Year: 2005

Piggybacking on the success of “Carmen,” Jeune Lune serves up a second spicy, Spanish-flavored opera—one that also stars the now-famous Baldwin sisters (who played the title role and Micaela in “Carmen”) as desirous but unattainable divas. This time, Dominique Serrand and company have chosen a little-known piece, perhaps a preemptive move to disable opera traditionalists who scoffed at Jeune Lune’s bare-bones instrumentation of the usually full-forced “Carmen,” as well as its previous tamperings with Mozart operas. The rest of us, however, are quite at home amid the minimal orchestration but larger-than-life singing that make a Jeune Lune opera. Forget the fat ladies! Jeune Lune feasts on passion and lust, reclaiming the sexiness, immediacy, and relevance of opera one production at a time. 105 First St. N., Minneapolis; 612-333-6200; www.jeunelune.org

Lee Blessing is best known for the Tony Award-winning “A Walk in the Woods” and, recently, “Thief River” at the Guthrie Lab. He calls his Two Rooms “a play about devotion.” Written circa 1988, the story centers on a woman whose husband has been taken hostage in Beirut. Flanked by reporters and government officials, this “hostage wife” weighs her options. If she tells her story, will it help bring her husband home? Or should she keep mum? In an effort to connect with her spouse, she also constructs a cell in their home, trying to re-create, from imagination, the place that holds her husband. Retreating there, she can grieve and “talk” to him, despite all that lies between them. The dialogue that takes place there—in those two, similar rooms—is gut-wrenchingly sad, but, ultimately, beauty comes out of this crisis. 245 Cedar Ave., Minneapolis; 612-333-3010; www.theatreintheround.org

German playwright Bertolt Brecht famously said that a theater without beer is just a museum. So he must be looking down upon America’s theater houses with great distress, because most have become Tennessean “dry states.” Just try to bring some Merlot to your seat and watch the ushers tsk-tsk you. To counteract the damper that theater etiquette puts on theater, a collective of writers and performers have begun serving up their newest works at Joe’s Garage. At a bar! In their bid to make theater more spontaneous, they’re inviting folks over to the Garage every Monday evening to sample a new selection of “playlets,” bite-sized shows to be enjoyed with your dinner or, better yet, over a few cold ones. 1610 Harmon Place, Minneapolis; 612-904-1163; www.joes-garage.com

They don’t make shoot-’em-up gangster films like they used to. James Cagney gives a landmark performance as Tom Powers, a Prohibition-era bootlegger based on real-life gangsters Charles Dion “Deanie” O’Banion (Al Capone’s archrival) and Earl “Hymie” Weiss, who gets credit for the infamous grapefruit-to-the-face scene. Beyond that citrus-scented notoriety, The Public Enemy has been praised for its early sociological inquiry into the connections between childhood poverty and a life of crime. With its glorification of bootlegging and consorting with floozies, The Public Enemy helped to pave the way for early Hollywood’s strict censors. The film’s most violent acts, however, take place off screen, leaving the gore to the imagination. It could teach Quentin Tarantino a thing or two about subtlety.

A young, flirty Bette Davis lucks out when Leslie Howard, a wandering intellectual in search of meaning in life, walks into her particular cafe. Greasy food is served, googly-eyed glances are exchanged, and all is oh-so-good and as sexy as 1936 ever got—and then Humphrey Bogart shows up. Playing a gun-toting con on the run, Bogie made his first big impression with this film, in which he holds the staff and patrons of a lonely Arizona diner hostage. As the captives wait out their uncertain ordeal, they share stories and re-imagine the lives they hope to escape to. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Robert E. Sherwood.

Since this is quite possibly one of the most excruciatingly painful movies ever made, would we be able to watch it again, now that it’s out on DVD? Uncertain. Stunningly beautiful, it inspires a host of machinations in the mind of the viewer. If you had the chance to completely erase your most painful memories, would you? That’s the premise of this movie, simply put, as a somewhat mismatched couple (Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet) fight to retain the memories of their doomed love affair after they pay a mad doctor to wipe their minds clean of it. As the most realized film so far from writer Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich,) Eternal Sunshine blends the plodding, prosaic moments that make up true intimacy with a shimmering and often hilarious imaginary world. The lovers run through their own memories, grasping even for the bad ones, because it’s the journey, despite the destination, that matters.

Sean Penn quietly turns in one stunning performance after another, in complex and riveting films, and still, real popularity eludes him. Or at least his fans refrain from pecking him apart with the so-called love that dogs the Leos and Toms of Hollywood, which is probably just as well. His latest role, as Sam Bicke, the man who plotted to kill President Nixon, won’t make the paparazzi chase him, either, but Penn’s portrayal of a man in the midst of heartbreak and disintegration is riveting. Bicke’s family is falling apart, his society is rotting under the weight of its corrupt leadership and a meaningless war, and to Bicke, one person seems to be ultimately responsible for it all. Even setting aside the parallels with contemporary life, Penn does an incredible job making sense of someone who, on the surface, seems completely unhinged. 3911 W. 50th St., Edina; 651-649-4416; www.landmarktheaters.com

Once upon a time, the Sierra Club was merely a loose group of happy hikers who didn’t think much further than the next hill. But when David Brower took over in 1952, he brought a sense of urgency and environmental awareness to the organization, which went on to save national treasures like Utah’s Dinosaur National Monument and large stretches of the Grand Canyon from mining and destruction. This film pays tribute to Brower’s vision by restoring the archival footage he shot of America’s Western wilderness from the thirties through the sixties. The restoration techniques and an indie-rock soundtrack (Yo La Tengo, the Fruit Bats, Beachwood Sparks) give this film anotherworldly aura, which is fitting because so much of the footage is of another world’s lost world. Haunting scenes of Glen Canyon in its full, pre-flooded magnificence remind us that Brower’s fight was not always victorious, and there’s plenty of work left to do. 17th and University Ave. SE, Minneapolis; 612-331-3134; www.mnfilmarts.org

Who doesn’t have a bit of a thing for Conor Oberst, the doe-eyed Nebraskan whose angst-ridden, poetic ballads draw comparisons to Bob Dylan and Paul Simon? With fame and success firmly planted on his doorstep (which is now in Manhattan), Oberst, who has made some nine recordings as Bright Eyes, is becoming a more relaxed, less self-conscious musician. Gone are the strained, brittle vocals and jagged guitar riffs that characterized previous albums like 2000’s “Fever and Mirrors.” Although Oberst’s broken heart seems to be on the mend (no mentions of “Kathy” in these newest albums), his maturing fury turns on darkening political landscapes and consumerist gluts. “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning” brings together twangy, intimate, country-inspired fare, while “Digital Ash in a Digital Urn” is a high-production, full-band effort offering rock anthems for a pissed-off generation to come.

Who will keep you warm when the moon is high and the nights are long and cold? Pam Houston would recommend a good dog. He might drool, smell a little gamey after a romp in the rain, and eat the occasional flattened squirrel, but he’ll adore you unconditionally and enjoy nothing in the world so much as your companionship. Houston has styled herself as a literary rough-and-ready adventure girl, writing wry and outdoorsy short fiction like the collection “Cowboys Are My Weakness” and magazine essays about her life as a hunter, ski instructor, Colorado ranch owner, Amazon River guide, and owner of an oft-broken heart. But much of her work can be boiled down to simple girl-and-her-dog tales, in which the men leave and the heroine is left to walk the trail with a loyal hound by her side. Her first novel, Sight Hound, follows a woman and her pack of human companions as they go to great lengths to extend the life of a beloved canine. With both humor and painful truths, Houston exposes the primacy of the dog-owner connection, and explains why animals often make better friends than humans.