Rob

The Best Venue in Eugene (Not saying much)

The WOW Hall serves as almost anyone's introduction to the Eugene music scene. Because it's the only small venue worth a damn in the whole city, it gets every genre known to man, with occasional success stories passing through on their way to the top. You get your prerequisite hippie music weekly, your metal, your goth, your polka, your hip-hop, and your indie rock to appease the hipsters at the University of Oregon. It's a minor league stop on the indie rock circuit, but gets that would later go on to stardom such as Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, or The Decemberists.

The venue itself is charmingly decrepit, undersized, and coated in chipped white paint. The main auditorium is a hardwood floor, a small elevated stage, and claustrophobically low ceiling, guaranteeing an intimate concert, whether you want it or not. Downstairs there is a decent bar which always has great microbrews from around Oregon and the rest of the West Coast on tap.

It's not a place to be missed if you're spending an extended amount of time in Eugene. Who knows you might see the next big thing there.

Hard. Heavy.

If robots had sex, it would sound like Ratatat.

Ratatat combines some of the best beats being made today with the best staccato guitar playing around today. They shift their tone almost everywhere during an album, going from a straight rocker like in Wildcat or going to an Air-like jam in Montanita. Whether they're in a lead position on their albums or they're supporting players on their mixtapes, Ratatat always brings something you can't find anywhere else. You know, sounding like robots doing it.

The stupidest movie ever?

Wanted has everything you would want from an action movie. The gunfights are excessively violent, the tone is nihilistic, and there's a body count in the lower hundreds. Not to mention that setpiece that involves the exploding rats.

James McAvoy, sporting one of the worst American accents this side of Jude Law, anchors this story about a man in an average life who realizes that it isn't one worth living unless he's killing people with his strange super-assassin powers.

Sure there's some sort of tacked-on bit about a group of former weavers from thousands of years ago who become assassins, and there's that glimpse of Angelina Jolie's butt, and of course there's a memorable line from Morgan Freeman, but honestly, it's a pretty slim and incoherent story, full of plot holes.

Luckily, it's the slickest looking movie to come out this year, as Bekmambatov employs just about every trick in the book visually, embracing the silliness of the story and enhancing it with his style.

If you like your action movies fast, stupid, and slick (not a bad thing), Wanted is a good fit for you.