If you want a wild bash with the lampshade-wearing and the drinking-champagne-out-of-a-shoe, look elsewhere. (Above, maybe.) For one thing, this civic cavalcade, formerly Capital New Year, is being held three days early. (The official auld lang syneing falls inconveniently on a Tuesday, and gosh, that’s a weeknight—though if you have to work Wednesday, you should … Read more
New Year’s is one of those holidays where you can find yourself in a roomful of friendly strangers. In recent years, though, we’ve come to view it more like Thanksgiving—it’s so much more fun to be with people you know and love. Well, Debbie Duncan certainly qualifies. She’s one of the Twin Cities’ most beloved … Read more
Launched in 1997 by Barry Levinson (Diner, Rain Man), Oz showed other theater and film vanguards that the path to creative freedom on the small screen led to HBO. The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and The Wire soon followed. Oz follows the lives (and untimely and/or gruesome deaths) of the prisoners in Oswald Penitentiary’s experimental … Read more
Even amid the ferment of punk and indie rock in the early 1980s, Camper Van Beethoven didn’t quite sound like anyone else, crossing R.E.M.-style jangle-pop with ska and surf rhythms and traditional European string melodies. Not that they made a big deal out of it. Laid-back, laconic, and tongue-in-cheek was their way, and especially on … Read more
We’re not in the camp of those who idolize the Replacements’ earliest work—they’re like tomato soup, and had to cool down before we could stomach them. But it’s remarkable to listen to the increasing sophistication of Paul Westerberg’s writing, culminating in the whisky melancholy of “Within Your Reach” and “Unsatisfied.” The Twin/Tone albums chart the … Read more
Originally got out in 1995 and now re-released, The Thrill of It All box set hits all the high points of the Roxy canon. Early records had a more jagged sound thanks to Brian Eno’s synth experiments, but when he split to pursue tape-loop electronica, singer Bryan Ferry was left at the helm. His interests … Read more
There are many ways to recognize a music snob, but probably the easiest is his insidious way of insisting that a band’s best work is invariably its earliest, least accessible stuff. In the case of New Order, of course, that early ouvre was Joy Division, the maudlin proto-gothic outfit from Manchester, England. We loved that … Read more
Jennifer Aniston gets some kind of prize, perhaps a case of Turtle Wax, for being the first cast member of Friends to successfully anchor a drama on the big screen. Maybe it helps that Good Girl seems like a mild comedy on the surface. But there’s a shark under the waters. Director Miguel Arteta and … Read more
Jean Luc-Godard’s biggest popular success has been praised in some quarters as the greatest European artwork of the 20th century. We wish we liked it that much. To us, the film’s narrative weaknesses overpower its good points, and what others call iconoclastic genius, we call stubborn mulishness. Still, warts and all, Godard changed the direction … Read more
Roman Polanski’s best movies—Rosemary’s Baby, Repulsion, Chinatown—are all about dread and mistrust. But up until now he’s never made a film about the part of his personal history that very likely caused that rare affinity with dark material, namely his childhood in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War. He’s wanted to film it … Read more