Author: rakemag

One of Woody Allen’s funniest short stories involves a humanities professor who has a disastrous affair with Emma Bovary by magically transporting himself into Gustave Flaubert’s novel. Welsh writer Fforde takes this concept to a whole new level in his three very witty novels about Thursday Next, a detective who works the mean streets of Western literature. Bibliophiles will find the newest, The Well of Lost Plots, a hoot. Though Fforde’s love for extended tangents makes it occasionally difficult to follow the storyline, the tangents themselves are exceptionally clever. Where else will you find Wuthering Heights characters grumbling and complaining through a court-ordered rage-counseling session?
Bound To Be Read; 870 Grand Ave., St. Paul; (651) 646-2665; www.boundtoberead.com
Barnes & Noble, Galleria; 3225 W. 69th St., Edina; (952) 920-0633; www.bn.com

There’s a quintessential dichotomy about the American big city: a place where smart or lucky nobodies strike it rich, and where the unlucky and rootless get swallowed up. Larsen’s Devil In The White City, a finalist for the National Book Award, tells of two men of 1890s Chicago who embodied that split: Daniel Burnham, the architect behind the 1893 World’s Fair, and H.H. Holmes, the nation’s first and perhaps deadliest serial killer. The two men didn’t know each other, but both used the megalopolis to get what they wanted. Burnham and his team created a sparkling city-within-a-city that drew amazed crowds from around the globe—a testament to Chicago’s creative and commercial power. The city also brought Holmes a steady supply of victims who disappeared into the block-long mansion he converted into a secret death factory, a ghastly parody of the slaughterhouses that fueled Chicago’s wealth. Larsen skillfully weaves his factual history together as if it were a thriller. (A minor aside: He also tells us that Holmes’ second wife, a Minnesotan, preferred him to Twin Citian suitors since “in Minneapolis there had been only silence and the inevitable clumsy petitions of potato-fingered men looking for someone, anyone, to share the agony of their days.” Ouch.)

A reliable biography of French filmmaker Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve does not exist, apparently by his choice, which leaves us unable to verify the rumors that he was born of Mongolian nobility, or explain his choice to rename himself after the Magic Marker beyond its obvious utility as (ahem) a pen name. If you know his name without knowing his films, it’s probably because his short experimental sci-fi La Jetée—a time-travel vision of apocalypse told almost entirely in still photographs—was the inspiration for Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys. But most of his work has been in documentaries, which in his hands are not so much reportage as a combination of ruminative essay, radical politics, and visually punning avant-garde poem. Besides La Jetée, this series features five of Marker’s most prominent works, including his ethereal travelogue Sans Soleil and cinematic tributes to his two favorite Russian directors: One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich, on Andrei Tarkovsky (of the non-George Clooney Solaris), and The Last Bolshevik, on silent-era pioneer Alexander Medvedkin. Arsenevich and Remembrance of Things to Come also happen to be Marker’s two most recent works, so this is an excellent opportunity to see what he’s been up to lately.
Oak Street; 309 Oak St. S.E., Minneapolis; (612) 331-3134; oakstreetcinema.org

With so much unwitting awfulness in theaters already, it seems like overkill to try to make something bad on purpose. But that’s the point of this often very funny, straight-faced spoof of 1950s sci-fi movies like Robot Monster and Plan 9 From Outer Space. Writer/director Larry Blamire shows his affection for the semi-competent cinema of the Atomic Age by assembling his deliberately nonsensical story from a mix of walking Ed Wood cliches. Aliens and mad scientists, none of whom can act, fight over a space meteor made of “atmosphereum”; a “living” skeleton (clearly operated by strings) tries to take over the world; a mutant monster played by a stagehand in a cheap rubber suit is gravy. Cadavra relies too much on jokes about cheap sets and clumsy writing, but Blamire has a fine ear for parodizing banal, repetitive dialogue—our hero, fatuous scientist Dr. Paul Armstrong, wakes up his wife with “It’s your husband, Dr. Paul Armstrong.” And the cast is adept at getting laughs without descending into unbearable camp. Cadavra screens with the 1937 Ub Iwerks-directed cartoon Skeleton Frolic, a visually inventive, Halloween-y gem from Disney’s Silly Symphonies.
Lagoon; 1320 Lagoon Ave., Minneapolis; (612) 825-6006; www.landmarktheatres.com

Collaborations between actor and director have created some legendary pairs—think John Ford/John Wayne, Akira Kurosawa/Toshiro Mifune, Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood. But none was more volatile, even violent, than the creative ferment between Germany’s Werner Herzog and the enfant terrible Klaus Kinski. The two childhood friends made five movies together in the seventies and eighties, including an atmospherically creepy remake of Nosferatu and the sublime Aguirre: The Wrath of God, about a Spanish conquistador’s descent into madness. Kinski’s genius at portraying wild-eyed insanity was matched only by his ability to act insanely in real life. His out-of-control behavior included attacking actors on the Aguirre set with his sword for becoming distracted by bananas (yes, bananas), and wounding others by firing a pistol randomly into the tent where they were sleeping. Still, Herzog claims that the extras were most afraid of him, figuring that anyone who could deal with Kinski so calmly must be the truly crazy one. This limited-edition set collects all five films plus My Best Fiend, Herzog’s documentary on his love-hate relationship with Kinski.

With the George Romero original now on DVD, there’s no reason not to brand the bound-to-be awful remake, due in theaters this month, as undead on arrival. Despite the limitations of a low budget, some iffy acting and an ending that feels like an A-Team episode, Dawn is, simply put, the best horror film of the 1970s. Writer-director Romero, who first brought cannibalistic zombies to the world’s attention in his iconic Night of the Living Dead, infused this sequel with a strong strain of sly satire, setting the main action in an abandoned shopping mall where his brainless monsters shamble aimlessly in a nightmarish parody of window-shopping. Romero’s penchant for forefronting Important Messages in his movies was often a drag, however well intentioned, but in Dawn the critique of American consumerism works because he keeps it simple and mordantly funny. Of course, the movie also excels on a more primal level; if this doesn’t scare you, we don’t know what will.

Seijun Suzuki’s heyday in the fifities and sixties was spent fighting constraints, both within Japan’s studio system and the not-particularly-respectable yakuza genre, his specialty. He made around forty films during this time, mainly splashy and stylish noirs with titles like Age of Nudity, Fighting Delinquents, and our favorite, Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards. Of the three films here, the strongest is 1958’s Underworld Beauty, which captures the feel of a pulp novel as well or better than any film we’ve seen. The other two are well above average, thanks to Suzuki’s insistence on warping genre conventions with offbeat casting and plot. Tattooed Life’s highly stylized samurai battle, though only a few minutes long, is especially interesting for its clear influence on Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill. Seijun had a long hiatus, prompted by a firing after one too many “incomprehensible” movies; now, happily, he’s still working well into his seventies and finally getting the respect he deserves.

If you’re looking to catch the early bandwagon for the next hipster band, you’re about six months late for TV On the Radio. Their summer ’03 debut EP, Young Liars, has already wowed and bored the pierced-and-tattooed cognoscenti, and we’re already reading about how last August they are. So silly. This Brooklyn trio is worth exercising your attention span. While Liars was highlighted by an a capella cover of the Pixies’ “Mr. Grieves” that’ll take the top of your head off, Desperate Youth is more of a slow burn: a compelling mix of indie-rock fuzz, jazzy rhythm and Dion-esque doo-wop, with tasty hints of Stereolab and Morphine. It’s one of those too-rare works with a layered structure that rewards repeated close listening; we keep coming back to the third track, “Dreams,” with its rich, understated closing segment. Nice work.

A frequent guest on Garrison Keillor’s show, the Williamses practically have an official residence in Lake Wobegon (Keillor even came up with the organizing concept behind their last recording, Visions of Love). The Carolina couple cements another Minnesota connection with disc number seventeen, their first for Greg Brown’s local Red House imprint, and provides more of their stock-in-trade: sweet harmonic singing over layers of mountain-grown bluegrass. Though neither Keillor nor old pal Peter Ostroushko are around this time, there’s no shortage of familiar guests. Mary Chapin Carpenter and Sissy Spacek join in on vocals (or as the lyrics have it, on “croon and howl and yodel”) on Waters’ most immediately engaging number, “Old Plank Road,” while Iris Dement provides mournful backup on the melancholy “Leaving This Land.”

CD: Wynton Marsalis
The Magic Hour
Available March 9
Walking away, for now, from the 200-strong big band that he led through 2002’s All Rise, the great traditionalist of jazz returns with his first small-group recording in five years. Befitting an album that takes familial intimacy as its theme, Marsalis has gathered a quartet of musicians he’s known since they were teenagers. Bobby McFerrin and Diane Reeves stop by to take a turn at the mic on this otherwise mostly instrumental outing; the star, as it should be, is Marsalis’ own trumpet, though he’s generous about giving his proteges room to stretch out and explore. Magic Hour comes across as a disc that was a joy to create; small wonder it’s also a joy to hear.

CONCERTS: Bob Dylan
Roy Wilkins, March 10
The recent flurry of interest in Bobby Z’s greatest studio work (see Straight Talk, page 21), shouldn’t let you forget his live show. Dylan’s late-nineties renaissance extended to the stage as well as the studio, and concerts over the past few years have approached the mark set by his incendiary 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue. (A sampling of that tour was released last year as Vol. 5 of the Bootleg Series discs; Vol. 6, his Halloween 1964 show, is due March 23). That said, pretty much any Dylan stage experience is worth the bucks, since few musicians reinvent his material as well or as often as the man himself.
Roy Wilkins; 175 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; (651) 726-8240; www.xcelenergycenter.com

CONCERTS: Cassandra Wilson
Rossi’s Blue Star Room, March 18
Since her father’s vitae includes playing bass for Sonny Boy Williamson and Ray Charles, no one would have blamed Cassandra Wilson if she’d gone to dental school and simply avoided the pressures and comparisons inherent in going into dad’s business (just ask Pete Rose, Jr. what the unhappy results can be). Luckily, Wilson picked up the cudgel and has become, since her 1985 debut, Songbook, arguably the finest jazz vocalist in the world. Persnickety critics have occasionally chastised her for picking inferior material, but anyone who can not only not fall on her face but also shine singing covers of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” deserves a medal with oak-leaf cluster. Her latest, Glamoured, came out last year to excellent reviews.
Rossi’s; 90 S. 9th St., Minneapolis; (612) 312-2828; www.bluestarjazz.com

CONCERTS: Al Green
Guthrie Theater, March 29
Contrary to the spray-painted testimonials of East Greenwich Village graffiti artists, God is neither Mingus nor Bird, not even Coltrane. My vote goes to the Reverend Al Green, who for decades has explained it all to us in lyrics and music, crying out—whether in times of sensuous, heaven-sent good or heart-wrenching, heart-broken bad—“Lord, what have you done to us this time?” Admit it: How many have fallen in love to “Here I Am (Come and Take Me),” tried to patch it all up to the subliminal strains of “Let’s Stay Together,” or bit the pillow to “Call Me (Come Back Home)”? At least as many as cried at the end of Old Yeller.
Guthrie; 725 Vineland Place, Minneapolis; (612) 377-2224; www.guthrietheater.org

ART: Beauty, Honor, and Tradition: The Legacy of Plains Indian Shirts
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, through May 16
What sartorial item is more exclusive than haute couture, more status-laden than the perennially wait-listed Hermès Kelly bag? Why, the plains Indian shirt, of course: an animal-hide garment festooned with all manner of beading, colorful symbols and battle scenes, leather, horse- or human-hair fringe, and porcupine-quill embroidery. As stereotypically “Native” as a tomahawk or teepee, plains shirts were, in fact, a rare prize, crafted individually for top warriors in tribes from northern Texas to southern Alberta. Moreover, fashion-forward Native Americans couldn’t simply covet a neighbor’s shirt, save up items for barter, and get on a wait list (as with the Kelly bag): They had to earn these garments. Each shirt, therefore, isn’t merely decorative, but heavily symbolic, conveying distinctive battle exploits and other brave deeds of its wearer (try getting Hermès to customize a bag commemorating your climb up the corporate ladder). Dozens of extraordinary 19th-century examples, along with some contemporary interpretations, are on display in an exhibit curated by a father-and-son team from the MIA and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian.
MIA; 2400 3rd Ave. S., Minneapolis; (612) 870-3131; www.artsmia.org

ART: Air-Ride Equipped: New Paintings by Jim Zellinger
One on One Gallery, through April 3
Not content merely to be an ambitious new downtown art gallery, One on One doubles as a bicycle shop, and once a little remodeling is done it’ll triple as a coffee bar. Its second-ever exhibit features a painter with a similar bent toward combining art and transportation, New-York-by-way-of-Iowa’s Jim Zellinger. His boldly colored acrylics are all variations on a simple theme: Semi-trailers, sans rigs, as the sole image in some anonymous Midwestern parking lot, which is rendered as a bright sea of background color. Without resorting to aggressive abstraction, Zellinger still manages to extract a recognizable and compelling emotion from these flat, wheeled boxes. They seem almost lonely, perhaps abandoned by their human drivers. But he’s has also carefully pointed each toward something beyond the frame, as if they’re eager to get out on the road, for escape or maybe just fun. Makes you wish C.W. McCall was around to start a convoy.
One on One; 117 Washington Ave. N., Minneapolis; (612) 371-9565; www.oneononebike.com

RESTAURANTS: Coffee and Tea, Ltd.
2730 W. 43rd St. (612) 920-6344
Located 1,200 miles off the coast of west Africa, St. Helena is mostly known for exporting dead French Emperors, i.e. Napoleon Bonaparte, whose remains went back to France in 1840 after his death nineteen years earlier. The island’s second-most-famous export is its coffee, which the diminutive warmonger reportedly adored—and if you’re willing to shell out eighty bucks a pound, so should you. A rare shipment recently arrived at Jim Cone’s Coffee and Tea Ltd., and is on sale at both the south Minneapolis shop and its outpost in Sears at the Mall of America. Coffee aficionados carry on like wine critics about the “fruits” and other exotic flavors that can be pressed from St. Helena’s magic beans. Apparently it’s got something to do the island’s Yemeni Arabica tree stock, which claims a provenance unbroken for more than 250 years. We dropped by for a cup, and have to admit it was pretty darn good. Some of the price undoubtedly goes toward the story behind the beans. But hey, it’s a good one.

THEATER: Far Away
Pillsbury House Theatre
March 5-April 3
As would be expected from a theater that shares a building with the Powderhorn neighborhood community center, the Pillsbury House Theatre can always be counted on for politically engaged and socially responsible performances. The
area premiere of the great English surrealist Caryl Churchill’s Far Away is no exception. Timely and powerful, it is the story of a confused young girl in a world at war, struggling within the comfort and safety of home while others around her suffer in secrecy. With dreamlike dialogue, only four speaking parts, and a war that may seem more like Stanley Kubrick’s than George Bush’s, Far Away hits close to home in its fifty short minutes between start and finish.
Pillsbury House; 3501 Chicago Ave. S., Minneapolis; (612) 824-0708; www.puc-mn.org/theatre.html

THEATER: Osiris
Playwrights’ Center
March 12–April 4
As our Chooka boots slog into winter’s home stretch, it’s good to be reminded that this too—the bottomless mud puddles, the salt stains, the never-ending blur of flurries—will pass. Pangea World Theater and The Playwrights’ Center help lift our spirits as they resurrect Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god of the underworld who was often associated with fertility, the Nile, and the golden, glorious sun. Meena Natarajan’s new adaptation of the myth—in which Osiris is killed by his brother and revived by his wife, Isis, the goddess of nature—combines music, movement, poetry, and striking visuals to illuminate Isis’ journey as she avenges her husband’s death and restores the cycle of the seasons. After three long months of cabin fever, we can certainly sympathize with extreme violence in the name of getting a little bit of spring around here.
Playwrights’ Center; 2301 E. Franklin Ave., Minneapolis; (612) 822-0015; www.pangeaworldtheater.org

Walking away, for now, from the 200-strong big band that he led through 2002’s All Rise, the great traditionalist of jazz returns with his first small-group recording in five years. Befitting an album that takes familial intimacy as its theme, Marsalis has gathered a quartet of musicians he’s known since they were teenagers. Bobby McFerrin and Diane Reeves stop by to take a turn at the mic on this otherwise mostly instrumental outing; the star, as it should be, is Marsalis’ own trumpet, though he’s generous about giving his proteges room to stretch out and explore. Magic Hour comes across as a disc that was a joy to create; small wonder it’s also a joy to hear.