Author: rakemag

You’ve heard the rumors: Deep in the bowels of TPT’s St. Paul studios, former governor, pro wrestler, and Navy SEAL Jesse Ventura is preparing for his debut as an MSNBC television host. Sadly, the launch date of the Ventura show (and the triumphant return of our favorite public servant and bloviator) keeps getting postponed. What on Earth is the problem?

• Scheduling conflicts with Young and the Restless Reunion & Convention Tour
• Guest-hosting Tom Ryther’s swinger parties through July
• Chin-dimple spackle keeps melting under the klieg lights
• Crank-calls Leslie Davis every fifteen minutes
• MSNBC wardrobe staff unable to find peacock-print Zubaz
• Leg-wrestling match with Chris Matthews stretching into its 13th day
• Still separating green glass from brown glass at governor’s mansion
• Too busy writing phony reviews for his books on Amazon.com
• Roasted Chestnut or Old Mahogany?—the mustache-dye quagmire
• Rehearals at TPT studios constantly interrupted by Erik Eskola coughing loudly
• Still trying to find a willing volunteer to take over Predator fans listserv
• Television technicians not sure how to get that big head into the little box
• ESL classes not going as planned
• Hammering out contract riders for “lifetime supply” of Slim Jims and Cheez-Its in green room
• Keeps getting lost driving to St. Paul
• Going “commando” backstage, causing massive staff turn-over
• Finally getting to all those TiVo’ed episodes of Judging Amy
• WWF not giving any deals on “breakaway” folding chairs or suspended cages
• Secretly scared to death of Lester Holt
• Stalling for six to eight weeks before mandatory MSNBC urine test
• Waiting until after man-hunting season is over

MIT physics professor Lightman is best known for Einstein’s Dreams, a brilliantly elliptical series of spare, magical-realist vignettes which explored what it would be like if the laws of physics worked differently—what-if tales not so much science fiction as brief essays on the limits of human nature. He switched gears for The Diagnosis, a National Book Award finalist, a paranoid J.G. Ballardesque tale about an executive whose body rebels against him with amnesia and paralysis. His latest novel, Reunion, is a downbeat bit of midlife-crisis angst about a 50ish professor who starts seeing hallucinatory reenactments of a disastrous, life-changing love affair from his college days. Lightman’s distanced, even formal prose style, which we enjoyed in his previous books, fits well with the book’s theme of sadness at the road not taken. But even at only 231 pages, Reunion reads like an overextended vignette from Dreams. Lightman reads at Ruminator Books August 1.

He may be one of the most prominent Indian writers around today, but Sherman Alexie doesn’t play to the expectations of either white or Native American audiences. Though he almost always writes about characters who are, like himself, Indians from the Seattle/Spokane area, he feels no obligation to the traditions of identity politics and aims for stories that are, if necessarily filtered through his experience, about the wider human condition. He’s a deft ironist, but also knows how to mingle his humor with pain and pathos. His short-story collections include The Toughest Indian in the World and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, which he later adapted into the script for the indie-film sleeper Smoke Signals in 1998. His new collection, Ten Little Indians, adds nine more tales to his catalog, and some of his most mature writing to date. He’s also branched out into directing, with The Business of Fancydancing, featuring Smoke Signals star Evan Adams as a gay Spokane Indian writer shackled by an uneasy relationship with his past. The film is currently making the festival circuit and out on DVD July 8. Black Bear Crossings, 1360 N. Lexington Parkway; call Birchbark Books, (612) 374-4023, for more information

A few months ago, Zadie Smith wrote in the New York Times about being an extra in a PBS screen adaptation of her autobiographical debut novel, White Teeth. It was a touching piece in which the writer acknowledged the shortcomings of her novel, and the bizarre experience of being an extra in the movie of your own life. (Actually, it was, among other things, the raucous story of how her biracial hippie parents met in the paisley heyday of London circa 1975.) Here, she’ll undoubtedly read from The Autograph Man, her likeable second novel, which came out last fall. Ruminator, 1648 Grand Ave., St. Paul, (651) 699-0587, ruminator.com

The truth of the matter is that we’ve blown off Aquatennial for years. Crowds make us nervous, and we certainly don’t need the imprimatur of City Fathers (or Mothers) to enjoy its most bountiful amenity—our lakes and rivers. And yet, Aquatennial has gotten so big that at least one affiliated event is actually drawing national attention these days: We understand this year’s Lifetime Fitness Triathalon (August 2) will be on network TV. Maybe we should take another look at the schedule—and take in the coronation of the Queen of the Lakes (July 25), or maybe the traditional Calhoun regatta (July 26), or the one spectacular event you pretty much have no choice but to enjoy, the mammoth fireworks show in downtown Minneapolis, July 26. www.aquatennial.org

One could approach Oak Street’s July retrospective as an aesthetic exegesis of the changing modes of cinematic expression in the mid-century heyday of the Hollywood studio system. One could seek evidence of unique directorial styles finding voice in an artistic medium defined strongly by the visions of the moneymen on top. Alternatively, one could just say “Hey, awesome, a Bogart double feature!” There are certainly plenty of excellent films to partake of here. Auteurs gathers works two-by-two from the best directors of the era, people like Howard Hawks, George Cukor and John Ford—including his 1924 career-launching silent The Iron Horse (July 16). If you’re missing Gregory Peck, who died in June, check out his 1956 performance as Ahab in Moby-Dick, costarring Orson Welles, who surprisingly does not play the whale. As for Bogey, he’s here both in the July 5-6 pairing of Hawks’ To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, and on July 25-27 in John Huston’s two great crime films, Key Largo and The Maltese Falcon. Oak Street, 309 Oak St. S.E., (612) 331-3134, oakstreetcinema.org

The Walker’s concurrent exhibit on boxing makes a serendipitous theme for this year’s installment of our favorite local open-air arts event. The sweet science has always been a favorite subject in American filmmaking—you could put together a series many times longer than this six-week run without coming close to running out of watchable fare. The best matchup is probably the July 21 opener, pitting opening band the Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers against the terrific Requiem for a Heavyweight, a 1962 Rod Serling-penned drama that opens memorably with a boxer’s-eye view of what it feels like to get knocked out by Cassius Clay. Other good movies in the series include The Great White Hope, with black heavyweight champion James Earl Jones fighting racism outside the ring (August 4, with buzzy local punk-popsters the Soviettes), and the Kirk Douglas noir Champion (August 11). Closing out the series August 25 is some obscure little indie film called Rocky, which we’re told had a sequel or two. Walker Art Center, (612) 375-7622, www.walkerart.org

Writer Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell) and illustrator Kevin O’Neill crafted the somewhat geeky premise of a Victorian-era Justice League in the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Mina Harker, the femme fatale from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, is appointed to assemble a few literary titans to foil the nefarious plans of the late Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis, Professor Moriarty. The motley crew assembled includes adventurer Allan Quatermain, Dr. Jekyll, Captain Nemo, and the Invisible Man. 20th Century Fox has thrown Sean Connery into the Quatermain role, added art connoisseur Dorian Gray, and, in a fit of xenophobia, a Missouri problem-child-turned-international-spy by the name of Tom Sawyer. We’re choosing Mr. Hyde over the Hulk this summer, and partying like it’s 1899.

Here are two mid-50s films from French director Alain Resnais, both struggling to come to terms with the deep psychic wounds of World War Two. Hiroshima, a collaboration with French novelist Marguerite Dumas, uses the story of the love affair between a French actress and Japanese architect as jumping-off point to explore grief and survivors’ guilt, and whether love has any meaning in the face of humanity’s growing ability to carry out horrific brutality on a massive scale. The film fractures narrative chronology in a way that was then groundbreaking, in pursuit of depicting the way persistent memory can dominate our perceptions of the present. Like Citizen Kane, if it seems unremarkable today it’s because the techniques it pioneered are now an entrenched part of the language of filmmaking. Also new on DVD is Resnais’ haunting documentary Night and Fog, one of the first to document so starkly the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps and a conscious reaction against the refusal by many involved with the camps—German and otherwise—to accept responsibility.

It took us a couple of viewings before we grasped Wings of Desire’s quiet beauty, but it’s since grown to become one of our most beloved films, one we’ve seen a dozen times over the last decade. German director Wim Wenders’ story of angels silently witnessing human joys and sorrows is constructed like poetry, meditative and ethereal, without a hint of the mawkishness you might expect from what is basically a love story about an angel renouncing his immortality for a mortal woman. A near-flawless piece of work that, like It’s a Wonderful Life, makes us glad to be alive every time we see it—not to mention changing forever the way we watch Peter Falk’s old Columbo reruns, thanks to his wonderful and largely improvised supporting role here. (It also introduced us to Nick Cave, a side benefit worth the price of admission.) The two spinoffs—the sappy American remake City of Angels and Wenders’ own ham-fisted sequel—only serve to illustrate how good the original is.