Author: rakemag

Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip has been a strangely enduring cult phenomenon. First published in 1973, Lesy’s indescribable marriage of photographs and text, alternately chilling and hilarious, chronicled a late-nineteenth-century epidemic of madness and mayhem in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. A photographic historian, Lesy has kept busy since then, producing a batch of books that, even if they don’t quite capture Death Trip’s weird magic, share its obsession with photographs and history. The title of his latest, Murder City: The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties, pretty much says it all. Rain Taxi sponsors this talk and signing, a kickoff for Lesy’s Murder City tour. 165 13th Ave. N.E., Minneapolis; 612-824-5500; www.guthrietheater.org

As Minnesota Public Radio’s alterna-juggernaut, The Current has delivered a reliable slate of programming and special events, but it’s really stumbled on an inspired idea with the Fakebook series. The basic idea is to pair an author—usually somebody copasetic with the station’s mission—with a band, and put the two on stage with host and Current DJ Mary Lucia. Previous installments featured Neal Pollack and Amy Sedaris, and this latest bill is easily the most promising yet. Minnesota native Chuck Klosterman is a senior writer at Spin and the author of Fargo Rock City and Killing Yourself to Live, among other titles, and a true pop culture superhero in certain circles; he can be poignant, very, very funny, and maddeningly self-indulgent in the span of a few pages—no small feat. Joining him is the local rock comet Tapes ’n’ Tapes. 651-290-1221; fitzgeraldtheater.publicradio.org
http://fitzgeraldtheater.publicradio.org/

Other Electricities, Ander Monson’s 2005 debut collection, introduced one of the freshest and most interesting new voices in years. The interrelated stories, set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in the bleakest midwinter, represent a sort of inventory of loss, complete with obituaries, obsessive weather minutiae, electrical charts, and an elegiac style that drifts again and again into stretches of purely poetic language. Neck Deep and Other Predicaments, winner of Graywolf’s 2006 nonfiction prize, finds Monson ruminating on such topics as disc golf, car washes, and the history of mining in Northern Michigan. Robert Polito, who selected the book for the prize, says of the author, “For Monson the essay is something like a schematics for our fiercest longings and most ecstatic inventions.”

Mix the rich color cinematography of Douglas Sirk with the gushing violence of Sam Peckinpah, fold in the kind of Thai melodrama that has all but vanished from the international movie landscape, and you’ve got Tears of the Black Tiger, a film that moves with the force of a hurricane blasting apart a great marzipan city. Tears tells of the impossible romance between the young peasant-cum-legendary-bandit, Dum (a.k.a. The Black Tiger), and the wealthy daughter of a provincial governor, who is engaged to be married to the local chief of police. Wisit Sasanatieng’s picture is both homage and send-up, but harks back to a genre that is so little seen that it comes off as strikingly original. Watch for armies of scowling bandits in black, thugs who resemble Joseph Stalin, some oddball Thai jazz, headless snakes falling from trees, and a ricocheting bullet so incredible they have to stop the film and show it twice.

Jan Svankmajer could be the weirdest filmmaker in the world, an artist whose troubled subconscious seems to dictate his every move. His latest, Lunacy, is loosely based on two Edgar Allan Poe short stories and “inspired” by the Marquis de Sade. It’s the story of a poor fellow who, upon returning from his mother’s funeral, is taken to an asylum where the inmates have the run of the place and the staff members are locked up. As per usual in a Svankmajer film, there’s bizarre sex, gratuitous nudity, violence (including what appears to be an inmate with his eyes gouged out), and stop-motion animation that involves meat—in this case, dancing tongues. Lunacy would certainly have a greater effect on one’s fragile psyche if seen in a theater—but even at home, you’ll find that Svankmajer’s unwillingness to stay on the sane side of life is the stuff of nightmares.

In 1944, the French government recruited more than a hundred thousand Algerian men—almost all Muslims—to defend France against the Nazi onslaught. Of course, most of these unfortunates had never set foot in France. Unlike Clint Eastwood’s uninsightful Letters From Iwo Jima, Days of Glory, written and directed by a Frenchman of Algerian origin, is already being praised for its brutal realism and for the sympathy with which it portrays its virtually unknown subjects. It’s virtually a lock for a best foreign film Oscar, and in a better world it would be one for best picture, playing on screens across the country.

An amazement. James Longley’s brave and beautiful documentary is filmed without judgment and bookended with the voices of children aged beyond their years. The first in a triptych of stories is a Sunni boy straight out of Dickens, an apprentice to a cruel mechanic who lost his father and struggles to survive while his city burns. Shiites make up the middle section; they are charged with anger over years of oppression, at some times brutally enforcing Islamic law, at others yearning for democracy. Finally, a Kurdish child ruminates on God and life like a prophet, abandoning his schooling to tend sheep while black smoke fills the sky—this time from baking ovens that offer hope for the future.

What’s the easy way to identify the smartest country music stars? They cover Patty Griffin songs. The redheaded singer/songwriter has a knack for stories about troubled hearts laid bare, set to wistful melodies drawing on traditional folk and country music. She’s also capable of tossing in bursts of three-minute rock ’n’ roll. Her songs have launched or helped cement the careers of the Dixie Chicks, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Martina McBride, and a raft of other brainy babes. Now forty-three, Griffin is a star in her own right, one firmly entrenched within the alternative folk and country music communities; no doubt tunes from her new blues-tinged album will make a few others famous as well.

Like that computerized gadget you just bought, so much electronic-based music is obsessively entertaining—at least for a time. If your fickle ears are anxiously awaiting the next innovation in computer-based song engineering, Trans Am’s new album might be just the ticket. On Sex Change, the band’s sonic innovations stick in your head, leaving you craving spin after spin. Brainy, techy, and really quite sexy, with meditative post-rock beats and a hypnotic air, this is music that seems destined to sell cars someday. Soon. Until then, we’re hooked.

A decade ago, Mark Linkous almost joined the long list of self-medicating rockers found dead in hotel rooms; he overdosed in a hotel bathroom and passed out with his legs pinned underneath him for fourteen hours. When doctors finally straightened out his limbs, he had a heart attack and was declared medically dead—if only for a few seconds. Fortunately, Linkous still walks among us, and makes the kind of music that might groove the dead: trance-y and wistful, with the barest whisper of a backbeat. His latest album, Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain, finds him occupying a hazy border territory somewhere between Daniel Johnston and Tom Waits: a little bit crazy; a little bit crazy like a fox. 612-332-1775; www.first-avenue.com