In this Scottish film, sacked shipbuilder Frank Redmond pulls out of his doldrums when he decides to swim the English Channel. Training, planning, and sneaking around his wife in order to do so give him a new lease on life. As with many a classic British buddy movie, he’s supported by a posse of slouchy … Read more
French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet fashioned the now-classic Delicatessen as a black-humored farce that is a cautionary tale buried within an expansively freaky fairy tale. At a popular French eatery, a series of handymen become the special of the day, until a former clown takes the doomed job and woos the butcher’s daughter. She rallies a … Read more
Blame the gentrification of bluegrass nation on O Brother, Where Art Thou?, NPR, or handsome young bands like Nickel Creek, whose ability to cross over to an open-minded rock audience must chafe home-pickin’ traditionalists to the calloused bottoms of their clogging toes. Of course, bluegrass has been through this all before, when college folkies discovered … Read more
What does it mean that Amazon.com paired the Dixie Chicks’ new album with Al Franken’s new book for a special discount deal? It means some people can’t let go of the past. So the Chicks shocked some fans a few years back by making clear their opposition to the invasion of Iraq; they’ve had a … Read more
What to make of this latest Springsteen recording? On the one hand, it means he’s so hugely successful that he can make whatever kind of music he pleases. On the other, it shows that he’s cemented his star so far in the past that his latest endeavors can slip by unremarked upon, even by many … Read more
Another Texan songbird, Tish Hinojosa, retains the love of her home state by performing in both Spanish and English. She’s equally at home within the Latino music community, or with folkies like Lucinda Williams and Nancy Griffith, or touring internationally with her fellow “Global Divas,” Peru’s Susana Baca and Zimbabwe’s Stella Chiweshe. Her vision of … Read more
Live! Onstage! Tonight at the synagogue! OK, this Minnetonka temple is an unusual venue, perhaps, forone of the world’s finest violinists, but lucky are the few who take advantage of a rare opportunity to see such spectacular musicianship in an elegant and intimate milieu. Israel-born Perlman plays “the Devil’s instrument” ferociously, as if he were … Read more
Theater companies, like most of us, are driven to find a permanent place to call home (see Ballet of the Dolls to the right). But the Skewed Visions performance troupe is at home as a nomadic concept; previous productions have been designed to suit such makeshift “stages” as a parked car and a private home. … Read more
The most thought-provoking piece the Theatre in the Round has staged in some time, Bruce Graham’s play centers on two death-row inmates who strike up a friendship. As they reveal their circumstances, they raise the kind of questions that trouble a civilized society: What is an appropriate punishment for killing someone? What kind of crime … Read more
Ever adept at adapting novels, the Hardcover Theater goes a bit off its own beaten path with A Princess of Mars. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ pulpy, eighties-era sci-fi book concerns a Civil War-era Southern gent who’s inadvertently transported to the red planet. There, he finds he has Herculean physical strength and, of course, falls in love … Read more