Seriously…

Went to see the Coen brothers’ latest on a gray Sunday afternoon that couldn’t quite decide if it might rain or might have a little sun. That kind of you-don’t-know-what-you’re-going-to-get sums up Larry Gopnick’s life in A Serious Man.

 

Put your soul in storage…

The last few days have been full of drama — why am I doing what I’m doing, and so on and so forth, so Cold Souls struck me as just the movie to go to. I’d noticed a review for it a couple of weeks ago — the whole idea of putting one’s soul in cold storage for a bit was interesting and just enough alternate universe to make me want to see it.

 

Keep cool this weekend…beer, Indian art, movies.

Wow, I completely lost this week. And I can’t even say the heat addled my brain because I’m originally from the South and I like heat — as long as I’m not working directly in it in the middle of the day.

There are things to do to keep your cool this weekend. Naturally there’s a beer festival — it’s July in Portland. The Portland International Beer Festival is underway in the North Park Blocks. Nice and shady under the trees there and beer is always good in hot weather (or cold or really any time).

If you start your Saturday with the Portland Farmers Market at PSU — always fun and wonderful fruits and veggies — you can stay in the Park Blocks a little longer and go to the Downtown Yard Sale in the South Park Blocks between Market and Clay from 9 to 5.  It’s outside but who knows what cool things you might find. I believe this is the first time for a downtown yard sale.

Want something cool and indoors — surely you’ve heard that the new Harry Potter movie just opened.  Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince  is playing at several local theaters and promises to take your mind off the heat.

Something else indoors — how about visiting the Portland Art Museum and its celebration for Ganesha—the elephant-headed, dancing Hindu god of yoga, wisdom, and new beginnings. Sunday, July 19, is a free family day at the Museum and there will be Indian music, art projects, yoga sessions in the Park Blocks and Indian food carts in the Museum courtyard. The Museum Sunday hours are 12-5. See more details here.  If you drive downtown to the Museum on Sunday remember that the new parking rules have gone into effect and parking meters will need to be paid from 1-7.

That’s just a few of the things you could do — and I’ll be doing some of them. Just not sure which ones yet.

 

Too many choices…

Sometimes I succumb to event overload — so many choices of things to do without even leaving town that I can’t choose and end up doing none of them. July and August in Portland are particularly susceptible to this problem with multiple conflicting events.

Just a few I might go to this weekend, free except for food and drink:

Friday July 10 — dusk — Flicks on the Bricks at Pioneer Courthouse Square. Tonight’s free movie is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Saturday July 11 10AM-9PM — street fair on North Mississippi Avenue with live music, barbecue contest and all kinds of people watching. Info at http://www.mississippiave.com/

Saturday July 11 Noon – 8PM — early Bastille Day celebration at Jamison Square Park in the Pearl. Music, pommes frites and a waiter’s race. Info at http://www.afportland.org/bastillepdx/

If you want to take a drive rather than stay in town, check out the Oregon Lavender Festival being held at several nurseries and farms over Saturday and Sunday. List of participating locations and events at each one at http://www.oregonlavenderfestival.com/

 

Sometimes it’s a chin…

As you already know, I like movies. And I’m usually pretty good at recognizing people from other films or TV shows even if they are hidden behind one disguise or another. It’s usually the voice that gives it to me because they’re much more likely to successfully disguise other characteristics.

Friday night I went to see a couple of Danny Boyle films that I’d not seen before, one of which was Trainspotting. I never went to see it when it came out because the subject just didn’t appeal to me but by now I’ve worked up enough interest in his films to want to see more of them. So I’m sitting there watching the film when one of the less flamboyant of the main characters starts to seem oddly familiar. He’s young and blond in the film but the accents are too thick for me to place him – besides the fact that he doesn’t talk nearly as much as the other three of the mates. Still, in the few shots where you get a good look at him, something about the chin and eyes just seemed familiar. At the credits I checked to see if the actor was a familiar name – but no, didn’t recall seeing and/or remembering Kevin McKidd for any reason.

It sat in the back of my mind overnight and still nothing so I had to do a little research. Not that it took long these days with IMDB and Wikipedia and such to consult. A few years ago I’d have spent days trying to track down whatever was nagging at me. Anyway, it turns out that the chin/eyes combination belongs to one of the newish characters on Grey’s Anatomy – Dr. Owen Hunt. He has some of that same haunted look as the doctor who’s back from the war but sounds nothing like he did back in Trainspotting. I’m a more or less regular watcher of Grey’s Anatomy but it takes me a long time to consciously know the names of series actors.

Mystery solved.

 

Are you a Copyright Criminal?

Perhaps — if you’re involved in the commercial and creative use of music sampling.  The University of Oregon - Portland Library & Learning Commons is joining with the Portland State University Sociology Club to sponsor a free showing of the documentary “Copyright Criminals: This is a Sampling Sport”

Showing is at 6 pm on Wednesday, April 15, in the White Stag Block (70 NW Couch St) in downtown Portland.  Immediately afterward, musician and design guru Dave Allen will do a Q&A with the filmmaker, Kembrew McLeod.  

More info about the film can be found at http://copyrightcriminals.com/

 

PIFF on its way out …

It’s 5PM and for some unaccountable reason, I’m not standing in line to go to a movie.  What’s that about?  Oh, yes, it’s that I’ve already seen the movies that are showing tonight — a sure sign of end-of-PIFF-ness. 

There are in fact two more sets of showings, tonight and Saturday, and then encore screenings on Sunday, but for some scheduling reasons I ended up with a night where I’ve already seen the films offered.

Needless to say, I’ll end up going out later because the whole idea of jumping back into regular life just isn’t on my mind at the moment.  I did do a little of that today — going to the bank and getting my hair cut and shopping for a birthday present — all things that had been put on hold while movies were in power. 

I meant to go back and put ratings numbers on my blurb/reviews, but haven’t quite done that yet.  It’s at least a movie-related project.

 

PIFF winding down

I know it seems a little bizarre to say the film festival is winding down when I’m still seeing two films a day — which is way more than many people I know see in a year.  Of course I find their lives hard to imagine as well.

 

Lucky Friday the 13th…

Lucky day for me because I’m seeing more movies at PIFF (Portland International Film Festival)!  This week has gone by in a blur, mostly that induced by sitting in front of screens for hours on end.  But it’s a fun kind of blur and we only get to enjoy this once a year in Portland.

Short blurbs about films I’ve seen at http://pdxwatch.wordpress.com/piff-32-blurbs/    At this point they’re not organized by anything other than date I saw them but I might be getting to organization later.  It all depends on if there’s time between the films themselves.

 

PIFF madness

February used to be just another month of short, ugly days with lots of rain — until I discovered the Portland International Film Festival (PIFF) a few years ago.  Now I have dozens of films to see and, except for getting back and forth to the theaters, I don’t care if it is raining.