Author: rakemag

What can you say about Maya Angelou? She’s the sort of person who gets schools named after her. She rose from a childhood marred by poverty, racism, and rape to a status as one of our most distinguished writers, a dignified and sometimes imperious living embodiment of African-American cultural pride. Her life has been one of great accomplishment, which she herself has documented in six volumes of autobiography beginning with her now-classic I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and continuing up to last year’s A Song Flung Up To Heaven. She worked for civil rights alongside Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, speaks six languages fluently, and has been a newspaper editor in Cairo, a film director, and even a not-half-bad calypso singer (seek out her 1957 album Miss Calypso, re-released during the mid-90s swing craze). She’s been nominated for the Pulitzer, Tony, Emmy and National Book Award, and was asked by fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton to compose a poem for his first inauguration. She’s also an incredibly inspiring speaker, so don’t miss this chance to see her in person. O’Shaughnessy, 2004 Randolph Ave., St. Paul, (651) 690-6700, www.st kate.edu/oshaughnessy

If you’re a fan of Robert Stone’s, but always found him a bit too long in the reading, know that his most recent novel, Bay of Souls, is his shortest. That doesn’t mean it’ll be any less dense than, say, A Flag for Sunrise or Damascus Gate. In fact, Stone is one of those writers we like best in a bookstore reading; a legend in his time, and a member of the last generation of great literary novelists with social and political obsessions (see Ken Kesey, Peter Matthiessen), whose novels can feel a little like doing homework. It’s enough to take him in as a one-off podium appearance; you have our permission. Ruminator, (651) 699-0587, www.ruminator.com

Plenty of our regional authors routinely tackle stories about small-town Great Plains life, and Jonis Agee is no exception there. Less common is her abiding interest in stock-car racing. The Nebraska native (who taught at St. Kate’s here in Minnesota for two decades) has staked a claim as small-press fiction’s correspondent among the blue-collar set that spends its weekends down at the track. Even if watching fast cars zoom around in a circle is as exciting to you as the Indianapolis Watching Paint Dry 500, she’s worth a look. Her latest book, Acts of Love on Indigo Road, gathers new stories alongside selections from her previous collections Pretend We’ve Never Met, Bend This Heart, A .38 Special and a Broken Heart, and Taking the Wall. (She also reads at the Loft June 5.)

Now in its 15th year of honoring the best wordsmiths our state has to offer, the Book Awards have expanded to honor publishers, booksellers, and others in the local literary world. The winners will be announced at a free public ceremony at the Fitzgerald, which will also be televised June 1 on TPT-17. (Rumors that the National Guard will be on hand to blockade Joan and Melissa Rivers remain unconfirmed at press time.) Related events will be going on throughout the week of May 14-21 in the Twin Cities and Duluth. Finalists in fiction, poetry, memoir and children’s fiction will read May 15 at an Open Book event hosted by the Loft and Minnesota Literature; Susan Power, Anna Meek, Ray Gonzalez, Mary Winstead, Madelon Sprengnether and Mary Casanova are confirmed to appear. And on May 16-17, the Loft hosts its Festival of Children’s Literature, intended for writers and those currently working in the book biz or hoping to break into it. The complete list of nominees can be found at www.thinkmhc.org/Book/awards .htm. Fitzgerald, 10 E. Exchange St., St. Paul, (651) 290-1221, www.fitzgeraldtheater.org; Open Book, 1011 Washington Ave. S., (612) 215-2575, www.openbookmn.org

We’ve known for years about this wonderful little museum on the shores of Lake Calhoun. Founded by the man behind the cardiac pacemaker and Medtronic, it celebrates the many wondrous roles of electricity in medicine and in life. It’s always been a fun place to take the kids—and now they’re really going to foam at the mouth, with this irresistible exhibit of inventions created by kids in the Bakken’s education programs. Bakken, 3537 Zenith Ave. S., (612) 926-3878, www.thebakken.org

A weighty drama about the burdens of guilt and redemption seems like an awful stretch for writer and first-time director Ed Solomon. His previous credits are all comedies, including Men In Black, Charlie’s Angels, and the Bill & Ted movies—not terrible films, but ones with absolutely zero gravitas. On the plus side, cinematographer Roger Deakins (Shawshank Redemption, half a dozen Coen Brothers films) means the visuals will be terrific. And what a cast: Holly Hunter, Morgan Freeman, Kirsten Dunst, and Billy Bob Thornton (yeah, a flake, but a great actor). Those four working together might be able to make an Ed Wood movie resemble Shakespeare. Thornton anchors the story as a remorse-wracked ex-con who dedicates his life to making amends for the murder of a convenience-store clerk, and winds up entangling all four characters’ lives in trying to connect with his victim’s sister (Holly Hunter). We’re betting Levity will float or sink based entirely on Solomon’s untested skill at fashioning drama. Edina 4, 3911 West 50th St., Edina, (952) 926-1621

One cannot live on arthouse films alone. The summer tradition of big, booming, brains-optional blockbusters has returned, and the first two out of the gate are ones we’ve been looking forward to, perhaps a little guiltily. We don’t have any grandiose expectations for the return of Marvel Comics’ mutant metaphors for prejudice and teenage angst; X2 is burdened by more characters and nicknames and powers than anybody should bother to keep track of. But the guys with lasers coming out of their eyes ought to blow stuff up real good. The Matrix movies are more streamlined, thanks to a story structure with only one primary character—Keanu Reeves’ Neo, the high-tech action hero with Buddha nature. But Reloaded also has to set up November’s trilogy-closing Revolutions, not to mention having a much better film to live up to than X-Men. If the writer/director Wachowski Brothers can deliver on the fight-scene promise shown in the Reloaded trailers and still deliver a story with some real ideas in it, we’ll gladly be the first to say “whoa.”

So much nostalgia TV in one place, you can almost smell the crimebusting. In case you feel like watching the entire run of a 70s cop show from the beginning but you have no idea which one, this collection is, like, a total godsend. Here are the very first episodes—not the pilots, when the cast and concept of a series are often wildly different from the real show, but the actual season-one openers—of five of the polyester decade’s most well-known police dramas: Starsky & Hutch, Charlie’s Angels, S.W.A.T., Police Woman and The Rookies. (Well, the Angels were really private eyes, not cops, but then you’d have to title the DVD Four Great 70s Cop Shows and Also a Private-Eye Show, or Five Shows That Often Feature Criminals With Feathered Hair, and the boys in marketing probably said no to that.) If you do find your interest piqued by these (ahem) arresting examples of Me Decade programming, know that the complete first seasons of Angels and S.W.A.T. are both out on DVD by the end of spring, followed by the second Angels movie and a Samuel Jackson-led remake of S.W.A.T. in summer.

Dull and dry is never a problem with David Attenborough. The BBC’s grandfatherly grandmaster, perhaps the world’s premier practitioner of pop-science storytelling, has a knack for making you feel the same joy of discovery that he so obviously does. His latest series is a 10-part companion piece to his stunning 1998 Life of Birds that takes him from New Zealand to the Arctic Circle to survey the furry creatures of the world. It’s full of arresting images—an orangutan paddles a canoe, an elephant swims, a grizzly snaps its jaws on a salmon while Attenborough calmly narrates from only a few feet away. His childlike joy at seeing a blue whale surface just yards from his boat is charming and utterly infectious. He doesn’t shy from the stark reminder of violence in the animal world—his 1990 Trials of Life infamously showed killer whales not merely hunting seals, but casually toying with them before the decisive strike. But with his gentle British lilt and creative presentation—and backed by the Beeb’s crack crew of wildlife cameramen—he makes it a pleasure to use your brain. Plus, there’s otters. Who doesn’t like cute, furry otters?

It strikes us as a teensy bit redundant to shell out for multi-DVD sets of two TV sitcoms that are still on the air in reruns all over the place. Still, the wise man plans ahead for the future, storing up treasures for the lean times yet to come. We’re especially partial to the first year of Cheers for the presence of Diane and Coach (the show just wasn’t as good without them) and occasional guest-star Harry Anderson, in the sneaky con-man persona he was known for before Night Court turned him forgettable and vanilla.