Author: rakemag

Herschel V. Jones, a newspaperman and museum trustee, wowed the art world in 1916 when he donated thousands of prints to the young Institute. This exhibition is curated to offer an overview of techniques and trends in a genre that, because of its affordability, has always cast an eye toward market concerns. Thus the popularity of peasant festival scenes in the sixteenth century, replete with vomiting and fondling and buffoonish antics that intrigued the bourgeoisie. Also on view are masterpieces by Dürer, who used his incomparable engraving skills to render light refracting through the windows of St. Jerome’s study, and seemingly every last hair on his companion lion. At the opposite extreme is Francis Jourdain’s White Cat, made almost five hundred years later, whose economy shows the influence of Japanese art, which captivated many French at the fin de siècle. 2400 3rd Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-870-3131; www.artsmia.org

“Where’s the rest of me?” cries the newly amputated Drake McHugh, which was easily Ronald Reagan’s finest performance (that is if you don’t count those sixteen years he spent as a figurehead for California and the U.S.). Based on a scandalous potboiler, Kings Row is the story of “the town they talk about in whispers.” A group of childhood friends leave their stifling hamlet in search of great fortune. But returning years later, they find themselves embroiled in torrid love affairs, dementia, suicides, and the clutches of a sadistic doctor who’ll cut off the legs of any young man with designs on his daughter. We can only wonder why Kings Row never found new life during the Dutch Administration, and it would be a camp classic if it weren’t so somber.

Faith in Woody Allen was restored for many with last winter’s steamy British thriller Match Point; now the director is reviving his comedic antics with a playful murder mystery. As Allen once again sets his story across the pond, Scarlett Johansson, his muse of the moment, plays an American journalism student in London who telepathically receives clues to a murderer’s identity during a magic trick. In order to catch the man known as the Tarot Card Killer, she naturally pairs up with the magician (thankfully, it’s in a platonic way, since he’s played by Woody). As can often befall a detective, even an amateur, she grows sweet on her suspect: a hot-to-trot aristocrat played by Hugh Jackman who is definitely humorous, but may or may not be homicidal.

The Quinceañera is the traditional Mexican celebration of a girl’s fifteenth birthday and subsequent graduation into womanhood, but one young lady has beaten the party to the punch. Magdalena gets kicked out of the house when her Catholic parents learn she is pregnant; forced to turn her attentions from party dresses and limousines, she finds refuge with a great-uncle and gay cousin who have been similarly shunned. This film was shot in family homes throughout the Echo Park area of Los Angeles, a longtime Latino community, and the casting of actual neighborhood residents brings authenticity to what is already a spirited story. That might help to explain how Quinceañera walked away from the Sundance Film Festival this year with both the grand jury prize and the audience award.

As we draw closer to the five-year mark, filmmakers have grown less shy about portraying the tragedy that, as many people say, felt like a big-budget, special-effects movie in the first place. With World Trade Center, Oliver Stone focuses on two Port Authority officers (played by Nicholas Cage and Michael Peña) who found themselves trapped in the wreckage of the second tower, and makes what feels like Irwin Allen’s September 11th. Call JFK and Nixon historically incorrect, but at least they were masterpieces of paranoia and hugely entertaining. Here, Stone brings perhaps the most charged day in history to a grinding halt, though patriots might appreciate the excessive slo-mo, the chest-thumping religious allegories, and his obvious support of the war in Iraq.

In the hands of Outkast video director Bryan Barber, this unusual musical boasts gorgeous cinematography, the kind of rich detail that recalls The Sting, and songs that mix hip-hop with the spirit of Cab Calloway. Set in the Prohibition-era South, Outkasters Antwan A. Patton (that’s Big Boi to his fans), and André Benjamin (aka André 3000) star as the manager and piano player at a speakeasy; two lifelong friends, they’ve grown up with a shared love of music, and, apparently, trouble. The real-life duo have described Idlewild as an “Outkast album in visual form,” but given their reputation for ambition and experimentation, the film is likely to find an audience beyond hip-hop fans.

Celebrating its seventh year of mixing music with film, our little Sound Unseen is all grown up now. This month, it will spare nothing to entertain: Dance-partying, rock ’n’ bowling, and fifteen or so films are all on the docket, with a whole lot more. Among our top picks is My Name is Albert Ayler, a new Swedish documentary examining the short and sometimes troubled life of the 60s free-jazz saxophonist; and Danielson: a Family Movie, an artsy film about the nurse-uniform wearing Christian music collective, made by one of its fans. www.soundunseen.com

As teenagers, we used to drive past Bob Dylan’s rural Minnesota country home and marvel at all the security lighting. Why, we wondered, was he so paranoid? Who’d want to bother an old washed-up folksinger? Now, at sixty-five, Dylan is a rock ’n’ roll star reborn, making some of the most vibrant and relevant music of his career, and shedding the recluse act with a never-ending tour, film roles, and a terrific XM Satellite Radio show. Modern Times is his forty-fourth album, and the final installment of the trilogy that began with Time Out of Mind and heralded Dylan’s return to truly inspired songwriting. Mining the same edgy, world-weary, and tender vein as the other two albums, these songs find Dylan engaged with traditional American songwriting, and, as always, unafraid to experiment.

Those who don’t know any better think of Dean and Gene Ween as those stoners who refuse to outgrow their adolescent stage antics. But the fact is—all sweat, grease, and fart noises aside—Ween is as innovative as Radiohead, as tuneful as the Beatles, and as complex as Mozart. Over more than two decades, this duo has explored, mastered, and subverted the rock anthem, the sea shanty, the country classic, the pop hit, the never-ending psychedelic jam, and more. Their music is as impassioned as it is unpredictable—even if the guys can’t seem to stop writing songs about poop. 651-989-5151; www.hennepintheatredistrict.org

Just when it seemed like the bluegrass revival was about to expire, Boston-based Crooked Still unpacked the cello. This young quartet plays bluegrass with traditional spirit, but they also bring unconventional stylings—and unconventional strings—to their songs. What’s more, the band’s silvery-voiced singer, Aoife O’Donovan, even sounds like a less formal Alison Krauss. But their darker, smarter, more adventurously arranged music is surely a sign that old-time music is ready to be made new once again.