Author: rakemag

Maybe this will be the year when you make that extra effort to actually find the art at the Uptown Art Festival. Sure, there are food booths, live music, games, and the general hubbub of another summer festival. And who can deny the cheap thrill of wandering around the middle of Lake Street slightly buzzed, and shopping for machine-made Mexican rugs? But honestly, there really is a lot of genuine art to be found—it just gets overwhelmed by the 500,000 people expected to converge on Uptown this weekend. More than 400 “arts and crafts” exhibitors bring their wares to Minneapolis from as far away as Florida and New York. And while there are plenty of great local artists who don’t make it into a vendors’ booth, well… this isn’t precisely the place to take a long look at serious art, either. Did we mention the food booths, live music, and games? On a vaguely related note, let us mourn the loss of MCAD’s wonderful gallery upstairs at Calhoun Square, one of the real (and secret) gems of the native Twin Cities art scene.

“Greek food is arousing,” declared one of my table companions after a big bite of his spicy soutzokakia sandwich. The rest of us raised our eyebrows and waited for him to explain. He chose instead to blush and mumble that he “just meant intriguing.” But he’s right. All that garlic and olive oil, lemony ambelodolmades in grape leaves, sweet and tangy roasted red peppers—it’s zesty and Zorbalicious. Step into your own personal Poseidon adventure in this airy two-room café in Old St. Anthony, tan and blue with vines and stone statuary decorating the walls. Stacked in a pile on the radiator are books on Greek culture and Northeast Minneapolis history—take a few minutes before your meal arrives to transport yourself mentally from East Hennepin to coastal Thessalonica. You can’t go wrong with that old standby the gyros, but try to make room for the pureed garlic skordalia and the tasty tyro, feta cheese with olive oil and peppers. Top it off with the thick, rich and dark Greek coffee—just don’t get caught unawares by the loamy grounds at the bottom of the cup. Gardens of Salonica, (612) 378-0611

If you have difficulty making decisions, the Sample Room wants you. As the name implies, this brand-new, swank café bar is centered around sharable, nibbleworthy combination platters—3,500 possible combinations of veggie, meat, cheese, and seafood treats. That goes for wine too: Try a number of vintages with a flight of three 2-oz. glasses. Our entrees were nothing terribly exotic—smoked pork loin and turkey breast, with mashed potatoes and roasted vegetables—but it’s comfort food done elegantly and in good-sized portions. We recommend the carefully spiced and smoky cream of mushroom soup. A stone’s throw away from a cardboard-box factory and Gabby’s Saloon, the Sample Room brings casual class to the neighborhood. It’s inviting and comfortable contemporary interior in dark browns and warm colors, under a restored original ceiling, is quite the change from the slightly seedy Polish Palace it replaced. On our visit the space seemed a trifle loud, even at one-third capacity, but service was friendly and eager to please—our coffee was topped off no less than five times, and the manager proudly made the rounds showing patrons a turn-of-the-century photo, discovered during remodeling, of the old bar and its much-mustachioed regulars. It might be nice, in future, to see the place add a patio out back to take advantage of the river view, but on our next visit our biggest problem will be choosing which of the four dessert chocolates to try first. The Sample Room, (612) 789-0333

In our ongoing survey of bars that serve good food at odd hours, we’re pleased to report that Grumpy’s features an exhaustive—though occasionally sticky—menu of sandwiches, burgers, and delightful comfort foods, all of which we’d stand right up against the menus of any other bar anywhere in the city. We recently worked through a bad case of writer’s block by ordering the cajun pepper burger at about 3:30 p.m. It was accompanied by french fries so hot they made us stop worrying about our brains, and start worrying whether we’d ever regain feeling in our tongues. But let’s face it—we come to a place like this for the ambience, for the feeling we get, the people we see, the vibe. OK, we come for the beer. Still, we hope we’re not the first ones to tell you that Grumpy’s has quietly become the Uptown or the C.C. Club of the new millennium. The music is hard, the place fills up with single-speed cyclists and bike couriers, the reassuringly seedy downtown contingent takes over the pool tables and dartboards, and there seems to be an endless loop of Jackass videos on the numerous TV sets stashed around the place. (It’s art, y’know.) If genuine Minneapolis subcultcha has gone back underground to hibernate, this is where it comes to water itself each night. But the place is big enough and magnanimous enough that you can walk right in and feel at home without being a boho or a regular or both. (Grumpy: We’re sorry if this notice brings in the yuppies, but they can fend for themselves.) Grumpy’s, (612) 340-9738

Two watch-at-night thrillers that rely mainly on mood and atmosphere for their impact, each very pleasurable in its own way. Be warned: Neither is very big on the element of surprise or particularly strong in plotting. Mothman is of the MTV generation in its abrupt, disconcerting imagery; it’s a glossy B-movie that charms by its unexpected visual verve. Director Mark Pellington has a terrific sense of tempo that makes the most of periodic creepy interludes. Not the least of its charms is the unshakably placid Richard Gere, an actor who was a great wooden Buddha long before he began stumping for the Dalai Lama. The Others , with its methodical, foreboding gothic air, is more substantial and more thoroughly fun. Its director, Alejandro Almenabar, is a talent to watch; he made Abre Los Ojos [Open Your Eyes], the original, superior version of Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky . Which probably explains why we have this Tom Cruise-produced Nicole Kidman movie at all. It was surely part of a quid pro quo to secure the rights to Open Your Eyes . Ironic that The Others , the afterthought in the deal, turned out to be so much better than Crowe’s folly.

Writer-director Wes Anderson’s third feature film, The Royal Tenenbaums, is set in New York. That is, the enchanting New York of post-World War II, of glamorous old hotels, of The New Yorker in its prime. Gene Hackman plays Royal Tenenbaum, an absentee father who attempts to reinsert himself into his family by faking terminal illness. The siblings, all former child prodigies who have since self-destructed, have made their way back to their childhood home and under the care of their archeologist mother Etheline (Angelica Huston). Each child—struggling playwright Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), washed-up tennis pro Richie (Luke Wilson), and tortured widower Chas (Ben Stiller)—must deal with Royal’s return in their own way, while coming to grips with their own disintegrating lives. As with his previous works Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, Anderson blends humor and pathos with just the right touch of sentimentality. Ex-Devo member Mark Mothersbaugh has composed an eclectic soundtrack that includes his own interludes, as well as gems from Nick Drake, Nico, and Elliot Smith. The DVD extras are pretty standard: behind the scenes footage, outtakes, interviews, and the like. But this is one you pick up for the feature, not the bells and whistles.