Author: rakemag

We enjoy a make-over just as much as anybody. But when it happens to a favorite dining spot, we get a smidge skittish. Will they go too glossy? Will they forget that we like to bring the kids with us? Happily, the Edina Grill has been successfully updated without losing its soul. There’s a new sassy bar, but a giant orange-juicing machine stands right around the corner. Despite modish art on the walls and sophisticated dark-wood booths, the tables are still set with terry towels for napkins and a malt tin full of silverware. As always, you can enjoy your Elvis burger or killer waffles, but there’s also new fare, like the ahi tuna with vibrant herbs and sweet-potato risotto, or a BBQ sandwich that goes for tangy and vinegary over sweet. Some new dishes need a tweak, but old faves sing all the more beautifully in this new space. 5028 France Avenue, Edina; 952-927-7933; www.edinagrill.com

For the food-obsessed, the arrival of Jean-Georges Vongerichten in our town is nothing less than a blessed event. But does Chambers Kitchen live up to the hype? Maybe. The David Rockwell interior achieves cool without sacrificing comfort. The staff, while efficient and knowledgeable, can still manage a genuine smile. But in the end, it’s all about the food, isn’t it? With offerings like house-made mozzarella with grilled figs, glazed short ribs with crispy cheddar polenta, and halibut with Malaysian chili sauce, nothing is shockingly revolutionary—but that’s fine, because who can eat that all the time? Jean-Georges hits you not with superficial dazzle but developed flavor. The dishes are balanced, nicely portioned, and seem intended for true eaters, not chef groupies who push the plate away after one orgasmic bite. As in his other restaurants, he proves here that high style and sophistication don’t have to come at the price of sincerity. 901 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-767-6900; www.chambersminneapolis.com

As a condiment, wasabi is earthy, spicy, and slightly mysterious. As the new sushi place off Washington Avenue, Wasabi is bright, happy, and kinda cute. Glass-bead curtains, green bamboo framework, and an automated door sensor that shouts “genki!” (how are you?) to new arrivals give this place a whimsical touch. What is earthy and spicy is the menu, full of customary Japanese offerings. Traditional sushi and sashimi are fresh and generous, but pay special attention to the chef’s specials like the Crazy Tuna roll, which employs smoky, pepper- encrusted tuna balanced with silky avocado. Hearty noodle dishes, flavorful don buri, and entertaining hibachi dinners are all great pre-Guthrie or post-Dome options. Lunch service is perfectly timed, and most specials are under ten dollars. 903 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-338-6688

Bouncing between near misses (Cold Mountain) and outright dogs (the risible Stepford Wives), Nicole Kidman could use a surefire hit, at least critically. Whether or not this so-called imaginary portrait of doomed photographer Diane Arbus will be the tonic for Kidman’s post–Oscar malaise is an intriguing question. Looking almost too clean and bright for its subject matter, Fur appears to suggest that Arbus was molded by a mysterious presence—here, in the form of a hairy Robert Downey Jr., who lurks in an apartment below her studio. To suggest that Arbus was anything but a visionary on her own terms is sadly typical of Hollywood’s general squeamishness about artists, especially female ones. Director Steven Shainberg scored an art-house hit with his bland Secretary, and in casting Kidman’s perfect face (instead of, say, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s softer, less-chiseled mug), you wonder if he hasn’t missed the point of Arbus’ entire oeuvre.

We don’t know Kazakhstanis from Martians, but something tells us they’re not the backwater, Jew-loathing whoremongers that writer-producer-star Sacha Baron Cohen makes them out to be. Borat is a mock documentary in which the titular hero, a Kazakhstani television personality, comes to the U.S. on a cross-cultural mission and winds up crossing the Southern states to get to California—and Pamela Anderson, whom he wishes to marry. Despite some funny moments—including a grotesque, buck-naked wrestling match between Borat and his overweight manager—Borat’s broad humor often collides with downright insulting material. Filling his movie with real-life footage of Southern bigots as well as obviously staged moments (a book signing and attempted abduction of Pamela Anderson, a ride in an RV full of idiotic frat boys), Cohen and his fellow screenwriters ask you to laugh with (and at) a creature devoid of redeeming virtues. Ultimately, Cohen isn’t merely shooting fish in a barrel—he’s throwing in a stick of dynamite.

Vigorously booed at the Venice Film Festival, acclaimed as masterpiece by others, this time-travel extravaganza hits our shores after six years of labor from director Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream). Wildly ambitious in its scope, The Fountain takes place over a thousand years and weaves together three stories, with the same actors helming each thread. Rachel Weisz (the good wife of Mr. Aronofsky), fresh from her Oscar triumph in The Constant Gardner, brings her sexy intelligence to the role of a woman trying desperately to finish writing a book while fighting a life-threatening disease. Studly Hugh Jackman is the man who flies through time and space to tap into the “tree of life” in an attempt to save his beloved. Along the way, he becomes a sixteenth-century conquistador, a modern-day scientist, and a bald guy floating in a bubble ship through space in the 2500s. Looking both daring and outlandish (not to mention all its New Age claptrap), The Fountain could be Aronofsky’s Matrix … or his Battleship Earth.

At first, it just sounds too good to be true. But as rumors persist that the independent film Home for Purim is generating Oscar buzz, the entire cast and crew—triumphs of mediocrity, each and every one of them—slowly begin to unravel. Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries are always good for an evening of belly laughs, although his acerbic wit seems to have evaporated in his last two films and been replaced by mawkish sentiment. With For Your Consideration, Guest is back in form, skewering a subject well worth roasting: Hollywood and its obsession with self-congratulation. He has rounded up his crew of stalwarts—Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Eugene Levy, and the brave Parker Posey—and brings in Ricky Gervais, creator of The Office, who could raise the embarrassment level to new highs—or drop it to new lows, depending on your outlook.

Even though chronic hay fever keeps him from service in the Marines, Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith tells everyone that he’s fighting overseas. All the while, he’s hiding out in a distant city, working in a munitions factory. When a group of down-on-their luck leathernecks hear the truth, they usher poor Woodrow back to his hometown for a hero’s welcome to ease his mother’s worried heart. Arguably Preston Sturges’ masterpiece, Hail the Conquering Hero is a film so ripe for remake it almost hurts. In classic screwball fashion, it takes on patriotism, the media, and politicians who manipulate war for their own benefit—and in the process, lampoons contemporary wartime culture in an almost frighteningly prescient way. Part of the seven-disk series: Preston Sturges: The Filmmaker Collection.

Director Richard Linklater’s love of the 1970s may have reached its zenith with this film, which would fit well with the paranoid classics Coppola, Pakula, and Altman made some thirty years ago. Adapting (with author Eric Schlosser) the controversial non-fiction account of the fast-food industry, he avoids the hysterical polemics of, say, Michael Moore, for a much more engaging—and infuriating—story. The film follows a teenaged worker at the Mickey’s chain undergoing a political awakening; a burger exec facing a crisis of corporate faith; and a group of Mexicans whose lives are wrecked so that we may eat cheaply. “The machine don’t give a shit,” one character laments, and like the cows in the meat-processing plant, the people of Fast Food Nation are, in fact, devoured by the system.

In many ways, Maine is something of a coastal Minnesota. It has loons, moose, and a stump-studded northwoods. It has a Plymouth, an Orono, a Medford, and a Northfield. We have Granite Gear; they have L.L.Bean. It’s like the two states were separated at birth—by glaciers. But you don’t hear much about the hot Maine music scene. The state’s only star of note is Ray LaMontagne, a guy with a mythical-sounding backstory: One night, after his shift at the shoe factory, he hears a Stephen Stills song on the radio and has an epiphany: He should make music, not shoes! So he quits his job on the spot and starts writing songs. Minnesota has produced Prince, the Jayhawks, and Bob Dylan, and LaMontagne’s sound borrows a bit from all three, as evidenced by his rootsy, sexy 2004 debut, Trouble. The fellow is notoriously shy, which has made touring difficult, but perhaps he’ll feel at home here. 651-989-5151; www.hennepintheatredistrict.org