Year: 2007

BOOKS & AUTHORS

Nonfiction, Neoliberal Globalization, and Social Change

David Bacon spent 20 years as a factory worker and union organizer before becoming a photo journalist in the mid-80s. Since then, he has published numerous essays and photo essays documenting farm labor, immigration, and the impact of the global economy on workers. Bacon represents American working-class journalism at its finest, exposing stories seldom picked up by mainstream media. Tonight Bacon will be discussing a border that few North Americans know anything about — a working-class fight for survival on the unequal playing ground of NAFTA, where labor rights are often dishonored and where activists often end up blacklisted, jailed, or even desparecido (disappeared). Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border investigates the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on those who labor in the agricultural fields and maquiladora factories on the border. And since union organizers are in fact the heroes in Bacon’s story, he will be joined this evening by Javier Morillo-Alicea, president of SEIU Local 26. (You’re likely to have heard of him as the organizer behind the recent janitors’ strike.)

7 p.m., Metropolitan State University/, Dayton’s Bluff Branch Library, Ecolab Room, 645 E. 7th St., St. Paul; 651-793-1699; free.

Choose Your Own Adventure

“Child of the ’80s that she is, when local writer and independent public-radio producer Heather McElhatton decided to write a book, she chose to resurrect the literary model made famous by Bantom Books’ classic Choose Your Own Adventure series. The result, Pretty Little Mistakes, is a novel with 150 endings to choose from, where adults can refuse marriage proposals, experiment with substances, and indulge their bi-curiosity.” Join The Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library this evening to celebrate the book launch of McElhatton’s new novel. The program will include an introduction by Kevin Kling, a reading by McElhatton, guitar accompaniment by Robert Bell, and a reception of complimentary desserts, a cash bar, and book signing.

7 p.m., Minneapolis Central Library, 300 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis; 612-630-6174; free.

Ink Runs from the Corners of My Mouth

The Carol Connolly Reading Series continues tonight with performances by poets Margaret Hasse and Richard Solly. Author of Stars Above, Stars Below, New Rivers Press and In A Sheep’s Eye, Darling, Margaret Hasse will be performing poems from her latest collection, Milk and Tides. Now a St. Paulite, Hasse works as a consultant to arts and community organizations. With three books to his credit, Richard Solly will read from his newest, From Where the Rivers Come, a gripping collection about loving and rising from the depths of illness and mere consciousness. Whew! That’s a mind-full.

7:30 p.m. (5 p.m. for dinner with reservations), University Club of St. Paul, 420 Summit Ave., St Paul; 651-222-1751; free (dinner not included).

Read “Boundaries” by Margaret Hasse.
Read “White Point, Nova Scotia” by Richard Solly.

MUSIC

It’s no secret that Branford Marsalis is playing tonight at the Dakota. In fact, the show is sold out. But great as Marsalis is, he’s not the only music in town. Irish singer/songwriter Damien Rice is playing a 7:30 p.m. show at Northrop Auditorium, and The Killers are playing at the Roy Wilkins Auditorium at 8 p.m. These are all good acts to catch, but again… no real secret there.

Classical String Instruments in Decidedly Nonclassical Projects

The hot musical secret of the night is the Ponytails & Ivory show at the 331 Club. Liz Draper, of Black Blondie fame, and Jonathan Kaiser, of Blackthorns fame, come together for an evening of double bass and cello duets. Ponytails & Ivory — a reference to the horsehair and ivory used to make the bow of a stringed instrument — gives the two string musicians a forum in which to play 100% improvised music. They never discuss any plans before they start playing; and no two performances are alike. Thus they are able to smoothly incorporate any influences that seem right on the spur of the moment — simple lyrical melodies, percussive rhythms, or even atmospheric sound experiments. Tonight’s show marks their third performance as a duo.

10 p.m., 331 Club, 331 13th Ave. NE, Minneapolis; free.

RAKING THE NET
Goings-on Around Town

Thanks to a hot new local blog full of great daily secrets, I got wind of JimmyOgraphy’s new video project. See what you’ve been missing around town.

Wondering how to spend the day at work?

Here’s some fun for you: the perfect time waster. Isn’t it beautiful?!

Have a secret to share? Send it to cristina@rakemag.com, and don’t be afraid to comment here, folks. This one-way interaction is getting a bit stale.

FILM
Get Ready to Make Your Own

The secret is out. Anyone can make a “film” these days. Granted, many of them bore the pants right off me after only ten seconds; but then as long as the pants are off, who cares? Have you tried your hand at video yet? Be brave and see what you can do in just 48 hours. (Who knows? It might even be a lesson in humility.) This year’s 48-Hour Film Project will take place from June 8th to the 10th. Attend an information session tonight to get more info on registering, watch past films, and talk to producer Ira Livingston in person.

6 p.m., IFP Minnesota, 2446 University Ave. W., St. Paul; 651-644-1912; free.

Yielding to the Great Filmmaking Abilities of Minnesotans

While the 48-Hour Film Festival might produce some amusing results, a film worth watching usually takes at least six days — or sometimes eight years. See what an accomplished filmmaker can do with his time. Wholecrue Productions invites you to an evening of art, cinema, drink, and song. The evening will begin with drinks, mingling, and an exhibition of works by local artists, followed by the premiere of writer/director Gregg Hortgrewe’s Unhinged. Hortgrewe shot this short thriller as a feature last summer, in just six days, and then cut it down in length. But the evening isn’t about this short. Not really. The main event awaits until after dinner. We can’t have our bellies growling during the movie, so fill them up to the music of Coach Said Not To. Once your belly is full, settle into your chair for the world premiere of Holtgrewe’s second feature film (yielding to) a willing breath. After eight years, Holtgrewe’s truly low-budget ($3,500) film is finally bringing local actors Paul Cram, Charles Brin, and T.Mychael Rambo to the forefront with this story about a man coming to terms with the death of his girlfriend. Enjoy the film, and stick around afterward for a question and answer session with Holtgrewe and producer Michael D. Howe.

6 p.m., Suburban World Theater, 3022 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-822-9000; $20 with dinner.

READING AND FILM
Yet Another Piece of the Puzzle

Clearly, most feature films are not a result of 48-hour projects. The screenwriting alone can seem to take an eternity (and often does). So imagine how frustrating it must be to finally complete the screenplay and still have to wait years to see it in action. Get a sneak peak of an upcoming film tonight, before it goes from paper to film. Minnesota actor John Carroll Lynch (Fargo,
Zodiac, and “The Drew Carey Show“) will direct a workshop reading of his next film, Remember Minnesota, a story about the 1987 University of Minnesota Crew team who came from their rusted corrugated tin hut on the Mississippi banks and, for the first time in their history, went all the way to the coveted rowing regatta championships to compete against the most powerful teams the Ivy League had to offer.

7 p.m., The Ritz Theater, 345 13th Avenue NE, Minneapolis; 612-659-8292; $10 (free to Screenwriters’ Workshop members).

BOOKS & AUTHORS
Spiritual Deterioration

Of course, you could always just leave the whole film “thang” to the visually obsessed and go for something more malleable? Two great authors are in town tonight to read from their latest novels. Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting will read from The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs, and Minneapolis native Arthur Phillips will discuss Angelica.

The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs is the story of two men locked in a war of wills that threatens their very existence. Troubled restaurant inspector Danny Skinner sinks into alcoholism tortured by his mother’s refusal to reveal the identify of his father. Suspecting the answer may lie with celebrity chef Alan De Fretais, Skinner relocates to San Francisco, where he meets his nemesis, inspector Brian Kibby. Danny finds himself consumed by a seething hatred of his clean-living rival until, during a drunken and vitriolic interior rage, he enacts a hex. Now Danny can drink, fight and snort with abandon and Kibby’s body, not his, pays the physical toll. Welsh’s work is a defiant parable about the great obsessions of our time: food, sex, and celebrity.

7:30 p.m., Magers & Quinn Booksellers, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-822-4611.

Angelica follows a lowly London stationery clerk who senses the presence of supernatural evil in her house and turns to a spiritualist to help her. As she watches her domestic life deteriorate into disorder and perceived danger, Phillips offers four sections, each taking a different character’s point of view, that delivers a parallel and sometimes conflicting interpretation of her reality. Follow along and see how nothing is as it seems, but how everything fits together. Phillips will sign copies of his book following the discussion. (Read an excerpt from Angelica.)

7 p.m., University of Minnesota Bookstore, Coffman Memorial Union, 300 Washington Ave. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-625-6000; free.

Looking for some good music this evening. Go check out Tyrone Wells with Ernie Halter at 6 p.m. at the Varsity Theater ($10/$12), or go to First Avenue for The Tragically Hip show ($30).

28 Weeks Later, 2007. Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, written by Fresnadillo, Rowan Joffe and Jesus Olmo. Starring Robert Carlyle, Mackintosh Muggleton (a J. K. Rowling creation?), Imogen Poots, Amanda Walker, Rose Byrne, Catherine McCormack, Jeremy Renner, Idris Elba, Emily Beecham, and Harold Perrineau.

Now showing in theaters around town.

Writing about the movies can be more edifying than, say, writing about baseball or maybe automobiles (I’ve written of the first, not the second), for every now and then film critics get to address serious moral issues. Like the Iraq war or a possibly stolen election. And not just when we take in a searing documentary that tackles such heavy subjects head-on, but in regular feature films like 28 Weeks Later, the new ‘zombie’ film, a sequel of sorts to 28 Days Later. It helps, I think, in a critic’s life to have some political gravity to chew on, such as the themes of 28 Weeks Later… after all, how much can one say about Spider-Man and Shrek?

The problem occurs when you go into 28 Weeks Later armed with a pencil and a sense of righteous indignation against this president’s disastrous war, and you expect to be able to write both review and polemic, but what unfolds onscreen is not just a failure, but a relatively boring, poorly acted film that is fraught with gaping plot holes, irregularities and contradictions. So now, suddenly, instead of writing a pointed review of a movie and an indictment of the Bush Administration, not to mention doing our part to get the masses out to see something that will challenge them (though what this will do for society at-large eludes me), we are now faced with simply another review of a mediocre film.

For 28 Weeks Later is a mediocre film. In many ways, however, it is very much like its predecessor, the equally praised 28 Days Later, a movie I’ve always considered over-rated, yet viscerally thrilling. Both flicks, however, begin brilliantly, though in opposite locales. Days began in an empty London, and moved into the countryside; Weeks starts in the country and, much more quickly, finds itself in the heart of London. Both were better where they began, each director oddly enough showing themselves masters of the original locale. Director Danny Boyle–the more talented of the two–had a brilliant grasp of this empty London, of the menace lurking in the tunnels, in the streets, down the alleys and in shrubbery that blankets the suburbs. Once he ended up in the mansion in the country 28 Days Later quickly grew claustrophobic. The countryside of Weeks is sunny and frightening, the Rage-infected loonies eventually racing after a terrified Robert Carlyle is one of the great openings I’ve seen since, well, since Zack Snyder’s undervalued Dawn of the Dead.

28 Weeks Later begins in a country cottage that is utterly dark. Trying to fashion a dinner of canned chick peas and pasta, found wine, and candle light, Alice and Don (Catherine McCormack and Carlyle) are a husband and wife team whose children are out of the country and ostensibly safe. They are joined by an old couple, a woman who’s going batty, a young man and, suddenly pounding on the door, a young kid (the wonderfully named Beans El-Balawi). Alice, distraught over her children, allows this urchin into the home–he was being chased by the crazies in bright daylight (turns out the house is so fortified it’s pitch black). Of course, the home is invaded, and Don commits an act of cowardice: while Alice tries to save the child, he deserts them, racing out of the home and across the brightly-lit field to a boat in a stream. Turning, he sees Alice begging him to save her. But he doesn’t, he can’t, for the zombies are upon her.

Cut to London, 28 weeks or so later. Under the care of the U. S. Military, the people of England are being returned, slowly, to the Isle of Dogs, a section of London. Andy (Mackintosh Muggleton, again, an awesome name) and his sister Tammy (Imogen Poots) have been brought in, reunited with their father Don, and are readying themselves to try and begin life anew. And all hell breaks loose.

And does so in an alarmingly fast and slipshod fashion. Andy wants a photo of his mom (Alice, the one left behind by Don), and with Tammy scampers across a pipe, out of the safety zone and into a contaminated section of London. They do this with ease, despite snipers and helicopters. Oh, yes, a sniper sees them, but no one is able to apprehend our sneaks before they find… their mother, who happens to be the only human who can be infected but not go rage-crazy.

What? The question is begged: how the living fuck did she survive? It’s not so much that’s she’s somehow immune, but my God, the woman was beset by literally dozens of raging lunatics who don’t just simply bite, they rip and tear and bite and gouge. Maybe she can get the virus and not be affected, but how does she fend off the zombies?

Thus begins a series of ridiculous coincidences and goofy plot elements. For instance, Don gets infected (somehow, as a building caretaker, he has security clearance everywhere, including to his quarantined wife), and is the one who brings the zombie element back into London. The U.S. Army is implicated for being as cruel and inhuman and incapable of order in Iraq, and having individuals who rebel and pay the price. But it’s a wonder these guys can do anything right: once the outbreak occurs, they do all that is possible to screw up containment.

What about these Londoners, the ones who are being led around by their noses? These are survivors of the original zombie attack, don’t you know, so why are they acting like fools, willing to be herded up into containment areas that will, of course, be invaded by the infected? It makes no sense whatsoever.

The original 28 Days Later had a scene that haunts me to this day: one of the survivors speaks of being caught in a busy train station when the infected came in and began killing. It was insane, beyond belief, people clawing and climbing, dying, trying to get away, turning into the zombies, terrible. What makes that scene so intense is how the story was being told, and how it tapped into each viewer’s worst case scenario, as dictated by the dark corners of their imagination. We never actually witness this scene, but the telling is enough to send chills down the spine.

Well, in 28 Weeks Later, we get that scene played out in front of us, and it’s a stunning disappointment. The director, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, has a jittery camera and no sense of where to point it–the chaos in many of his scenes builds no tension but only confuses the viewer. When the infected attack this crowded room, you can’t see anything, the sound effects are blurred by an overloud soundtrack (imagine what fun a sound effects guy would making his audience squirm at the gorging of zombies on this cattle-pen).

Furthermore, Fresnadillo relies on the old horror trick of the evil killer who just won’t go away. Like Jason or Freddy or Mike Myers in Halloween, Don the Dad is everywhere in this movie. Once infected, he is not content, like all the other infected, to kill at random, no, he has to chase his kids all over London, to the point where I and a number of the audience were laughing outright. There are a dozen other marvelously funny parts, including a scene where everyone climbs into a car and closes the vents to save them from chemical weapons (what?), and a scene right out of Grindhouse’s Planet Terror, with a ‘copter using its blades to chop up the zombies. That’s fine for the ridiculous Planet Terror, but for 28 Weeks Later, supposedly realistic, one can’t imagine a soldier risking his life bringing his chopper blades so close to the ground, or flinging buckets of infected blood hither and yon.

For a movie that bears the responsibility of criticizing the U.S. Military and making a serious zombie film, I was struck by the fact that the principals here are all white and good-looking. Apparently no blacks were allowed back into London, nor Pakistanis or Indians. The military doctor is the usual babe (give Boyle credit in Days for peopling his England with unattractive types), the army man a hunk, and the kids a pair of beauties.

28 Weeks Later’s greatest failing is that it is simply a bore. There’s nothing wrong with critizing our involvement in Iraq–in fact, I welcome that. But it must be in service to the story, just as character quirks, sex scenes, etc. must. This is, after all, a summer’s entertainment, 28 Weeks Later and not Iraq in Fragments (though that film was much more compelling than this one). Fresnadillo drops the ball entirely, wasting his tense opening in a film that has little to carry you through to its predictable ending (and one that is borrowed, in mood, from the superior, though criticized for its lack of meaning, Dawn of the Dead).

But it says volumes about our involvement in Iraq. For us liberals who argued against the war from the beginning, it’s nice to see our concern dribbling into the movies. But this is the best we can do? A simplistic and yawn-inducing horror film? Between 28 Weeks Later and the lauded Land of the Dead (yet another failure that was regaled for its criticisms of Bush and Co.) there’s a pair of bad movies elevated only by their loathing of this president. Perhaps that’s the secret to making a critically acclaimed sequel: join the zeitgeist and pad a weak script by critiquing current failed policy. This is hardly bold–by now it is de rigueur to say that we’re failing in Iraq. But if it makes critics and filmmakers feel better about themselves…

NATURE AND GARDENING
Get Your Hands Dirty and Your Air Clean

Quick, go plant a tree this morning! Celebrate Arbor Day and bring new life to Powderhorn Park. The Home Depot and the National Arbor Day Foundation are heading up a 1,000 trees in 10 cities campaign to increase awareness of the importance of trees in our cities and to create healthier communities in urban areas. As part of this campaign, they’ll be hosting a tree-planting event today at 10 a.m. at Powderhorn.

Friday at 10 a.m., Powderhorn Park, 3400 15th Ave. S., Minneapolis.

MUSIC AND NEW MEDIA

As we get more and more visually-centric with this current gush of new media, artists are being pushed to find creative forms of collaboration. It’s not enough anymore to just have audio; it must be accompanied with visuals — video, performance, anything to keep the eyes engaged. Minneapolis is a great place to be this weekend when it comes to blurring lines and bringing together media forms in innovative ways.

What Came First — the Song or the Image?

It doesn’t get much more innovative than this. Bob Wiseman is a Canadian singer/songwriter and filmmmaker. Remember the Canadian roots rock band Blue Rodeo? No? That’s OK. I might have been one of three people in this country to buy their album. In all fairness, they were quite good — and they’re still around — but Wiseman hasn’t played with them since 1992. Since then, he has been busy making folk and rock jazz music about explicitly political themes. But the kicker came in 2000 when Wiseman began making super 8 films and videos to accompany his music. This is a seriously multimedia event, folks. Don’t miss it. Wiseman has performed with a number of well-known acts, including The Wallflowers, Wilco, and Edie Brickell. He is currently touring with Jason Trachtenburg of the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players and Magali Meagher of The Phonemes — both unique, innovative, and beautiful in their own way.

Another multimedia act, the Slideshow Players are best described as an indie-vaudeville-conceptual-art-rock-slideshow band. The father-mother-daughter combo set vintage slide collections to music, turning anonymous lives into pop-rock musical exposés. While it’s just dad in Minneapolis with Wiseman and Meagher, the show promises to be quite interesting.

Saturday at 9 p.m., 400 Bar, 400 Cedar Avenue S., Minneapolis; 612-332-2903; $8.

Remember, this show is about more than just listening. But if you want to get a strictly listening sample, click the links below.
Listen to Bob Wiseman.
Listen to the Slideshow Players
Listen to the Phonemes.

Electric Eyes: New Music and Media Festival by Christy DeSmith

By commissioning five pieces of original music, each of which is to be accompanied by some form of electronic media, the Southern Theater is hitting upon a big trend in the contemporary composition business. As of late, composers of all stripes have sought collaborations with video and performance artists, thus adding an element of spectacle that blurs the lines between concert, play, and even film. On the docket for the first-ever a Electric Eyes festival: Acoustic playing by New York composer and violinist Todd Reynolds is filtered through a multi-channel manipulative device.

The reverberating sounds of the improvisational Minneapolis band Electropolis get video and aerialist accompaniment. VJ Neverwas, a well-known Electropolis collaborator, combines his handpicked video clips with live, electronically mixed music. And an emerging composer named J. Anthony Allen combines his own electronic sound installations with metronomic images.

Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 7 p.m., Southern Theater, 1420 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-340-1725; $15/show ($27 for 2, $35 for all).

THEATER & PERFORMANCE
Theatre Unbound and The 365 National Festival

Several years ago, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks got an idea to write a play a day for a year. The resulting play cycle, 365 Days/365 Plays, is a daily meditation on an artistic life. Some plays are very short, less than a page. Others last forever. This weekend, Minneapolis is participating in The 365 International Film Festival, a grassroots premiere of the play cycle with over 700 theaters from around the country. Enjoy a progressive-dinner-style romp through the Parks’s wild world of art. Each room holds something completely new and wonderful, and a new play starts every 10 minutes. See one or two, or stay for them all.

Saturday at 7 p.m., The College of St. Catherine, Coeur de Catherine Classrooms, 2004 Randolph Avenue, St. Paul; 612-721-1186; free. (Free parking in O’Shaughnessy event parking lot)

Also opening tonight is The Red Nose at Bedlam Theater.

ART
Witness the Birth of Art

What better way to celebrate Mothers’ Day than in The Labor Room? No, silly, not a labor and delivery room; just a labor room, an artistic labor room. Twenty visual artists will come together in a common studio to transform inspiration into art in a variety of media. Think you have the muse in you? The weekend-long event is open to the public in an effort to expose and share the creative process. Stop on by to watch and learn, inspire or be inspired. Witness the creation from start to finish –oil and acrylic painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramic barrel firing, screen- printing, and photography. Plus, join the Artist Reception on Friday from 7 – 9 p.m.

Friday and Saturday from 4-9 p.m., Sunday from 1-6 p.m., Center for Independent Artists, 4137 Bloomington Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-724-8392.

More art? Check out The Dutch Opera, painting by Jil Evans, at Form + Content Gallery.

BOOKS & AUTHORS
The Woman Cometh

Looking for a great Mothers’ Day gift for mom? Take her to see Dr. Maya Angelou this Saturday or Sunday. Whatever this woman has to say will be well worth it. Clearly a poet at the core of her being, Angelou has earned success as a playwright, a best-selling author, a professor, a historian, a civil-rights activist, an actress, a producer, and a director. This woman is without a doubt one of the great voices of contemporary literature. Go partake of her essence.

Saturday at 3 p.m., The O’Shaughnessy, College of St. Catherine Campus, 2004 Randolph Avenue, St. Paul; 651-690-6700; $36.

For more things to do this weekend check out our Events Listing. And don’t forget the Jewish Film Festival wraps up this weekend, and The 2007 Twin Cities Tibetan Film Festival kicks off at the Riverview Theater.