Dear Rake, I was too excited when I saw the cover of the February Rake [“Exposed”]! It was right before I left on my first vacation at a naturalist resort. The experience was great and the magazine was a big hit at the manager’s cocktail party, among the many Minnesotans who “bare it all” at … Read more
To wit: the Heights Theatre is giving everyone another opportunity to check out Christopher R. Mihm’s local B-Movie homage Monster of Phantom Lake. This time, the film will be even better than it was back in early March, only because we’re going to have the great early summer weather that these frightfests deserve. I use … Read more
Let’s just get last weekend’s art events taken care of, shall we? Go see the Ballet of the Dolls show! I don’t know a ton about dance, but I’d venture to say that this show is pretty terrific. I’m secretly a music-head, so the thing I liked best was how the music covered the gamut … Read more
He needed to get rid of some of this shit –the books and magazines, the photographs of his war and the places he’d been and the things he’d seen. He needed to get out from under that story; it kept things too fresh for him, even as what he had actually experienced became more unreal … Read more
Le Proces (The Trial), 1962. Written and directed by Orson Welles. Starring Anthony Perkins, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Elsa Martinelli, Madeleine Robinson, Anoldo Foa and Billy Kearns as the inspectors, Suzanne Flon, Carl Studer, the lovely character actor (and Welles stalwart) Akim Tamiroff, the madman William Chappell, and Orson Welles himself, as the magistrate. Where … Read more
Tiffani is getting railroaded. I finally saw the “reunion” episode of Top Chef the other night, and I seriously couldn’t sleep afterward. Tiffani is being cast in the role of the villain. Don’t think for a minute that just because it’s Reality Television that there aren’t people behind the scenes working the events into “story … Read more
My verdict on The Elephant Man opera: worth seeing, so long as you’ve downed some espresso before hand. My random thoughts: This being a contemporary French opera, the “dialogue” seldom manages to get outside of poor Joseph Merrick’s head. Therefore, the libretto is gawd-awful, chalk-full of trite simplifications about how it must feel to be … Read more
Have ya’all heard about that insane 3-Day Walk thingamajig? It’s a fundraiser for the Susan B. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in the form of an intense athletic event, not unlike the old AIDS Ride, for which women strap on running shoes and walk twenty miles each day for three days straight. (And many–most–of these women … Read more
The Americanization of Emily, 1964. Directed by the hack Arthur Hiller, written by the decidedly unhackneyed Paddy Chayefsky. Starring James Garner, Julie Andrews, James Coburn, Melvyn Douglas, Joyce Grenfell and one of the great character actors, Keenan Wynn (most famous as Major Bat Guano in Dr. Strangelove). When Paddy Chayefsky died in 1981 of cancer … Read more
Stanley Kunitz, 1905-2006 Kunitz did not go mad, die young or yield to other forms of dissipation, despite tragedies in his early life. For years he made his living editing reference books and teaching at universities. At night he holed up in a spartan writing room where he read, wrote and rewrote until dawn. “Stanley … Read more