Author: Cristina Córdova

ART & ACTIVISM
Solutions Volume 2 Showcases Innovative Design, Art, Activism

Back in May, I recommended the first Solutions showcase as a great way to channel your creative energy and transform gripes into proposals. Now, it’s time for Solutions Volume 2, where leading edge designers, architects, artists, and activists — “solutionists” all — will present their work, 6-minutes and 40-seconds at a time. What will they cover is so short a time, with 20 rapid-fire slides apiece? — “do it yourself bio-diesel vehicles, urban camouflage street art, sustainable architecture and humanitarian design, Minnesotans rebuilding the Gulf Coast, transformative homeless theater, artistic street culture for urban youth, and sustainable sexuality.” Whew! Problems we’ve been facing for many lifetimes solved in under seven minutes. Gotta love it!

Friday at 7 p.m., Studio 1414, 1414 Marshall St. N.E., Minneapolis; 612-638-1888; $8.

DANCE
Ugly

Contemporary dance seems an unlikely vehicle for exploring our culture’s obsession with physical perfection, what with all the buff beauties prancing about. But that didn’t stop local choreographer Matthew Janczewski from assembling an impressive cast of collaborators to help realize his heartfelt, movement-based rebuke of superficiality — in fact, it’s his most ambitious project to date. The evening is set to the dissonant sounds of pioneering electronic music composer Morton Subotnick. Direction is by Peter Rothstein, founder of Theatre Latte Da and director of the Guthrie’s recent production of Noël Coward’s Private Lives. The result is a dance in three acts. The first is a baroque, very formal piece about keeping up appearances. The second, a dystopian vision called “Disco Technology,” deals in the false identities created for romantic pursuits (playwright Kira Obolensky lends a bogus online dating profile). And in the deconstructionist third act, the façade comes tumbling down. –Christy DeSmith

Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin, Minneapolis; 612-375-7600; $25 (members $21).

FILM
My Kid Could Paint That

In 2004, director Amir Bar-Lev first approached the parents of young
Marla Olmstead with the idea of making a documentary of her extraordinary talent. Over the course of a year, this four-year-old girl from Binghamton, New York, sold nearly $300,000 worth of abstract paintings, was covered by news outlets from around the world, and then, on 60 Minutes, had her reputation sullied by accusations that her father was the real artist, or at least an over-imposing coach. Bar-Lev’s masterful My Kid Can Paint That leaves viewers questioning what they see, and pondering the nature of modern art, parenting, and the role and responsibility of the media. –Peter Schilling Jr.

Lagoon Cinema, 1320 Lagoon Ave., Minneapolis; 612-825-6006.

I, of course, will be heading out to see the long-awaited Wes Anderson flick, The Darjeeling Limited, at the Uptown Theatre — Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman bonding in the desert. Yay!

Get a Sneak Peak of Pu-239

Let’s put it this way: when George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh decide to back a project, you know it must be worthy. As executive producers of Pu-239 (along with Peter Berg), the two put some serious faith into Scott. Z. Burns’s writing and direction. Why? Well, Burns has a few notches on his own belt. He wrote The Bourne Ultimatum screenplay and produced An Inconvenient Truth. Now, you can enjoy his dark thriller. Set in 1995 post-Soviet Russia, Pu-239 follows actor Paddy Considine on a wild ride to provide for his family when he finds out he’s dying from radiation exposure. Sure, you can always wait for the official HBO Films premiere on Saturday, November 17th (8 p.m.), but then you won’t get to meet Burns in person after the show.

Friday at 7 p.m., The Historic Heights Theatre, 3951 Central Ave. N.E., Columbia Heights; free with reservations, call 651-644-1912.

Of course, you can also meet him the following morning, see some film clips, and hear him talk about his latest endeavor.

Saturday at 10 a.m., Minneapolis Community & Technical College, Rm. L3000, Whitney Hall, 1501 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 651-644-1912; $15 (members, students, and seniors $10).

BIKES AND BEERS
Homie Fall Fest

If you’re one of those people who can actually booze it up on a bike, then you absolutely must get out those wheels this weekend. From the looks of it, it might even stop raining for a day: mostly sunny on Saturday with a high of 68. Perfect. Are you an early riser? Be at the CRC Coffee Bar at 9 a.m. to ride to Hell’s Kitchen for breakfast. If you’re not exactly a morning person, fuel up at home and join the crowd at Liquor Lyle’s for a noon departure. You don’t have to be a hardcore cyclist, and it won’t hurt to be a hardcore beer enthusiast. Here are some photos from last year.

Saturday at 11 a.m., Liquor Lyle’s, 2021 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-870-8183.

SPORTS
Yes, It’s a Sport — It’s the Minnesota Roller Girls

The time has come. Yes, sir. Saturday is the Minnesota Roller Girls home season opener, which means big time fun and festivities. Oh, yeah, and hot girls on skates! Watch the Dagger Dolls play against Nebraska’s No Coast Derby Girls, and the Garda Belts play the Cincinnati Rollergirls. The first 200 people to show up will get a free Roller Girls t-shirt. Or if you prefer, don your Halloween costume for a chance to win a special prize. There’s a pre-game happy hour at Station 4, with a free shuttle to the game. And the Roller Girls invite you to “get your party on” with them after the game at their O’Gara’s after party.

Saturday at 7:30 p.m. (doors at 6:30), Roy Wilkins Auditorium, 175 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; 651-265-4800; $8-12.

HOLIDAY EVENT
Ha Ha Ha Ha Halloween – Eeeeeeeiii!

As much as I like the “idea” of haunted houses, as much as I respect real haunted houses, let’s face it, the typical Halloween haunted house is cheesy as all get-out. I know it’s all about exploiting our fears and all, but can’t we do it in style? Apparently so. And where better to do it than in the Soap Factory’s soon-to-be-legendary creepy 100-year-old warehouse basement. This is no typical haunted house experience — unless you’ve experienced the real deal. This haunted house is artist-designed. With hand-held lanterns for light, and a mere three friends at your side, you can grope your way through the haunted basement, buried bodies, and other frightful designs of artist Chris Pennington.

Saturday from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m., Soap Factory, 518 2nd St. S.E., Minneapolis; $10.

STYLE
Joynoelle

If you enjoy local fashion, then surely you’ll be interested to know that local designer Joy Teiken (a.k.a. Joynoelle, see her creation at right) celebrates the opening of her Minneapolis-based boutique and atelier this eve. How very throwback of her, no? The reception lasts from five to eight p.m. The digs? You’ll find ’em at 42nd and Grand Ave. S. If you can’t make the party, don’t despair: From hereon out, the store will keep hours on Thursdays from two to eight p.m. and Saturdays from ten a.m. to four p.m. –Christy DeSmith

ART & MUSIC
Another Gallery Grooves Evening

Danish Teak Classics: A place where your visions of a stylish, modern living area can come into focus. The Rake’s promotions depot hosts another of its fabulous Gallery Grooves events there this eve. There, you can marinade your decorating ideas in a showroom full of vintage-modern chairs, desks, tables, and lighting fixtures — as well as Peter Kramer’s new series of prints, Birdwatching and The Samurai’s Houseboat, featuring drawings done in church, at concerts, and while driving. The event comes replete with fine wine, food, visual art, and jazz to boot. No vin rouge on the orange-wool lounge chair, please. –Christy DeSmith

7 p.m., Danish Teak Classics, Northrup King Building, 1500 Jackson St. N.E., Suite 277, Minneapolis; 612-362-7870; free.

MUSIC
Two Legends Take the Stage

Dave Mason and John Mayall have a lot in common: both are ridiculously talented guitarists. Both are native Brits. Both have played with (and, unfortunately, been overshadowed by) some of blues and rock music’s greats — Mayall with Eric Clapton and John Lee Hooker, Mason with Fleetwood Mac and Jimi Hendrix (to name just a few). Both are prolific — each with over 50 CDs to his name. And tonight they are playing what is definitely the hottest show in town. –Danielle Kurtzleben

9 p.m. (doors at 8 p.m.), Cabooze, 917 Cedar Ave., Minneapolis; $25… way worth it to see two legends take the stage.

Golden Goldberg Variations

Lore dictates that Bach wrote his Goldberg Variations to ease the sleepless nights of a Russian count wasting away his nights without the comfort of a Tivo backlog. Perhaps this is why the 30-variation, nine-cannon work is so well suited for a performance of excerpts — proof of an innate human desire for highlight reels, particularly when only the sublime is adequate compensation for dreams. Wonderkind Glenn Gould’s name dominated recordings of the Goldberg Variations for more than 50 years. Earlier this year, Simone Dinnerstein made her name and signed her first recording contract by challenging those monolithic recordings. Dinnerstein will bring her guts and technical prowess to the Landmark Center Cortile this afternoon. Bring your lunch, and The Schubert Club will provide the coffee. –Danielle Cabot

12 p.m., Landmark Center Cortile, 75 West 5th St., St. Paul; 651-292-3233; free.

THEATER & PERFORMANCE
The Clean House

This is the first time a Sarah Ruhl play has been produced in the Twin Cities since the thirty-something hotshot’s Eurydice became the hit of Off-Broadway this summer. The Clean House is an earlier product of Ruhl’s fantastical imagination, and one with an important distinction from Eurydice: Even though it was a Pulitzer finalist in 2005, it drew divided criticism. The New York Times raved raved, but The New Yorker’s theater critic smelled a stereotype in the play’s heroine, Matilde, a depressive Brazilian maid who loves wisecracking but doesn’t particularly relish housework. What follows, no matter what your thoughts on the Latina character, is a robust satire on labor relations: Matilde’s employer, a successful American doctor named Lane, goes so far as to feed her servant antidepressants. But Matilde despairs whenever distracted from her quest to form the perfect joke. –Christy DeSmith

7:30 p.m., Mixed Blood Theater, 1501 S. Fourth St., Minneapolis; 612-338-6131; $10 tonight ($28).

BOOKS
Cheating at Canasta: Stories

Cheating at Canasta is a marvelous, enviable title, and William Trevor is an astonishing, and astonishingly reliable, writer. Along with Alice Munro, he is also one of the living masters of the short story. That sort of thing usually sounds like so much hogwash, but in this instance it’s nothing but the plain truth. Even as he approaches eighty, Trevor continues to produce carefully crafted marvels that often whipsaw between deviance and devotion, or dereliction and disappointment, from one story to the next. His best tales are compact and powerful moral symphonies, and are so full of startling and often catastrophic disruptions and moments of exhausted grace that they seem as utterly believable as life. –Brad Zellar

Available today at bookstores near you.

ART
Where Cigarette Machines Go to Die

We’ve all been to the Chambers Hotel and gawked at the fabulous (or at least fabulously expensive) art lining its halls. But Ralph Burnet’s chic lodgings have another amenity that makes fine art a bit more accessible (or maybe that’s acquirable): the Art-o-Mat, described as “the world’s smallest self-contained art gallery.” Invented by Clark Whittington, these converted cigarette machines dispense original works of art for a five-dollar token. After a couple of $12 Bombay To Tokyos at the Chambers’ bar, that kind of investment is a no-brainer. Tonight, join Whittington and local artists as they celebrate the tenth anniversary of this clever machine — and find out how you, too, can become part of the Art-o-Mat stable. –Julia Caniglia

5:30 – 7:30 p.m., Chambers Hotel, 901 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-767-6900.

FILM
Groundbreaking Film Exposes Mexican Maquiladoras

If you don’t yet know what a maquiladora is, it’s time to educate yourself. And if you do, well then, this is your opportunity to further that knowledge. This evening, the Labor & Community Film Series presents the acclaimed documentary Maquilápolis, a film about Tijuana’s maquiladoras, multinationally-owned factories attracted by Mexico’s cheap labor and tax incentives. In an intimate and empowering new style, filmmakers Vicky Funari and Sergio De La Torre bring together Tijuana factory workers and community organizers “to tell the story of globalization through the eyes and voices of the workers themselves — overwhelmingly women — who have borne the costs but reaped few of the benefits.” We’re not just talking on-camera testimonials and the usual talking heads. I said “new” — and what I refer to here is the current trend of putting cameras into the hands of the subjects. This is the video logging era, folks, and filmmakers world-round are adapting to this in all sorts of manners. Covering a very real and provocative topic, Funari and De La Torre did some very smart edgy thinking to overcome one of the biggest obstacles in any kind of cultural or anthropological discourse — the scientist, the recorder — in this case, the person behind the camera. Two of the women actually created their own video diaries, chronicling their struggles. And the result is a ground-breaking film that embraces subjectivity rather than trying to deny it.

7 p.m., Waite House Community Center, 2529 13th Ave. S., Minneapolis; free.

Massive Misinterpretations

Does the Bible really condemn homosexuality? Is homosexuality wrong? Have you still not really made up your mind on this subject? Then you, my friend, are one of the “moveable middle” — the audience that producer/director Daniel Karslake has said he hopes to reach with his new documentary, For the Bible Tells Me So. The thesis of this flick is simple: that the conservative Christian community’s anti-gay sentiments are based on a massive misinterpretation of scripture. Tonight the Lagoon Cinema will host an HRC-sponsored panel discussion after their 7:30 screening. “Moveable”? Come and be swayed one way or the other. Mind made up already? Take part in the (certainly heated) debate. –Danielle Kurtzleben

7:30, Lagoon Cinema, 1320 Lagoon Ave., Minneapolis; 612-825-6006; $8.25.

Cinema Lounge

For those of us who have already started having family holiday-induced panic attacks, why is it that Halloween proves nothing more than a sweet distraction from our impending emotional crises? Seek preemptive relief at IFP’s Cinema Lounge, where a trio of devilish shorts and an indie trailer will ease the onset of your Turkey Day flashbacks with werewolves, giant pumpkins, and a docu-style rehash of the infamous pirates vs. zombies pubcrawl dance-off of 2006. The films are free, so pony up for another round of Octoberfest to really savor the moment. There are scant days left till the commercial world unleashes their red and green assault. Revel in the fake blood and rotting flesh while you still can. –Danielle Cabot

7 p.m., Bryant Lake Bowl, 810 W. Lake St., Minneapolis; 612-825-8949; free.

BOOKS & AUTHORS
A Portrait of Segregation

Join best-selling author Edward P. Jones this afternoon as he discusses his latest collection of short stories, All Aunt Hagar’s Children. Bringing back some of the characters from his previous collection, Lost in The City, Jones paints a diverse and detailed portrait of Washington D.C.’s segregated neighborhoods through present day. “Through his stories we meet people struggling with the complex legacy of slavery, the challenges and disappointments of the urban promise, and the inter-racial class prejudice in the black community.” And we’re not just talking your typical fare; the cast of characters includes government workers, churchgoers, dishwashers, doctors, murderers, and even whores.

2 p.m., University of Minnesota Bookstore, Coffman Memorial Union, 300 Washington Ave. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-626-0559; free.