Hamish Linklater and Miranda July in "The Future"
Ex-Portlander Miranda July has a new movie,“The Future,” opening on Friday, and a few months ago The Oregonian’s indie film writer, Stan Hall, interviewed her, the first time she’d been in the city since 2005, she said. It’s a good interview as these sorts of things go, and this is the sort of “question” (hey, the best questions aren’t always actual questions) that got things beneath the surface.
Hall: Viewing “The Future” as a late-30s person in a long-term relationship, one that is supposed to last “forever,” I connected with the dialogue about how even when a couple is several years into their union, that it’s still in the beginning stages.
July: I’ve said in interviews that being in my 30s made me start thinking about mortality or whatever, but I don’t know if I would’ve come to all that if I hadn’t also met someone (July’s husband, film director Mike Mills) I felt like committing to for the rest of my life. The second you start throwing those words, you have to think about picturing yourself being old with this person … it can be either moving or something stifling and terrifying. . I met my husband right before I started working on this; we got married a few months before I started shooting the movie. So I was definitely thinking about all that.
Via the Harvard University science demonstration site (through Open Culture), we have this particularly mesmerizing little apparatus, just to start your morning in a state of hypnosis.
Harvard isn’t the only place video goes on, oh no. Oregon Ballet Theatre does some, too, on a blog run by Claire Willett, who works at the ballet by day, writes plays by night and supports the arts in general with exactly the right spirit. This particular video is for cubicle dwellers with sore necks and tight shoulders…
Brian Libby’s Portland Architecture blog takes on lots of arts-relevant issues, and his recent take on The Woods, an alternative music club carved out of an old funeral parlour on Milwaukie Ave. is a case in point. He even starts to get at something I’ve often wondered about: Why do arts events feel so right in warehouses, churches and, yes, funeral homes?
“The stage at The Woods, formerly an in-house chapel, also reminded me of other arts spaces in town reclaimed from utterly different original buildings. At Milepost 5, for example, the housing development for artists on 82nd Avenue that used to be a retirement home, there is a wonderfully intimate and cozy small theater and performance space that was formerly the facility’s in-house chapel. From the preserved pews where Gladice, Doris and Abigail said once said their prayers, Tyler, Ashley and Austin are screening experimental films and bobbing heads to bands.”
Enough for this morning? Back to the cubicle for me!