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It’s springtime in the Twin Cities, which means touring musicians are once again willing to add us to their schedule, including the talented New England singer/songwriters Dar Williams and Melissa Ferrick. On the light side, Dar Williams, with her quirky, melancholy songs about alternative radio, therapy, and how southern California wants to be western New York; on the dark side, Melissa Ferrick tearing through her songs of unrequited love, troubled father/ daughter relationships and frogs named Freddy. Both artists are tremendous songwriters who spent most of the last decade on the folk-rock fringe and deserve to get noticed. Judging by their recent live albums, they both put on formidable shows. Cabooze, 917 Cedar Ave. S., (612) 338-6425; Pantages Theatre, 710 Hennepin Ave., (612) 339-7007

Regular listeners to A Prairie Home Companion might find these songs familiar. A frequent guest and onetime music director on the show, multi-instrumentalist maestro Ostroushko wrote the songs on Red Lodge as a challenge to himself to fill a five-week stint last March with entirely new work. The 10 songs here reflect the range of his compositional skill, hitting blues, bluegrass, and Celtic with equal aplomb. He covers a comparable emotional terrain—sly swagger in “Topanga Canyon Strut,” high-stepping ebullience on the title track, the meditative mourning in his September 11 memorial that closes the album.

Lucinda Williams is a stubborn lady, which has been both a blessing and a curse. She’s refused to compromise her genre-crossing, rough-edged songwriting, but it’s not easy to get ahead in country music when your influences also include Delta blues and electric-era Dylan. She’s too raw and electric for country radio and too twangy for rock airplay, sort of like the Osmonds except that in her case that meant nearly 20 years of bouncing from label to label trying to get her music released. Things have gotten a little easier since 1998’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road hit it big, protecting her integrity with the music industry’s best armor, album sales. World will be her third album in four years, and while it doesn’t surpass Car Wheels, it does stand proudly beside it. The best songs here are smartly written, fiercely emotional and richly varied in mood. The slow croon of “Fruits of My Labor” segues into the swaggeringly sexy Stones-y crunch of “Righteously.” “Minneapolis,” a melancholy, bitter ballad about a shattered relationship, packs a punch but won’t exactly boost tourism here, thanks to lyrics like “a dozen dead roses are all that’s left in Minneapolis.” (Hey Lu, we’ve got great cross-country skiing! A vibrant theater community! Paul Magers! Give us another chance!)

By far the most well-deserved Oscar of 2003, Hayao Miyazaki’s haunting anime was so far ahead of its competition in the Best Animated Feature category that it made them look like, well, cartoons. Indeed, there’s so much going on here it’s hard to absorb in one viewing. The ethereal and often weird plot follows Chihiro, a 10-year-old girl who becomes trapped in an otherworldly carnival where her parents turn in to pigs and a witch named Yubaba steals her name and puts her to hard labor. Like previous films My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke, there’s a strong current of environmentalism, most notably in the tragic figure of Okutaresama, a river god turned to walking sludge by pollution. But though it reflects its creator’s deeply felt moral views, this is no mere “message film.” Though the story’s simple enough to appeal to The Lion King’s core audience, Miyazaki’s surreal imagination and painstaking attention to detail make his work worthy of everyone’s attention.

Sam Peckinpah’s fascination with human brutality was never so blazingly controversial than this 1971 revenge thriller, starring Dustin Hoffman as a milquetoast professor who confronts his capacity for violent revenge when his wife is attacked by local hooligans. At the time, it prompted critic Pauline Kael to call him a fascist director, and it’s no less disturbing today. But it cannot be easily dismissed as exploitation; it’s too technically brilliant, and Peckinpah’s subtle and layered script refuses to give the viewer a character to safely identify with. The physical violence is, if anything, less disturbing than the emotional shocks—most infamously, a rape scene that blurs into seduction, but also because of the implied idea that killing is not just a necessary evil but an enjoyable one. Perhaps it’s an indefensible film, perhaps not. But like Hitler’s documentarian Leni Riefenstahl, Peckinpah’s ideas go deeper than the images, and demand to be met first on their own terms if they’re going to be shot down.

This is the fourth showbiz-schmucks mockumentary from Christopher Guest and his Spinal Tap/Guffman/Best in Show troupe, and if we’re lucky they’ll be able to go all the way to eleven. This time around the target is folk music—lampooning the malcontents, losers, and loonies reunited decades past their prime for a Carnegie Hall memorial concert. The most promising news: For the first time since This Is Spinal Tap, Guest reunites with bandmates Michael McKean and Harry Shearer in the guise of a Kingston Trio send-up called the Folksmen. The songs we’ve heard so far are a credit to the legacy of “Big Bottom.” Folk’s tendencies toward pomposity and overearnestness make spoofing it practically the definition of shooting fish in a barrel, but you know what they say: Hear “If I Had A Hammer” once too often, and everything starts looking like a nail.

As recent events have made painfully obvious, the peoples of the world still can’t get along. It would be nice to think that this, the biggest local film event of the year, might help bridge the gap in some way. With more than 120 films from 50 countries screening at theaters all over town, there are far too many worthy movies to properly enumerate here, but you’ve got everything from quirky Australian comedies to Swedish psycho-thrillers to documentaries on the Chinese working class. Visiting filmmakers include Robert Duvall, whose Assassination Tango has opening-night honors at the State Theater April 4. The most timely entry is surely Marooned in Iraq, a fascinating and music-rich drama about the Kurdish plight from the director of A Time For Drunken Horses. But our secret pleasure during the last few fests has been to go see at least one film completely at random, no matter where it’s from or what it’s about. It’s never failed to open our eyes to something new and interesting. It’s a big world out there; this is your chance to go somewhere you’ve never even thought of before. Multiple venues and showtimes; (612) 627-4430, http://www.ufilm.org/fest/2003

Just think, if this document had never been written, King George would still be pushing us around. He’d make us all drive on the wrong side of the road and wear powdered wigs, and demand that we call soccer “football” and freedom fries “chips.” That’s just the kind of tyrant he was. Luckily, the Declaration of Independence put a stop to all that. But seriously: It’s remarkable to think of how the ideals expressed so succinctly here—life, liberty, and all that jazz—have survived these 227 years and remain central to our concept of the America we want to be. Of the 200 originally printed, only 25 copies are known to have survived. The one on tour here was a recent discovery—found, weirdly enough, behind the frame of a $4 thrift-store painting and bought for $8 million by TV producer Norman Lear, who sent it out to spread its message just like it did circulating around the colonies in 1776. MIA, 2400 Third Ave. S., (612) 870-3131, www.artsmia.org

What a treasure the Minnesota Zoo continues to be. Hard to believe it turns 25 years old this year; it seems like only yesterday when they were talking about a state-of-the-art zoological garden out in the cornfields of Apple Valley, just about the time we were all feeling kinda creeped out by Como. Here’s a great way to celebrate: Put the kids in the minivan and head out to the up-and-running Family Farm section of the zoo, and watch them go ga-ga over the piglets, ducklings, calves, and other babes presently on order from Mother Nature. MN Zoo, 13000 Zoo Blvd., Apple Valley, (952) 431-9500, mnzoo.org

It’s nearly perfect that the mischief-minded David Sedaris first gained fame for being an elf. If you’ve heard of Sedaris at all, you know about his hilarious, sardonic memoir “The SantaLand Diaries,” detailing his petty humiliations as one of Kris Kringle’s helpers at Macy’s department store. Insightful, bitter and genuinely sidesplitting, it struck a nerve among NPR listeners and freed Sedaris from elfdom and a series of other go-nowhere jobs. Since then he’s written four books of essays and stories, and still contributes regularly to Ira Glass’ radio series This American Life. He’s got a terrific ear for dialogue and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of dry wit. He also has a knack for recognizing and capturing life’s bizarre little moments. These often prompt his funniest observations, whether he’s struggling to explain Easter to a Muslim in a language he barely knows or explaining the way of the Rooster, his yokel younger brother who thinks a businesslike name for his floor-sanding company is “Silly P’s.” His last book, Me Talk Pretty One Day, actually caused fights in our house over who got to read it next. But his real skill is as a monologist, easily on par with Spalding Gray, and his stories are best heard rather than read. State Theater, 805 Hennepin Avenue, (612) 339-7007, hennepintheatredistrict.com