Year: 2007

“When you wake up in the morning, don’t kvetch! Say ‘Yippee’!” So suggests the wisdom of this happy collective of Hasidic Jews in this delightful, if somewhat workmanlike, documentary from Paul Mazursky. Mazursky, once a presence in Hollywood (he created the outstanding Enemies: A Love Story before flushing his career down the toilet with some of the worst straight-to-video fare a great director has ever made), leads us by the arm to Uman, a Ukrainian city that just so happens to be the burial place of nineteenth-century Rabbi Nachman. Each Rosh Hashanah, Hasidic Jews from around the globe flock to this town for a rollicking celebration of faith. Funny thing is the event looks more like a Grateful Dead concert than a pilgrimage. The rumpled Mazursky is a wonderful guide—arm in a sling, unshaven, telling the same damn jokes over and over and insisting to anyone who will listen that he is a “famous American director.” But he doesn’t hog the lens, choosing instead to provoke stories and humor from the people who are only too eager to lean into the camera, eyes glistening, and tell why they’ve come to this corner of the world to dance and sing and laugh. This screening is part of the fourteenth Annual Jewish Film Festival. Hopkins Cinema 6, 1118 Mainstreet W., Hopkins; 952-931-7992.

François Pignon (the Moroccan-born Jewish actor Gad Elmaleh) has it pretty rough. He’s a good-natured but horse-faced valet who can’t convince the love of his life to marry him. Out moping one afternoon, he is caught on film while standing on a street corner, by chance next to a supermodel who’s out on a romantic interlude with a very-married perfume magnate. When paparazzi break news of this illicit affair, the cheating hubby (played by a very funny Daniel Auteuil) cooks up a plan to have the supermodel move in with the poor bloke, so that his wife (Kristin Scott Thomas, speaking fluent French) will be convinced of his innocence. Director Francis Veber’s broad comedy is sweet and charming, much like his earlier films The Dinner Game and The Closet. The Valet is a swell springtime diversion, a movie to enjoy with your date before strolling around the lakes. Edina Cinema, 651-649-4416.

In this purposefully ridiculous sequel to his popular The Monster of Phantom Lake, Christopher R. Mihm offers yet another send-up of ’50s B-movies. This Ed Wood-like quality is achieved with grainy black-and-white images, a hambone cast, and special effects that look as though created from random objects found in the garage—which, in fact, is often the case. In It Came From Another World!, our hero, Professor Jackson, a Meerschaum pipe-smoking square, must save the world—again—when aliens land in Small Town, USA. Mihm’s films don’t withstand repeated viewing by adults used to quality filmmaking, but they are imaginative and fun—the perfect summer drive-in fare. And they’re like to inspire more budding filmmakers than the new Pirates movie. The premiere is at the Heights Theatre, and most tickets are available by invitation only via the website. Heights Theatre, 3951 Central Ave. N.E., Columbia Heights; 763-788-9079.

It takes guts for an established band to keep messing with fans’ expectations. BRMC began with the punkish scruff-and-fuzz of Jesus and Mary Chain, took a harder rock edge on the follow-up, totally corkscrewed into rootsy Americana ditties inlaid with gospel and blues on their third, and now charge again into blistering pop-rock on their latest, Baby 81. Along the way, the California trio was unceremoniously dropped by a major label, were resigned by another one, lost and regained their drummer, confused the hell out of everybody, and continued to churn out restlessly creative, compelling music regardless of style or critical response. First Avenue, 612-332-1775.

Critics have called him a nauseatingly romantic wuss, a badge-of-honor Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard has worn through three Grammy nominations, six critically acclaimed albums, and a performance on Saturday Night Live. Everything this soft-spoken, melodic alt-rocker has touched in the ten years since he founded Death Cab, including his side project The Postal Service, has turned gold. This is a rare opportunity for Gibbard fans to check out the singer/songwriter performing solo and acoustic—no better way to hear the depressing yet soulful and ironically titled hit “SuchGreat Heights.” First Avenue, 612-332-1775.

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 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 Never was, 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. Southern Theater, 612-340-1725.

Alexander is a throwback to the halcyon days of hard-bop battle royals, when a man could walk into a club with a tenor saxophone and blow the house down. Just thirty-eight, Alexander knows how to stoke a barn-burning solo until the patrons are hollering even before the climaxes. But he also burnishes his supple, muscular tone with a tidy blend of intellect and curiosity that enables him to twist but not disfigure bop chestnuts and other jazz standards. And his apprenticeship with Memphis pianist Harold Mabern has provided him with a tangible grasp of the blues. By now his annual engagement at the AQ has become a calendar-date-circling event, made all the more so this time out by the possible inclusion of pianist David Hazeltine from Milwaukee. Artists’ Quarter, 408 St. Peter St., St. Paul; 651-292-1359.

This acclaimed comedy classic was made in 1962, given a brief American run in ’64, and then, for forty years, it vanished like a mob boss on the Witness Protection Program. Nino, the lead character, is a portly middle manager, happily passing time at a Fiat plant in Milan. He finally returns home to a little Sicilian village for the vacation he’s been promising his family for years—giving them the chance to finally meet his northern Italian wife and two daughters. But before he embarks on this trip, a local mob boss asks our poor hero to deliver a small package to one Don Vincenzo, the reigning capo of Nino’s hometown. Being a comedy, all hell must break loose. However, Mafioso isn’t just slapstick, but a poignant examination of the emergence of two Italys—the industrial north and the provincial south. Created a good seven years before the eponymous novel on which The Godfather was based, Mafioso is an obvious influence, yet it stands on its own as a sunny comedy. Lagoon Cinema, 612-825-6006.

This show features three intellectually hard-charging but often funny conceptual types from New York doing a wide variety of media (painting, sculpture, and video). This goofball name, Des Derrières, opens itself to all kinds of interpretations, from the opposite of the avant-garde (le derriere garde, the rear guard, those in fighting retreat) to pure scatology. All of this will matter, from the high-toned French history of the abject radical to the jokes and irreverence of fringy American art. It is also reminiscent of the old Monty Python joke: “And now for something completely different: A man with three buttocks.” It opens May 5 with a party everyone is invited to; if the opening is typical for this gallery, there’ll be music and ways for audience members to participate in the work. This is not the kind of gallery where you get something to go above the sofa, but you could figure out something to do behind it. Or maybe under it. Art of This Gallery, 3222 Bloomington Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-721-4105.

Jil Evans’ paintings are beautiful. She’s also a thinker who’s deeply ingrained with paint. A founding member of the long-standing Art and Philosophy reading group, Evans strives for meaning in form and color. The Venetian painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo is a major influence; she named her dog after him. In keeping with this intense relation to other artists’ work, The Dutch Opera is influenced by painters from the opposite end of Europe. On a visit to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, Evans was transfixed by their Baroque Dutch still-life paintings: work by Willem van Aelst, Simon Verelst, and Jan Weenix. The paintings she made in response take the form of operatic theater; thus, they are absolutely huge. Form + Content is a new gallery, and a lot of excitement has accompanied its opening. It’s a co-op put together by a few of the best mid-career artists in the city, of whom Evans is one. These will be shows to watch. Form + Content Gallery, Whitney Square Building, 210 2nd St. N., Minneapolis; 612-436-1151.