Culture

Tenacious Archery time with JB.Little boys, whatever their ages, have always loved permission to laugh at potty humor. Like baseball, number two pencils, and visiting your parents, jokes about feces and farting draw out that inner child like nothing else can. Harold Ramis recognizes this. So he wrote and directed Jack Black's new movie, Year One.

Ramis has a great resume dating back to Caddyshack and Ghostbusters. But let's face it, houses built largely of dung and gas generally don't hold up. And Year One is no exception.
But there are redeeming moments. In fact, cameos by Oliver Platt and Hank Azaria are brilliant. Azaria plays Abraham to Christopher Mintz-Plasse's Isaac. And there are bits, moments and high points where you're surprised in ways that are original and funny. And Azaria and Platt are in many of them.

Mister rabbit says, "A moment of realization is worth a thousand prayers." Management is set in Kingman, Arizona but anyone who has been around here a while knows it was really filmed in Madras. As a resident of Central Oregon and a short-term resident of Arizona, I couldn't see the resemblance at all - Madras is just too instantly recognizable as Madras. It's not the first Oregon city to play surrogate, Portland has masqueraded as Baltimore, Maryland and Aberdeen, Washington in the same way. But Madras is little more than a prop - the story could have taken place in any small town in any motel.

Management opens on the character of Mike (Steve Zahn) a motel heir in the most basic sense who is running his parents' small roadside hotel. Into his life walks Sue (Jennifer Aniston), a businesswoman with whom Mike becomes smitten. The movie then morphs into a cross-country/stalker-obsessed love story and all that usually entails: a jealous ex, kooky sidekick, ailing parents. Management attempts to put a capitol "Q" on quirky and succeeds more times than it fails. For a while, the film gropes and falters in the suspended disbelief mode, but is peculiar enough to be enjoyable. Then about midway through, it sinks into way-too-cute mode, combining heartfelt scenes with oddball comic relief. If you dig chick flicks, this is the one for you.

…without a paddle.Sin Nombre (which translates to "Without a Name") is one of those films that will stay with you for days. This brilliantly directed, acted and photographed visual masterpiece is a chase-thriller/road-movie/coming of age/love story. The film examines the power and influence of Mexican gangs in small towns that offer little beyond the lure of crossing the border. It's a simple tale bound together with complex emotional themes, and produced by two actors who have established themselves in American movies, Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna (Y Tu Mamá También).
The film features two main storylines that intersect during a train ride moving immigrants north. El Casper (Edgar Flores) is disillusioned with gang life and seeks an escape; Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) is going to cross the Mexican border from Honduras with her estranged father. Casper is running from his past with gang members in chase. Sayra is smitten with him, a combination of infatuation, necessity and the white knight syndrome-even if the knight wields a machete. The saga of twelve-year old Smiley (Kristyan Ferrer) is the movie's pivotal and most powerful secondary storyline, chronicling his gang indoctrination and efforts to legitimize himself. Immigration, while a powerful undercurrent, plays a back seat to the depiction of desperate acts to escape intolerable circumstances.

Bike Chariot wars: Coming soon to Drake Park…please.Bicycling. It seems simple enough - two wheels, gears, cables, and of course someone to ride it. But anyone even remotely connected to cycling, especially in this part of the country, knows that it's not that straightforward. In fact, past Webcyclery movie nights at McMenamins have always looked into a specific aspect of the bicycle world. But this time around, the chosen film is one called Veer, and it attempts to tackle cycling culture in one fell swoop by taking a wide-angle look at Portland's culture more or less as a whole.
The film, directed by Greg Fredette, introduces us to a range of characters including the Zoobombers, an increasingly well-known group of cyclists that bombs down Portland hillsides on children's bikes as well as a cycling advocate battling to pass bills on the floor of the state legislature. There's also a group of bike dancers, cycling non-profits and stories of cyclists who've been killed in traffic. All in all, it's a look at Portland's urban cycling culture from a variety of angles. But there's very little by way of facts or statistics to discuss or explain the cycling boom, it's not that kind of documentary. Rather, the film is strictly observational in its approach.