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What Happened, Man? New Murphy movie is a must miss

Eddie Murphy is obviously trying to hurt the world on purpose. Why else would he inflict this “movie” on the masses? (I say “movie” with

Eddie Murphy is obviously trying to hurt the world on purpose. Why else would he inflict this "movie" on the masses? (I say "movie" with quotation marks because stringing together one poop joke after another is not what I'd call a movie. I'd call that sixth grade.)
 
Remember Raw-era Eddie Murphy? The Eddie Murphy who shit-talked Bill Cosby and wore the tightest leather pants in the universe? Or remember Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop? Yeah, well, forget about that Eddie Murphy. All we have now is an Eddie Murphy who lazily fulfills contractual studio obligations by making stupid comedies about spacemen who poop money. I'm not kidding. This actually happens in his new movie. And it happens inside an Old Navy.

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Burning Love: Hellboy’s campy twisted vision pummels onward

nuthin’, waddya you doin’?What is it this year with the superheroes? Bringing to life more comic book superhero blockbuster razzle-dazzle, we now enter the monster-dwelling

nuthin’, waddya you doin’?What is it this year with the superheroes? Bringing to life more comic book superhero blockbuster razzle-dazzle, we now enter the monster-dwelling realm of Hellboy II: The Golden Army. The original showed Hellboy (Ron Perlman) as the demon-turned-super-hero battling present-day Nazis and inter-dimensional monsters, and the sequel continues pulling out all the stops.
 
The movie begins with a sickeningly cute Hellboy (as a boy) brushing his teeth, excited for his bedtime story. And the story is? Yep, the saga of the Golden Army, and told in wooden puppet form, it looks pretty cool. Cut to: the present-the bedtime story is now a reality. An evil prince has to assemble three scattered pieces of a golden crown to raise the evil Golden Army from its dormancy to unleash Hell on earth…here's where Hellboy excels. He likes to kick monster butt.
Hellboy resides in a paranormal research center that is actually the home of a bunch of human oddities that would fare well in a freak sideshow. Oh, and they fight crime. Everyone's back, including sidekick fish-boy Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), but without David Hyde-Pierce's voice. Stepping into the webs-flipper-gills, Jones brings some credibility. Hellboy's girlfriend, Liz the Fire-Girl (Selma Blair) returns as does their totally lame love story. Manning (Jeffery Tambor) is once again the head of the government funded super-freak hideaway.

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Our Picks for the Week of 7/18-7/23

Ottmar Liebert & Luna Negra
friday 18
Ottmar Liebert is one hell of a flamenco guitarist, but you've never heard him correctly until you've taken a listen to Up Close, his binaural recording that when listened to with headphones sounds like you've got strings vibrating around your brain. Pretty intense. Check him out at the Tower with his ensemble, Luna Negra for some high-class sounds. 7pm Tower Theatre, 835 NW Wall St., 317-0700. $28.50/advance, $31.50/day of show.

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Deschutes Brewery: Black Butte Double XX

Editor's Note: This is the first in an occasional column spotlighting local beers
and breweries
My own research into beer drinking habits leads me to believe that the number of true "porter" aficionados is a small one. With its big malty body, and chocolate overtones, a good porter pretty much overwhelms the palate - it's the drinking equivalent of double fudge cake.

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Roll the Film: Newfound stability in tow, BendFilm takes its show on the road

Sandy Henderson and her 400 submission.You don’t have to look past the name of BendFilm to ascertain where the festival originated. While the non-profit independent

Sandy Henderson and her 400 submission.You don't have to look past the name of BendFilm to ascertain where the festival originated. While the non-profit independent cinema festival is, of course, rooted in our mountain town, this month will see BendFilm cross the Cascades for its first ever out-of-town event.
 
The screening of the documentary Breast Cancer Diaries in Portland at the end of the month marks a step forward for a festival that organizers say is doing well both fiscally and artistically - which they say wasn't exactly the case only a year ago.
"With the economy the way it is now it's important to reach out to other areas. I would always want it to be a Bend-based festival because I think Bend as a town provides part of the festival's charm," says Sandy Henderson, who is in her first year as executive director of BendFilm.
The screening is set for July 28 at the Portland Center Stage, and like the Indie Reels edition of the film in Bend this past winter, features an expert panel on the subject.
"We kept trying to think of a way to reach out to Portland and make the city more aware of BendFilm and breast cancer and Bend as a destination - so it's really a three-fold mission," Henderson says.

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Call Him Lego Jones, Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures

It’s okay to tell your kids about these swingers. When developer Traveller’s Tales put out two Lego Star Wars titles, audiences snapped them up. So,

It’s okay to tell your kids about these swingers. When developer Traveller's Tales put out two Lego Star Wars titles, audiences snapped them up. So, it only made sense to tap yet another George Lucas goldmine and take Indiana Jones to Lego land, with a focus on the three original Indy films. So could the Indiana Jones games be at least as good as the Star Wars ones?
The original Lego Star Wars games seemed at first like children's games, but ended up being quite fun. The presentation for the Indy game is just as fun and is extremely well done. It does a solid job of presenting the stories of the original three movies.
Lego Indiana Jones looks great and has some solid colors, well-drawn animations and shows a nice touch with the visual effects. This game really looks fantastic on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and even the good ol' PlayStation 2. The sound is also quite well done; you get to hear John Williams score from all three movies, along with some nice sound effects. There's nothing like hearing the crack of Indy's whip with a well-played move. The sound effects can get a little bit repetitive, but manage add to the action going on around you.

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Robin Hood RevisitedKit Kittredge shows how to do more with less

Even kids love old timey. Is stealing ever okay? How about if it’s from a rich banker in order to save the home of an

Even kids love old timey. Is stealing ever okay? How about if it's from a rich banker in order to save the home of an out-of-work family, or committed by those suffering in hunger and despair, as in the Great Depression? In the new film, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, based on the American Girl book series, Kit and her pals delve into that and other tricky moral quandaries, as they exit the safety of their tree-fort to embark upon various feats beyond their years. It turns out that Kit learns the most about survival, ingenuity, honesty and grace just by looking around her hometown.
 
Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) is the perfect choice for the role of Kit. She is confident, poised and assertive, with an earnest innocence. As Kit, Breslin also illustrates that she knows well how to register a look of shock or surprise, keeping a young audience enthralled with the film's exploits and misadventure.
The 30's-era tale chronicles the adventures of an aspiring young journalist who helps solve a mystery that threatens her family's home, as well as her entire Cincinnati neighborhood. When all signs of guilt point to the "hobo jungle" on the city's fringe-where Kit's new friends Will and Countee live alongside other jobless, hungry victims of the Depression-Kit convinces her friends to ferret out the truth.

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Super Bad: Turning the super hero genre on its ear in Hancock

nothing to see here. Just keep raking. It’s been quite the summer for super heroes-Iron Man, Hulk, and now Hancock, who comes in the form

nothing to see here. Just keep raking. It's been quite the summer for super heroes-Iron Man, Hulk, and now Hancock, who comes in the form of a drunken lout of a super hero.
 
The premise is clever: a super hero with a drinking problem doesn't know who he is or where he comes from. Carrying a truckload of problems, he doesn't really enjoy saving people's lives. He just does it because either he can and/or he's the only one who can. He makes a sloppy exercise out of saving the day, chucking a beached whale out to sea only to hit a sailboat….skewering a car of bad guys on the Capitol Records building… you get the point. Hancock is pretty much despised for all the chaos he causes - the exception being Ray Embry (Jason Bateman), a PR exec that Hancock saves from getting pulverized by a train. In return, Ray befriends the hero and attempts a marketing strategy makeover. Ray brings Hancock home for counseling and to meet his wife, Mary (Charlize Theron), who is busy with her own life and doesn't approve.
Will Smith is a charismatic actor, bringing life to what would normally be a spoof-oriented role. He also plays a believable drunk with some genuine talent. With Theron, though, I wondered for the longest time why she was even in this movie, but she does manage to prove her worth. Bateman is an entertaining guy in a smarmy and witty kind of way, although fairly one-dimensional.

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Our Picks for the Week of 7/9-7/14

Cascade Cycling Classic
wednesday-sunday
As if this town isn't bicycle crazy enough, we get to truly unleash our inner Armstrong for the 29th Annual Bend Memorial Clinic Cascade Cycling Classic. It's four days of all sorts of two-wheeled fun, highlighted by the downtown Twilight Criterium. Whether you're a hardcore rider or just someone who likes spandex, click over to cascade-classic.org to get yourself in gear.
Red Elvises
thursday 10
It seems like this band from Venice, CA by way of Russia is getting a hankering for Bend, seeing as how they've already returned for another show at the Midtown complex. The last time they stopped off they rocked the wood planks right out of the floor of the Annex, and expect them to do the same when the band with the big hair and bigger bass guitars (it's actually called a balalaika) returns for what promises to be a great night of rockabilly. 21 and over. 9pm. $12. The Annex, 51 NW Greenwood Ave.

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Cascades Theatrical Co. and the Tower Theatre Ponder: Ya wanna put on another show?

Cascades Theatrical Co. and the Tower Theatre Ponder: Ya wanna put on another show?

Dee Torrey: Man on a mission.Executives at the Cascades Theatrical Co. (CTC) and the Tower Theater
are contemplating future big-budget musical productions in the wake of
the "success" of their first collaboration, Urinetown: The Musical
(UTM). UTM completed its two-weekend run May 11.

Rickey Minder, who played UTM's Little Sally, said she appreciated the opportunity for growth that production provided.
Her
response is noteworthy, and not because it's unexpected of an aspiring
actress who was previously cast in a non-speaking role in CTC’s recent
production of The Fantasticks, which ran on its NW Greenwood stage last
February. Rather, the response of this 21-year-old Idaho native and
competitive hip-hop dancer illustrates the sort that Torrey works to
foster in his "troupers." The CTC exists to accomplish three major
purposes, Torrey explained in another interview: "We want to do good
theater, and [that means some] heavy drama. We want to educate the
public, and give our actors a chance to grow."

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