Year: 2005

Perhaps the most pleasurable thing about Barbette is the feeling that, upon gliding through its velvet-curtained entry, you’ve walked into a French movie. A host with chiseled cheekbones guides you past a round communal table. Stained-glass fixtures in circus colors suggest the performer from which the cafe takes its name. If you’re lucky, you’ll be seated with a view of a painting of a lovely nude with a sensuous backside. Patrons to your left slurp oysters, and across the room, a couple lingers over a bottle of Sicilian red with a spread of fruit, artisan cheeses, and warm olives. You can’t decide whether to indulge in the grass-fed steak frites or the wild mushroom risotto, but one thing is certain: it’s time to learn French. 1600 W. Lake St., Minneapolis; 612-827-5710

Great children’s movies attract not just families, but a sizable contingent of sheepish adults with no children, which may help to explain all the rap stars who line up with Ellen DeGeneres to voice-over cartoons. But this new offshoot of M-SPIFF brings a highly intelligent selection of international children’s film to the Twin Cities, demonstrating that the genre can indeed thrive without celebrity voices, garish animation, or fast-food toy tie-ins. Highlights include a spotlight on French animation, centered around a screening of Princes and Princesses at the Children’s Theatre Company, in which CTC actors will create a live soundtrack to the film. www.mnfilmarts.org/m-spiff/2005

Hapless Ben (Saturday Night Live alum Jimmy Fallon) is a teacher whose Boston Red Sox obsession consumes his life until he becomes smitten with Lindsay (Drew Barrymore), who couldnÕt care less about the sport. Sounds like your typical romantic comedy, except that it’s based on a novel by Nick Hornby, the Helen Fielding-for-guys who brought us High Fidelity and About a Boy. Also, it’s directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly (There’s Something About Mary, Dumb and Dumber). Hornby is adept at creating goofy and shambling characters with a stupid side that his readers identify with, while the Farrellys are notorious for making the stupid side of characters the only side you want to see. So Fever Pitch looks well-positioned to become a romantic comedy classic–or at least a romantic baseball comedy classic.

The newest in an increasing number of must-see films from Hong Kong, this extravaganza set in the glamorous and ruthless 1930s is a funny, eye-popping homage to Bruce Lee, Grease, and a thousand special effects. Aspiring gangster Sing longs to join the Axe Gang, which rules the city’s slums and casinos with a commanding combination of wicked martial arts gymnastics, a snazzy sense of fashion, and dazzling dance moves. Sing and his tubby sidekick pretend they are Axe members in order to pull off a minor crime, which only draws the real gang to town to dispense with these fools through a little song and dance.

A film noir for the twenty-first century, this crime drama is based on Frank Miller’s much-loved comic-book series, an elegant, violent, bleak, and sexy chronicle of various seamy underworlds. A grizzled cop (Bruce Willis) has vowed to keep a showgirl (Jessica Alba) alive, while a crook (Mickey Rourke) is out to avenge the death of his lover, Goldie. Benicio Del Toro, Brittany Murphy, Elijah Wood, and Alexis Bledel bring other Miller characters off the page and onto the screen, filling the dancehalls and buying the bullets in a story with as many twists and turns as a pole dancer.

When it comes to supergroup films, everything depends on the players. We never were compelled to watch the Allen-Coppola-Scorcese triptych New York Stories, for instance, but we’ll get in line for Eros, a filmic anthology on love from Wong Kar-Wai, Steven Soderbergh, and Michelangelo Antonioni. Kar-Wai’s Hands covers similar terrain as his ravishing In the Mood for Love; here, though, the tragic couple is a call girl and her tailor. It should tide us over until his 2046 is finally released here. Soderbergh’s work has been disappointing of late, but there’s still hope for Equilibrium, a noirish recounting of a therapy session employing the actors Adam Arkin and Robert Downey Jr. As for Antonioni, be forewarned: word is that his contribution is a horrific parody of his own masterpieces from the sixties. Ah, well, it’s hard to sustain genius.

Show tunes just won’t die, and Kristin Chenoweth is partly to blame. Her cartoonishly expressive voice conjures the songbirds of Broadway’s bygone era, both on torchy jazz standards and on girdle-busting numbers from shows like Wicked, Candide, and You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown (for which she won a Tony). And Chenoweth doesn’t just sing; she’s a West Wing regular and reportedly is working on a film with Steve Martin. She might become her generation’s Bernadette Peters if she doesn’t watch out. This, her second album, veers from traditional jazz to explore a variety of spirituals.

M. Ward’s melodies are as quietly pervasive as cigarette smoke in a bar (ah, the days of É last month). His voice sneaks through the back door while you’re ordering the cheapest beer on tap, and the next thing you know you’re singing his songs while driving to work the next day. In other words, he’s compelling even when you’re not paying attention. It’s the gritty, percussive guitar that sticks first. The blues riffs next. Then the raspy voice that sounds like its owner needs some NyQuil–until he croons a sweet falsetto. 1601 University Ave., St. Paul; 651-647-0486; www.turfclub.net

Not long after his move to the Australian outback in 1999, Ben Folds began laboring over Songs for Silverman. The album features the falsetto peaks and pretty pop piano Folds is renowned for, and we, for one, are happy to report that he has elected not to revive the adolescent wit indulged in his days with the Ben Folds Five. Silverman is an organic, slow-cooking effort, right up your alley if you liked his earlier sugary-sweet ballads like “The Luckiest” and “Brick.” In all, this is an even but romantic album. And if that sounds too grown-up to suit your “Battle of Who Could Care Less” tastes, try the Ben Folds website. There you can download his expletive-heavy Dr. Dre cover.

Painting begets music begets painting. At least in the case of Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky, whose Pictures at an Exhibition was inspired by a series of work from a contemporary, the nineteenth-century painter Victor Hartmann. Now Mussorgsky’s composition has, in turn, inspired paintings by ten local artists, to be shown in conjunction with the Minnesota OrchestraÕs performance of Pictures. The visual works refer to the composer’s beautifully complex images–the majestic gates of Kiev, the anxious witch, chicks hatching from eggs–and we think Mussorgsky would love them. Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis; 612-371-5656; www.minnesotaorchestra.org