Author: rakemag

When Dave Eggers is finally critically keel-hauled and goes under the waves for the last time, David Foster Wallace will no doubt be safely on shore, pounding out another in his series of post-modern works of actual genius (or at least magnificent failure). Oblivion is Wallace’s first fiction in five years, though he’s still best known for 1995’s Infinite Jest, a novel the size of a telephone book which many people actually finished (or claimed to). Most of the short stories in Oblivion, Wallace’s third collection, are as finely wrought as Infinite Jest was grandiose. Yuppies, ad agencies, and Orwellian sleep clinics are the suspects this time, and Wallace rounds them up with authority. (Available June 8)

No matter how successful the Bridget Jones novels have been, we can hardly blame Helen Fielding for wanting a change of pace. And so, for now at least, she’s left behind her droll sendup of chick-lit and Pride and Prejudice for a droll sendup of James Bond. Her new heroine is a reluctant fashion reporter who stumbles onto an Al Qaeda plot while covering the launch of a new face cream, and winds up working for MI6, who outfit her in perfect Q style with such spy gadgets as a beweaponed push-up bra. Fighting international terrorism and jetsetting among Hollywood, Cairo, and Honduras, Olivia lives in a far more glam world than Bridget, but luckily, Fielding has changed none of her warm and witty style. Those in search of light beach reading with at least half a brain, look no further. (Available June 3)

It’s painful to admit, but we avoided reading anything by David Sedaris for years. Mere text would feel inadequate, we felt, without the downbeat timing, wry tone, and steady marksmanship that put him and This American Life on the map. We’re way over that now, but we still take live Sedaris when we can get it. The expatriate elf has pledged to read from his new collection, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. His listing at Amazon.com may have inadvertently supplied the title for a sequel: Customers interested in Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim may also be interested in Liz Claiborne Woman. Coffman Union, 300 Washington Ave. S.E., Minneapolis; (612) 625-6000; www.bookstore.umn.edu

In the continuum of outdoors adventure and nature writing, the truth lies somewhere between Jon Krakauer’s Into The Wild and a Dick Cheney “pheasant hunt.” Seth Kanter’s Ordinary Wolves is a striking debut novel that does a nice job of reproducing the hardscrabble realities of native life in Alaska without getting stupid or softening the blows dealt by Mother Nature in such an unforgiving environment. There is much romanticism about life off the grid, but without an understanding of crucial realities—exposed fingers in hundred-below weather will die in ten minutes; they can be warmed in the entrails of a freshly killed moose—it is sentimental, needlessly tragic, or both. Truth sometimes works better as straight facts rather than maudlin analysis; Kantner’s approach is as honest and simple as the windchill. Galleria, 3225 W. 69th St., Edina; (952) 920-0633; www.bn.com

Jim Harrison eclipsed Thomas McGuane as the tough-guy Western writer of our time because of the heart one could sense in his prose, buried just beneath all the boozing, fighting, and betrayals. He comes through again in his latest, True North, facing the old-as-the-Bible question of what a son should pay for his father’s sins. The son, David Burkett, is convinced he must right some of the environmental wrongs wreaked on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula by his father, a boozed-out Yalie Master of the Universe. Earnest yet believable, Harrison also delivers his usual knock-out punch of an ending. 1658 Lincoln Ave., St. Paul; (651) 699-0587; www.ruminator.com

Since Judith Guest’s inspired debut with Ordinary People in 1976, she has reigned as the Amelia Earhart of local best-selling authors. Where the hell was she? Living the high life on the grosses from the Oscar-winning film made from her book? Very little buzz accompanied Guest’s subsequent work—until now. Her new suspense novel, The Tarnished Eye, takes us deep into an unsolved, three-decade-old murder in Michigan, based on an actual case. No paint-by-numbers mystery writer, Guest also delves into the souls of her characters with as keen an eye for dysfunction as she had back in ’76.

If you’re lacking a song in your heart or a spring in your step, this series of twenty-one musicals in twenty-one days ought to give you plenty of both. This all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza includes longtime favorites like West Side Story, Singin’ in the Rain, and the classic Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers vehicles Top Hat and Shall We Dance. The series’ opener, Silk Stockings on May 28, has been moved to the Riverview to accommodate a special treat for fans: hoofing legend Cyd Charisse, who starred with Fred Astaire in this 1957 film, will host a Q&A at the screening. Oak Street, 309 Oak St. S.E., Minneapolis; (612) 331-3134; oakstreetcinema.org. Riverview, 3800 42nd Ave. S., Minneapolis; (612) 729-7369; www.riverviewtheater.com

Argentinian writer/director Alejandro Agresti mined his own childhood for this sure-fire arthouse hit, a lovable cross between My Life As a Dog, The Station Agent, and Amelie. The movie’s heart is Rodrigo Noya as Valentin, a sweet-natured, old-souled little boy who comes to terms with the world, and his deep-set family problems, by resolving issues among his relatives and neighbors. Noya is a remarkable child actor, cute as a Muppet but also curious, intelligent and sad. His performance saves the film from a tendency toward the cloying; there’s also a subtle undercurrent that suggests that everything will not necessarily turn out well in the end. Argentine model and TV star Julieta Cardinali, playing a girlfriend of Valentin’s father, has an endearing rapport with the little boy, who desperately hopes she will become his new mother. And Agresti himself takes on the role of the little boy’s abusive, domineering father, perhaps working out some Freudian baggage. 3911 West 50th St., Edina, (952) 926-1621, www.landmarktheatres.com

Lately Quentin Tarantino’s been agitating to be named the director of the next James Bond movie, which strikes us as a not-half-bad idea. As Tarantino doubtless knows, the Japanese already pulled off their version of such a feat with this movie, in which super-stylish director Takeshi Kitano revisits and updates the beloved 1960s action series about Zatoichi, the wandering blind gambler and fastest sword in the land. Expect a lighter touch than you might have seen in the breathtakingly violent crime thrillers that brought Kitano his biggest U.S. fame; as a matter of fact, the closing scene owes as much to Busby Berkeley as it does to Akira Kurosawa. (And do check out the original films starring the gruff Shintaro Katsu, currently being released on DVD; we’ve seen six, and loved them all.) (612) 925-6006; www.landmarktheatres.com

If you think Godzilla movies are mostly silly and puerile, well, you’re probably right. But the 1954 original is a very different monster—instead of cheeseball pro-wrestling with rubber-suited sci-fi beasts, it offered a dark meditation on the awe-inspiring power of the atomic bomb. It’s still a monster movie, to be sure, just one that actually has something important to say. And unless you’ve been to Japan, you’ve never seen it—because when the film was brought stateside, it was utterly eviscerated. Forty minutes were removed, the atomic angle (and American culpability) was downplayed, and a painfully unnecessary character played by Raymond Burr was shoehorned in, apparently for the sole purpose of getting a white guy in the cast. On the occasion of Big G’s fiftieth birthday, this restored version has been stomping through arthouse theaters across the country.