The Rake Magazine

Category: So Little Time

  • The Omega Man (1971)

    There
    seem to be a lot of movies lately that feature a select few survivors
    of a catastrophic apocalypse who have to battle mutated humans in their
    search for other survivors (see 28 Days Later, The Happening, I Am Legend, and Shaun of the Dead). This, however, is not a new concept.

    An
    early pioneer of the post-apocalyptic vampire-mutant survivalist story
    was the novelist responsible for the 1954 science fiction book, I Am Legend.
    Richard Matheson’s story about the last man alive in a future Los
    Angeles has now been reproduced as a movie three times.

    The original
    was 1964’s The Last Man on Earth, starring the legendary Vincent Price, and the most recent was 2007’s I Am Legend, featuring Oscar nominee Will Smith. Not to be outdone in star power, 1971’s The Omega Man enlisted one of the greatest actors of the time, Charlton Heston, to play the protagonist, Dr. Robert Neville.

    The Omega Man
    deviates from Matheson’s book and the other movies by turning the
    vampire creatures into a cult called "The Family," an obvious reference
    to the Manson Family and their murderous plot a few years prior.
    Neville must avoid being caught by the nocturnal Family at night by
    barricading himself in an apartment with powerful searchlights outside
    to keep the albino light-sensitive creatures at bay.

    Continuing with its social commentary, The Omega Man
    pits the power of science against the power of God. The Family believes
    that they have survived the apocalypse, which was put into place by the
    power of scientific knowledge, wielded by super-powers China and Russia
    during a final World War. They want to rid the earth of the last
    remaining purveyor of science — Neville.

    With limited special effects capabilities and deviation from the vampire concept, the producers of The Omega Man
    chose to prey on people’s existing fears, rather than an unknown future. The question becomes, what is more scary —
    cannibalistic vampire-mutants, or a violent, delusional, puritanical
    cult?

    Go see The Omega Man at the Northeast ’08 Music and Movies on Tuesday, June 17, at The Basin, 22nd Ave. NE and Quincy St. NE. Death to Our Enemies will provide the music portion of the evening.

  • New Works 4 Weeks Festival

    Red Eye Theater’s New Works 4 Weeks Festival is well underway. After its Works-In-Progress performances last week, the festival heads into its Isolated Acts performances this weekend with Justin Jones’s Pinhead, a reaction to Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz. This new pseudo-auto-choreo-biography begins Friday, June 13 and runs through Sunday, June 15, with 8 p.m. performances on Friday and Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday.

    From June 19 to June 21, Leah Nelson teams up with Roxane Wallace to present Techni-Colored Blues, a piece that moves and freshly examines identity in a Midwestern culture. Performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

    The festival closes with a triple bill: Jules Weiland and Janelle Ranek’s C-Sick, Becca Barniskis’s The Queensberry Rules and Tisch Jones’s Up Against the World. The three pieces, which run June 26 – 28 at 8 p.m. nightly, explore varied topics like coping with Hepatitis C, boxing rules as metaphor, and life in the inner city.

    Tickets are $15 for Friday and Saturday shows and $12 for Thursday and Sunday shows. $8 tickets are available for students and seniors with a valid ID. Tickets can be ordered online at www.redeyetheater.org or by calling (612) 870-0309.

  • The Gin Game

    Bain Boehlke and Wendy Lehr are onstage together again in the Jungle Theater’s production of The Gin Game, which opened May 30. Set in a seedy nursing home, this Pulitzer Award-winning drama by D.L. Coburn examines the problems of growing old as two residents strike up a friendship during a card game. Boehlke and Lehr directed themselves in the production.

    Jungle Theater, 2951 S. Lyndale Ave., Minneapolis; 612-822-7063; $26 – $36; half-price rush tickets will be made available 30 minutes prior to each performance.

  • Augustus F. Sherman: Ellis Island Portraits, 1905 – 1920

    A revealing and fascinating set of images snapped by an untrained eye have been making the rounds through museums around the country and finally makes a stop at the Minnesota History Center starting July 4. "Augustus F. Sherman: Ellis Island Portraits, 1905 – 1920", a photographic series of newly arrived immigrants taken by an Ellis Island registry clerk gives viewers a compelling perspective on turn-of-the-century America and the diversification that has become a staple of our country’s past.

    The exhibit runs through September 21. Tickets are $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and college students and $5 for children aged 6 – 17. The cost is free for children under 5 and MHS members. The museum is open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m. Sundays and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on holidays and Mondays through Labor Day. The Minnesota History Center is located at 345 W. Kellogg Blvd. in St. Paul. For more information, visit www.mnhs.org.

  • Through the Looking Glass

    Local artist Jennifer Davis is exhibiting Through the Looking Glass, a series of whimsical and emotional narrative paintings that study the quirks of humanity, at the SOO Visual Arts Center’s Toomer Gallery beginning June 20. According to Davis, she approaches her work as an intuitive process. "From the confusing battles we fight within ourselves, to the familiar feeling of being lost in a crowd, each story is played out in a dreamland that somehow feels like home."

    The exhibit kicks off Friday, June 20 with an opening reception from 6 – 9 p.m. The SOO Visual Arts Center is located at 2640 Lyndale Avenue South in Minneapolis.

  • The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde

    The Guthrie Theatre presents Irish playwright Thomas Kilroy’s The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde, an exploration into the life of the wife of renowned writer Oscar Wilde, who had a highly controversial relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas during the marriage. Starring Sarah Agnew (of the acclaimed one-woman show The Syringa Tree) as the titular character, with Matthew Greer as Oscar Wilde, the play is a mix of fact, fiction, and speculation that brings to life the private world they shared. Puppets and live musicians will also be seen in the play’s transcendental world.

    The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde runs through July 11 on the McGuire Proscenium Stage. Marcela Lorca directs. Tickets are between $29 and $59, and can be purchased by calling (612) 377-2224 or by visiting www.guthrietheater.org.

  • The Once and Future Celt

    The acceptance of identity and the power of family is hilariously chronicled in The Once and Future Celt, Bill Watkins’s conclusion to his trilogy of memoirs. The tale begins when the 21-year-old narrator finds himself in the care of a band of Gypsies. As he begins to fall for one of the camp members, he learns that the Gypsies and the Celts are not so different as he experiences the prejudices they suffer in Britain.

    After returning to his parents’ home in Birmingham, England and dealing with his proud mother and secretive father, Bill departs to follow the call of the Celt, the hireath – really just an excuse to pursue a girl. As he explores and meets a variety of characters, he comes full-circle in his quest for identity and self-actualization as the Celtic revival of the twentieth-century begins to take hold.

    Following the acclaimed A Celtic Childhood and Scotland Is Not for the Squeamish, The Once and Future Celt is "a delightful and often touching book, full of sly rebellion." (Frank Delaney, author of Tipperary and Ireland.) Bill Watkins will be appearing at Magers & Quinn booksellers on Tuesday, June 17 at 7 p.m. for a book reading and signing.

    The Once and Future Celt is available now from Scarletta Press. For more information, visit www.scarlettapress.com. Magers & Quinn booksellers is located at 3038 Hennepin Avenue South in Minneapolis.

  • God for President

    What would the world be like if God were president? Local inspirational speaker and spiritual psychotherapist Lisa Venable answers that question in her first book, God for President: A Parable About the Power of Love. When disillusioned activist Sarah Rose retreats from Washington to her Minnesota hometown, she begins to wonder exactly what would happen if God were the leader of the free world. Soon a mysterious woman enters her life and recruits her to help in a campaign for the Oval Office. It is on the road to the White House that Rose is able to use love, not fear, to govern a country.

    In the tradition of The Celestine Prophecy, God for President is a reminder that no one person or party may have the corner on "right" or "the American way" and that using love is a better way to run a country than fear.

    Lisa Venable will appear at Magers & Quinn Booksellers to discuss the book God for President, now on sale from Conari Press.

  • August Moon

    Mira James, heroine and amateur sleuth of the Murder by Month mystery series, returns in local author Jess Lourey’s newest work August Moon. This fourth installment of the series finds Mira about to leave adopted home Battle Lake, Minnesota for good — until a high school cheerleader is murdered. The act is soon linked to a local pastor who runs an evangelical Bible Camp that gives Mira a "Stepford Wives meets Hee Haw" vibe. But in order to catch the killer, Mira must first confront darkness in her past.

    The Murder by Month series, which includes May Day and June Bug, has been praised by The Strand magazine as, "Sweet, nutty, evocative of the American Heartland, and utterly addicting." Lourey’s previous work, Knee High by the Fourth of July, was a finalist for the Left Coast Crime Lefty Award for humorous mysteries.

    August Moon is on sale now from Midnight Ink Books. Once Upon a Crime is located at 604 West 26th Street in Minneapolis.

  • Murder at the Bad Girl's Bar & Grill

    A murder in a south Florida retirement community would seem to be an event that is definitely out-of-the-ordinary. Add in a blind heiress loved by the town’s only cop, a former slasher film queen who runs a raucous Bar & Grill for the under-65, and a trio of Swedish circusfolk, and you’ve got yourself a good mystery. Acclaimed author N.M. Kelby offers up her fourth book, Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar & Grill, which went on sale June 3rd. Library Journal has praised Kelby, a former Twin Cities journalist whose stories have appeared in Minnesota Monthly, as a cross between Carl Hiaasen and Christopher Moore, and Hiaasen described her as, "A natural-born storyteller who manages to be very funny and very wise at the same time."

    Kelby will be appearing the University of Minnesota Bookstore on Wednesday, June 25 at 4 p.m., and at Magers and Quinn Booksellers on Thursday, June 26 at 7 p.m. Earlier that day (Thursday), she will be speaking on the Write On Radio! program of KFAI: Fresh Air Radio 90.3/106.7 (11 a.m.).

    Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar & Grill is on sale now from Shaye Areheart Books. Visit the author’s website, www.nmkelby.com, for more information.