We awoke on day two ready to get out and start exploring.  I hadn’t really planned any sort of itinerary – I’d just compiled a list of “things to see in no particular order” and decided to figure it out as we went along.  For our first full day in Portland, we decided to mainly stick to Downtown and the Pearl District, with a brief jaunt to the South Waterfront.

Our room at the Ace featured a great old claw-foot bathtub.

Clearly, the first order of business was breakfast.  Thanks to a wonderful web site, VegPortland, we had heard of a place called “Blossoming Lotus” that sounded interesting, and it was listed as being only a few blocks from the hotel, to the north of us in the Pearl District.  On the way out, I grabbed a shot of the Ace’s lobby mezzanine, which was set up as a sort of study for guests.

So, out we headed.  Portland has very small blocks, and combined with the wide sidewalks, lots of buildings, and few parking lots, it’s a joy to walk around there.  We decided that since Blossoming Lotus was just a few blocks to the north, we’d walk it.  Later, we’d use the streetcar to go further.

Along the way, I grabbed some shots of the neighborhood.

The design of Portland and its incredible transit systems/bike infrastructure makes it easy to live without a car.  For the times when you might need one, though, these Zipcars are positioned all over the city.  Zipcar is a car sharing service, where cars can be taken for a few hours or a day or so, and when you’re done with them you park them back on the street for the next user.  They let you go grab some furniture or take a trip to the coast without having to have a car all the time.  There’s a variety of types – Minis like this one seemed popular.  We also saw a Miata – which we imagine is popular for trips to the coast or countryside – and an Element, perfect for those Ikea runs when you’re bringing back something too big to fit on the MAX light rail train.

We quickly found out that Portland has some gorgeous architecture, both of the historic and modern types.  In the Pearl, this building is one of the outstanding ones.  The Armory was built in 1891, originally as a home for guardsmen.  Now, after a renovation from 2002-2006, it is the Gerding Theatre, showcasing a wide variety of live stage performances.

As it turns out, Blossoming Lotus was just around the corner from the Armory.  Housed inside a yoga studio called Yoga Pearl, Blossoming Lotus serves up several interesting vegan dishes, including some live food.  The fact that they served breakfast intrigued us, so we headed inside.  Little did we know that this was going to become one of our favorite eateries in Portland.

Steph got herself the Live Breakfast Parfait.  It combines layers of buckwheat granola, fruit, and cashew creme.  She gave it high marks for its flavor and freshness, and the bit I tried certainly backed up her opinion.

I got the oatmeal, and it was really the best oatmeal I’ve ever had before.  Extremely fresh and flavorful.  Rolled oats, maple syrup, bananas, apples, raisins, and hemp milk.  The hemp milk was something new for me, having never tried it before.  It’s actually very tasty and made a nice compliment when mixed into the oatmeal.

We made it a point to try as many different restaurants and cafes in Portland as we could, but we did come back to a certain few places again and again during the trip, because we liked them so dang much.  Blossoming Lotus was one of them.  It became our breakfast staple, and we also came back for lunch.  Should you find yourself in Portland and want something very tasty that’s also very healthy (especially during breakfast), it’s highly recommended.

As we sat in Blossoming Lotus and ate, I appreciated the view.  The contrast between the small building across the street, the Armory, and the huge new condo building behind them was very cool.  It shows how quickly and how impressively the Pearl built up following the construction of the Portland Streetcar, which allowed tons of new apartments, condos, and townhomes to be built here without requiring a lot of space for cars.

As we were leaving Blossoming Lotus, I paused to take this photo looking down the street.  The reason being that this is a view we don’t have back home in Texas – looking down a street to see an honest-to-goodness hill in the distance.  For two youngsters from the prairie, this was something to be enjoyed.

We decided to wander around the Pearl District for a while, just getting the layout of the city.  The Pearl is really something else.  Until the very recent past, this was all just a giant abandoned rail yard and industrial sector.  Due to the development drive that has accompanied the streetcar’s return, the old rail yard was torn out and in its place an entire new neighborhood was created.  The Pearl is block after block after block of dense infill buildings – condos, apartments, and offices, virtually all of which have ground-floor retail for tons of restaurants and shops.  It’s incredible to walk through the district and see the life and vitality that has sprung up here.  It feels like standing in some European city, such is the design and layout of the place.

Everywhere you turn is more “stuff.”  It’s really remarkable.

We learned that Portland takes its parks, squares, and plazas very seriously.  I don’t think I’ve ever been to a city that had more parks and squares than Portland.  They take a wide variety of shapes and styles.  The first we visited was one of the parks in the Pearl District, Tanner Springs Park.

Tanner Springs Park serves not only as a public space, but as an ecological space as well.  There are two “zones” to Tanner Springs Park.  At one end, at street level, is a more traditional “park” sort of space, with low-mowed grass and space to run around.  Starting at the tall grass, though, Tanner Springs Park shifts its focus.  From the tall grass down the slope, it is a recreation of the sort of tide pool that was here before people came to Portland.

At the lower level is the actual pool.  All this is no mere “greenwashing” – it’s an actual functioning mini-ecosystem.  Signs prohibit you from entering the tall grass, because of the animals nesting in it.  It is not unusual to see ducks swimming around the pool looking for snacks.

To view the pool, you can walk out on this zigzagging walkway elevated just above the water.  Along the side, an undulating fence made of reclaimed railroad iron snakes its way from one end to the other.  This became one of our favorite spaces in Portland – the walkway, fence, and water made such an incredible, beautiful piece of design that we kept coming back here again and again.

Looking up out of the pool, you can see how the park transitions from the hardscape of the surrounding blocks through a park space into a natural preserve.  The contrast between the tide pool and the sleek modern buildings around it was incredible.

After leaving Tanner Springs Park, we wandered around the Pearl some more, past block after block of buildings housing condos, apartments, shops, and restaurants:

The sidewalk cafe above was Sip & Kranz, a coffee shop which we visited later.  It became another favorite of ours.  Here, we came across another park, adjacent to Sip & Kranz – Jamison Square.

Jamison Square is another of the Pearl’s major public spaces, located a few blocks from Tanner Springs Park.  It consists of a few sections.  Here, one one side, is a partially grass/partially gravel area with a public art sculpture.

Along the other side is a grassy area with denser tree cover, which is ringed with more public art in the form of these totem poles.

In the center is Jamison Square’s party piece – a large water feature, comprised of waterfalls spilling down large rock slabs into the center of a plaza, creating a shallow pool.  While there weren’t many people yet on this early Sunday morning, after the day got going we would see tons of people – especially couples and families – here enjoying the water.

The design of the small waterfalls is such that you can actually walk across the top and sit directly above them while remaining perfectly dry.  In the evenings, we liked to come here, grab a drink from Sip & Kranz, and sit on top of the falls in the cool, clean air, watching the crowds play in the water or lay out on the grass beyond.

Scenes like this were plentiful in Portland.  It is an unbelievably pretty place.

We walked around the Pearl some more.  Some of the streets in the Pearl had been closed and torn out, and replaced with pedestrian-only streets like these, lined with trees, plants, and benches.  Along both sides were townhomes and condo/apartment buildings.

Another view of one of the pedestrian streets.

We were generally making our way back towards Downtown.  Along the way, in the middle of the Pearl, was this old warehouse building that had been turned into townhomes, complete with large front porches.

The Pearl is full of interesting architectural contrast.  Here, a few of the sturdy old historic buildings help set off a striking new condo tower that features a “fractal” window pattern and red glass balconies.  Somehow, it all works – few places I have seen are as full of contrast and yet so harmonious.  It’s a trick we have yet to figure out back home.

We decided at this point to hop on the streetcar and take it to the South Waterfront, which is a brand-new development district on former industrial land right on the banks of the Willamette to the south of Downtown.  As a bonus, the streetcar would take us through Downtown, letting us get our bearings there a bit as well.  We stopped at the nearest streetcar stop and just a few minutes later, one whirred up.

It is really amazing to see the popularity of the streetcar.  Virtually every time we rode it, it was full of people.  Singles, couples, families with kids – everybody rides it.  It’s a great compliment to walking – walk short distances, hop the streetcar for longer ones then get off and walk some more.  With stops every few blocks it makes it extremely simple to get around the city.  It’s an experience completely unlike back home, where transit is limited to some infrequent, poorly-planned bus routes and where the design of the city is such that in most parts of it you are forced to use a car for everything.  Obviously, it won’t appeal to everybody, but the Portland way of doing this sort of thing really clicked with us.  We loved every minute of it.

About halfway there, we decided not to go straight to the South Waterfront, so we got off near Portland State University (an incredible urban campus right in Downtown) and wandered around a bit.  We stumbled upon Portland’s City Hall, which is a gorgeous old building across the street from yet another park/plaza space.  This is actually a sort of “government center,” as nearby can be found various other city & other government structures.  One of which we had really been looking forward to seeing in person…

Ah, there it is!  The Portland Building, designed by Michael Graves in 1982.  Widely credited as the first major work of Postmodern architecture, the Portland Building has been reviled by architectural critics ever since.  We loved it.  It’s absolutely ridiculous-looking and bizarre, which might be one reason why we like it so much.  It is unlike anything else in the world, including a lot of buildings from the same genre.  It’s so ugly and weird and out-there that it’s cool, in our humble opinions.

Further adding to the spectacle is Portlandia, the massive copper sculpture perched over the doorway.  Created by artist Raymond Kaskey, Portlandia is the second-largest copper repoussé statue in the United States, after the Statue of Liberty.  The sculpture is 34 feet, 10 inches tall – if she stood up, Portlandia would be about 50 feet tall.

Nearby, we encountered our first Benson Bubbler.  These constantly-running public drinking fountains can be found throughout Downtown Portland.

For a little while longer, we just walked around, enjoying the beauty and architecture of Downtown Portland:

Eventually, we hopped back on the streetcar and headed off to the South Waterfront.

The South Waterfront is another huge new development spurred by the streetcar.  It is relatively recent, and as such is still under heavy construction.  Several towers were rising out of the ground under tall cranes when we were there, and the ones that were finished were only partially filled with residents and businesses.  Still, it was an impressive place already.

The towers in the South Waterfront have been designed slender, so as to preserve views through the development of the Willamette River waterfront.  They are all very sleek modern designs of varying shapes, with more squared-off bases to provide more units and retail space.

Most of the major public spaces in the South Waterfront are still under construction, but some smaller ones, like this lovely plaza space, were complete.

While in the South Waterfront, we stopped in to a coffee shop, Rilassi.  It was tasty and gave us a perk-up before we headed back into Downtown for lunch.

For lunch, we decided to go to Chinatown.  Chinatown is located next to the Old Town district, north of the downtown core and east of the Pearl.  Numerous family-owned Chinese places can be found here.

We stumbled across this place, simply named Vegetarian House.  We were in the mood for a sort of hole-in-the-wall kind of place, which is often where one can find some of the best food in old city urban areas.  Vegetarian House did not disappoint, plus we got a bonus of a slightly weird cultish feeling to the proceedings.

Vegetarian House serves up all manner of vegan dishes, using various meat substitutes like tofu and seitan.  We both got the Vegetarian “Beef” & Broccoli, and it was great.  Plentiful broccoli and seitan, along with a nice pile of brown rice.  Really, really good.

The slightly weird feeling came about from some of our surroundings.  It wasn’t unpleasant or scary – actually, it was rather humorous.  On a flat-screen TV at the back of the place, a channel of some sort of Chinese news feed was playing.  We didn’t pay it much attention at first, but after looking at it a few times we noticed that the channel was an Internet feed called “Supreme Master TV.”  Wha? Supreme Master?  As we looked around some more, we saw posters and pamphlets apparently extolling the virtues of following the Supreme Master, who was apparently an elaborately dressed woman named Ching Hai.

Had we stumbled onto some sort of front for a cult?  Would our bill come with fortune cookies and a sermon asking us to sell our possessions and live in a compound for a while?  As it turns out, nothing of the sort happened, and a Google search revealed that Supreme Master Ching Hai is the founder and leader of the Quan Yin Method.  What is the Quan Yin Method?  Wikipedia sez:

The term Quan Yin Method (also Guan Yin Method) was coined in 1985 by Ching Hai, to describe the type of meditation that she practices and teaches. The spelling is an idiosyncratic romanisation of a Chinese term said to be in English translation: “contemplation of the sound vibration”.[citation needed] It is markedly similar to the much older Surat Shabd Yoga from the Sant Mat tradition which also teaches meditation on the light and sound.

Ching Hai has said, “It’s not that I invented the Quan Yin Method; I just know it. This method has existed since the beginning of time, when the universe was first formed. And it will always exist. It is not a method; it is like the way of the universe, a universal law that we must follow if we want to get back to the Origin, back to our true Self, back to the Kingdom of God or our Buddha nature.”[9] In the book The Key of Immediate Enlightenment, it is said that those who recite her name would become elevated.[10]

Ching Hai initiates spiritual aspirants into the Quan Yin Method, which is purported to exist in various religions under different names, as the “best, easiest, and quickest” way to get enlightenment.[11][12][13] The method involves meditation on the “inner light and the inner sound of God”, or the Shabd that she claims is also referred to in the Bible and said to be acknowledged repeatedly in the literature of all the world’s major spiritual traditions. Ching Hai accepts people from all backgrounds and religious affiliations for initiation. One does not have to change one’s present religion or system of beliefs.[citation needed]

The Quan Yin Method requires two and a half hours of meditation per day and adherence to five precepts which appear to be borrowed from The Five Precepts of the Theravadin practice:

• Refrain from taking the life of sentient beings. This precept requires strict adherence to a vegan or lacto-vegetarian diet. No meat, fish, poultry or eggs (fertilized or nonfertilized).
• Refrain from speaking what is not true.
• Refrain from taking what is not offered.
• Refrain from sexual misconduct.
• Refrain from the use of intoxicants. This includes avoiding all poisons of any kind, such as alcohol, drugs, tobacco, gambling, pornography, and excessively violent films or literature.

As part of their meditation routine, followers of Ching Hai partially cover their heads under a sheet of cloth or blanket while meditating. However, while meditating away from the view of uninitiated people, the meditators do not necessarily use this cloth to cover their heads completely.

So, the Supreme Master isn’t a cult leader…probably.  Whatever she is, her followers cook up a mean vegan Chinese dish, so we would definitely go back to Vegetarian House.

Afterwards, we walked around Chinatown for a bit:

Eventually, we made our way to the Portland Classical Chinese Garden.

This is a full block in Chinatown that has been transformed into, well, a classical Chinese Garden.  There’s a tea room and a huge assortment of plants to check out.  Wen spent some time walking through the garden – it’s really quite lovely.  Here’s some photos:

After we left the garden, we walked around Old Town and Downtown some more.

Portland really does have some gorgeous historic buildings.  Some of them have cast-iron facades.  This awesome pair was near the Willamette waterfront.

While I was getting some photos of these buildings, the MAX light rail train rolled past.

As we walked on, we came to the Downtown section of the Willamette waterfront.  Waterfront Park runs up and down the river, with wide walkways and extensive green space.  The Willamette is nothing like the Trinity River back home – where the Trinity is tiny and the bridges over it modest, the Willamette is a big, wide river with actual water traffic and several big bridges.  Portland is well-known for the series of bridges crossing the river in the Downtown area.  One of our favorites can be seen above:  the Steel Bridge, built in 1912.  It’s this big, industrial-strength affair that has such a cool early 20th-century look to it.

As we walked around Waterfront Park, we came across a huge crowd and tons of bikes parked everywhere.  It took a moment before we realized that we had walked into one of the events we wanted to make sure to see while we were in Portland:  the Portland Saturday Market.

The Portland Saturday Market actually runs on Saturday and Sunday.  It’s a huge street festival featuring a massive variety of local merchants selling all manner of art, crafts, and food.  It’s held under the Burnside Bridge and the surrounding area – it’s actually grown so much that the city built rows of wood & metal canopies in Waterfront Park for merchants, and even then it spills out into several Downtown blocks.  It is held every weekend.  For those back home, picture the Main Street Arts Festival in Downtown Fort Worth – now imagine it having a much greater emphasis on local merchants, covering a much larger area of downtown, and happening every weekend rather than once a year.

The Saturday Market is a sight.  It seems almost endless, with row after row of food vendors, artists, and craftsmen.  Despite its size, it never seems overwhelming or incredibly hectic/stressful like Main Street Arts Festival can – or perhaps it’s because of its size.  It doesn’t feel cramped.  Attendance is huge, and given the sheer variety of things happening it’s not hard to see why.

Here’s the newest section of the Saturday Market, under the sleek new canopies constructed in Waterfront Park.

Here, we’re looking towards the Steel Bridge from underneath the Burnside Bridge.

We didn’t spend a ton of time in the Saturday Market this time around – we returned the next weekend, on a Saturday, to check out the full thing.  More will appear in the post about that day.

After checking out some of the Saturday Market, we decided to head south through Waterfront Park.  Even as we got away from Saturday Market, the crowds in Waterfront Park were impressive.  Along the river, as seen above, there’s a wide path for pedestrians and bicycles.

Next to the path is a wide grass space.  What’s really incredible about this is that back in the ’70s, this was an elevated freeway.  Portland decided to get rid of the freeway, taking space away from cars and giving it back to people.  It has been a resounding success.

As we neared the Hawthorne Bridge, we peeled away from Waterfront Park and headed back into Downtown.  The Hawthorne Bridge, up ahead, would carry us to the near east side neighborhoods another day during the trip.

As we re-entered Downtown, we passed the Hotel Fifty.  This is an old Mid-Century Modern hotel that has been given a hip, stylish modern makeover and is now open again.  Really cool looking place – would be curious to see inside.

Walking back through Downtown Portland.

Portland has a lot of old ads painted on the backs of buildings – this one was pretty cool.

As noted, Portland has a lot of parks.  In Downtown, they even set aside two long stretches of blocks for park use – the North and South Park Blocks.  Here, we’re in part of the South Park Blocks.

While walking around Downtown, we passed another Mid-Century hotel that had been given a shiny new makeover – the Hotel Modera.  Portland loves its Mid-Century architecture.

One of the places we wanted to see was not far away, so we detoured and took a stroll to the Ira Keller Fountain, designed in the ’70s by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin.  The Ira Keller Fountain is a really cool assemblage of fountains and waterfalls tumbling over concrete cliffs into a pool, over which are “floating” concrete pads to walk out through the water.  Here, at the top of the falls, a man sat reading a book.

Here, we’re down at the lower level, on the floating walkway.  You can see the same man up at top right, giving a sense of scale.  The water drowns out the sounds of the city and creates a very peaceful and calm place to relax.

Here are some close-up photos of parts of the fountain:

After leaving the Ira Keller Fountain, we decided to head back to the Ace for a bit before dinner.

Since the Ira Keller Fountain is close to Portland State University, we walked over there and hopped on the streetcar headed back towards the Pearl.

While at the Ace, I grabbed a shot of the lobby from the mezzanine.  The lobby is a popular hangout, not only for guests of the restaurant but for customers of the Stumptown Coffee shop in the Ace’s ground floor, as the coffee shop has little seating of its own.

Since we had decided to use the stairs instead of the elevator, we got to see the Ace’s awesome stairwell artwork.  Here’s just one of the details:

We rested for a bit, then headed out to find some dinner.  For some reason, pizza sounded good again this night, so we headed back into the Pearl to check out a pizza place we had seen from the streetcar:  Hotlips Pizza.

As we walked up to the building, we saw these little guys parked near the entrance.  That’s right – for deliveries, Hotlips uses electric carts.  How cool is that?

I decided on a slice of their thin pepperoni, briefly breaking my vegetarian streak (which I otherwise maintained through the whole trip).  It was delicious – perfectly cooked and very flavorful.

Steph, meanwhile, had the vegan focaccia pizza.  Having tried a bite, I can confirm that it was great as well.  She did miss the presence of soy cheese, which neither Hotlips nor Rocco’s the previous night used.  We did eventually find a place that had soy cheese, though, on the near east side.

We also sampled some of their breadsticks, in both original and pesto varieties.  They were about the greatest things ever, really.

Sunday evening in the Pearl District, as seen from Hotlips Pizza.

After finishing up at Hotlips, we went on a nice long walk through the Pearl.  We came across this – the Pearl District’s Safeway, one of the many urban grocery stores in Portland.  It was really impressive – a full Safeway with office space on top.  Another one of these in Downtown Portland has apartments above it.  These are the kinds of grocery stores I like – it’s refreshing to have one design so that you can walk, bike, or take transit to it without having a zillion-car parking lot ocean in front of it.  This Safeway was right on the streetcar line, so it was incredibly easy to get to.

Down the street, also on the streetcar line, is the Bridgeport Brew Pub, one of Portland’s approximate 3,486 brew pubs.

I exaggerate, but only a bit.  Quality microbrewed craft beer is pretty much the official drink of Portland.  There are 28 breweries in the city proper, more than any other American city.  Some have even called for Portland to be known as “beer capital of the world,” as the city has more breweries than Cologne, Germany.

The beer culture in Portland is amazing.  Back home, we have one craft brewery.  There are only a handful more in the whole state of Texas.  Now, Rahr is a great brewery, but the poor folks are handicapped by a host of arcane, Puritanical Texas liquor laws that impact everything from sales to marketing to distribution.  In Portland, no such laws exist, and the beer culture has flourished.  It’s a source of pride.  It would be nice if Texas would unshackle its beer brewers.

We walked around some more, checking out the incredible developments in the Pearl District.

Loved this cozy little path between two developments in the Pearl.

Not only does Portland have a bunch of big urban grocers, they also have a bunch of smaller ones.  Here’s Little Green Grocer in the Pearl.

As we explored more streets in the Pearl, the development just kept coming, block after block.

After a while, we hopped back on the streetcar and rode back to the Ace.  Getting off to walk over, we saw this beauty of a historic building in Downtown.

Nearby, somebody had inserted some social commentary on a “no smoking” sign.

Here’s an example of the support and enthusiasm Portland has for locally-owned independent business – there’s actually a small district right in Downtown Portland with a series of shops specializing in fabrics and knitting/sewing supplies.  It’s called the Fiber Arts District.  How neat is that?

Heading to the Ace, we got a good look at this gorgeous old clock tower-equipped building across the street.

And here we are, back at the Ace.  But before heading upstairs, there’s one more thing we have to try.  Until now, we haven’t taken a sip of the legend itself:  Stumptown Coffee.  Happily, there’s one in the ground floor of the Ace.

Local coffee house Stumptown Coffee is an institution in Portland.  They have several coffee shops themselves, and many other local stores use their coffee.  It had already become obvious that Portlanders take their coffee very seriously – there’s an indie coffee shop on virtually every other corner in town.  Like beer, coffee is a way of life up there.  But having grown up in a coffee-centric family, I wondered:  how different could great Portland coffee be, really?

The answer came with the first sip:  very different indeed.

Almost without fail, coffee in Portland (especially Stumptown’s) was unlike the stuff we get down south.  It’s very smooth and not really all that bitter.  A lot of care is put into brewing it – simple coffee pots are not often seen in Portland.  Perhaps most refreshingly, almost none of the coffee shops in Portland served their coffee scalding hot – instead, it was served an actually drinkable temperature.  There’s no waiting around for it to cool, no tentative sipping and burned tongue.  It’s really, really great stuff.

As seen on my latte above, one of Stumptown’s signatures are the designs they put in the foam.  It was almost a shame to actually drink it and destroy the work that guy put into it.

We took our coffee to the Ace’s lobby and settled into the big cushy couches with a copy of one of the local alt-weeklies:  the Portland Mercury.  They seemed to have a bit more of a sense of humor than the alt-weeklies we know from back home.

We sipped our coffee and read about polar bears and chatted with some of the other guests.

The Ace really does have a lovely lobby.

We watched twilight fall on downtown Portland through the Ace’s big lobby windows before heading back upstairs to prepare for our third day.

As another example of the Ace’s quirky nature, here’s the sign next to the sink in the room.

Next to come:  day three, in which we make further explorations of Downtown and the Pearl, and make our first trip to Powell’s Books.

The term Quan Yin Method (also Guan Yin Method) was coined in 1985 by Ching Hai, to describe the type of meditation that she practices and teaches. The spelling is an idiosyncratic romanisation of a Chinese term said to be in English translation: “contemplation of the sound vibration”.[citation needed] It is markedly similar to the much older Surat Shabd Yoga from the Sant Mat tradition which also teaches meditation on the light and sound.

Ching Hai has said, “It’s not that I invented the Quan Yin Method; I just know it. This method has existed since the beginning of time, when the universe was first formed. And it will always exist. It is not a method; it is like the way of the universe, a universal law that we must follow if we want to get back to the Origin, back to our true Self, back to the Kingdom of God or our Buddha nature.”[9] In the book The Key of Immediate Enlightenment, it is said that those who recite her name would become elevated.[10]

Ching Hai initiates spiritual aspirants into the Quan Yin Method, which is purported to exist in various religions under different names, as the “best, easiest, and quickest” way to get enlightenment.[11][12][13] The method involves meditation on the “inner light and the inner sound of God”, or the Shabd that she claims is also referred to in the Bible and said to be acknowledged repeatedly in the literature of all the world’s major spiritual traditions. Ching Hai accepts people from all backgrounds and religious affiliations for initiation. One does not have to change one’s present religion or system of beliefs.[citation needed]

The Quan Yin Method requires two and a half hours of meditation per day and adherence to five precepts which appear to be borrowed from The Five Precepts of the Theravadin practice:

Refrain from taking the life of sentient beings. This precept requires strict adherence to a vegan or lacto-vegetarian diet. No meat, fish, poultry or eggs (fertilized or nonfertilized).

Refrain from speaking what is not true.

Refrain from taking what is not offered.

Refrain from sexual misconduct.

Refrain from the use of intoxicants. This includes avoiding all poisons of any kind, such as alcohol, drugs, tobacco, gambling, pornography, and excessively violent films or literature.

As part of their meditation routine, followers of Ching Hai partially cover their heads under a sheet of cloth or blanket while meditating. However, while meditating away from the view of uninitiated people, the meditators do not necessarily use this cloth to cover their heads completely.The term Quan Yin Method (also Guan Yin Method) was coined in 1985 by Ching Hai, to describe the type of meditation that she practices and teaches. The spelling is an idiosyncratic romanisation of a Chinese term said to be in English translation: “contemplation of the sound vibration”.[citation needed] It is markedly similar to the much older Surat Shabd Yoga from the Sant Mat tradition which also teaches meditation on the light and sound.

This is not a slight against Southwest Airlines, but this excursion cemented my desire to not fly again – too uncomfortable, too stressful. It’s weird, because as a kid I loved to fly. I loved to sit by the window and watch the wing and ailerons and flaps and such, and see the world gliding by underneath. Sometimes, after a family vacation, my grandparents would ask me what my favorite part of the trip was, and as a deeply nerdy child I’d say “the plane ride.” Now, it’s just constant worries about turbulence. I get that it’s safe and efficient, but some animal part of my brain doesn’t. And what’s the deal with airline food?

And a note to Albuquerque: I’m sure you’re a lovely city, and you made wonderful Weird Al song fodder, but your airport’s positioning relative to the surrounding mountains makes for some unpleasant air currents for Southwest flights making stops on the way to the Pacific Northwest. It would be nice of you to either move the airport or the mountains.

Anyway, it was evening when our 737 touched down at Portland International Airport. Prior to landing, as we descended through the puffy white clouds, our first impression of the area was that it was very green. Sure, we have grass and trees in Texas – at least, most of the year. We don’t have anything quite so intensely, lusciously green as the Pacific Northwest, though. Doubly because we left the Texas of summertime, when the grass turns brown except where people essentially spray paint it green (and that’s only slightly an exaggeration – this is the land of TruGreen ChemLawn, after all). Peering down out of the plane, it was like looking into a box containing nothing but Forest Green crayons.

Upon landing, we stepped into the clean and well-lit terminal and made our way to baggage claim. It was our intention to spend the entirety of the trip without renting a car, so we headed downstairs to our first real encounter with the Portland we’d come to see: the MAX light rail train.

There are several MAX lines, and the Red Line runs right into the terminal at PDX. It makes it extremely easy to get to and from the airport, so riding it was a no-brainer. We settled in and headed off towards downtown Portland. Along the way, we noted that the Red Line stops at an Ikea – an Ikea with light rail access? This was a dream for us, being Ikea fans from the land where getting to the big blue Swedish megastore requires a long, terribly stressful drive across county lines.

As the Red Line rounded a curve, I got this shot of it.

A short time later, we pulled in to downtown Portland. Our stop was the Galleria/SW 10th stop, and along the way we passed through several other districts, including the Old Town historic district.

I grabbed this shot of one of the gorgeous historic buildings in downtown as we pulled in.

To be honest, I didn’t get a lot of photos at this point. After multiple flights on an airline who prides itself on not providing real food to passengers, I was tired and hungry. It’s a shame, because after the Red Line rolled up to the Galleria/SW 10th station and we got out, we saw within the first two minutes an image of Portland that we’ll probably never forget. As we walked north the three blocks to our hotel, we saw two guys walking cats. Leashes and everything. Now, I say “walking cats,” but know that cats do not, apparently, go for walks in the same manner as dogs. One was sharpening its claws and not moving forward all that much, while the other was basically being dragged along in fits and starts by its owner. Cats are not especially compatible with “walking,” I suppose.

After a few blocks, we arrived at what would be our home for the next eight days: the Ace Hotel.

The Ace is in a converted older hotel, located in downtown Portland on Stark between 10th & 11th, just next to the border between downtown and the Pearl District (the two are roughly divided by Burnside Street, which runs east & west and serves as the dividing line between Portland’s “South” blocks and their “North” blocks). The Ace concept is very different from your typical modern-day hotel. It’s designed as a home for travelers who want something unique, funky, and affordable. You won’t find beige striped wallpaper and floral print bedspreads here. It’s minimalist, hip, and probably the most affordable place to stay in the heart of downtown Portland.

The Ace has rooms with only a sink, with three rooms sharing a shower/bath in the hall, but we elected to pay a little more and get a room with a full bath.

Here’s the view of the room we wound up in, which was on the west side of the building looking out over the Stark & 11th intersection. As I said, about as far from a traditional modern-day hotel as you can get. The wall behind the bed was covered in pages from an old novel. The one complaint we had was the bed, which was a little on the firm side.

As I said, very minimalist, but we loved the funky weird style of the place. It had loads more character than the typical corporate hotel chain. They even let you open the windows, which is increasingly rare in mainstream hotels, which are typically just plate glass.

One of my favorite parts of our room at the Ace was the view:

Here, we’re looking out at the 11th & Stark intersection. The Pearl District rises down 11th, on the right, while the northern edge of downtown surrounds the intersection. Across the street is the Mark Spencer Hotel, while I believe that just behind the trees on the right is the headquarters of one of our favorite Mac software developers, Panic.

It’s a classic urban view – not concerned with the skyline, but rather right there amongst everything, the windows filled with beautiful density. The soundtrack drifting in from outside is the sound of the city – vibrant, bustling, full of life. I even like the fire escape, probably because my first experience with urban living was in a downtown loft with a fire escape out the window and I’ve always enjoyed having that bit of clutter outside.

Here, we’re looking out the other direction down 11th. The Portland Streetcar has stopped outside to pick up and let off passengers.

At this point, I decided that it would be well worth the effort to maybe find some food, so we headed out onto the streets of Portland on a cool Saturday evening.

Across the street from the Ace, we passed this place – the Living Room Theater. Now, we come from a place where there are no indie movie theaters. The closest we have is the occasional art house flick at the local modern art museum. Portland has so many independent theaters that some specialize themselves in new and interesting ways. (This would prove to be true for more than just movie theaters, as we would later learn.) The Living Room features theaters with big, comfy lounge chairs & tables, and a full café and bar.

While wandering toward the Pearl, a streetcar passed:

It whirred past quietly and smoothly, a far cry from the loud CNG-powered buses back home.

We had set out without much of a plan – I hadn’t even pulled up a list of food on the Internet, and we had zero bearings at this point. We roughly knew where the Pearl District was, so we headed north. I was feeling a bit ill, mainly just run-down from lack of food and being crammed into the coach seat of a 737 for five hours, so I was impatient to find a place, sit down, and grab a bite to eat. We agreed, though, that we didn’t want to go to any sort of big national chain (which turned out to be an easy goal to accomplish, as big chains are few and far between in Portland).

Fortunately, just a couple of blocks from the Ace, we found something that looked interesting.

Rocco’s Pizza attracted us from the outside with its slightly worn, hole-in-the-wall look and its signs promising “cheap eats” and “vegan pizza,” so we quickly decided to head inside.

Inside, we found the sort of local pizza joint that we rarely run in to anymore back home. Rough-around-the-edges, some arcade machines against a wall, filled with eclectic people. The Star Trek poster sealed the deal, because both Steph and I are huge geeks/nerds.

We each ordered a slice of vegan pizza, not quite knowing what to expect (the description on the menu was very brief) but deciding to leave our culinary fate up to the Portland Food Gods. What arrived shortly on a thin paper plate was, to our hungry eyes, nothing less than a mountain of food.

The slices were packed tight with a dense conglomeration of vegetables. So many, in fact, that it was a bit of a challenge to eat. We dug in, and were rewarded with a very fresh and flavorful slice of unconventional pizza that did wonders for our tired state of being. We would come to learn that “fresh and flavorful” is a common refrain in Portland, because the city has a lot of farmers that grow the fruits and veggies used by the local restaurants. The city has an “Urban Growth Boundary” which prevents sprawl development and reserves land on the perimeter of the city core for natural preservation and farming uses.

While we were eating, a family sat down at the table next to us. A mom, a dad, and a couple of kids. The mom asked us about our vegan pizza and we struck up a conversation. We hadn’t been out and about for more than a few minutes at that point, and already we were chatting up the locals. It’s a friendly city.

Seated at the window looking out at the 10th & Burnside intersection, we saw that Rocco’s is across the street from a place that we already knew was a famed local landmark.

Powell’s Books is known internationally as something of a book lover’s nirvana. An indie, local establishment, it’s held down this block in what is now the Pearl District for years. Powell’s occupies a full city block and is up to four stories tall, and that space is jam-packed with new and used books, as well as comics and a coffee shop. (There are coffee shops on virtually every corner in Portland, though you’ll have to search to find Starbuck’s – most are independent and local.) This was one of the places we were intent on spending time in during our stay in Portland, and here it was just a few blocks from the hotel! As avid readers, this was great news for us.

After we’d finished our vegan pizza slices, we headed back outside. Night was falling on the City of Roses, and we decided to wander around a bit at random and get a sense of where we were before retiring back to the Ace to get an early start the next day.

Across the street from Rocco’s was the first of many public art pieces we would encounter. This one was interactive, as demonstrated by the chap in the photo. You could give the part in the middle a push and make the metal bristles on top move around. It’s called Pod, and was created by artist Peter Beeman in 2002.

We walked into a part of the Pearl District that we would later learn is called the Brewery Blocks.

The place was busy with people walking around, riding the streetcar, and riding bikes. We were struck by the interesting contrasts in architecture, with 100 year old factories surrounded by gleaming, sleek, modern developments full of apartments, condos, and offices. Every building had retail or a restaurant of some sort on its ground floor. It was the very definition of a vibrant urban neighborhood.

They even had one of these:

We would learn that Portland has tons of grocery stores, large and small, in the middle of its neighborhoods. This huge Whole Foods was our first encounter. It stood an impressive four stories tall and took up an entire city block. What parking there was was underground – most people walked, biked, or took the streetcar. It’s a very different way of life than we were used to back home. We found it very appealing to not have to be tied to a car for everything.

Finally, we decided to head back to the Ace and get some sleep, as Sunday would bring our first full day in Portland. There was much to see, and we wanted to be well-rested.

The Ace glowed in the steadily darkening night. It felt like we had picked the best place we could for our first visit – the Ace was virtually at the hub of Portland’s core, and it would be easy to get to most any other part of town from here.

On the way up, a bit of the Ace’s offbeat attitude from the elevator:

It became quickly apparent that the sign was correct. The Ace’s elevator was a bit on the pokey side, and at only four stories tall, the stairs were the preferred method of travel within the building. It turned out that the stairs were worth it, not only because they were beautiful old things made of dark wood, but because the Ace’s unique decor extended to the stairwells.

Next time, we’ll head out on a beautiful Sunday for a full day of exploring the neighborhood.

Tim Burton’s been on a hit-or-miss streak for a while now, but when he was on, he was on – in one unbroken run, he gave us Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, and Batman Returns. That’s enough awesomeness for the entire careers of many directors – Burton accomplished that with his first five real films.

Capping off that winning streak, though, is Burton’s genuine masterpiece, an outstanding piece of cinema that is now often forgotten about when talking about Tim Burton, Director.  That film is Ed Wood, the lovingly crafted, brilliantly successful biopic of one of Hollywood’s most infamous personalities:  Edward D. Wood, Jr., the “Worst Director of All-Time.”

Now, fellow fans of “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ know that Ed Wood’s pictures are far from being the worst movies ever made – as bad as a Plan 9 From Outer Space or Bride of the Monster can be, they are nowhere near as poorly made or soul-crushingly torturous as films like Manos:  Hands of Fate, Monster-a-Go-Go, or Red Zone Cuba. Fortunately, Ed Wood doesn’t really play into the “worst of all time” mantra that much, instead depicting Wood as a relentlessly optimistic, wide-eyed dreamer with aspirations of being the next Orson Welles, using his talents to their absolute fullest – never realizing that his talents are pretty puny.  The film takes Wood’s side and crafts him as a likable, charming go-getter that one can’t help but sympathize with, which makes the inevitable ups and downs of being a Z-grade Hollywood director all the more affecting.

The film follows Wood from his early days transforming a sex-change exploitation flick into a personal, emotional (but still unsuccessful) look into cross-dressing (1953’s Glen or Glenda), to his meeting washed-up drug-addicted horror icon Bela Lugosi, to getting 1955’s Bride of the Monster made amidst funding troubles, ending on the iconic note of Wood’s career:  the filming and release of the legendary Plan 9 from Outer Space in 1959.  

It’s fairly exhausting to list everything this film gets right, but #1 has to be the cast.  Everybody is spot on, and it starts with Johnny Depp as Wood himself.  Depp plays Wood as an ambitious artisan who’s working from a rather limited palette – he might not have much of a talent for filmmaking (a fact he’s oblivious to), but he’s going to make every movie as big and far-reaching and amazing as his (lack of) ability and budget will allow.

Overflowing with optimistic smiles and good-natured charm, Depp’s Wood is one of the actor’s finest performances.  He transforms Ed Wood into the sort of larger-than-life mythic figure we all hoped he really was (not necessarily 100% accurate to reality), and is a complete joy to watch.

The other cornerstone of the film is an equally fantastic peformance:  that of Martin Landau as the aged, out-of-work icon of horror, Bela Lugosi.  Landau absolutely nails Lugosi, from the accent to the mannerisms, and skillfully navigates a complex, challenging role.  He handles radical shifts in personality, from Lugosi’s world-weary lows to his drug-enhanced highs, and winds up being an incredibly sympathetic and tragic figure.  He’s funny, he’s dramatic, and he’s perhaps the finest performance in the film.

The interplay between Depp and Landau is just fantastic – as Wood and Lugosi evolve into their friendship, one of the strangest and least-likely in Hollywood’s history, Depp and Landau sell every moment.  As the film unfolds, it becomes clear that Wood’s entire world is made up of the weirdos and outcasts of Mid-Century Hollywood’s low-level fringes, and Lugosi quickly becomes, essentially, one of the gang.

Speaking of which, the supporting players are all equally fun to watch.

Ed’s girl at the outset of the story is Dolores Fuller, who Ed casts as the female lead in his films.  Dolores is played by Sarah Jessica Parker, a long time before she was “Sarah Jessica Parker from Sex and the City.”  Dolores has the task of being the one relatively normal person in Ed’s sphere of society’s rejects, a position that becomes increasingly frustrating as Ed’s films become ever-more complex and convoluted.  SJP does a great job here, and her slowly building exasperation and intolerance for Ed’s way of life is entirely believable.

Jeffrey Jones shows up as Criswell, the famously inaccurate “psychic” whose bizarre predictions are the stuff of legend, and who became a fixture in Ed’s movies, narrating Plan 9 and using phrases like “future events such as these will affect you in the future.”  Jones capture’s Criswell’s bravado and quirkiness perfectly, and even gets the famous spit-curl right.

Lisa Marie capably fills out the corset of Vampira, who gets drawn into Ed’s world almost against her will, and who appeared in Plan 9 with a mute character so nobody could recognize her voice.  The sense of sheer embarrassment Vampira must have felt when she signed on for Plan 9 is palpable, and Marie does a fine job portraying the original Queen of Darkness.

Patricia Arquette plays Kathy O’Hara, Ed’s eventual wife.  Sweet and caring, Kathy plays an important role in the film, as the first woman who really accepts Ed and his life for what they are, never judging him and never backing down in her commitment to him and his work.  Arquette is incredibly effective, quietly conveying all that Kathy means to Ed in a lovely, subtle performance.

Another eerie doppleganger is George “The Animal” Steele, playing Swedish wrestler-turned-Ed Wood leading man Tor Johnson.  Steele’s resemblance to Johnson is uncanny, and he brings a lot of charm and humor to the role of one of moviedom’s oddest actors.

Very nearly stealing every scene he’s in is Bill Murray as Ed’s flamboyant drag queen-turned-actor friend Bunny Breckinridge.  Murray is hilarious, but wisely plays Breckinridge subtly, never taking him into caricature territory.  One of Murray’s best roles, though not a well-known one unfortunately.

One of my favorite things about Ed Wood is how wonderfully it depicts this strange world of bottom-level fringe mid-1950s Hollywood.  The movie’s sense of style and place is impeccable, from the fashions to the cars to the mannerisms and speech of the characters.  It all has a very slightly off-kilter feel, thanks to Burton’s direction and sense of style.  However, it never approaches the sort of preconception we have of Burton’s films today – it doesn’t look like a “Tim Burton movie,” yet there is an unmistakable air of Burton surreality to the proceedings from time to time.

Because of this subtlety (among many other reasons), this is my favorite Tim Burton movie.  Long before he was a Hot Topic stereotype, Burton made a name for himself for his bizarre, imaginative visuals, but Ed Wood showed Burton playing a very different game, creating a depiction of mid-’50s Hollywood that is true to the era but has a slightly weird feel about it, befitting the oddball characters populating Ed’s world.

Filmed in smooth black & white, Ed Wood is also, simply, a lovely movie to look at.

The film also has many scenes that are treats for fans of B-movies and Ed’s films in particular, creating an on-the-set feel that really captures the sort of charm that a great B-movie can create, and the sort of love that fans of lesser-quality cinema feel for their subject matter.

Ed Wood is, simply, a great movie.  An engaging story, beautifully acted, wonderfully filmed, and accompanied by a pitch-perfect score by Howard Shore that echoes the tropes of classic B-movies.  It’s virtually impossible to watch this movie and not come away moved by the story of Ed Wood and his strange world of incompetent films and offbeat people, especially if you enjoy watching a good bad movie.  It’s a film that gets in behind the scenes and explores some of the most colorful people behind some of the most famous bad movies ever made, and it does it all with genuine heart and affection for the people and films it examines.  It truly is Tim Burton’s masterpiece, and a fitting memorial to the legacy of one of Hollywood’s most fascinating people.

I’m a Wonder Woman fan. I don’t read a lot of comics, and to be honest I haven’t even read any measurable amount of current Wonder Woman material, but as a character I’m definitely a fan of the Amazon princess. I own the original William Moulton Marston Golden Age Wonder Woman run in hardcover and Darwyn Cooke’s “DC: The New Frontier” has a place of honor on my coffee table. (I have a problem with the way Diana is drawn most of the time these days, but Darwyn Cooke’s version of her is my absolute favorite.)

I’ve always considered her to be one of comicdom’s most interesting characters – a woman raised in a feminine utopia by a mother who freed her people from enslavement at the hand of man, who now must serve as an emissary and champion of both her people and that very same world of man. A woman trying to empower the women in Man’s World to stand up for themselves and realize that they are special and amazing in their own ways (some say Diana’s not really relatable because she comes from an all-woman utopia – I disagree. She might not have ever been passed over for a promotion because of her gender, but when you come from a people who were enslaved by gods because of their gender I figure you’ve at least got a pretty solid foundation on which to base your arguments). A woman who is massively powerful, rivaling and perhaps surpassing Superman himself in many ways, and perhaps even more intimidating than Supes because of her femininity (one of my favorite moments in “The New Frontier” is the brief scene between Diana and Superman in Asia, as he confronts her for aiding a group of women held captive and forced into sexual servitude by guerilla fighters. Diana disarmed the guerillas, freed the women, and let them take the guerillas’ guns and slaughter them. Diana, drawn by Cooke as basically a seven-foot-tall, endlessly curvaceous ’40s pinup model, stares Supes down and gets in his face, standing a good several inches taller than the Man of Steel. She berates him for slamming her actions while the government conducts secret operations in the region before snarling “There’s the door, spaceman” and sending Supes on his way. It really gets the point across that even Superman is somewhat uneasy about being on Diana’s bad side). A woman who is equally capable of bringing about peace through massive strength or pure love. A woman whose sense of rightness might not quite mesh with the “American Way” every time.

Like Superman, she will always be an outsider who doesn’t quite fit in with normal people – but in some ways, she’s even more of an outsider than Supes. Sure, he’s massively powerful, intimidating, and on some levels godlike, but he’s an alien. At some point, people expect that aliens are going to be different. Diana’s much more subtle – she’s also massively powerful, intimidating, and on some levels godlike, but she doesn’t have the whole alien thing to explain it. When you get right down to it, she’s just an incredibly exceptional woman from a race of exceptional women. To a lot of people, that’s going to be weirder and more intimidating than an alien. She’s not powered by a yellow sun or born of a species of space beings – she is a product of Earth, a force of nature.  

She’s indisputably one of the biggest characters in comics history, yet she’s never quite had the respect that a Batman or Superman has gotten. While every character appears to have had monumental stupidity foisted upon them over the history of their comics career, Diana’s had things done to her that go against her very purpose. She’s been turned into a ’60s spy, characterized as a spiteful and unlikeable man-hater that needs to be beaten to behave (thanks, Frank Miller), had her femininity stripped away by artists intent on turning her into a muscle-y, sinewy, ripped bodybuilder, been turned into a secretary on “Super Friends,” and more. While Batman and Superman get movie after movie, Diana has to live solely through her comics, her part on Justice League cartoons, and DVDs of the old ’70s TV show.

That show is sometimes the only exposure a lot of people who aren’t comics people have to Wonder Woman. I know it gets some flak for being at least partially cheese-based, but considering that it was the ’70s (the low point of modern culture), I’ve always thought the show wasn’t bad at all. Particularly in the first season, which was pure Golden Age Wonder Woman, battling Nazis during World War II. They stayed as close to the source material as they could with a ’70s TV budget and they scored a massive win by casting Lynda Carter as Diana, one of the most ideal pairings of actress and role that could be imagined. Carter was tall, curvy, and could display Diana’s compassionate and peaceful nature while still kicking Nazi arse when the need arose. As a way to bring the original Marston character to life, she was ideal. While the show itself definitely had its elements of ’70s schlock (Lyle Waggoner as Steve Trevor never really worked all that well), Carter elevated things with her portrayal of Diana.

A new live-action Wonder Woman movie floats in Development Hell for the time being, and I’m skeptical it’ll get produced any time soon. Outside of cash-cow Batman, DC’s live action film adaptations aren’t especially prolific these days. Perhaps the best person to make a new live-action Wonder Woman film that wouldn’t suck, geek idol/feminist action hero maestro Joss Whedon, has already left the production. Without Whedon, hopes that a Wonder Woman movie featuring some intelligence and an appropriate actress playing the part aren’t as high. Whedon seemed to get what makes Diana special, and he had better rumored taste in actresses for the part. With Whedon writing & directing somebody like Morena Baccarin of “Firefly” or Eliza Dushku of “Buffy” and “Dollhouse,” we might have gotten a true Wonder Woman movie. Instead, the studio will probably want to cast some anorexic flavor-of-the-moment “hottie” who can’t act her way out of a paper bag, like Megan Fox, or some vacant-headed supermodel. Blergh, as Liz Lemon would say.

In the meantime, though, a certain legendary animation guru named Bruce Timm decided that, if Warner Brothers didn’t want to make a live action Wonder Woman movie, he’d just make an animated one. Which brings us back to Timm’s “Wonder Woman,” the subject of this review if you’ve forgotten.

Timm needs no introduction. His creation of the legendary “Batman: The Animated Series” in the ’90s was enough to cement his reputation as a master of the art. BTAS is still considered by many, even in this post-”Dark Knight” world, to be the best depiction of Batman ever put on the screen, and its “Dark Deco” art style, mature writing, and incredible characters (from Kevin Conroy’s Bruce Wayne/Batman to Mark Hammill’s (!) Joker to Arleen Sorkin’s lovably insane Harley Quinn, and more) forever changed the world of animation. Timm became the guiding hand of the DC Animated Universe and went on to handle projects such as “Superman: The Animated Series,” “The New Batman Adventures,” “Batman Beyond,” the “Justice League” series, the recent direct-to-DVD features “Superman: Doomsday” and “Batman: Gotham Knight,” and the direct-to-DVD adaptation of Darwyn Cooke’s “DC: The New Frontier,” re-titled as “Justice League: The New Frontier.”

With Timm handling production duties on “Wonder Woman,” storyboard artist and fledgling director Lauren Montgomery helms the picture, with a script written by “Birds of Prey”/”Wonder Woman” writer Gail Simone and Michael Jelenic. The film serves as a complete re-telling of Diana’s story for the DC Animated Universe and as such can be viewed by newcomers to the character.

At the beginning, we’re treated to a lavishly animated prologue set in ancient Greek times as Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons (a great portrayal by Virginia Madsen), and her forces battle Ares, the God of War (Alfred Molina turning in a suitably evil performance), and his armies. This is quite literally a battle of the sexes, not just in the sense of the all-female Amazon army going against Ares’ male-and-creature brigades, but in motivation as well: we quickly learn that Hippolyta and Ares were lovers once, but he enslaved the Amazons and forced Hippolyta to bear his child (who is now on the battlefield slaughtering the Amazons). Hippolyta revolted and commenced a massive war against Ares for the freedom of her people, bringing us to this point.

This opening sequence gives us crucial backstory and character introductions (besides Hippolyta and Ares, we meet the Amazons Artemis, Persephone, and Alexa (each well-acted by Rosario Dawson, Vicki Lewis, and Tara Strong, respectively), who we’ll see more of later on), and serves as an introduction to the outstanding animation. Timm’s productions have always had high marks in the animation department, but “Wonder Woman” may be his most purely gorgeous work yet. Even compared to the other recent DC Animated Universe direct-to-DVD movies, “Wonder Woman” looks simply beautiful. The sheer amount of effort and care that went into the animation is obvious. This film looks better than a lot of theatrically-released animation. It’s fluid, it’s lush, it’s colorful – this is pure Timm visual poetry.

One of the things I love about “Timmverse” work is that it’s so recognizable and unique – as anime is instantly recognizable, so is a Timm product. Inspired as it is by classic ’50s comic art and Art Deco architecture & art, Timm’s style is perhaps the most thoughtfully and distinctly American animation style in existence.

This introduction also gives an exposure to the fairly brutal and violent nature of the film. This is definitely not a movie for the sensitive-to-violence types. Slashing swords, stab wounds, bone-crunching punches and kicks, and beheadings abound. Since all we’ve had previously was the fairly tame ’70s TV-era action of the old TV show, this level of action is a welcome change for Wonder Woman fans who have longed to see the true strength and power of the Amazons realized on screen.

Before Hippolyta can finish Ares off, Zeus and Hera (David McCallum and Marg Helgenberger) intervene. Ares is bound by metal bracelets that prevent him from drawing on the psychological power of hate and violence that gives him his strength, and is turned over to the Amazons to be detained indefinitely. Hera grants the Amazons an isolated, hidden island in the middle of the Aegean Sea to use as their new home and to serve as the location of their self-made utopia free from the influences of Man’s World.

We see a quick time-lapse of the creation of the new Amazon home of Themyscira, and as Hera’s voiceover tells Hippolyta that she eventually be granted her wish for a child not born of unnatural union, we see Hippolyta kneel down on the beach of Themyscira during a storm and sculpt a baby from the Earth itself. She holds the baby sculpture aloft and the lightning of Zeus strikes down. Revealed is a healthy baby girl – the infant Diana.

We then cut to the present day, and a now-grown Diana (played by Keri Russell of “Felicity” fame – the choice I was most skeptical of, but Russell does a surprisingly excellent job as the voice of the young, inexperienced Diana). Diana is already showing that she is another notch above the rest of the Amazons in skill as she handily defeats expert warrior Artemis yet again during a sparring match.

The Amazons have been sealed off from the outside world ever since the creation of their island, and there is a sense of longing from the Amazons here – Diana has explored every inch of Themyscira and wants to see more, Artemis wants to taste combat again, and Alexa wants to reestablish contact with the outside so she can have more books to read. Queen Hippolyta arrives and puts a stop to the discussion, and takes Diana to a dungeon to show her the wicked true nature of Man. Held in that dungeon is Ares, still powerless, and still vowing to one day rise again and slaughter humankind.

Later, as Diana heads out for a horse ride, their world is about to be shaken up by the arrival of one Steve Trevor (Nathan Fillion).

The casting of Nathan Fillion as Trevor is one of those “couldn’t be any better” sort of things. Fillion brings his cocky swagger and sense of humor that served him so well in “Firefly” and “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” to full force in his portrayal of Trevor, and he and Russell have great chemistry together. This, Hollywood – this is how you cast people!

Trevor & two other American pilots are attacked by an unnamed force of enemy fighters and are shot down. As Trevor plummets toward the ocean, somebody on Themyscira (we only see their hand) touches the mirror which controls the island’s invisibility cloak, revealing it to Trevor in time for him to make a rough landing in a lagoon. He exits the plane and stumbles across a group of nude Amazons relaxing around a nearby waterfall, but before he can enjoy the scene too much a group of warriors led by Artemis begin pursuing him. Eventually, he runs into Diana, where he first remarks on her beauty only to have the consciousness beaten out of him by the Amazon princess.

When he awakens, he finds himself tied up and surrounded by the Amazons, and thus begins the first of many surprisingly bold sex jokes throughout the movie. The movie is definitely not shy about presenting the more sexual aspects of the Wonder Woman universe and it’s better for it. This isn’t watered-down Wonder Woman – right off the bat, Trevor cracks jokes about bondage in a hilarious nod to the many, many, many bondage references of the original Golden Age comics.

After being interrogated by Hippolyta with the Lasso of Truth, the Amazons decide that Trevor is no threat to them and that he will be returned to America. Diana wishes to take him (don’t miss Trevor’s subtle background remark of “Seconded!” at the suggestion), but Hippolyta says she is too inexperienced, and a series of challenges will be held to determine who will return him to his world. If you’re familiar with the Wonder Woman mythos at all, you know how this goes: Diana secretly competes and handily wins. Hippolyta realizes that her daughter is incredibly capable and wants this exposure to the outside world very dearly, and relents.

Before there can be too much celebration, though, it is revealed that Ares has escaped (and I won’t be spoiling anything further about that), so Diana now has two missions: return Trevor, and find Ares before he can get another god to remove the bracelets binding his power.

After donning her indestructible bracelets, the Lasso of Truth, and her new outfit (fashioned after the colors of the flag on Trevor’s flight suit as a sign of peace and friendship), Diana and Trevor load up into the Amazons’ invisible jet (which looks downright cool here compared to virtually every other iteration of the plane) and head off. Will they be able to stop Ares before he begins slaughtering humanity? Will Diana and Trevor be able to do so without her beating him senseless for his constant attempts to get her in the sack?

“Wonder Woman” is easily the best DC Animated Universe movie I’ve ever seen. Timm & company seem to finally be getting a handle on what sort of stories they can and can’t tell in the required 73 minute running time they have to work with. The adaptation of “The New Frontier” was great, but had to cram Darwyn Cooke’s epic story into that same short running time, leading to a lot of information being left out. Here, the story has plenty of room to maneuver and breathe, and we get much more in the way of character than we have before. “Wonder Woman” succeeds much more in getting us engaged and caring about its characters than the sometimes rushed feel of previous efforts.

A lot of the success comes down to Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion as our leads. They have great chemistry and have plenty of scenes to build their relationship and play off each other, with the result being that we quickly become attached to the characters. Fillion very nearly steals the show with his hilarious, womanizer-with-a-heart-of-gold portrayal of Trevor, but Russell keeps up with him. I was really unsure of having Russell play Diana, but she does a great job. There are so many great moments with these two – such as Diana teaching a little girl in Central Park how to properly swordfight with her pirate-playing boy peers before telling the girl to, and I quote, “Unleash Hell,” or Trevor unwisely engaging Diana in a tequila-drinking match that doesn’t quite end the way he’d like it to.

Additional props have to go to the other actors for giving it their all in their roles. Molina is fantastic as Ares – dark and menacing, but far from being one-note “eeeeeeeevil!” as other actors might have portrayed him. There’s even some outstanding sympathetic bits to the character, especially a scene between Ares and Hades, played with delicious sliminess by Oliver Platt. Ares shows a part of himself that isn’t fueled by hatred or terror when he’s contrasted against the Lord of the Underworld himself. It’s a nice touch in the portrayal.

The rest of the Amazons are well-played as well, from the no-nonsense Hippolyta of Virginia Madsen to the brutally efficient warrior of Rosario Dawson’s Artemis to the naive bookwork of Alexa as played by Tara Strong. One of the funniest parts of the movie is a brief exchange between Trevor and Artemis during the challenge segment on Themyscira that I don’t want to spoil.

All of this is buoyed aloft by the previously mentioned gorgeous animation. I’ve never seen any previous “Timmverse” creation that looked and moved quite this good. The movie is a total visual treat from beginning to end. Everything, from the backgrounds to the characters to the movement, is outstanding. Timm and his artists and animators have truly outdone themselves on this one.

If I was going to complain about anything related to the art or animation, it’s just a personal preference: had the film’s Diana looked like Darwyn Cooke’s version of the character as seen in “The New Frontier,” I would have been overjoyed:

I just love Cooke’s curvaceous Amazon pinup girl design over all the other interpretations of the character. To be fair, though, Timm’s movie version of the character is hardly a stick – she’s still an Amazon. And she’s not ripped, thank goodness. Just a personal preference I have for Cooke’s art, but I’m not going to let it interfere with my enjoyment of and affection for the movie.

There’s also a brief coda after the main storyline has been resolved, before the credits roll. I won’t spoil it for you, but I’ll just say that it’s a great scene and that even as the film spends its time on the mythological side of the Wonder Woman universe, they do find time in that little scene to bring in a certain member of Diana’s classic rogues gallery.

To sum up, “Wonder Woman” is an outstanding movie. It’s action-packed, has great characters and performances, gorgeous animation, some genuinely funny humor, and perhaps most importantly it’s a great depiction of Wonder Woman, the character. While not perfect – the story hops around a bit towards the end as that 73 minute running time crops up – its flaws are minor compared with everything that the filmmakers get right.

It’s great for fans and, because it’s got the complete origin story, it’s great for newcomers as well. This is the movie that Wonder Woman has deserved for a long while. It’s about time Diana gets to be in the spotlight with her own feature, and we couldn’t have asked for a better one than Timm’s adaptation. I recommend it highly – it’s greatness.

(”Wonder Woman” is available on DVD, Blu-Ray, and as a download from the iTunes store.)

After some time I finally had the will to open my eyes. It was dark, but my eyes surprisingly had no trouble adapting. How long had I been laying here? I had no memory of any events leading up to this; the last thing I remembered was laying down in my bed, in the boarding house behind the market. How had I arrived here? And by whose will?

I was in a chamber, probably a size of fourty feet square; the ceiling above was domed. Not another object shared the chamber with me, save a few more spots of the moss I felt under my right hand. All of the chamber was rusticated stone with no ornament or detailing, with the exception being the doorway directly opposite me. No other doors or windows could be seen – there was only this doorway, which I estimated to be fifteen feet tall set into an even taller gothic arch. It featured two wooden doors of impressive mass, with simple iron handles.

At some length I decided that my fortunes would never be improved by simply laying on the floor, bemoaning the pain in my body and contemplating that doorway. I worked my way to my feet, unsteadily but determinedly. My clothes…my word, what had gone on? My clothes were soiled with dirt and covered in blood stains – whether they were mine or a foe’s, I could not be sure.

A growing sense of unease and a desire to find another soul to seek help from led me to propel myself towards the doorway. I wanted to get out, to begin piecing together the events that brought me to this place, to look upon Anna again and feel the touch of her hand on mine. My body grudgingly cooperated, and I half-ran, half-staggered my way forward until my hands touched upon the iron handles of the doors. They were cold, as the river in the throes of winter. The chamber behind me was not especially small, but I felt as though it was contracting on me, as though it no longer wanted me for a guest. A queasy sense of claustrophobia and dread seeped into me as I pulled with all the strength I could summon. The doors slowly, with an agonizing groan, came open.

I looked out, and saw…nothing.

“Stardust” is what you’d get if you took Rob Reiner’s 1987 cult movie “The Princess Bride,” loaded it up on CGI excess, paired the light and frothy humor with some out-of-left-field graphic violence, sprinkled it with a few dozen helicopter shots lifted from Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings,” and then tweaked it in places with a “Terry Gilliam” Photoshop filter. The result is something of a mess, very occasionally approaching something good before veering off into derivative territory.  

Bland hero Tristan inexplicably wants to win the affections of Victoria, his quasi-Victorian village’s resident alleged hottie, despite her treating him like dog food. If Tristan can retrieve a fallen star from the other side of the less-than-impressive five foot wall that divides the village from the generic magical kingdom of Stormhold, she’ll marry him instead of her fiance, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Cary Elwes. After using a Plot Device Teleportation Candle to travel to Stormhold, Tristan discovers that the fallen star has taken the form of Yvaine, played by Claire Danes with a weird blonde dye job, apparently filling the role that Gwyneth Paltrow would have played if this movie had been made several years earlier. But Tristan and his new stellar lady friend are on a collision course with wackiness, as evil witch Lamia wants to capture Yvaine and eat her heart to gain eternal youth, while scheming Stormhold princes want to retrieve Yvaine’s necklace and kill each other to ascend to the kingdom’s throne. Throw in some oddball scenes with Robert De Niro continuing the tired “tough bad ass who’s hamming it up for laughs” schtick he’s been doing since “Meet the Parents” and “Analyze This” as a cross-dressing gay air pirate with a tough facade (picture “The Princess Bride’s” Dread Pirate Roberts as a stereotypically fey hair dresser), and you’ve got a slick and shiny special effects showcase whose moments of genuine heart are adrift on a sea of l33t-k3wl CGI.

Part of the problem is the film’s wild shifts in tone. It wants to have its cake and eat it, too – a foundation of straight-up fairy tale, at times slipping into the sort of parody and satire that was “The Princess Bride’s” hallmark, before slapping us in the face with surprisingly grisly scenes of witches ripping out the intestines of small animals, or trying to pump the proceedings up into the sort of epic that Jackson’s “LoTR” was with swooping ‘copter shots of our leads wandering around the same sort of majestic landscapes of fields and mountains that appeared in the Tolkien-based films. The scheming Stormhold princes murder each other in a variety of calculating ways, but they’re played for laughs more often than not – a prince in a tub, his neck slit, gushing buckets of…blue blood. Perhaps it was the late hour of my viewing, but it all just seems rather…off. It’s almost as if the straightforward love story/”Princess Bride” homage between Tristan and Yvaine (no spoiler warning, since this part of the film’s a straight up fairy tale it’s pretty blatantly obvious that he’ll ditch the village popular girl in favor of the star), the darkly comic princes, and the scenery-chewing intestine-fondling witches are from three distinct movies. When De Niro minces his way into the film piloting a half-Zeppelin/half-pirate ship, he brings with him a heaping dose of wannabe Terry Gilliam straight out of “Time Bandits” or “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen,” but without that director’s sheer inventiveness. All these disparate elements don’t always mesh together seamlessly. The film seems to want to be all things to all fantasy fans, but it’s never focused enough to consistently deliver the goods. (A few “it’s in the script” moments don’t help, such as when a certain character develops a superpower in the film’s closing minutes, a scene which prompts rounds of “why didn’t she just do that before?”)

My other big problem with the film was its glossy sheen. Director Matthew Vaughn was obviously proud of his CGI team, calling upon them to wallop us over the head time and again when a simpler approach would have been more effective. Take the scene where the evil Lamia creates a fake inn to trap Yvaine and slice out her heart – where it would have been preferable to show a simple, more fantastical and imagination-powered depiction of the inn rising from nothing, Vaughn swoops and swirls us around an elaborate CGI construction fest before flying the camera inside, as the inn’s interiors spring to life amidst a swirl of green computerized fire. It’s the sort of modern fantasy film where everything is spelled out in CGI icing, leaving us with no need to imagine, no fantasy or wonder. Vaughn seems to hate the thought of getting the audience to use our imaginations at all. In fact, it’s when the movie jettisons its overwrought effects work that the solid fantasy film underneath can occasionally peek out from behind the curtains. As corny as it is, the romance between Tristan and Yvaine does work, and it can be genuinely affecting when it’s not being pushed aside by effects set pieces. The film’s simplest moments are its most effective – as Tristan and Yvaine gradually fall for one another, she develops a stellar glowing effect whenever she’s overcome with happiness from being with him (she’s a star, after all). These scenes of a beaming Danes softly glowing with pure joy from having found her one true love are far more affecting, and have more lasting impact, than all of Vaughn’s multimillion dollar set pieces combined.

Buried under the uneven tone and overcooked CGI is a sweet and simple fantasy that wants to get out. Perhaps others might latch on to that, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t able to get past the rest of it all to embrace it.