Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
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I'd meant to see "Dumb Money" near the end of last year, but recent absurdities in the news had me feeling weirdly nostalgic for the comparatively quaint online firestorms of the COVID era. Indeed, while the art of cinema has progressed now to where many movies have incorporated the realities of social media into their narratives, "Dumb Money" is the first film I've ever seen in which Reddit, as a forum, has legitimately earned a supporting cast member credit. Because the filmmakers wisely...
In playwright Susan Sandler's charming comedy "Crossing Delancey," Isabelle Grossman seems to be living the dream. She has a rent-controlled apartment in New York City's Upper West Side, a job at a prestigious independent bookstore, lots of friends and a handsome local author to dream about. However, none of this matters to Bubbie, a strong-minded traditional Jewish grandmother who worries that her granddaughter is living alone. Unbeknownst to Isabelle, Bubbie hires a marriage broker, who introd...
As was the case with 2021's "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," I registered the divergence in reactions to "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire." As with the previous film, many reviewers can't seem to stand it, whereas audience reaction scores have been overwhelmingly positive. "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire" is not a film whose screenplay will be studied by future film nerds for how well-constructed it is, in the way the original "Ghostbusters" and 1985's "Back to the Future" are now. But what's ironic is...
Steven Delopoulos and Johnny Phillips from the band Burlap to Cashmere perform The Sounds of Silence Tribute at 7 p.m. Friday at the Shelton High School Performing Arts Center. The duo sings the songs of Simon and Garfunkel and other singer/songwriters of that era, including Bob Dylan, John Denver, Harry Chapin, Cat Stevens and Don McLean. As members of the band Burlap to Cashmere, the two have opened for Elvis Costello, Hootie and the Blowfish, Bob Weir and REO Speedwagon, and recently,...
I somehow missed "Saint Maud," the 2019 debut film by writer-director Rose Glass, but after seeing "Love Lies Bleeding," which Glass directed and co-wrote with Weronika Tofilska, I'm definitely checking out whatever she has to offer from this point forward. "Love Lies Bleeding" is quite possibly an even more lesbian film than "Drive-Away Dolls," which I reviewed just a few weeks ago, but this is in no way a criticism. For a London-born gal whose lifespan post-dates the 1980s, Glass has a knack...
North Mason High School Drama Club students perform two one-act plays - "Sorry, Wrong Number" and "The Still Alarm" - at 7 tonight, Friday and Saturday in the school's theater at 71 E. Campus Drive in Belfair. Regular admission is $8, with students with an ASB card admitted for $5. Both one-act plays are old-time classics: "The Still Alarm" is 99 years old and "Sorry, Wrong Number" debuted during World War II. Drama Club Advisor Hilary Gennaro said she considered modern one-act plays for the...
Denis Villeneuve stuck the landing. I've only followed Villeneuve's filmmaking career since "Sicario" in 2015 - he's been directing feature films since 1998 - but every film he's made from "Sicario" forward, including 2016's "Arrival," 2017's "Blade Runner 2049" and 2021's "Dune," has been virtually flawless. "Dune: Part Two" is no exception, as Villeneuve gives Frank Herbert's 1965 epic science fiction novel the cinematic adaptation it's always deserved. Even brilliant auteurs that include...
Alicia Healey and Wes Wedell are Seattle singer/songwriters who draw inspiration from their rural roots and have collaborated musically for more than two decades. The two perform in concert at 3 p.m. Saturday at St. Germain's Episcopal Church, 600 N. Lake Cushman Road, Hoodsport. Admission is a suggested donation of $15, but no one will be turned away. Each will perform a set of original songs. "I will be backing him up, and he'll be backing me up," Healey said in a joint telephone interview...
Minor spoiler to start: "Drive-Away Dolls," contrary to its mildly misleading trailer, is not set in the 21st century. This matters because this period piece from 1999 is probably a golden mean between an absence of cellphones, whose presence would preclude most of this film's plot points, and a relative level of LGBTQ acceptance in society, which allows our lesbian protagonists to be careless over the course of their misadventures. It also matters because "Drive-Away Dolls" represents a...
The British classical crossover group Vox Fortura performs at 7 p.m. Saturday in the Shelton High School Performing Arts Center. The trio's eclectic set can include everything from Elgar and Bizet's "Pearl Fishers" to David Bowie, John Legend and Ed Sheeran. The group was a semifinalist on the TV show "Britain's Got Talent." The Mason County Community Concerts Association presents the show as part of its annual program. Single-concert tickets are $30 for adults, with children under age 18...
This year's Academy Awards are coming up next month, but I've never been any good at predicting the winners, so I thought I'd look back at a film that was nominated for eight Academy Awards 30 years ago and didn't win one. When "The Remains of the Day" premiered in 1993, my tastes ran more toward Miramax than Merchant Ivory, but a family friend recently suggested to my mother, the retired English teacher, that they give the film a second viewing. My mom had taught the 1989 Booker Prize-winning...
The long-running soap opera "The Bold and the Young" is in its last days. The hunky hero has self-esteem issues, the actor playing the villainous old man on the series for 40 years is more interested in soup, and the heroines are slightly psychopathic. The executive producer gives the squabbling cast an ultimatum: complete one episode overnight or the show dies. But when the director ends up murdered, the other cast members start dying. Can the cast discover the murderer before the show is...
In adapting Martin Amis' 2014 novel, "The Zone of Interest" to the big screen, writer-director Jonathan Glazer takes seriously the phrase, "the banality of evil," originally popularized by Hannah Arendt in 1963. Arendt and Glazer express the legacy of the Nazis during World War II by focusing on how they hid their evil in plain sight, behind a screen of domestic mundanity. Glazer's adaptation of "The Zone of Interest" lacks a plot, as it centers on German SS officer Rudolf Höss (played by...
Anjelah Johnson-Reyes, a former Los Angeles Raiders cheerleader, was a fledging standup comic when her YouTube clip "Nail Salon" attracted a reported 100 million views. Her character of a Vietnamese-American nail salon employee named My Linh/Tammy changed her life, Johnson-Reyes said in a telephone interview with the Journal from Los Angeles. "I had nothing to my name and then I'm on a hit TV show and touring the country," she said. Johnson-Reyes performs shows at 6 and 9 p.m. Feb. 3 at the Litt...
It's a measure of how far pop culture has progressed that "The Iron Claw" is neither Zac Efron's first critically praised performance, nor is it the first film about professional wrestling to earn critical acclaim. "The Wrestler" revitalized Mickey Rourke's career 16 years ago, and Efron's performance was the best thing about "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile" five years ago, but what still makes "The Iron Claw" stand out is how successfully it simulates a specific era of professional...
The vocal trio The Starlets perform pop, doo-wop, rhythm-and-blues and Motown tunes from the 1950s and '60s from 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday at the Shelton High School Performing Arts Center. The Mason County Community Concerts Association presents the show as part of its annual program. Single-concert tickets are $30 for adults, with children under age 18 admitted free. Ticket packages for the remaining season are $80. For more information, go to www.masoncountyconcerts.org. The Mason County...
The cold weather has had me housebound, so no trips to the movie theater for me. Instead, I bunkered down and caught up on streaming series as two shows ended their seasons and another made its premiere. The first season of "Monarch: Legacy of Monsters" on Apple TV+ had solid performers, but not all of their characters were written equally well. It often felt as though father and son Kurt and Wyatt Russell were carrying the show in their flawless portrayals of the older and younger versions of...
Bruce Coughlan, the longtime singer and songwriter for the Canadian Celtic folk band Tiller's Folly, performs a solo concert at 3 p.m. Saturday at St. Germain's Episcopal Church, 600 N. Lake Cushman Road, Hoodsport. Admission is the suggested donation of $15, but organizers say no one will be turned away. For 26 years, Tiller's Folly has written and recorded songs that draw from Scottish, Irish and maritime traditions "to preserve a measure of the West's colonial history in stories and songs,"...
Most people know Woodie Guthrie for his anthemic "This Land is Your Land." In 1941, the folksinger and activist composed 26 songs in 30 days traveling the Columbia River and visiting the Grand Coulee Dam project, penning tunes as an employee of the Bonneville Power Administration that included "Roll On Columbia." Olympia actor/teacher/musician/historian Joel Underwood brings the singer and the times to life with "That Ribbon of Highway: Woody Guthrie in the Pacific Northwest" at 2 p.m. Jan. 28...
As a Washington boy, there's no way I wasn't reviewing this week's premiere of "The Boys in the Boat," based on the 2013 book by Daniel James Brown, about the University of Washington rowing team that competed in the 1936 Summer Olympics. I was joined during my screening by a fan of the book, retired English literature teacher Linda Boxleitner, my mom, who lives in Cape George, and my insights below borrow liberally from her own. I tend to see films about sporting or athletic competitions as...
"Ferrari" is every inch a Michael Mann film, which means its acting, cinematography and production are all impeccable, but for once, I didn't find the result entirely compelling. Mann has sought to make this movie since the turn of the millennium, which makes sense. Mann's obsession with propulsion likely inspired lesser directors such as Michael Bay. Mann's narratives tend toward masculine protagonists, who pathologically need to pursue that which could lead to their own unraveling. Within the...
Hoodsport author Rebecca Holbrook will read from her debut novel "Omie's Well," and writer Melanie Jennings - the current writer-in-residence at Hypatia-in-the-Woods - will read essays from her work in progress, "Cake," at 2 p.m. Jan. 7 at the Shelton Timberland Library. Admission is free to the event at 710 W. Alder St. Holbrook will also play some of her compositions on banjo. Rebecca Holbrook Holbrook grew up in the South, where her maternal line went back to some of the earliest settlers aro...
I've shilled for this one before, but unlike "Die Hard" or "A Christmas Story," it has yet to make the jump from a holiday curio to a beloved Christmas classic, so here's hoping I can make it happen this time around ... It's that drowsy week between Christmas and New Year's, when you're still in a festive mood, but you've run out of options for holiday viewing that you haven't already seen. You've already watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and "It's a Wonderful Life," you know the adaptations o...
Growing up in Federal Way in South King County, Adrian Conner first heard AC/DC as a junior high student on a field trip while attending an assembly at her future high school. When "You Shook Me All Night Long" roared through the speakers, "I immediately had goose bumps - what is this?" she recalled in a telephone interview with the Shelton-Mason County Journal. These days, she's playing lead guitar licks on that song and other AC/DC classics such as "Highway to Hell," "Thunderstruck" and "Back...
Whether you're looking for childish flights of fancy in the cinema or suspenseful spy thrillers on streaming, this week's reviews have you covered. "Wonka" smartly seeks to appeal chiefly to those who know of its title character through 1971's "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," starring Gene Wilder, rather than Tim Burton's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" in 2005, starring Johnny Depp, or Roald Dahl's original 1964 novel. Wilder's Wonka shared some of the less-than-kid-friendly edge...
