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What does it mean that Amazon.com paired the Dixie Chicks’ new album with Al Franken’s new book for a special discount deal? It means some people can’t let go of the past. So the Chicks shocked some fans a few years back by making clear their opposition to the invasion of Iraq; they’ve had a good, long maternity leave to mull over their outspoken ways. And guess what–things haven’t changed. The album’s first single, “Not Ready to Make Nice,” conveys their current state of mind pretty clearly. Plus, they’ve inched ever closer to the black heart of rock -n- roll by working with producer Rick Rubin, who turned legions of country-music-haters into Johnny Cash fans, and by tapping local talents Gary Louris and Dan Wilson for songwriting contributions. Come to think of it, since Texas probably still hates the Chicks, we’re more than happy to consider them honorary Minnesotans.

Blame the gentrification of bluegrass nation on O Brother, Where Art Thou?, NPR, or handsome young bands like Nickel Creek, whose ability to cross over to an open-minded rock audience must chafe home-pickin’ traditionalists to the calloused bottoms of their clogging toes. Of course, bluegrass has been through this all before, when college folkies discovered Bill Monroe and his brethren; since then, it’s never been a purely hick endeavor. And someone like Darol Anger makes us grateful for that. This fiddle and violin virtuoso approaches bluegrass with musicianship so precise, intelligent, and classically ground that the rustic vernacular gets lost in his own searching and all-inclusive approach to the music. The Turtle Island Quartet, Anger’s jazz-oriented acoustic band, gave him the opportunity to perfect complex playing styles of his own invention; indeed, no one plays quite like him, although folks like Stephane Grappelli, Mark O’Connor, and Bela Fleck line up to accompany him. On this tour, lucky young Nickel Creek singer Sara Watkins joins Anger for an evening of bluegrass that is really much bigger than a genre usually gets. 416 Cedar Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-338-2674; www.thecedar.org

French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet fashioned the now-classic Delicatessen as a black-humored farce that is a cautionary tale buried within an expansively freaky fairy tale. At a popular French eatery, a series of handymen become the special of the day, until a former clown takes the doomed job and woos the butcher’s daughter. She rallies a band of vegetarian activists to save her lover as he clambers his way to escape, encountering a hilarious series of (mostly) sweet local oddballs of the same breed that populate Jeunet’s more recent film, Amelie.

In this Scottish film, sacked shipbuilder Frank Redmond pulls out of his doldrums when he decides to swim the English Channel. Training, planning, and sneaking around his wife in order to do so give him a new lease on life. As with many a classic British buddy movie, he’s supported by a posse of slouchy guys whose hands are permanently curled around pints, and much humor derives from the sight of an aging male body in saggy underpants. But the get-off-yer-butt message is undeniably inspirational and Redmond’s adventure is filmed with such chilly, dizzying clarity that one is reminded of how swimming the Channel is a marvelous and humbling (or ridiculous and incomprehensible) feat. 3911 50th St. W., Edina; 612-825-6006; www.landmarktheatres.com

Next time you have the opportunity to make a bargain with a genie, just say no. And yet, you’ll probably say yes, no matter how many fairy tales you’ve read, because those spell ladies are just so darn persuasive. In this stylized Chinese romance, a poor orphan girl negotiates with a sorceress to become a beautiful princess with whom men fall crazy-stupid in love, but should she ever love them back, they are doomed. Nice deal, kid. Said to be the most expensive Chinese film ever made, this feverish tale from director Chen Kaige (Farewell, My Concubine) presents three different men who fall for the girl’s killer charms as she fights to throw off the curse and live happily ever after–looks and princess status intact. Expect the kind of flashy martial arts, exquisitely choreographed battlefield scenes, and gorgeous sets and landscapes that made films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers so wildly popular on this side of the Pacific. 612-825-6006; www.landmarktheatres.com

Seven years in the making, Water has finally landed on our shores, and it was worth the wait. Shelved after its sets were destroyed by fundamentalist Hindis and the director Deepa Mehta’s life threatened, the production resumed years later in Sri Lanka with a new cast. Water is the story of Chuyia, a precocious eight-year-old who has just been widowed from a man she barely remembers marrying. Forced by ancient laws to mourn eternally in an ashram, the young girl rebels, bringing both hope and turmoil to a group of destitute widows.

Sean Penn and Madonna did it; so did J-Lo and Ben Affleck. For some couples, love and ego swell together in such a way that a cinematic collaboration is inevitable. Now it’s Matthew Barney and Bjork’s turn–and we’re happy to say that the results are stranger and more spectacular than anything Hollywood would turn out. Bjork supposedly swore she’d never act in another film after starring in Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, but apparently her antipathy for that director was subsumed by a desire to work with her artist spouse. For his part, Barney put away the creepy latex get-ups from his five earlier Cremaster films, appearing in Drawing Restraint 9 as a basically unmodified and quite attractive male human. The plot, such as it is, could be summed up as “Barney-n-Bjork’s honeymoon on a Japanese whaling ship,” although the real point of the film, given the heavyweight status of this pair in their respective art and music worlds, is to allow yourself to get lost in the bizarre and gorgeous world they conjure. 612-375-7622; www.walkerart.org; for Lagoon Cinema dates see www.landmarktheatres.com

Today’s open adoptions give birth mothers a degree of peace of mind, as well as provide their children with a sense of identity that so often proved elusive to previous generations. But for much of the twentieth century, pregnant women were spirited off to strange and sometimes cruel places where they delivered and relinquished their babies, often against their will. This engrossing study of the million and a half adoptions that occurred between World War II and Roe v. Wade features interviews with a hundred birth mothers. Their stories reveal the hidden world of unwed mother’s homes, the psychological damage that the experience caused many of them and their children, and the process by which many of these mother-child pairs have attempted to reunite.

Writing under the sly pseudonym Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler is the man responsible for the highly amusing A Series of Unfortunate Events, a string of bestselling tales for especially smart young readers–and for a large handful of slightly juvenile adult readers, the kind who take unabashed pleasure in bathroom humor and the satisfactions of revenge. Those adults should be charmed in a different way by Adverbs: A Novel, a set of sixteen little love stories that introduce a series of mostly unfortunate would-be lovers and lonely-hearts types, as well as indulging Handler’s love of the odd phrase and the even odder observation. 3225 69th St. W., Edina; 952-920-0633

The appearance of a new George Saunders story is always cause for excitement among his steadily growing cult. There really isn’t another contemporary American writer who has tapped so effectively into the absurdities that result from our current climate of cultural confusion. In the process, Saunders has carved out his own niche in unlikely places–the New Yorker, for instance, or Barnes and Noble–where his almost-inimitable style and sensibility remain as jarring as they are refreshing. His latest collection includes many stories originally seen in some of Saunders’ usual magazine forums, as well as previously unpublished work. Though he continues to make his trademark archaeological excursions into a subconscious cluttered with all manner of cognitive dissonance, Saunders is also increasingly willing to rein in the weirdness and deliver stories that are surprisingly straightforward and genuinely poignant.