Culture
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Two-Wheeled Movies: WebCyclery Movie Night keeps their cycling series rolling with Pedal

The Source Staff

Hell hath no furry like a New York City bicycle messenger.Although snow is still on the ground and most folks have their bikes
tucked neatly away in the storage shed for another month or two,
cycling is never quite on the backburner in this two-wheel obsessed
town. Riders who can't actually get out on the road or trail burn away
the cabin fever by talking about cycling, reading about cycling, and
perhaps most entertainingly, watching movies about cycling - which is
where WebCyclery comes in.

Posted inCulture

Running with the Devil: Devil May Cry 4

Shawn Wallbaum

The clear cut number one in ’07It seems like game publishers don't make original games anymore, just
sequels to hit games, and Capcom is no exception. Its latest release
"Devil May Cry 4" is the third sequel to the hit game Capcom released
on the Playststion 2 back in 2001. The original was a forerunner in the
extreme combat genre and a predecessor to hugely popular games like
"God of War" and "Blood Will Tell." While the concept may not be
revolutionary, "Devil 4" is largely up to the task of reinventing the
genre that it helped to establish.

Posted inCulture

Caveman vs. Cavewoman: Defending the Caveman gives a one-man look at relationships

The Source Staff

Barney Rubble is going to want that TV back.There are some differences between men and women - far beyond what you
may have learned from a nervous junior high school nurse in your first
sex education class. And whether you like it or not, these
dissimilarities are funny and there's never been a shortage of writers,
television producers and comedians to cash in on the topic. But
somehow, someway, people are still laughing, and that's why Defending
the Caveman is still packing theaters.

The one-man show that has been
performed around the country since 1991 and eventually became the
longest running solo play in the history of Broadway, is again dragging
its club into the Tower Theatre-and with perfect timing…the show plays
on Valentine's Day and the day after.

Posted inCulture

This is Still Cowboy Country

Rick Steber is a local literary hero, the author of more than 30 books, many of them set in Central Oregon. But it still took
Mike Bookey

Rick Steber is a local literary hero, the author of more than 30 books, many of them set in Central Oregon. But it still took more than 100 pages for me to start to care about the main character in his new novel, Forty Candles on a Cowboy Cake. The novel focuses on a character with the awkward handle of Waddy Wilder, a buckaroo on a ranch outside Sisters. It didn't help that Waddy is a malcontent, unhappy with the scourge of developers, but equally irritated by environmentalists working on behalf of "an army dressed according to L.L. Bean, Cabela and Eddie Bauer."

Posted inCulture

Year-Around Film: BendFilm and the Tower team up to revamp The Series

The Source Staff

BendFilm and the Tower kick off the Series with the Breast Cancer DiariesFor a few days in October, the Tower Theatre becomes home to the
BendFilm festival, packing the historic venue with diehard film buffs,
as well as locals who just like to get a taste of independent cinema
without leaving town. But when the festival closes down, documentaries
and out-of-the-mainstream feature films, although not completely vacant
from our cultural landscape, are much tougher to find.

While some
might think of BendFilm as an entity existing only during that long
weekend in October, the organization has teamed with the Tower Theater
to present a bi-monthly series of independent films from the festival's
library and beyond. Kicking off Indie Reels is The Breast Cancer
Diaries, a film documenting a woman's battle with the disease.

Posted inCulture

Air-Power to the People: Pirate Radio USA gives media to the masses

Mike Bookey

These pirates don’t have scurvy.This is one of those highly entertaining, insightful, humorous,
fact-filled documentaries that can be enjoyed by those on both sides of
the political fence, despite its clear agenda.
I saw this movie
at the BendFilm Festival and was glad to see our local community radio
station KPOV 106.7 FM bringing the documentary to McMenamins on
Wednesday. As a DJ on KPOV, I confess that I'm somewhat biased -
sharing an affinity for the free-speech rights of local broadcasters
over large media conglomerates, having volunteered at the station for
more than three years.

Posted inCulture

Video Game Flashback: ColecoVision and the Adam computer

Shawn Wallbaum

They just don't make video games like this anymore…thankfully.Back in the early 1980s after the Atari 2600 system was released, other
companies wanted to cash in on the video game craze and one such
company was Coleco. Considered a second-generation game system, the
ColecoVision was released at the end of 1982 with 12 arcade-quality
titles. The system was sold with a licensed version of Nintendo's
"Donkey Kong," and helped beat its main rival, the Atari 5200, which
also provided more advanced, arcade-quality games, but was ultimately
less successful than the ColecoVision. The system sold more than a
million units in its first year and more than seven million during its
lifetime. 

Posted inCulture

A Tortured Soul: The Films of Heath Ledger

Mike Bookey

Last week Heath Ledger was found dead in his Manhattan apartment. At
28, he had created a career based on risky roles and shunned the
heartthrob characters he could have played. In his last film, The Dark
Knight, a sequel to Batman Begins, Ledger plays the deranged villain,
The Joker. It is due out in July of this year. Below are the best films
available on DVD of his short, but notable career.
Candy
Ledger
and Abby Cornish are stellar in this bleak tale about two artistic
souls tumbling down the road of self-destruction from heroin use.
Tragic and sad, these characters are the poster children for staying
far away from recreational drug use.
Brokeback Mountain
There's
no discussing Ledger without mentioning Brokeback Mountain. By far his
most challenging role was his heartbreaking performance of Ennis Del
Mar, the sexually conflicted cowboy never able to allow himself the
freedom to be happy. Accolades were mounded on Ledger as well as the
rest of the cast and the film as a whole. This is where Ledger met
Michelle Williams, who later became his romantic partner and the mother
of his child. Ledger had recently separated from Williams.
 

Posted inCulture

Fourth Blood: Stallone kills, kills, kills in another over-the-hill sequel

Mike Bookey

How many 60-year-olds can kill like this?Let's get this straight right off the bat, something I'm sure we ALL
know … DO NOT MESS WITH RAMBO. This movie sledgehammers that fact home
by combining preachy stereotypes and super-gore. And you know what?
Parts of it are actually all right.
Rambo opens with grisly authentic
stock footage of the atrocities in Burma (oddly never referred to by
the nation's present-day name of Myanmar). Stallone said he wants this
movie to carry a "real" message, so people will become aware of the
genocide that plagues Burma, but then he chucks himself into a fake-ass
drama smack-dab in the middle of it, allowing him to come across as a
hero, "find" himself and kill tons - and I mean tons - of people in the
meantime.

Posted inCulture

Walls Bring Us Together: CTC goes musical with “The Fantasticks”

Mike Bookey

The Fantasticks: Waving jazz hands for 40-plus years.Luisa is 16, "pretty for the first time," and quite insane. Matt is 20,
nerdy, and wondering what's beyond that road. Oh, and they're in love
and as close together as the wall their parents have literally built
between them allows. This isn't another Romeo and Juliet or Pyramus and
Thisbe, but The Fantasticks - the longest-running off-Broadway musical
(some 17,162 performances spanning 42 years), loosely based on Edmond
Rostand's Les Romanesques, and now available to hum along with at the
Cascades Theatrical Company.

Marking the middle of the CTC's 29th
season, The Fantasticks is a stage standard; dripping with nostalgia,
audiences lap up the escapism and the cast ever-cognizant that they are
part of history. Yet the CTC has again offered a twist: Director
Kymberli Colbourne has dared to alter the time-tested formula of The
Fantasticks by replacing the two meddling fathers (who built the wall
to manipulate their children) with two equally errant mothers. Bellomy
(Kimberlee Lear) and Hucklebee (Mandy Rockwell) bring new life to the
sometimes quaint script, while Jimena Romero as Luisa and Scott Carroll
as Matt never take themselves too seriously - which is most welcome
when watching a play nearly a half-century old.

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