNERS Wed 07:00, 09:00
Laurelhurst Theatre
2735 E Burnside St., 503-232-5511 50/50 Fri-Sun-Mon-TueWed 07:20 A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR CHRISTMAS Fri-Sun-MonTue-Wed 09:45 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Fri-Sun-Mon-TueWed 07:10 THE IDES OF MARCH Fri-Sun-Mon-TueWed 09:15 MONEYBALL Fri-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 06:45 DRIVE Fri-SunMon-Tue-Wed 09:30 THE RUM DIARY Fri-Sun-MonTue-Wed 09:00 TAKE SHELTER Fri-Sun-MonTue-Wed 06:30 NO FILMS SHOWING TODAY Sat PUSS IN BOOTS Sun-Mon 01:45
Moreland Theatre
6712 SE Milwaukie Ave., 503236-5257 SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 05:30, 08:15
Mount Hood Theatre
401 E Powell Blvd., 503-665-0604 COURAGEOUS Fri-Sat-SunMon 12:45 DOLPHIN TALE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon 03:00 PUSS IN BOOTS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 05:00 TOWER HEIST Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:00 MONEYBALL Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 08:55
Oak Grove 8 Cinemas
16100 SE McLoughlin Blvd., 503-653-9999 MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE —GHOST PROTOCOL Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 12:50, 03:45, 06:40, 09:35 WAR HORSE FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:40, 03:35, 06:30, 09:25 SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 01:35, 04:25, 07:10, 09:50 WE BOUGHT A ZOO Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 12:30, 04:10, 06:50, 09:25 THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:00, 03:10, 06:20, 09:30 THE DARKEST HOUR Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 12:25, 02:35, 04:50, 07:00, 09:05 ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: CHIPWRECKED Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:25, 02:40, 04:40, 06:50, 09:00 THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:20, 02:50, 05:10, 07:30, 09:55
St. Johns Twin Cinemas and Pub
8704 N Lombard St., 503-286-1768 SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 04:30, 07:10, 09:40 MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE— GHOST PROTOCOL Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:00, 06:45, 09:30
CineMagic Theatre
2021 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-231-7919 THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 05:30, 08:40
The OMNIMAX Theatre at OMSI
1945 SE Water Ave., 503-797-4640 FLYING MONSTERS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed
Fifth Avenue Cinemas
510 SW Hall St., 503-725-3551 NO FILMS SHOWING TODAY Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed
Forest Theatre
1911 Pacific Ave., 503-844-8732 THE MUPPETS Fri-Sat-SunMon 04:45 NEW YEAR’S EVE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 07:00 THE SITTER Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 09:20
Hollywood Theatre
4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-281-4215 MY WEEK WITH MARILYN Fri-Sun-MonTue-Wed 07:15, 09:15 MELANCHOLIA Fri-SunMon-Tue-Wed 06:45, 09:20 DRIVE Fri-Sun-Mon-TueWed 07:30, 09:30 DAY OF THE DEAD Sun 03:00
NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium
1219 SW Park Ave., 503221-1156 MYSTERIES OF LISBON FriSat 01:00
Sandy Cinemas
16605 Champion Way, 503826-8100 WAR HORSE Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 12:35, 03:40, 06:50, 10:00 THE DARKEST HOUR 3D FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 01:00, 03:10, 05:25, 07:40, 09:50 WE BOUGHT A ZOO FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 01:35, 04:25, 07:20, 10:10 THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 12:10, 02:40, 05:10, 07:30, 09:55 THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 12:15, 03:35, 07:00, 10:20 MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE—GHOST
‘‘ LISBETH IS A MARVELOUS
POP-CULTURE CHARACTEr, STRANGER AND MORE COMPLEX
Academy Theater
7818 SE Stark St., 503-2520500 THE IDES OF MARCH FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:00 MONEYBALL FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 06:30, 09:15 DRIVE FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:45, 09:25 TOWER HEIST Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 05:15, 09:35 PUSS IN BOOTS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:30 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:30
Valley Theater 11:00, 02:00 BORN TO BE WILD Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 12:00, 03:00 TORNADO ALLEY Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:00, 05:00 THE ULTIMATE WAVE TAHITI Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 04:00 THE POLAR EXPRESS Fri-SatSun 06:00 HUBBLE Fri-Sat 09:00
FilMS oF THE YEAR
9360 SW BeavertonHillsdale Highway, 503-2966843 PUSS IN BOOTS Fri-SatSun-Mon 01:00, 03:00, 05:00 TOWER HEIST Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 07:00 THE IDES OF MARCH Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 09:15 COURAGEOUS Fri-SatSun-Mon 01:20, 04:00 MONEYBALL Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 06:40 A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR CHRISTMAS Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 09:35 THE HELP Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon 12:35, 03:30 IN TIME FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 06:20 IMMORTALS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 08:40
THAN THE AVERAGE SUPERHERO
aNd MORE INTRIGUING THAN THE USUAL BOY WIZARDS AND VAMPIRE BRIDES.
SHE IS AN OUTLAW FEMINIST FANTASY-HEROINE.’’ λ . o .
‘‘‘
s c o
’
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO IS A BEAUTIFULLY TAUT AND TERRIFYING THRILLER.
LISBETH SALANDER IS ONE OF THE GREAT HEROINES OF DETECTIVE FICTION, AS DIFFERENT FROM MISS MARPLE AS A TOOT OF
CRANK IS TO A NICE CUP OF TEA. ON TO ‘ THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE,’ PLEASE!’’ S E V E n
r e λ
‘‘ UNAPOLOGETICALLY GROWN-UP AND
UTTERLY ENTERTAINING.’’ L O
I S E
R O
G
Living Room Theaters
341 SW 10th Ave., 971-2222010 THE DARKEST HOUR 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:30, 05:30, 07:40, 09:40 MELANCHOLIA Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:40, 04:40, 09:30 RID OF ME Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:40, 07:30 SHOLEM ALEICHEM: LAUGHING IN THE DARKNESS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:50, 07:15 THE HEDGEHOG Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:00, 05:00, 09:20 HUGO 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-TueWed 11:50, 01:10, 03:00, 04:00, 06:00, 07:00, 09:00 J. EDGAR FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 02:30, 09:35 THE SWELL SEASON Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 12:20, 02:20, 04:30, 06:35, 08:50
A DAVID FINCHER FILM
Century at Clackamas Town Center
12000 SE 82nd Ave., 800326-3264 THE METROPOLITAN OPERA: RODELINDA ENCORE Wed 06:30 SUBJECT TO CHANGE. CALL THEATERS OR VISIT WWEEK.COM/MOVIETIMES FOR THE MOST UP-TODATE INFORMATION FRIDAY-THURSDAY, DEC. 30-JAN. 5, UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED
COLUMBIA PICTURES AND METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER PICTURES PRESENT A SCOTT RUDIN/YELLOW BIRD PRODUCTION 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 Willamette Week DECEMBER 28, 2011 wweek.com
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2 COL. (3.825") X 12" = 24" WED 12/28 PORTLAND WILLAMETTE WEEK