So those were definitely some Oscars, huh? There were definitely a few very good choices (Daniel Kaluuya winning Best Supporting Actor and Youn Yuh-jung winning Best Supporting Actress were chef’s kiss), but if that wasn’t the most strangely anticlimactic ending of the Academy Awards of all time, then I don’t know what could top it. […]
Jared Rasic
Film critic and author of food, arts and culture stories for the Source Weekly since 2010.
Posted inCulture
Crisis in Yemen
A Conversation with Oscar-nominated “Hunger Ward” Producer Michael Scheuerman, a Bend local
The Oscar nominees for Documentary Shorts are usually very difficult to watch. I mean, they’re uniformly excellent, but the films are always extremely topical and unflinchingly brutal in their dedication to truth. At Tin Pan Theater over the last six or seven years, I’ve been lucky enough to watch most of the Oscar Shorts (including […]
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deWitt’s Creek
“French Exit” Slips Away When You Least Expect It
It’s always fun in cinema and television to watch obscenely rich and out-of-touch people lose all of their money and then have to live like us normals. It’s a huge reason why shows like “Arrested Development” and “Schitt’s Creek” were so popular from the jump. But the reasons why shows like that had staying power […]
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Godzilla vs. Kong
Whoever wins, we also kinda win too, I guess.
Remember in “Lethal Weapon” how Mel Gibson would bet his co-workers he could get himself out of a straitjacket with no help? So then he would dislocate his shoulder and get out of the straitjacket, but then have to put the shoulder back into place by banging it into a filing cabinet or something? It’s […]
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A Neo-Noir Comedy Thriller?
Be confounded by "The Kid Detective"
If you held a gun to my head and made me pick a favorite genre of movie, I’d say horror, but if I got to pick another one, I’d say the genre of Lowered Expectations. The best example I can give is “The Royal Tenenbaums,” where everyone is talented and brilliant in their own ways […]
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Women in Film
Celebrating BendFilm’s new voices
BendFilm is filled with brilliant women. Throughout the tenure of the organization there have been several amazing women with the festival, but recently Executive Director Todd Looby has made it a priority to focus on showing movies by women and BIPOC and staffing BendFilm with new and diverse women. This being Women’s History Month, I […]
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May the Source Be With You
Your March edition of what to stream and what to listen to this month
Has everyone had a beautiful month? I know many more people are tentatively venturing back out into the world, so I have a feeling that this month most of us have maybe watched fewer movies and shows than we have in the last, say, year and change. Not me, though. I’m such a dedicated and […]
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New Streams in the Ether
Paramount Plus pushes nostalgia over quality
There are so many different streaming services that it’s kind of stupid. Between the subscriptions I pay for and the ones I have borrowed from others, I have Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBOMax, Disney+, AMC+, WWE Network, Hoopla, Kanopy, Shudder, IFC Films Unlimited, Peacock, Sundance Now and Hulu. Hell, I even had Quibi back when it […]
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The Stories We Don’t Hear
Indie Womxn Film Festival launches, virtually
There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t realize my privilege being a cis white male writing about movies in an industry where most of the executives and filmmakers look like me—and even more of the critics look like me. My voice is not a marginalized one. So whenever there’s an event focused […]
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The Lonesome, Crowded West
McDormand and Zhao take us to "Nomadland"
There’s so much Oscar hype surrounding Chloé Zhao and Frances McDormand’s new film “Nomadland” that I’m curious whether the film’s quiet and contemplative simplicity will wow audiences trained to think hyperbolic over-reliance on big emotion is what makes modern movies “dramatic.” “Nomadland” is the antithesis of movies like “Green Book” and “Crash,” which seem offended […]