What I’m really doing this weekend: Tonight I’m going to the opening night party for Minneapolis in 19 Minutes Flat, a short, cinematic historic of Minneapolis starring Kevin Kling. On Saturday, I’m headed over to the Twin Cities Book Festival so that I can geek out over comic books, essay and poetry anthologies, and zines. … Read more
Infamous and The Queen. Infamous, 2006. Written and directed by Douglas McGrath. Starring Toby Jones, Daniel Craig, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Daniels, Sigourney Weaver, John Benjamin Hickey, Lee Pace, Peter Bogdanovich, Hope Davis, Isabella Rossellini, and, in a small but powerful role, Gwyneth Paltrow. Now playing at the Edina Cinema. If you were to look at … Read more
Here I am, full of days. Maybe you know what I mean. You let enough time pass through you and pretty soon you start to feel the world within you winding down. There’s this greater, increasingly unfamiliar friction to your days, and the appetite packs up its bags and goes looking elsewhere for its beefsteaks … Read more
think outside of the fruit basket… I have not been a great friend of late. A couple of The Girls could use a little propping up, a little snarky laughter over lunch, maybe a day of beauty laced with The Macallan 12. But I don’t have time and we can’t seem to synch our schedules, … Read more
Ladeez and Gennulmen: Tonight, at the Bell Auditorium, as part of the distinguished Science on the Screen program, we have Hitchcock’s The Birds. Bring some popcorn of your own making, get a few glasses of cheap wine or fancy beer down your gullet, and a cardigan (the place is cold) and settle in for one … Read more
Wrestling with indecision… How often, lately, have I taken to the laundry list? First, readings, since books (and breath) are warm, it’s cold outside, and I’ve caught a case of the sniffles… Dear Ghosts, with Tess Gallagher, or Evil by Design: The Creation and Marketing of the Femme Fatale, with Elizabeth Menon. Perhaps a stop … Read more
As a literate bunch, I believe there are few Rake readers that appreciate the fine fiction of Mr. Vince Flynn. He is THE new Tom Clancy and lives in the Twin Cities. This statement raises some issues (the literature part, that is). Obviously the key question is whether Tom Clancy writes for the big screen … Read more
Addendum to the October music issue, page 52: It seems we forgot to mention Club Underground, a venue up in Northeast. The club’s booker, Marc Bowen, wrote to say he’s “a little pissed off” about the omission, understandably; and he has since incited a letter-writing campaign… So far, we’ve received no fewer than eight letters … Read more
Here, it seems, is where we are. Right here. And for what purpose are we here? Do we have anything resembling a mission statement? No, no, it appears that we do not have anything resembling a mission statement. Nor, apparently, do we have even a general idea regarding what it is we are up to. … Read more
The art of creating fascinating trailers has certainly improved since I was a kid. Back in the day, previews were nothing more than solemn voice-overs summarizing the coming attraction. Today, many of these pre-feature shorts are more intriguing than the movies themselves, and I don’t know how many times I’ve watched a preview only to … Read more