Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
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A novelist who uses tarot readings to unlock creative blocks in writers and a musician/musical historian who specializes in the life of folksinger Woody Guthrie stage free events this month. Harstine Island Inquiring Minds presents musician and historian Joel Underwood and part two of “That Ribbon Highway: Woody Guthrie in the Pacific Northwest” at 2 p.m. Jan. 26 at the Harstine Island Community Hall, 3371 E. Harstine Island Road North. The event is hosted by the Harstine Island Community Club and Humanities Washington. Admission is free and...
Reviewing a couple of relationship dramas this week, one made by a filmmaker local to this side of the Puget Sound. The Rose Theatre in Port Townsend and the Regal Poulsbo are showing writer-director Halina Reijn's "Babygirl," starring Nicole Kidman and Antonio Banderas, which was inspired by 1992's "Basic Instinct" and 1993's "Indecent Proposal." A challenge in recreating the taboo heat of the erotic thrillers of decades past, such as those made by directors Paul Verhoeven and Adrian Lyne, is...
Hoodsport author Rebecca Holbrook will read from her novels "Omie's Well" and "The Deer Stone" from 4 to 5:45 p.m. Jan. 16 at the Shelton Timberland Library, 710 W. Alder St. Admission is free. Holbrook is also a singer and banjo player and will perform music references in her novels. Holbrook grew up in the American South, where her maternal line went back to some of the earliest settlers around Savannah, Georgia. Stories from her ancestors, passed down through the generations, inspired the...
The winter holidays brought with them two cinematic takes on a couple of classics of 20th century pop culture, Robert Eggers' "Nosferatu" and James Mangold's "A Complete Unknown." I found both to be solidly good, even as they felt tantalizingly close, yet just out of reach, of being truly great. In some ways, it's my fault for not being as thrilled by Eggers' "Nosferatu" as I was by his work on "The Northman" in 2022. I hadn't studied the legend of Amleth, which inspired Shakespeare's "Hamlet,"...
Writer/artist/dancer Kathryn Frey will read, and maybe sing, from her work in progress of lyrical poetry about "friendship, love, grief, death, moss and stones" at 4 p.m. Friday at the Shelton Timberland Library, 710 W. Alder St. The resident of Portland, Oregon, is working on the piece as an artist in residence at Hypatia-in-the-Woods in Shelton. In Portland, Frey guides one-on-one embodiment sessions, weekly yoga classes, monthly workshops and seasonal retreats. In a news release, Frey states...
The New Year heralds the arrival of several movies and TV shows I'm looking forward to seeing, a number of which I might be able to review in this space. On the big screen, Steven Soderbergh has apparently reinvented the haunted house subgenre with "Presence," set to release Jan. 24, which is filmed from the perspective of the ghosts. When "Captain America: Brave New World" hits theaters Feb. 14, it will not only continue the story arc of 2021's "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier," but it will...
As we approach the close of 2024, the year in entertainment seems to be a story of emerging media gaining breakout successes, in the midst of existing media either treading water or stalling out, capped off by the loss of far too many familiar faces who'd been stalwart presences in the entertainment industry. Musically, this was another banner year for Taylor Swift. She became the first artist to win album of the year four times from the Grammy awards, before releasing "The Tortured Poets...
The Bluegrass Regulators, Faddis & Adkins, The Dirty Birds and Runaway Train will perform at the ninth annual Midwinter Bluegrass Celebration starting at 6 p.m. Dec. 28 at the Shelton School District Performing Arts Center at Shelton High School. Kristmas Town Kiwanis sponsors the concert. Admission is $20, with kids younger than 15 admitted for free. Donations will be accepted for refreshments. Tickets are available at BluegrassFromTheForest.com and at the door. The event raises money for the...
When "Pretty Woman" premiered in 1990, I remember certain critics treating it as a subversion of Walt Disney Productions' 1950 animated adaptation of "Cinderella," not in the least because Touchstone Pictures, which produced it, was owned by Disney. But writer-director Sean Baker's "Anora" is a far more transgressive subversion of that romantic fairy tale, enough that it also qualifies as a subversion of the relatively tame "Pretty Woman." In both 2015's "Tangerine" and 2017's "The Florida...
The movie "A Christmas Story" became a holiday classic after its release in 1983. Set in the 1940s and based on a book by Jean Shephard - who also narrates - the story chronicles young Ralphie's attempts to convince his parents, teacher and Santa Claus that a Red Ryder Range 200 Shot BB gun really is the perfect Christmas gift. There's also some business about a bunny suit, a seductive lamp, an exploding furnace and tongues frozen to poles. Connection Street Theatre stages a play based on the...
Over the course of seven years of writing film and television reviews for local newspapers, I've recommended several selections for holiday viewing, but what follows is my baker's dozen of personal favorites for the season, listed in the order in which they should be seen this month. 1. "A Christmas Carol" (1984) Alastair Sim is considered by many to be the best onscreen Ebenezer Scrooge, but George C. Scott's fierce TV movie portrayal of Scrooge ranks among the all-too-few adaptations of...
I took in two recently premiered streaming series over the Thanksgiving break, one very compelling indeed, and the other a bit of a disappointment given its pedigree. Recommended: "The Agency" on Paramount+ It's remarkable how relevant the international espionage genre has remained through the 20th and 21st centuries, even decades after the Cold War peak of John le Carre's literary career. "The Agency" is extremely up-to-the-minute, and thanks to the current real-world geopolitical climate, its...
In an era of "forever franchises," Francis Ford Coppola's "Megalopolis" offers audiences the novelty of an actual ending. When I watched "Return of the Jedi" in 1983, "Revenge of the Sith" in 2005 and "The Rise of Skywalker" in 2019, each time, I foolishly thought I was watching the final "Star Wars" film. But Coppola is 85 years old now, and all four movies he's directed during the 21st century have been self-financed, so unless his health and his fortune both undergo virtually impossible...
The Union-based Great Bend Chorale and an orchestra perform George Frideric Handel's classic oratorio "Messiah" at 7 p.m. Friday and 4 p.m. Sunday at Shelton United Methodist Church, 1900 King St. General admission is $24, $20 for seniors and military. The "Messiah" oratorio is the best-known work of the Baroque composer, born in Halle, Germany, in 1685. Handel wrote operas, oratorios and instrumentals. His best-known works include "Water Music" (1717) and "Music for the Royal Fireworks (1749)....
This review is going to cost me some fans, I suspect. Robert Zemeckis' "Here," based on the 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire, succeeds at doing what it seems like Zemeckis wanted to do with this movie adaptation. But that doesn't make "Here" a good movie, even if it is a visually impressive one. It brings me no joy to write this. Once upon a time, Bob Zemeckis was a wide-eyed wunderkind in the mold of his mentor, Steven Spielberg. "Back to the Future" practically imprinted itself on my...
When Scott Beck and Bryan Woods wrote and directed "Heretic," they really went all-in on combining "Saw" with comparative theology. This is not a film for all audiences, even more than most horror movies. While some families might share an appreciation for psychological thrillers, the title of "Heretic" should be your first clue that it devotes a significant amount of screentime to debating religion. Given the number of impending holiday dinners already haunted by the prospect of post-election p...
I entered "The Apprentice" wary from the failures of Oliver Stone's "W." in 2008 and Adam McKay's "Vice" in 2018, worried that yet another attempted biopic of a right-wing leader would fall short in spite of its acting and directorial talent. What I instead saw was a nonspectacular but nonetheless solidly competent film, directed by Ali Abbasi and written by Gabriel Sherman, that succeeded by focusing less on the mannerisms of its real-life subjects than on examining the consequences of their...
Folk singer/songwriter Kate MacLeod, who bills herself as a "neo-traditionalist," performs at 3 p.m. Friday at a house concert at Lake Cushman. Admission is the suggested donation of $15-$20. A potluck will follow. To make reservations and get the directions to the show, call 360-877-5862. MacLeod - who divides her time between Salt Lake City, Utah, and Harper's Ferry, West Virginia - plays her original songs, fiddle instrumentals and creative renditions of traditional and popular music on...
For our Halloween review, I'm going back a couple of months to a streaming series on Amazon Prime Video, that's suitably dark for the holiday, and legitimately clever, even though it contains some nagging flaws. "Batman: Caped Crusader" is 10 half-hour episodes of a Dark Knight who's styled more closely to his original appearances in the comics, albeit with a much broader diversity in the character's supporting cast. Artist Bruce Timm had co-created the original "Batman: The Animated Series"...
Switching things up, we're taking a week to cater to readers who spend more time streaming media than screening films in the theaters, especially because it allows me to squeeze in a couple of Halloween-themed reviews. 'Agatha All Along' The latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been airing new episodes on Disney+ every Wednesday since Sept. 18, and it's scheduled to wrap up its run Oct. 30. As a lifelong Marvel Comics fan, if you'd told me years ago that a nine-episode TV...
Writer-director Chris Sanders' big-screen adaptation of Peter Brown's "The Wild Robot" series of illustrated books for children gains an appeal for parents as much as for their kids by empathizing with the role of mothers. Our "Wild Robot" protagonist is a ROZZUM-model multi-purpose helper robot that eventually adopts the nickname "Roz." Roz was manufactured in the future by the Universal Dynamics company to assist human families, but wound up lost in midtransit on an island inhabited only by...
Editor's note: This is the second of two parts. The first appeared in the Sept. 26 edition of the Journal. As the Journal runs my remaining reviews from this year's Port Townsend Film Festival, I just want to thank my readers for caring about films. We watch movies about everything from the mundane to the fantastical, to question and make sense of ourselves and our existences. Who we see on the screen is who we are, and their stories are our own. Which is why, for yet another year, I spent a wee...
The Olalla Celtic musical duo Pam and Philip Boulding perform as Magical Strings at 3 p.m. Oct. 5 at a Lake Cushman house concert. Admission is a suggested donation of $15 to $20. A potluck will follow the performance. For reservations and to find out the location of the concert, call 360-877-5862. Since 1978, Magical Strings has recorded 22 albums showcasing traditional Irish arrangements, original compositions and what the group's website describes as "subtle world music influences." They...
The 25th annual Port Townsend Film Festival's virtual schedule of films became available from Monday through Sunday, but I followed my semiannual tradition of catching as many of those films as I could in the theaters, from the single film that screened immediately after the opening night dinner gala Sept. 19, through the festival's final day of theatrical screenings Sunday. Four days, 12 films and one review to rule them all, with no rest until it's all wrapped up. Total coverage. Maximum...
The Mason County Concert Association launches its 75th season of shows with country singer/songwriter Danny Wells at 7 p.m. Sept. 26 at the Shelton High School Performing Arts Center. The nonprofit has hosted touring performers since 1949. All six concerts are staged at the Shelton High School Performing Arts Center, 3737 N. Shelton Springs Road. A season ticket for is $100. Individual tickets can be purchased for $30 at the door. For more information, call Pam at 360-490-1098 or visit...
