Now, here’s fodder for daydreams and late-night speculation: What would happen to the earth—and, more pointedly, to our massive infrastructure of buildings, bridges, subways, and sculptures—if the human race were to disappear? Author and University of Arizona journalism professor Alan Weisman has asked the question of everyone from geologists and paleontologists to art conservators and … Read more
Contemporary dance seems an unlikely vehicle for exploring our culture’s obsession with physical perfection, what with all the buff beauties prancing about. But that didn’t stop local choreographer Matthew Janczewski from assembling an impressive cast of collaborators to help realize his heartfelt, movement-based rebuke of superficiality—in fact, it’s his most ambitious project to date. The … Read more
This is the first time a Sarah Ruhl play has been produced in the Twin Cities since the thirty-something hotshot’s Eurydice became the hit of Off-Broadway this summer. The Clean House is an earlier product of Ruhl’s fantastical imagination, and one with an important distinction from Eurydice: Even though it was a Pulitzer finalist in … Read more
The stalwarts at Rain Taxi once again put together this full day of lit love for the seventh annual TCBF, which is now firmly entrenched as an autumn tradition and a welcome respite from the paralyzing onslaught of seasonal affective disorder. Think of the day as a sort of Renaissance Festival for bibliomaniacs. You probably … Read more
The Old Testament’s most difficult book, the Book of Job, planted the seed of this new play. From the “unknowable nature of God” therein, which local playwright Alan Berks described as “one of the scariest things I can think of,” a new ghost story was born. Berks (who wrote the 2006 Fringe Festival hit, How … Read more
Its 2006-07 season was chock full of chestnuts, but now, finally, Theatre de la Jeune Lune opens its new season with an original production. The Deception is an adaptation of Pierre de Marivaux’s La Fausse Suivante, a dark eighteenth-century French comedy in which a young woman disguises herself as a man so that she can … Read more
Before Stanley Kubrick dedicated himself to creating “serious” films that viewed humanity with a cold, clinical eye, he made The Killing (1956), a tense little noir about a racetrack heist. Sterling Hayden stars as the mastermind who sets the pot to boiling, and leads a cast of some of the best character actors ever to … Read more
Cate Blanchett reprises her role as Elizabeth I, virginal queen of England. As usual there’s all sorts of innuendo about her hunger to get shagged by this or that prince or pirate. This time, England is under threat of Spanish invasion, and who should come to the queen’s aid but Clive Owen’s lusty Sir Walter … Read more
Director Aaron Katz’s Quiet City is part of the ever-growing “mumblecore” movement in indie film, a genre that favors disaffected youth who struggle to pay the bills. These films defy summary and star nonprofessional actors who improvise most of their dialogue, or, well, mumbles. In Quiet City, a girl gets lost in Brooklyn and meets … Read more
In 2004, director Amir Bar-Lev first approached the parents of young Marla Olmstead with the idea of making a documentary of her extraordinary talent. Over the course of a year, this four-year-old girl from Binghamton, New York, sold nearly $300,000 worth of abstract paintings, was covered by news outlets from around the world, and then, … Read more