Author: rakemag

Who wouldn’t want to soar through the air on the wings of a bird? Well, not us, because heights scare the living bejeezus out of us. But otherwise, sure, everybody would. And barring a medically iffy, possibly uninsurable operation to transplant your brain into a duck, Winged Migration is your best option. The product of four years’ filming by hundreds of people on all seven continents, its amazing cinematography will make you feel like part of the flock. Producer Jacques Perrin’s previous Microcosmos managed the tricky feat of making the insect world transcendently beautiful, even winning over your humble Rake editors, who scream like a little girl when a centipede crosses our path. And though Migration might be light on explaining the science behind bird flight, it’s an excellent way to get down with the geese. Uptown, 2906 Hennepin Ave., (612) 825-6006, landmarktheatres.com

Are there three sweeter words than “Peter Sellers retrospective”? Hmmm… “you’ve got mail”—no. “Here’s fifty bucks”—well, maybe. We haven’t seen about half the titles here (yet), but we can tell you with absolutely authority that there are four can’t-lose offerings from the mid-century’s great comedic chameleon: his two Stanley Kubrick collaborations, Dr. Strangelove and Lolita; the best of his Inspector Clouseau series, A Shot in the Dark; and Being There, his transcendent satire of the TV-created mind he fought to make for ten years. Meanwhile, Jackie Chan buffs, reserve your Mondays for a month of classics by Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, the masters of silent-era, let’s-do-the-stunts-ourselves physical comedy. Top on the list is Lloyd’s Safety Last—that’s the one where he accidentally climbs the outside of a department store all the way up to the clock tower—and note that not only is Lloyd himself really climbing, but that he was missing two fingers and a thumb on his right hand! Oak Street, 309 Oak St. S.E., (612) 331-3134, oakstreetcinema.org

Sergio Leone, who reinvented the gunslinger genre in spaghetti westerns like The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, only directed one film in the fifteen years before his death. That would be this Prohibition-era drama, but in many ways the perfect capstone to his career, blending the spirits of Goodfellas and Great Expectations with one of his own vengeance-laden Western morality tales. Robert De Niro and James Woods star as two childhood friends who rise together in the world of New York’s Jewish street gangs; De Niro’s acting is particularly strong, maintaining a sad dignity for most of the film in spite of his character being stuck with the name “Noodles.” America does have some glaring flaws, including a plot twist that erases any goodwill De Niro might have earned, and a final act that’s soap-opera nonsense. But it’s still a worthy film, and this DVD is especially welcome for being the uncut four-hour director’s cut—once upon a time, the only Once Upon a Time in America in America was a version more than 90 minutes shorter and nearly incomprehensible.

These things become familiar, of course, but how shocking a really moral film like this was, in 1985. Stephen Frears’ snapshot of the 80s was out of tune with its time, but slowly built as an art-house video cult in the 90s. Which is to say, by the time conversations about “identity politics” and “victim culture” had lost enough heat to be handled thoughtfully and seriously. My Beautiful Laundrette isn’t much of a story beyond its intricate web of relationships—including a wonderfully complex romance between Daniel Day-Lewis and Gordon Warnecke. As such, its success rests solely in its spectacular script—one of those movies you’re sure is based on a great novel, though it’s not.

This third installment in the BBC’s amazingly lifelike recreations of the ancient world doesn’t live up to the high standard set by its predecessors, Walking With Dinosaurs and Walking With Prehistoric Beasts, which combined cutting-edge paleontology and computer graphics to stunning effect. Which is a pity, because the story it has to tell is uniquely compelling—how a bunch of scrawny, hairy chimp-like creatures could have grown up into the planet-dominating sophisticates we are today, with our SUVs and televised sitcoms and Miracle Whip. We begin with Lucy the Australopithecus, anthropology’s most famous find and part of the group that first walked upright, showing that the first step in being human is learning to stand up for yourself. Cavemen is choppier than earlier installments and lurches confusingly through time, trying to structure the narrative around the evolution of each human trait rather than a simpler chronological progression of species. On the plus side, the makeup and acting is terrific; each species of protohuman has its own unique character, and it’s surprising to discover from the supplementary video that the same dozen-odd actors have been playing all the roles.

Great artists often reach an apotheosis in their careers beyond which they can do what ever they want. Radiohead managed that with OK Computer back in 2000, then followed up with Kid A, which was a low-rent, high-profile slumming in Aphex Twin territory, indulging in noise more than music. Which is fine—we’re as amenable to “sound experiments” as the next guy. But we couldn’t help feeling like Thom Yorke and company were ignoring their core competency in writing soaring and intellectual pop as hummable as it was thinkable. This new one represents a truce between experimentalism and the irrepressible urge to just write a singalong. Recommended for its longevity in your sub-collection of albums to which you actually listen.

Annie Lennox has not been terribly prolific in the years since she left the great ’80s art-pop duo Eurythmics at the beginning of the last decade. Solo, she brought us the sophisticated and occasionally wonderful Diva, and a dreadful covers album called Medusa, aptly named in that it turned the hearts of most critics to stone. In 1999, she and fellow Eurythmic Dave Stewart reunited for the solidly urbane Peace, but Bare finds her going her own way again. It’s a downbeat bit of business, a breakup record that works best with the lights dimmed and a glass of red wine. That’s not a bad thing; her smoky voice is well-suited to the slow-burning torch songs, though the defiant “Bitter Pills” makes us wish the rest of the record had a touch more verve.

That’s not a typo—terroir is a French term roughly meaning “soil” that has less to do with the current geopolitical bugbear than Farrar’s ongoing fascination with American culture and traditions. A song cycle about Farrar’s new hometown of St. Louis, it’s a solid piece of work that builds well on his earlier solo records and full-band alt-country projects with Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt. Terroir filters his trademark folk-twang sound through the blues, French and Indian influences of his Missourian city. As you might expect, it’s ruminative and melancholy—more than usual, in fact, since some of the songs here find Farrar working through the recent death of his father.

Sometimes you’ve just got to see a show because of the rare lineup. And in the case of these completely simpatico artists, it’s a shame someone ends up playing in the invariably ignominious position of “warm-up.” Young, of course, still maintains a stadium-sized contingent of dope-smoking longhairs who need to be accomodated as they holler for “The Needle and the Damage Done” or “Hey, Hey, My, My” (or whatever that silly song is called) or even “Keep On Rockin’ (in the Free World).” On the other hand Williams may not have reached the natural peak in her audience with her brilliant and drawling post-feminist approach to grunge country. Target Center, 600 1st Ave. N., (612) 673-0900, targetcenter.com

Bley represents a new and unique impulse in jazz—a desire to embrace big, messy, intellectual subjects. It’s not a natural mode for jazz, which tends to dwell on aesthetic detail. You know, art for art’s sake. But her latest album, Looking For America, sounds the clarion that jazz is uniquely equipped to approach complex issues like, well, the crazy conflicted country that birthed it. No wonder she’s been compared (favorably) to giants like Ellington and Mingus. And when was the last time you picked up a record—of any genre—that warned “the views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the musicians or the record label”? Northrop, 84 Church St. S.E., northrop.umn.edu