Blog

MUSIC
Along the Banks of the Mississippi

A great voice is a wondrous thing. A great voice singing the music is was clearly meant to sing, is downright spiritual. Such is the story of William Elliot Whitmore. This man can sing! But his is not just another pretty voice; it’s a vocal representation of the land, of the people, of the industrial smog. The grit and soul in his voice tell the infinite tales of the American working man, the whiskey, the coal mines, the longing, and struggles. Like Tom Waits and Johnny Cash — to whom he’s often compared — Whitmore lends a contemporary edge to an age-old sound soaked in spirituality and emotional depth. Hear him strum on that acoustic guitar, perhaps the banjo, and enjoy your standard bar fare at the Triple Rock. If you get there before 7 p.m., you can cash in on $2.50 pints and half-price appetizers.

9 p.m., Triple Rock Social Club, 629 Cedar Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-333-7399; $10.

A Voice to Carry the Melody

Another astounding vocalist jazzes it up at the Dakota this evening. Accompanied by only bass and percussion, French-Beninese chanteuse Mina Agossi offers a most unique and compelling sound. This is contemporary jazz at its finest. With only her voice to carry the melody, Agossi shapes the bass and drums of stellar duo Alexandre Hiele (bass) and Bertrand Perrin (drums), fusing musical styles from hip hop to world to jazz, blues, and rock. Currently on tour to promote her latest album, Who Wants Love? Live at Jazz Standard, New York City, released just a couple of weeks ago, Agossi is determined to push the limits (which she doesn’t seem to have) of her voice and creativity. Enjoy her refreshing, jazz improv sound, preceded by some even more refreshing happy hour prices. Get there before 6 p.m. for $3.50 appetizers, $6 martinis, and $3 taps, wine, and rails.

7 & 9:30 p.m., Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant, 1010 Nicollet Ave., Minneapolis; 612-332-1010; $17 & $12.

FILM
All Is Not Lost

Few filmmakers can be said to have had as tremendous an impact on film as Ingmar Bergman. With 62 films under his belt before his death this past July, Bergman influenced some of the greatest filmmakers today — Woody Allen, Robert Altman, David Lynch — and ultimately set a standard for film students across the world. Traveling dark and forbidden terrains, with new and imposing cinematic techniques as his tools, Bergman created an entirely new cinematic aesthetic. Join the Oak Street Cinema throughout the next couple of weeks, as they pay homage to the Swedish film giant. Tonight’s film is the 1954 love-tangle A Lesson In Love. It’s just like Bergman to center a film around a philandering gynecologist.

7:30 p.m., Oak Street Cinema, 309 Oak St. S.E., Minneapolis; $8 (seniors $6, members/students $5).

FOOD
After Movie Snack

Sure, there are plenty of good places to eat near the Oak Street Cinema. And many of them are even open until late. But sometimes the oldie-but-goodie makes the best choice. Though I was never a U of MN student, I certainly had many a late-night/early-morning meal at the Village Wok. And unlike so many other late-night meals I had, these were not meals of desperation (you know — the I’m-so-hungry-I-can-eat-anything, beggars-can’t-be-choosers variety). No. A meal at the Village Wok, no matter the time, is a satisfactory one, a well-priced one, a well-served one, and a quickly-served one. Throughout its 35 years, this restaurant has consistently been serving up some of the best Chinese cuisine in town. I recommend the mussels in black bean sauce.

11 a.m. to 1:45 a.m., Village Wok, 610 Washington Ave. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-331-9041.

FILM
A Modern-Day Musical

Writer/director John Carney made the film Once in just 17 days. Clearly not your typical Hollywood production, Once is about as indie as you can get. The film is about a Dublin busker and a Czech girl brought together by music. In the spirit of Hustle and Flow, with an even rawer, hand-held feel to it, Once has an improv quality that keeps even a musical real.

5 and 7:10 p.m., Heights Theatre, 3951 Central Ave. N.E., Minneapolis; 763-788-9079; $8.

FOOD
Dining before the Heights

Get a bite to eat before or after the movie. Central Avenue has a host of new and old restaurants — some of them questionable, but many of them unexpectedly good. Not ready to take any big risks? You’ve got the Chutney Indian Grill just two blocks away. Don’t let the appearance fool you. What it lacks in visual charm it makes up for in culinary details. Just go for the food, rather than the service. You won’t be disappointed.

Chutney Indian Grill, 3700 Central Ave. N.E., Minneapolis; 763-782-9900.

Oddly, the last two movies I’ve seen have had more or less the same storyline: impoverished street musician suddenly finds success but suffers many personal losses along the way.

The first was La Vie en Rose, a biopic about the French singer Edith Piaf. It was long — 140 minutes — and as violent a film as I’ve seen in years. I don’t mean there was a lot of shooting or blood (though there was some of both), but it was relentlessly loud and dark and hopeless. There was tons of screaming, drinking, fighting, and hysterical weeping. The only peaceful scenes were of a jaundiced, dying Piaf and even those included shattering glasses and angry words.

There’s no denying, Marion Cotillard did a spectacular job playing the blighted French singer. And La Vie en Rose was told in a layered mosaic style that worked beautifully, evoking life as we tend to remember it: random memories, tenuously connected, that aggregate over time to form a history.

One might argue that it’s “truer” than the second movie I saw: a sweet, short Irish Sundance winner called Once. And technically, it is. But I take another point of view, that what’s important is a lucid view into the making of great music. And in that sense, Once is the far better film.

Granted, this is a fairytale of a movie. There’s actually a scene in which the street busker and his rag-tag band are cutting a demo album while a two-year-old runs gleefully around the sound studio. I’ve had two-year-olds [three of them] and you can barely make toast when they’re around and upright.

Nevertheless, this film is wonderful. It’s quirky and sad and nearly prayerful: everyone in it is visibly lifted, exalted, made more whole by the music. And, yes, the music is that good.

On a strictly emotional level, Once is real. Its stars, playing simply “the guy” and “the girl” according to a script by director John Carney, are an Irish and a Czech musician (Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, respectively) whose voices simply light up our world. In the story, they sing together for the first time in an empty music shop and everyone — from the clerk, who is leaning on the counter eating a sandwich, to members of the theater audience — goes still. Listening.

There are those, I’m sure, who prefer the music of Edith Piaf to that of Hansard (lead singer of The Frames, one of the most popular bands in Dublin). She was an undisputedly great artist and an important figure in French cultural history. Given this, however, there’s a falseness to La Vie en Rose that bothers me. Piaf did have a stunning voice, and this comes through in spades. But the rest of her life was, according to the film, nothing but ugliness: poverty, degradation, betrayal, abuse, and addiction.

I’ve no doubt all these things happened. But I also suspect there were moments of lightness in her life — the ones that allowed her to sing as she did. Only at the very end of the film, around minute 118, was there even a glimmer of humanity and by that time, it was too late. When Cotillard as the beleaguered and weary Piaf got up and sang “Non, je ne regrette rien” (translated: No, I regret nothing), I didn’t believe it: she should have been regretful if this account was accurate. She had used, cheated, laid waste, and destroyed. I left the theater bleak despite Piaf’s glorious voice, vaguely angry that so much bitterness had been stuffed inside me.

Where Once may err on the other side, portraying life as twinkling and hopeful even in the grayest of circumstances, it does music justice. Watch the scene in which a jaded studio technician, stuck working with a no-name band, listens to them for the first time, his face washed with a craggy wonder at the sound coming from the motley group. Or the one in which the working-class father grins after he listens to his son’s completed album, full of a quiet, aching pride. These alone are worth your $8.25.

Perversely, after a summer of drinking meaty, dry red wines, when the cool weather set in this week, I suddenly got a hankering for white.

A woman’s body is fickle, as I tell my husband often. One day, you slip into your size-7 jeans and run around the world bending every which way like an Olympic gymnast; the next day, though it’s impossible that you have gained 50 pounds, you awaken feeling like some huge, galumphing creature who is in danger of crushing household animals under her swollen feet. That’s just how it is.

Now, my hormonal fluctuations aside, about that wine:

In deference to my mood, my husband opened a bottle of Ferrari-Carano Fumé Blanc — an easy task, as it’s a screwcap. (He picked up this wine, he said, because it’s made by the same winery that produces Siena, a blend of Sangiovese, Malbec, and Zinfandel, that we dearly love.) The color is lovely, clear and oystery-yellow. The nose is interesting, too: far spicier than you might expect of a wine made of 100% Sauvignon Blanc, with notes of cucumber, lime, pineapple, and some sort of redolent dusty-smelling flower, such as zinnia or marigold.

The flavor follows the same pattern — lots of tropical fruit and grass and floral elements — plus it’s full-bodied and finishes with a little green apple and a long-lasting zing in the corners of the mouth. This likely is due to the fact that about 65% of the grapes that go into this Fumé Blanc are aged in stainless steel casks, while the other 35% are aged in French oak. By selecting and putting the lots together, vintners at Ferrari-Carano create a taste at once earthy and sharp.

The Ferrari Carano Fumé Blanc contains 13.9% alcohol; it retails for around $15. And maybe my biological clock isn’t so far off after all. The crisp, apple-ish snap of this wine even reminds me of fall. So there.

3:10 to Yuma. Now playing in theaters around town. The original (1957) is also showing for one week only at September 7, 2007