This Week
The Gristle
Pass Through Costs
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
PASS THROUGH COSTS: Bellingham City Council this week took an important real step toward building a more socially equitable community as they considered an actual draft ordinance that might create a registration program for the city’s rental housing. The city estimates there are approximately 13,000 existing rental units that could be registered through this program.
Council has fretted for more than a decade—with numerous false starts—over the problem of substandard rental housing that
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Film
Jodorowsky’s Dune
The epic story of a never-was
Reviewed by Ty Burr · Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Is Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune the most influential movie never made?
Late in the lively, anecdote-strewn documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, director Frank Pavich enumerates the ways. The swordfights in Star Wars, the cyborg POV in The Terminator, the galaxy-spanning opening shot of Contact—all were prefigured in the massive Dune storyboard book that circulated through studio suites in the mid-1970s. Writer Dan O’Bannon and visual consultants Chris Foss, Jean “Moebius” Giraud, and H.R.
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Music
Signed Fest
Of labels and legacies
By Carey Ross · Wednesday, April 23, 2014
When a representative of Yellingham, Bellingham’s annual DIY all-ages music festival, announced in late January that, not only would there be no festival in 2014, but also that Yellingham was on indefinite hiatus, the news was disappointing, yet not surprising.
Disappointing because in the four years of its existence, Yellingham proved itself to be a welcome and fiercely supported part of Bellingham’s music community. Disappointing because Yellingham as both an event and an entity offered
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Outdoors
Good Wood
Sojourn in the cedars
Story and photo by Trail Rat · Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Like many greenhorn trail crew leaders before me, I did not endeavor to undertake my inaugural worksite encounter with an ancient grove of super-sized Western red cedars without briefing myself thoroughly on the signature structural and spiritual characteristics those shaggy-topped “transformer” evergreens have long been known to possess.
I soon surmised just how powerfully useful and life-affirming our most deeply revered and culturally valuable endemic conifers actually are.
Tree-hugging
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Food
Food Haus
Bringing Germany to Market
Story and photo by Sally Wolff · Wednesday, April 23, 2014
When Riley White-Brainard first started talking about Food Haus, I figured we were having the standard restaurant fantasy conversation we’d had many times before, slurping whiskeys and dreamily discussing briskets and whether endive is an economically feasible vegetable.
We’d often wax poetic about food trucks and restaurants; excitedly blurting out whatever entrees we’d like to serve. So I was surprised when the next time I saw Riley he’d drawn up a menu—and two weeks later had
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Words
Roddy Returns
From music-maker to middle age
Reviewed by Christine Perkins · Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Think back to 1991, when a (fictional) ragtag group of Irish soul musicians stormed the music scene in the profane but endearing film The Commitments.
The movie was based on a novel by Roddy Doyle; both center around Jimmy Rabbitte, a working-class Dubliner with a passion for soul music. He sets his sights on forming the greatest soul band to ever play, and gathers together a motley (and very white) crew whose musical brilliance is matched by their complete dysfunction off-stage.
Fast
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Visual
By the Seaside
Blossoms and beauty in La Conner
By Stephen Hunter · Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Now that he enjoys four other artists as congenial partners for his well-placed Seaside Gallery in La Conner, owner Mark Conley can breathe easy.
Running a gallery all by himself had been too much work. Next, when he operated it as a large co-op, difficulties only multiplied.
The gallery welcomes visitors with a museum-like atmosphere. You won’t trip over vases, paperweights and snow globes here. The paintings and photos are well-lighted and given their own space.
Conley’s photography
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On Stage
The Vagina Monologues
Sisters are doing it for themselves
By Amy Kepferle · Wednesday, April 23, 2014
What’s the worst word you can think of?
If it starts with a “c” and rhymes with “blunt,” you’re not alone in thinking the four-letter word can be distasteful and derogatory towards women.
I, too, was once wary of this particular linguistic unit. But after a month of uttering it more than a few times a day in an attempt to memorize my piece for upcoming performances of The Vagina Monologues, I’ve changed my mind.
In fact, my way of thinking about most phrases having to do with the intimate
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Film
Ernest & Celestine
A touching tale of an unlikely friendship
Reviewed by Peter Rainer · Wednesday, April 23, 2014
The enchanting French-Belgian animated feature Ernest & Celestine is so liltingly sweet and graceful that, a day or two after I saw it, it seemed almost as if I had dreamed it.
The real dreamers here are its young director, Benjamin Renner, co-directors Vincent Patar and Stéphane Aubier, and the novelist screenwriter Daniel Pennac, adapting material from the beloved children’s books by Gabrielle Vincent, which she both wrote and illustrated, about the enduring friendship between a little
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