Month: September 2004

A friend recently pointed out the hypocrisy in how I love bloody, mobbed-out films where people get whacked with a ball point pen in the jugular—and yet nearly have a nervous breakdown when I see a squirrel smashed in the street.I don’t know if this requires serious examination on my part but it is true.…

Straight talkVINCENT GALLO Since its infamous debut at the last Cannes Film Festival, director and actor Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny has become the year’s most controversial movie, as much for its deliberately slow pacing as for the final scene, in which Gallo and Chloë Sevigny engage in an explicit, unsimulated sex act. Gallo chatted…

Now in its ninth year, the Rain Taxi Review of Books remains a stalwart champion of “difficult” literature—stuff that challenges our assumptions about narrative, language, or even what makes a good story. It also celebrates the larger world of things bibliophilistic with the Twin Cities Book Festival, which it has sponsored since its inception in…

Only in the snotty West have we developed this idea of “outsider art” for crafts and art forms that are “vernacular.” Look to the East to find traditions that not only predate modernity, but keep right on ignoring it. Like Russian lacquer boxes. These incredibly detailed and lush paintings on boxes, plates, miniature caskets, and…

If it makes us sound shallow, so be it: We love supporting the arts because we love parties. Is there a finer way to show your support than to enjoy cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and dancing with intriguing, passionate, and creative people (many of whom inevitably have amazing footwear)? And when you can buy art and…

We’d wager there are a few families left who prefer slide shows or Super-8 screenings to home videos. But how many do you know who create art exhibitions celebrating their life together? Melba Price, Bruce Tapola, and their daughter Oakley did so in 1993 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; eleven years later, it’s time…