Author: rakemag

Bonnie is a Dutch girl with a problem: She believes her mother is bonkers. The woman suffers from manic depression, with highs so high and lows so low as to send the family into a tailspin. But when Bonnie’s grandmother, both the foundation and rudder of the clan, is killed in a car accident, the girl faces an uncertain future in foster care or an orphanage and so takes steps to keep her family intact. Which include befriending the weirdo neighbor and taking in a pet elephant. As with all great children’s stories, many examples of which are screening at this subset within the film festival, Bonkers refuses to sugarcoat Bonnie’s reality; instead, it weaves a bittersweet tale about the power of love and imagination, the lesson being that life can only be endured in the company of loved ones—whom you might have to find and create for yourself. 612-331-3134; www.mnfilmarts.org

Jim Denomie seems to have a door in his soul that won’t stay latched. It keeps swinging open to parallel worlds, where everything is more real than in this one. In the hilarious fantasies of his Renegade series, Indian men fly around surreal-colored mesas on rocket-powered horses and chase chickens through the sky with Volkswagen Beetles. He’ll show his painting-a-day series, too: hundreds of portraits he did every day for over a year. These paintings are radically different—they’re loose and wild instead of pictorial, intimate, and as scary as they are funny. Where Denomie is the natural, Andrea Carlson, a couple of decades his junior, is the virtuoso. But that doesn’t imply her work is tame. Like Denomie, Carlson is a member of the Anishinaabe nation, and she shares the great literature of this people through her work. Depth, humor, and dread arise from her elegant mastery of draftsmanship, strong pattern, and color. 612-870-3200; www.artsmia.org

From Europe come two politically torqued shows by young women. Carey Young is a London-based artist whose Consideration installation makes plain the degree to which lawyers run our lives. Lene Berg, from Oslo, makes video and text artworks that explore the role of art in war. Young designed her installation with the help of a legal team. It sets up contracts that bind anyone who is beguiled into experiencing it. What’s the sensation when you wander into a zone that announces, “By entering the zone created by this drawing, and for the period you remain there, you declare and agree that the U.S. Constitution will not apply to you”? And what does bottled “Guantanamo” taste like, for that matter? This is the diet version, but still … 527 Second Ave. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-605-4504; www.midwaycontemporaryart.org

Form, meaning, use—can you make them from clutter and waste? At Altered Esthetics this month, artists from around the world are trying just that. This funky space, near the Northrup King building in Northeast Minneapolis, is stuffed with everything from candy-wrapper ball gowns to more traditional scrap-steel sculptures—more than a hundred works in all. There’s a lot of range; some pieces might have been better left in the trash, but others intrigue with their wit and resourcefulness. The opening reception on April 6 features a Reincarnated Clothing fashion show as well as sound collages made from appropriated music and recycled recordings by Jon Nelson from Radio K’s Some Assembly Required. 1224 Quincy St. N.E., Minneapolis; 612-378-8888; www.alteredesthetics.com

David Lefkowitz is painting again. He hadn’t really stopped, but he’s dedicated the last few years mostly to his sculpture and drawings—graphite renderings of monumental cardboard boxes and witty constructions of tree stumps from the same brown materials. This show brings back an earlier style: These “Tangles” are oil-painted hybrids of electric-cord kudzu and tropical lianas, limned in an overheated nineteenth-century botanical style. The theme here is the hybrid: How is humanness changing the visible world? What kind of animals are we? How does transformation start, and where does it go? For Lefkowitz these may be serious questions, but the art with which he addresses them carry some wit along for the journey. 530 Third St. N., Minneapolis; 612-338-3656; www.thomasbarry.com

Pulitzer-winning pianist and composer William Bolcom has an enormous body of work, inspired by everything from Broadway to the classic American songbook. At a recent press event, he even dropped Grandmaster Flash when pressed to cite additional influences. His interpretation of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience won three Grammys last year, and we’ll get a chance to hear it in its full majesty at Orchestra Hall on April 28 and 29. That concert is just part of a three-week stay by Bolcom in the Cities, organized by a consortium of local arts organizations to celebrate his work. Another event on April 21 at the Fitzgerald Theater will find the composer at the piano, performing his cabaret songs with local luminaries such as Christina Baldwin, Bradley Greenwald, and Janis Hardy. 612-812-1870; www.illuminatingbolcom.org

The multilayered, polyrhythmic funk of Fela Kuti is the core inspiration for this Brooklyn-based Afrobeat collective. Like Kuti, they also pair rise-up political lyrics with a disobedient beat that refuses to lie down. As with so many other African bands, the dozen or so members of Antibalas make for an awesome stage presence; the merging of so many minds inevitably takes the music to diverse and unexpected places, as demonstrated on the band’s new album, Security. It’s a sonic collision of jazz, Latin, funk, and soul, the effect of which is both transcendent and edgy, with a contemporary buzz compliments of indie-rock producer John McEntire. 612-332-1775; www.first-avenue.com

With his new Son Volt record The Search, front man Jay Farrar diverges from a well-worn path of Neil Young-inspired folk-rock songs to explore more varied sonic influences, such as The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Beck, psychedelia, and swamp rock. The band has even enlisted a soulful horn section. Duly impressed by the album’s diverse sources and sounds, we asked the St. Louis-based artist to list his top ten favorite tunes.

1.“Tears of Rage” by The Band
Bob Dylan wrote the lyrics and Richard Manuel the music to this popular lament, The Band’s version appearing on its 1968 release, Music From Big Pink. Farrar describes it as, “Richard Manuel sings the apocalypse.”

2.“Town” by Richard Buckner
Says Farrar: “Richard B. and Raymond Carver take over the earth.”

3.“Strange Apparition” by Beck
This track is from Beck’s 2006 release, The Information. Farrar describes it as, “Beck channels Mickeith.” Note: Think Brangelina and Tomkat.

4. “Shiloh Town” by Mark Lanegan
This song appears on the Screaming Trees’ front man’s 1999 solo album, I’ll Take Care Of You.

5. “Just Got To Be” by The Black Keys
Like Farrar, this Ohio-based duo draws on varied influences—funk, blues, rock, soul, even organ music. “Just Got To Be” is from the 2006 release Magic Potion.

6. “Loving Arms” by Jimbo Mathus
This honky-tonk number is from the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ founder’s 2005 release, Knockdown South.

7. “Be Real” by Doug Sahm
The legendary amalgamator of Texas country, blues, and rock recorded this track with The Sir Douglas Quintet in 1970.

8. “A Thanksgiving Prayer” by William S. Burroughs
This poem, recited with accompaniment by jazz musician Frank Denning, was purportedly written on Thanksgiving Day, 1986, and dedicated to John Dillinger.

9. “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl” by Loretta Lynn
Released in 1960, this was Lynn’s debut single.

10. “Bhajan de Jugalapriya en Sanskrit” by Lakshmi Shankar
Ravi Shankar’s eighty-year-old sister-in-law, Lakshmi, borrows from various Indian influences. This Sanskrit-language song was released in 1987 on her album, Heures Et Les Saisons: Season & Time.

Son Volt plays First Avenue on April 9; for more information call 612-332-1775 or visit www.first-avenue.com

In Boomsday, Buckley’s latest novel, the relentlessly topical humorist (and spawn of conservative doyen William F. Buckley) envisions a future in which bloggers are actually powerful enough to radically influence decisions at the highest level of American politics. Not so far-fetched, you might say, but Buckley’s penchant for taking aim at the broadest possible targets (big tobacco, the legal profession, organized religion, the generally fatuous culture of the Beltway) and blasting away until there’s not an unsympathetic soul left standing makes for merciless and often surprising satire. 651-290-1221; fitzgeraldtheater.publicradio.org

A rare opportunity to see one of America’s quietest—or at least lower-profile—literary lions. And judging from the man’s eclectic body of work, distinguished by its broad historical sweep and social criticism, it’s likely that Doctorow will have something of substance to say. Over a career that’s now spanned almost fifty years, Doctorow’s writing has consistently garnered critical hosannas and literary honors alike: He’s got a National Book Award, a PEN/Faulkner Award, and a couple of National Book Critics Circle Awards under his belt. His last novel, 2005’s ambitious The March, offered plenty of evidence that he’s still got stories he wants to tell. 612-624-2345; http://tedmann.umn.edu