Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
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Amazon Prime and Netflix recently released two eight-part direct-to-streaming miniseries whose respective target audiences are far apart, but whose commitment to their genre formulas of storytelling are equally impeccable. 'Reacher' on Amazon If you've ever read one of Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels, you're old enough to remember when airplane trips didn't include the luxury of entertaining yourself with portable electronic devices during flight. For you youngsters out there, a subspecies of...
A few days remain before Valentine’s Day, so since we gave you six films last week, here are eight more, so you can enjoy 14 offbeat romantic movies through Feb. 14. ‘Pump Up the Volume’ Christian Slater is an anonymous, foul-mouthed pirate radio DJ who can’t work up the nerve to speak out as provocatively in his daily life as a high school student and new kid in town, until he connects with an inquisitive and insightful classmate, played by Samantha Mathis, who’s written him filthy letters a...
Maybe it's Valentine's Day and you're looking to get into the spirit of the occasion. Maybe it's date night, whether it's with someone new, with whom you're looking to take things further, or with a longtime love with whom you're looking to keep that romantic spark going. The problem is, so many of us have seen so many of the same familiar favorites, from more modern popcorn crowd-pleasers like "Love Actually," "When Harry Met Sally" and "Say Anything" to cinema classics like "West Side Story,"...
Belfair Self-Storage doesn’t have shows scheduled for February, but manager Barbara Treick hopes area artists will think ahead to her March fundraiser for “Keep Music in Schools” month. She wants artists to create and display their works at her business’ art space for the occasion. “I’d like to get the word out for this as soon as possible so artists can start working on their pieces during February,” Treick said. “Especially since the subject for all the pieces — artists’ interpretations of...
You can tell a lot about someone by who their favorite "Saturday Night Live" performers are. Folks who still swear by the original "Not Ready For Prime Time Players" are staunchly loyal traditionalists. Those who favor Phil Hartman (RIP), Bill Hader or Kenan Thompson appreciate performers who are solidly dependable, if not as showy. If you love Adam Sandler, you either just turned 13 or have remained 13 for too many years. And the Joe Piscopo fan club consists solely of Joe Piscopo. If you...
I've spoken before about what a gravity-defying franchise "The Karate Kid" films already were, even before they became the foundation for the ongoing "Cobra Kai" Netflix series, and that's never been more true than now, in the wake of the show's fourth season. "Cobra Kai" continues to thread the needle between empathetically reflecting the minefields of modern adolescence and sharing the Marvel Cinematic Universe's ability to whistle past what would happen if certain events occurred in the real...
Area art exhibitors offered their outlook on what lies ahead this year in their world of art. When asked what she looks forward to in 2022, Belfair Self-Storage owner and manager Barbara Treick expressed hopes of generating a good turnout for the “Keep Music In School” show she has planned for March. “I am working on a prospectus for a call to artists to celebrate MIOSM (Music In Our Schools Month) by creating art that shows their favorite song or musical instrument,” Treick said. “My art wall...
Is it possible to evolve (or retain) a social conscience while remaining an unrepentant criminal? Gangster fables have contemplated that question for generations, with "The Godfather," "Pulp Fiction," "The Sopranos" and "Breaking Bad" serving as some of the more notable examples. And while the answer has been "no" in all the aforementioned examples, none of those tales have been set in a world as lawless as Tatooine, where there aren't even any cops to bribe. It's no exaggeration to describe...
Harlequin Productions in Olympia is postponing further production until March because of the surge in COVID-19. “Murder for Two” is now scheduled for March 11 to April 2. The production initially planned for that period, “Samuel Beckett’s Endgame,” has been canceled. “We realize that producing work in the middle of a surge like this new wave would be dangerous and next to impossible,” Harlequin Productions Artistic Director Aaron Lamb said. “We have hope that this will pass quickly and we will be able to produce work on a regular basis moving f...
Sunday promises to see Belfair Self-Storage test out a new approach as owner and manager Barbara Treick invites the public to enjoy “Art From My Living Room” at 2 p.m.at the business’ location at 23270 NE state Route 3. Although Belfair Self-Storage’s previous art receptions have showcased some of the artists in-person with their pieces, and even included a couple of live performances, Treick said the post-holiday months can be slow for foot-traffic. Treick described Belfair Self Storage...
I've seen a few folks review writer-director-producer Adam McKay's "Don't Look Up" under the assumption it was intended as a response to COVID-19, even though enough of its pre-production was finished COVID and its principal photography was originally slated to start in April 2020. More than a dozen years ago, I was rewatching an episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" with one of my housemates at the time, in which Picard was captured and tortured by alien interrogators (Trek fans will...
The new year is almost upon us, and you are pretty much done with holiday spirit. You need a palate cleanser to wash the taste of holly-jolly cheer out of your mouth. Just as "Die Hard" is the seasonal 1980s action film that actually embodies the spirit of Christmas, "Less Than Zero" is the '80s drama that's also set during Christmas but runs absolutely counter to the spirit of the holiday. The 1987 film is based on Bret Easton Ellis' 1985 debut novel of the same name. It is practically the...
Exhibitors of area artists offered their thoughts on what the past year has meant for the local art scene and what the year ahead could bring. Elizabeth Bennett, operational manager of the Rest-A-While RV Park, saw her annual art and music fair expand into an entire series of one-weekend-per-month events, running from spring through fall, with a growth in the number and diversity of vendors. “It’s been a really special year, with a lot of new vendors,” Bennett said. “And the people who are alr...
Although 2020 was the year COVID first struck, 2021 has been more of a year of transition for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as Disney+ shows like "WandaVision" and "Loki" took established characters on arcs that redefined who they were and could be, while "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" and "Eternals" introduced new players to the MCU. What "Black Widow" attempted to do in theaters is what "Hawkeye" so far seems to be doing more successfully on Disney+ by portraying a torch-passing...
The last time we got an attempted big-screen resurrection of the "Ghostbusters" franchise, back in 2016, online trolls started review-bombing it for sexist reasons before the film even premiered in theaters, because director Paul Feig had the temerity to cast all four members of the team as women. This was unfair and unhelpful, because while the film did not deserve such abuse, neither was it actually any good, but the online trolls undermined their own cause by ensuring any substantive...
Origins Flashback: I'm a child playing with my brother. We have a collection of Hot Wheels mom gives us for practicing piano, cello and violin. There's a fold-up farm and city, and some track. We buzz the cars around. The cat bats at a few. We're very happy. Flash forward to mid-April of 2020. As COVID-19 shows up in Mason County and spreads, a natural cascade of reactions happens. Because we're human beings, we're compassionate. Because we're compassionate, we want our family, friends and neigh...
In one important sense, filmmaker Chloé Zhao's cinematic adaptation of comics creator Jack Kirby's "Eternals" is incredibly faithful, in that both tried to establish a semi-independent universe-in-microcosm within a broader Marvel universe, and neither one quite managed to stick that particular landing. While "Eternals" has been review-bombed online, it matters why it doesn't work, which is far different from the reasons motivating a number of internet trolls with grudges. Zhao is to be commende...
They finally got it right. As a nearly lifelong fan of Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi novel “Dune,” I can’t pretend to be coming to director Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 movie adaptation of “Dune” — or, more accurately, of the first half of the novel — as an impartial or disinterested viewer. However, I hope I can persuade my fellow “Dune” fans, and those who might otherwise be intimidated by the story’s length or complexity, that it is very much worth your time. Yes, this film runs more than two and...
Long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe grew into a multiverse through “Loki” and “What If …?” on Disney+, fans of the “Halloween” horror films were already well-acquainted with the concept of branching timelines. From 1981 through 2002, various sets of sequels to (and remakes of) the original 1978 “Halloween” saw Laurie Strode, Dr. Loomis and Michael Myers killed off, brought back and killed off again, as each new timeline told us that either parts or all of the preceding films hadn’t actu...
The close of this month marks the 35th anniversary of the first, and still the best, of all the "Transformers" films, which select theaters throughout the state and across the country are bringing back to the big screen for the final days of September. Before 2018's "Bumblebee" rebooted the franchise, Michael Bay had directed all five of the preceding live-action "Transformers" films, but none of them could compare to the original animated film, 1986's "The Transformers: The Movie." Some people...
While Cody Morris isn’t a newcomer to the Western Washington brewing industry, he picked — by his own admission — one heck of a time to start a business in Mason County. After opening Epic Ales in Seattle’s SoDo neighborhood more than a decade ago, Morris and his wife moved to Hoodsport with an eye toward starting a brewery in the area. Aside from Bent Bine Brew Co. in Belfair, they didn’t see many other options for breweries at that time. “We thought Mason County would offer a nice change of p...
