Yes, it’s true…we’re fully booked for Mother’s Day 2013. We will have a few tables outside for first come, first served seating (no reservations), provided the weather cooperates!

We so appreciate you thinking of us, and want you to know that every day is Mother’s Day at Mother’s Bistro & Bar. Come by anytime and know that we’ll take great care of you, cook our hearts out and make sure you want for nothing.

Until then, wishing you the happiest of Mother’s Days to you and yours.

Love, Mom (Chef Lisa Schroeder)

Marwencol (2010)

On Wednesday, May 1st, Movies at Mothers continues its series on “Dreams, The Subconscious and the Surreal”, with Jeff Malmberg’s bizarre and touching 2010 documentary, Marwencol, charting the remarkable life and work of Mark Hogancamp.

In 2000, Mark Hogancamp was ruthlessly beaten by a gang of thugs outside of a bar in New York State and left for dead.  He awoke from a coma a few days later suffering brain damage that severely affected both his memory and motor skills.  Trying to find some means of putting his life back together, he constructed a 1/6th scale WWII era Belgian town on the family property.  He dubbed the town Marwencol (A portmanteau for Mark, Wendy and Coleen)  and populated it with 12 inch action figures who represented the various people in his life, including his attackers who are played by German SS Officers.  This proved a powerful therapy for both his mind and body.  Eventually he acquired an SLR and he began setting up tableaux and photographing them.  The pieces he created were striking and it wasn’t long after he showed them to a few people that the New York art community took an interest.

As we become acquainted with Mark, he becomes an increasingly sympathetic character, while his search for some kind of foundation on which to build a new identity proves a fascinating exploration of human cognition on a universal level.  Like the best storytellers, director Jeff Malmberg has packed his film with numerous twists, turns and a lot of humor.  One has to love the fact that Mark’s mother, who owns the hobby shop that supplied the dolls, is herself represented by a Pussy Galore action figure.

The excitement begins at 7:00 when you will enjoy one of the best dinners in town, followed by the screening at 7:30 PM.  Hope to see you there!

Mother’s is located at 212 SW Stark.

Metachaos(2010) / Paprika (2006)

On Wednesday, April 3rd, Movies at Mothers continues its series on “Dreams, The Subconscious and the Surreal”, with Satoshi Kon’s final film, the 2006 anime classic,Paprika, and modern Italian surrealist Alessandro Bavari’s stunning animated short, Metachaos.

Art derived from dreams and the subconscious is the realm the mind’s eye, and therefore a deeply subjective experience.  Animation has long proven an ideal medium to explore that landscape for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the invoked imagery is limited only by the imagination.  From Windsor McCay’s groundbreaking Dreams Of A Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo In Slumberland to the Fleischer Studios’ opium fueled Betty Boop cartoons, animation has proven the ideal medium in which to represent an ever metamorphosing world and a complete rewrite of the laws of physics.  Add to that, characters who are entirely the product of their imagined worlds, dragging none of the baggage born by actors, whose familiar faces might constantly remind us of some previous performance (or worse yet, some insipid gossip or scandal).

The two films we present are distinctly different in tone.  Bavari’s Metachaos is an 8 1/2 minute nightmare of that rare sort that feels like a direct transmission from the REM state of a singularly troubled soul.  A cross between the painterly works of Salvador Dali and the scariest zombie film you’ve ever seen, Metachaos depicts a city composed of sterile, yet ever shifting monolithic architecture inhabited by floating and flying bodies in what might be interpreted as a state of grace.  This soon gives way to an apocalyptic industrial wasteland, its shuddering, disfigured inhabitants wracked by the torments of the damned.   Bavari’s canny computer generated black and white dystopia works so well because it is at once entirely alien yet somehow so familiar, and utterly terrifying while at the same time strangely sublime.  This copy of the film comes to us courtesy of Sig. Bavari

Paprika is part of the science fiction genre exploring the implications of mind probing and the potential to control people’s actions by entering and manipulating their dreams.  The obvious recent example of this would be Christopher Nolan’s Inception (Nolan has acknowledged this film’s influence on him), but the precedent includes 1984’s Dreamscape and, to a certain extent, Jean Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s World On A Wire (1973).  Like all of those films, Paprika begins as a straightforward industrial espionage thriller, in this case involving a device called the DC Mini which enables one to inhabit an avatar and enter another person’s dream state.  When one of the devices goes missing and a corporate bureaucrat starts losing his mind, it is apparent that someone is applying the technology towards some nefarious goal.  Dr. Chiba is a psychiatrist who can inhabit the dream world in the form of her avatar, Paprika, and she must give chase within and without various people’s psyches before the dream world and the real world begin to converge. Part sci fi thriller and part creation myth, the film’s over the top climax proves a mind-bending feast for the eye.

The excitement begins at 7:00 when you will enjoy one of the best dinners in town, followed by the screening at 7:30 PM.  Hope to see you there!

Mother’s is located at 212 SW Stark.

Mulholland Drive (2001)

On Wednesday, March 6th, Movies at Mothers continues its series on “Dreams, The Subconscious and the Surreal”, with David Lynch’s surreal masterpiece, Mulholland Dr., starring Naomi Watts, Laura Harring and Justin Theroux.

David Lynch, who essentially changed the face of American television in 1990 with Twin Peaks, returned to the medium in 1999 and created a 90 minute ABC pilot for a series centered around Los Angeles and the film industry, shady street characters and two beautiful women whose lives intersect both figuratively and literally.  All of these threads appeared to be manipulated by a mysterious illuminati-like organization that included a cowboy (Monty Montgomery), a dwarf with a full grown man’s body (Michael Anderson) and two espresso obsessed mafioso brothers (Dan Hedaya and Angelo Badalamenti).  ABC got cold feet and passed on the series, and it languished for a couple of years before Canal Plus bought it and gave Lynch the opportunity to turn what he had into a theatrical feature.  Actors were called back, sets were rebuilt and the narrative entirely re-engineered to fit within a 2 1/2 hour run time.  The result was a film that is nightmarish, erotic, and possibly Lynch’s most entertaining and accessible (the word ‘accessible” having its own meaning in Lynch-land) work.

Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) is a fresh faced, corn-fed Midwestern girl who, after winning a jitterbug contest, moves to Hollywood in search of fame and fortune.  She takes up residence in her Aunt’s vacant bungalow, where she finds Rita (Laura Harring), a woman suffering from amnesia following a serious car crash.  Betty, apparently raised on Nancy Drew mysteries, devotes herself to helping this mysterious woman unlock her past.

Parallel to this, film director Adam Kesher’s (Justin Theroux) life is collapsing in on itself when he discovers his wife in bed with the pool guy, and the studio taking over his current film project and demanding casting approval. The intervention of a Mephistophelian cowboy may be the ticket to getting his life back.  These are the two central threads of the narrative, but we take a number of side trips including one with a hilariously inept hitman and a gem of a scene involving two men at a diner discussing a nightmare.

But that is all on the surface.  Lynch has never been one to spoon-feed his audience, and Mulholland Dr. is as confounding and demanding as it is beautiful, funny and sexy.  Mundane concerns are continually interrupted by surreal episodes and encounters with the kind of grotesqueries that populate both high and low culture.  Like Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Lost Highway before it, Mulholland Dr.occupies a place in the twilight between dreams and waking nightmares.

The excitement begins at 6:30 when you will enjoy one of the best dinners in town, followed by the screening at 7:00 PM.  Hope to see you there!

Mother’s is located at 212 SW Stark.

3 Women (1977)

On Wednesday, February 6th, Movies at Mothers continues its series on “Dreams, The Subconscious and the Surreal”, with Robert Altman’s 1977 dream inspired meditation, 3 Women, starring Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule.

Robert Altman’s career spanned nearly 60 years (if one includes his television work in the 50’s) and, with regard to content, was one of the most diverse to be enjoyed by an American director.  Having made his mark with dark comedies like MASH and Brewster McCloud, he was equally at home with unconventional westerns (McCabe And Mrs. Miller, Buffalo Bill and The Indians), ensemble social dramedies (Nashville, A Wedding), and science fiction (Quintet, Countdown). In the 70’s however he made two striking yet underrated psychological dramas that explored identity and the subconscious, and stand out among his best films.  The first was 1972’s Images starring Susannah York, and the second was 3 Women.  According to Altman, this film was inspired by a dream, and he wrote the screenplay quickly and without a lot of self analysis.  The result was a story that he claimed to not entirely understand himself, and offered up to the audience for their own interpretation.  The film’s final act is delivered with a dissonant soundtrack and watery in-camera tricks all of which result in a disorienting and dreamlike tone.

The story is primarily centered around Pinky (Sissy Spacek) and Millie (Shelley Duvall – easily Altman’s greatest discovery), two young women who work together in a desert retirement home.  Pinky is an childlike naif, who looks up to Millie who fancies herself much more worldly and sophisticated than she really is.  Indeed, Millie’s self image acts as a shield to protect her from the derision that most people cast upon her.   As the two young women grow closer it becomes apparent that Pinky is not all she seems as well.  The third woman is Willie, the pregnant artist wife and owner of the motel where Pinky and Millie live, who spends her days decorating the drained swimming pool with paintings of semi-reptilian humanoids engaged in passionate folly and ritual (created by muralist Bodhi Wind). As the delivery of Willie’s baby draws nearer, the nature of the three women’s personalities shift, intersect and ultimately reverse.

It is important to approach Altman’s film less with regard to “story” rather than “tone”.  The audience will inevitably look for narrative sublimation, but what makes this work a real standout is its experimental nature which, even in the 70’s was unusual for mainstream American cinema and foreshadows the work to come from David Lynch (whose Mulholland Drive (2001) this film bears more than a passing resemblance).

The excitement begins at 6:30 when you will enjoy one of the best dinners in town, followed by the screening at 7:00 PM.  Hope to see you there!

Mother’s is located at 212 SW Stark.

It’s that time of year again, and Rob’s gettin’ in the Season Spirit!
Join Mother’s Bistro & Bar owners Rob, Lisa, and special guest host Shannon Day as they celebrate the season with the 4th annual Christmas Karoloke (Oh Holy) night.

Oh Come All Ye Faithful… and you can sing your favorite carols with Rob, Shannon, by yourself, with friends, or just sit back, enjoy a hot toddie and bask in the Holiday Cheer!

Many of you have been asking if we were going to do this again this year, and here it is – if you are Away In A Manger, you’ll miss it!

Drink specials, special treats, no host bar.

See you there.

Wednesday, December 19th.  Starts at 8:30pm

It’s that time of the year again and Mother’s Bistro has got your Latke fix!

What is a Latke?

A latke is a savory potato pancake traditionally eaten by the Jewish people during the Hanukkah festival, which starts this Saturday night, December 8th. Even if it’s not part of your holiday tradition, they’re still a delicious treat. Each latke is made with shredded fresh potatoes and onions, formed into a pancake, pan-fried in oil and then served with sour cream and house made apple sauce. They’ve become a holiday traditions here at Mother’s Bistro, and we’ll be offering them Saturday night, December 8th and Sunday, December 9th, and again the following weekend, Friday, December 14- Sunday, December 16th. Come and get it!

Tin House and the Portland-Brooklyn Project are hosting a fundraiser to benefit one of New York’s communities most devastated by Hurricane Sandy: Red Hook, Brooklyn. The benefit will be held at Disjecta, a Contemporary Arts Center in North Portland. The event title “Defiance,” shares the name of a fundraiser held on November 14th in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn also benefitting Red Hook.

The authors scheduled to appear include Jon Raymond, Karen Karbo, Nancy Rommelmann, and Peter Carlin. The Tim DuRoche Band and Casey Neill will be performing.

SUPER RAFFLE TICKETS are $10/each: 1 TICKET = 5 CHANCES TO WIN!
1st raffle ticket drawn = 2 ROUND-TRIP TICKETS to NYC from AZUMANO TRAVEL

www.brownpapertickets.com/event/299199