This woodblock print is a legendary masterwork by the Shin-hanga virtuoso Shiro Kasamatsu (1898–1991). Titled "Iizaka" (depicting the historic hot-spring onsen town of Iizaka). It captures the profound, quiet solitude of a mountain hot-spring village wrapped in winter twilight.

© Coco Capitán

This book is so great. The Wrong Son is about overcoming childhood trauma, partly through a love of literature, and it’s quite readable because the book is so lucid, it’s informative about psychology, and especially because it’s beautifully written. Neil is a friend so I’m biased, but holy wow.

Haha I'm actually crying lol - I know next to nothing about sports and still I'm caught up in this beautiful game & beautiful speech. Like Jalen Brunson & the rest of the Knicks (congrats!!), Mamdani has brought forward a dream of hope that uplifts and inspires action. This is the work :)

You want to watch something cool? John Malkovich doing a tourism short for Croatia. It's great. Courtesy of Pete Radovich youtube.com/watch?v=S2Uq...

A really compelling profile and portfolio in Aperture magazine featuring Li Zhensheng’s photographs taken during the Cultural Revolution.

All my favorite movies are ones where you can pause the screen at almost any moment and have a beautiful image. I did so here while watching Powell & Pressburger’s A Canterbury Tale (with Sheila Sim).

5 movies to get to know me: 1. Le Samourai 2. The Conversation 3. A Matter of Life and Death 4: 2001: A Space Odyssey 5. Koyaanisqatsi

George Crandall, the architect largely responsible for Portland’s iconic Big Pink skyscraper, died Tuesday. He was 88. h/t @brianlibby.bsky.social for the assist on Crandall's biography www.oregonlive.com/portland/202...

I've surely posted these before, but every time I come across these Art Hupy photographs of Portland's Memorial Coliseum in 1960, as I did today, I stop and swoon. America's greatest midcentury architectural photographer, Julius Shulman, also photographed the Coliseum, but I like these best.

A most satisfying rewatch. Such incredible chemistry. Such great dialogue and cinematography. Although The Maltese Falcon is itself a masterpiece, and a tighter film, I think I’ll still take The Big Sleep.

What a moving story: a filmmaker exploring and healing after the trauma of his mother’s 1983 murder, through restorative justice and returning home. I would love to see this film.

I could almost just keep watching this particular Columbo episode every week.

I'm still enjoying perusing photos from my visit earlier this week to the new East County Library in Gresham. It's so full of beautiful timber and natural light, as well as a strong sense of compression and release continually happening between one and two-story interior spaces.

Today is the 49th anniversary of the Portland Trail Blazers winning the NBA championship. I have the following day's newspaper framed, but until today I had never seen the June 5 edition. I love that it simply says at the top, "WE'LL WIN IT TODAY!" All these years later, I'm still in near-disbelief.

I'll play along. 10 bands/artists I loved in the 1990s: Fugazi American Music Club Smart Went Crazy Morphine A Tribe Called Quest Edsel The Beta Band Liz Phair Nirvana Tortoise HM: Branford Marsalis Quartet, The Beastie Boys, Bjork, The Chills, Living Colour, Cibo Matto

“The Insider has Sergio Leone-like extreme close-ups on Russell Crowe’s face tightly compressed, eyes constantly blinking, buckling but not bending. His performance, convincingly aging up with added weight [and] roll shouldered gait, as a doughy executive pushed into a corner until he snaps.”

I've maintained my subscription out of local-press loyalty, but an article this painfully tone deaf makes me want to cancel. It's basically saying, "What a tragedy we don't have this generic chain, so we must resign ourselves to local businesses with vastly tastier donuts and more personality."

Saddened to learn that Greenwich Village's Cozy Soup 'n' Burger is closing: one of the last vestiges of my college years in New York. Love that place! (Everything but the Sanka.) abc7ny.com/post/cozy-so...

I absolutely love the new East County Library in Portland's eastern suburb of Gresham, officially designed by Holst Architecture but originally co-designed by British-Ghanaian architect Sir David Adjaye. It's the best work of local architecture since the Portland International Airport terminal.

This is so brilliant: a Tetris-like animation by Walter Murch (linked via QR code in his book Suddenly Something Clicked) showing how scenes from The Conversation were rearranged during editing. vimeo.com/710004860

Great thread on Marcia Lucas, the editor whose work was a key part of Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, Taxi Driver, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, & other classics of the New Hollywood era & thereafter.

This book is kind of blowing my mind. It’s some of the best writing on film I’ve encountered, or at least the most insightful. Thank you @sightsoundmag.bsky.social and @mariephillips.bsky.social for the recommendation!

Famous Ray’s Pizza of Greenwich Village, at Sixth Avenue and 11th Street in Manhattan. Just sublime. Where I learned to appreciate a simple cheese slice.

Loved seeing these posters for My Own Private Idaho on a wall in downtown Portland this evening (advertising the upcoming Criterion Mobile Closet visit to the city).

I'm excited that today is the publication date for The Wrong Son, a memoir by our friend of 30-plus years, Neil Griffiths. He's a novelist and the co-founder of both the Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize as well as Weatherglass Books. The excerpts I read were amazing. Can't wait to read more.

With many paying tribute to Sonny Rollins upon his death this week, I love the consensus that his most beloved performance is actually his practice sessions, on the Williamsburg Bridge. However, my favorite album Rollins plays on is Milestone Jazzstars In Concert, with Ron Carter and McCoy Tyner.

I quite like this 1939 photo taken in a Sydney, Australia rubber glove factory, from the State Library of New South Wales archives (via their Flickr page).

This series of Taskmaster is an absolute delight. I often like the contrarians, but it's better when everyone acts like they want to be there. This line-up is also a lesson in approaching the unknown with a sense of joy and curiosity.

I love it when a rainy late afternoon gives way to a sunny evening sky. Epic sunset in Portland tonight.

I just rewatched for the first time in years my first of 50-plus short films, Western Travelogue #1, made in 2003. It was shot on super-8 and is narrated in Japanese, without subtitles, suggesting a kind of found documentary about Oregon. vimeo.com/11767299

Paul McCartney Fugazi Chuck Berry Herbie Hancock American Music Club Simon & Garfunkel Tom Waits Ron Carter The Chills Branford Marsalis Vijay Iyer A Tribe Called Quest Ray Charles Morphine Van Halen Lionel Hampton Tricky Sting Beastie Boys Rush Art Farmer Jeff Parker Itzhak Perlman

We enjoyed watching Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Pictures of Ghosts last night, a personal documentary about the long-gone movie theaters in the filmmaker’s hometown of Recife, Brazil. boxd.it/euvmEL

Fun time tonight at the Mission Theater seeing the great Willy Vlautin read from his new novel The Left and the Lucky, and play songs with his band The Delines.

If you're into Portland, or architecture, or good writing, my brother's book is gonna be a banger! bsky.app/profile/osup...

New OSU Press blog post features Brian Libby (@brianlibby.bsky.social) author of "In Search of Portland: Exploring a Transforming City." "Writing this book was a way of reminding myself to cherish the city we have, right now." Read more: beav.es/fdP. #PortlandArchitecture #PortlandHistory

Now playing, an ace birthday gift from @valarie.bsky.social. Never considered myself much of a reggae/dub fan in the past, but I heard the title track from this album on the radio a couple months ago and was instantly into it. Not a surprise Lee “Scratch” Perry was involved. Love the melodica too.

I became an Arsenal fan about 21 years ago (inspired by Thierry Henry's virtuosity), shortly after they won their last Premier League title. Excited to see them pull this off, and put to bed the "same old Arsenal" stories of near misses and disappointment. www.nytimes.com/athletic/liv...

My high school’s football stadium in McMinnville, Oregon burning down in 1973. The arsonist was actually at large for another six years. I remember him finally setting fire to a seed company and a main street drugstore in 1979 when I was seven. I used to worry he would burn down our house.

A little Sunday fun with Jenny and the slo-mo button.

Sometimes a Great Notion The Rings of Saturn Jane Eyre

While enjoying a Miami Vice episode last night, it struck me that each episode is like a movie condensed into 40 minutes. It made captivating, flashy-for-its-time TV, but struck me as somewhat of a shame: that there were all these deeper, moodier Michael Mann films wanting more room to stretch out.

Lovely look back at the life and career of filmmaker Brian Lindstrom by @brianlibby.bsky.social. His work includes documentaries about 70s singer-songwriter Judee Sill and James Chasse, who was killed by Portland police officers. He was also author Cheryl Strayed’s husband.

Now playing.

Loving my new book of Eugene Atget photographs, a birthday gift from @valarie.bsky.social.

So sad to learn of documentary filmmaker Brian Lindstrom's passing. I was lucky to interview him a couple times in recent years, and he couldn't have been nicer. Talented too, as evidenced in films like "Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse" and "Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill."

A favorite highlight from yesterday's Portland Art Museum visit was Mary Henry's geometric-abstraction paintings from the 1960s-80s. Her work is in several regional museum collections, but no major museums like MoMA, the Met, LACMA or SFMOMA, which seems unfortunate and maybe unfair.

I spent a long time at the Portland Art Museum today gazing at Cézanne's 1872 painting "The Wine Market at Jussieu." It's unlike his colorful paintings of fruit bowls or bathers, but I was totally wowed. Of course an iPhone photo can't replicate what it's like to see it in person. Magnifique.

My latest @orartswatch.org architecture column profiles an urban design and real estate consultant whose MIT dissertation was about how cities adapt to changing conditions. Very relevant to Portland’s malaise. www.orartswatch.org/urban-strate...