EXPANDING TIME TRAVEL
With its trippy comedic take on time travel and the multiple versions of one's self it'd create, Spokane-made sci-fi short TIM TRAVERS & THE TIME TRAVELER'S PARADOX was a favorite at last year's Spokane International Film Festival, and has gone on to win awards at other fests. This month, writer/director and EWU alumnus Stimson Snead has been back in Spokane shooting Tim Travers as a feature film. After visiting the set, it looks like the full-length version could be a blast, with Samuel Dunning back to play many wild versions of the titular Tim and a host of very recognizable Hollywood faces (whose names can't be announced yet) joining the fray to expand the scope of the story. (SETH SOMMERFELD)
PEDALING TO GOLD
With cowbells ringing and beer surely slinging, Tom Ryse won gold earlier this month at the 2022 USA CYCLING CYCLOCROSS NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS in Hartford, Connecticut. Ryse runs the School of Cross in Spokane, which coaches youth in cyclocross, a type of cycling that typically takes many laps around the same short course involving pavement, wooded trails, mud and other obstacles. To take gold this year, Ryse finished 30 seconds ahead of the second place finisher in the age 55-59 category, but almost a full four minutes faster than his time last year, when he took the bronze. (NICHOLAS DESHAIS)
COLOR IN THE STATIC
Don DeLillo's 1985 classic postmodern novel White Noise has long been thought of as one of those unfilmable books. Undeterred, Oscar-nominated director/screenwriter Noah Baumbach decided to give it a crack. Baumbach's WHITE NOISE (on Netflix Dec. 30) certainly doesn't reach classic status, but it feels like an interesting departure from his usual New York intelligentsia fare. The comedy/drama leans on over-the-top '80s absurdism, as a professor in Hitler studies (Adam Driver) sorts through the strange behavior of his wife (Greta Gerwig), capitalist modernity, and existentialism after an airborne toxic event forces his family to flee home. Some notes of the narrative's structure and the Day Glo, Wes Anderson-lite aesthetics don't work, but at least the film swings big. (SETH SOMMERFELD)
