Month: June 2004

The unavoidable compression needed to turn this medieval-monastery murder mystery into a two-hour film makes Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 1986 adaptation both less rich and less strange than Umberto Eco’s triumphal novel—and yet still, it’s a nearly perfect palimpsest, enjoyable both on its own terms and as an adjunct to the book. Annaud invests the film with…

After making a splash on the U.S. film-festival circuit (including our own local fest), this German documentary’s making a welcome solo return to arthouses. If you’re up for something in the vein of Winged Migration or The Saltmen of Tibet, don’t miss it this time around. It’s about a family of Mongolian camel-herders who face…

Fresh off his box-office success with School of Rock, director Richard Link-later’s returned to his low-key, high-concept indie roots. Sunset picks up on his 1995 romance Before Sunrise, catching up with the characters played by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy nine years later. The two of them wander around Paris, talk, visit a coffeeshop, talk,…

They’ll be murdering, stealing, and backstabbing all month down at the Oak Street, which sounds like fun to us. July’s repertory slate is a good mix of the titles long recognized as noir royalty (Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, Chinatown) and enough lesser-known beauties to pique the interest of hardened criminophiles. Good bets include Burt…

With seminars on everything from poetry to quilting, along with teachers from such faraway places as Korea, the Split Rock Arts Program’s summer workshops at the University of Minnesota make for a tasty arts buffet. Each Tuesday brings a fresh set of writers reading and visual artists showing slides. This year’s teachers include local stars…

Rock criticism has never mattered less, probably because it has never really evolved beyond the canon of its best, exhausted practitioners—Christgau, Marcus, and Meltzer. Whereas those old duffers should have grown up a long time ago, into broader social, political, even pop-cultural criticism—hell, how about a novel, guys?—they keep churning out increasingly remote ruminations and…