There’s something ultimately pretty amazing about the resiliency of the human spirit when it comes to what we’re capable of normalizing. If you would have told me back in March that the 17th Annual BendFilm Festival would be virtual, I wouldn’t have believed you, but that the fest is a virtual AND drive-in hybrid sounds […]
Film
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Technocracy Now
Unpacking "The Social Dilemma"
There’s a lot to unpack in Jeff (“Chasing Ice”) Orlowski’s new documentary, “The Social Dilemma”—the least of which is whether any of its sobering and lucid information is going to reach the people that need to hear it the most. On the film’s most basic level, it focuses on different tech experts from Google, Facebook, […]
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May the Source Be With You
September Edition: Were we all raised by wolves?
For last month’s column of May the Source Be With You, I talked about my anxiety connected to the world being on fire… several weeks before the air had the quality of actually living inside of a camp fire. I was trying to be metaphorical, not to predict the future. It’s pretty disturbing because for […]
Posted inCulture
Great Trouble
Bend’s Father’s Group teams up With BendFilm for a thoughtful evening at the drive-in
A few weeks ago, I wrote about movies that changed the world—and now here we are, coming up on two of them that have the power to do just that. Local nonprofit, The Father’s Group, is taking over the pop-up drive-in for a night, showing one of the most powerful documentaries to have come out over […]
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Let’s Try a Regal!
As soon as possible, our local film reviewer headed to the cinema for an in-person show. Here’s why he’s not going back anytime soon.
I missed seeing movies at the cinema more than I can say. The massive sound, the huge screens and the brand-new releases were all things I was deeply missing in the age of COVID. At the same time, it makes perfect sense why Regal Cinemas nationwide were closed. Being inside a box full of strangers during […]
Posted inCulture
The New Stoner Canon
Movies that melt your face
I‘m not sure if this is a hot take, but most stoner movies are terrible. Maybe at the time they came out they’re pretty funny or trippy, but they don’t tend to age very well. I recently tried to re-watch some of the Cheech and Chong movies. In “Nice Dreams,” Cheech legit sexually assaults someone […]
Posted inCulture
A Change Will Do Us Good
Movies that shape the world
It was 1902 when “Le Voyage dans la Lune” (“A Trip to the Moon”) by Georges Méliès was released, changing cinema and the way humans relate to the world forever. Sure, it’s widely considered to be one of the earliest examples of the science fiction genre in film and changed the way narratives were told […]
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May the Source Be With You
August Edition of our roundup of podcasts, streams and more
Well, I initially thought this month’s column should just be me repeating, “Everything is fine!” 500 times while everything burns down around me, but I’ve decided to bottle it all up until I have a nervous breakdown three or four months from now. Sound like a plan? Good! With that said, since theaters (live and […]
Posted inCulture
'Rebuilding Paradise'
Ron Howard’s documentary on the Camp Fire heads to the (outdoor) big screen in Bend
I was born in 1980 at the Feather River Hospital in Paradise, California. My family had lived there since 1964 when my contractor grandfather built the Foster’s Freeze and many other businesses across town. When I was eight, my grandma had me carve my name in wet cement in Paradise’s beautiful Bille Park, a transgression I […]
Posted inCulture
I Made it a Blockbuster Night
“The Last Blockbuster” finally has its premiere
The most meta moment of my life happened this past weekend, and it was amazing. I went to the world premiere of “The Last Blockbuster,” a movie that I’m in, about a dying form of entertainment, shown at a pop-up drive-in movie theater, which is in itself a dead form of entertainment, during a global […]