January 2012
87 posts
Books and women: St. Catherine University hosts...
For this blog I do my best to attend literary events that don’t exactly fall within the mainstream of what people expect when they hear the term “literary scene.” (Although, during a recent shopping trip, I was explaining this blog to a young shopgirl and she asked me, “Minneapolis has a literary scene?”) This week, I found myself slightly off the beaten path, among 450 St. Catherine’s alumni...
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Sunset on St. Planet: St. Paul Arts & Culture...
In 2008 I told a cautionary tale in mnartists.org: the tale of “St. Planet,” an incredibly elaborate website that had visitors piloting animated “culturenauts” over an eerie blue-and-mustard landscape in which St. Paul landmarks floated. The website was a project of the St. Paul Arts and Culture Partnership (ACP), a group of Capital City cultural institutions—except it...
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Nominations for the 84th Academy Awards announced
Nominations for the 84th Academy Awards were announced by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Tom Sherak and 2010 Oscar nominee Jennifer Lawrence. (Click here to see the complete list.)
Academy members from each of the branches vote to determine the nominees in their respective categories—actors nominate actors, film editors nominate film editors, etc. In the Animated Feature...
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Voltage: Fashion Amplified to take hiatus in 2012
MNfashion, the organization behind MNfashion Week, is set to make some changes to their programming this year. MNfashion Week will now be known as Minneapolis-St. Paul Fashion Week, the organization announced last month on its blog, and will next take place from February 19-26 rather than in April as was previously the case.
“By aligning ourselves with the cadence of the rest of the...
TUESDAY PICK | All My Relations spotlights...
One of the most underrated aspects of the Twin Cities arts scene is our large and dynamic Native arts community, anchored by institutions like Birchbark Books and All My Relations Gallery. Eight emerging visual artists of Native descent are featured in the current show at All My Relations, Making New Traditions—organized in partnership with the Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School in South...
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“Courtney McLean brought her signature naughty humor in both story and song...”
– Matthew Everett reviews the cabaret Dirty Girls Come Clean, now being presented by Freshwater Theatre Company at Nimbus Theatre.
MONDAY PICK | St. Kate's hosts a reading-optional...
The inconvenient thing about book clubs is that you have to read the books—and these days, who has time for that? Actually, never mind these days—who had time for that even in 1965? That’s when St. Kate’s inaugurated its annual Conversation with Books series, convening “a lively panel of book lovers that highlight recent books of literary merit.” The discussion is meant...
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"Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" sizzles at the Guthrie...
The character Brick spends much of Tennesee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof seeking “that click” in his head: that moment when he’s finally drunk enough to be able to ignore his yowling inner demons. There’s a click of sorts in theater as well: when a production is working so well that as an audience member you become totally absorbed in its universe. That click...
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Acting Company and Guthrie Theater bring "Julius...
I knew we were in trouble with the new Acting Company/Guthrie Theater staging of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, brought into the present day via costumes and set design, when one of Caesar’s advisors walked onstage and the two exchanged one of those shake-it/grasp-it/pound-it handshakes typically encountered in made-for-TV movies about urban youth and in your uncle’s living room...
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FRIDAY PICK | "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" at the...
Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning play (that was also adapted into a movie starring the late Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman) is the first play this year on the Guthrie’s Wurtele Thrust Stage. Greed, sexual desire, and death—the usual trademark goodies in a Williams classic—run rampant throughout the play, all from within the setting of a bedroom where the magic is known...
THURSDAY PICK | Blogfight! Paper Darts and The...
Sometimes it’s the ones you love most who you hurt the most severely, and that will definitely be the case tonight at the Nomad as writers associated the the local literary publication/organization Paper Darts face off against their friends at the creative writing blog The Tangential. I’m among The Tangential’s proprietors, and I’ll be among the readers trying to wow the...
Happy birthday, Boneshaker Books!
This past weekend marked the one-year anniversary for Boneshaker Books, an organization that, to my mind, should be hailed as Minneapolis’s greatest champion of the written word. With a business model based on the likes of The Wooden Shoe in Philadelphia and Bluestockings in New York, the all-volunteer collective behind Boneshaker are showing Minneapolis what it really means to love books.
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WEDNESDAY PICK | "Julius Caesar": Et tu, Guthrie?
The Acting Company/Guthrie Theater collaboration has had hits and misses, but we can be thankful that it supplies the Twin Cities with a steady stream of top-notch, freshly conceived Shakespeare productions. At a time when comparisons between the United States and Rome in decline are increasingly commonplace, director Rob Melrose should have fertile ground to till in his new Julius Caesar,...
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Slamdance Film Festival preview: Neil Young, Stan...
Started in 1995 by filmmakers tired of getting their films rejected, the Slamdance Film Festival takes place from January 20-26 on the busiest street in Park City, Main Street (across the street and only a few hundred feet away from Sundance’s Egyptian Theater), at the top of the hill in the Treasure Mountain Inn, with two screening rooms, a filmmaker lounge, and a small restaurant/bar at the end...
TUESDAY PICK | Books & Bars discusses Patti...
Books & Bars, says Courtney Algeo, “is something that those who like a free show, enjoy discovering new books, and who need a reason to go out and have a few drinks should experience at least once.” Today the popular open book club meets at St. Paul’s hottest new venue, the Amsterdam Bar & Hall, to discuss Just Kids (2010), Patti Smith’s acclaimed memoir of her...
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Was "The Lion King" story based on the Mali legend...
“I expect better from the Daily Planet,” says an upset commenter on my review of the stage adaptation of Disney’s The Lion King. “The Lion King story was stolen from the Mali people. It’s loosely based on its founder Sundiata Keita. This account is a well-known oral tradition. And all these European influences/renditions is nothing but an attempt to capitalize on it...
“Clyde came into rehearsal on Tuesday night with four other people and said to...”
– Navajo playwright Rhiana Yazzie, whose play The Corral—depicting the origins of the American Indian Movement in 1968—is at the center of a controversy that Yazzie is calling a personal vendetta.
MONDAY PICK | Take a date to the Lagoon Cinema and...
When you think “great architecture,” you probably think of the Weisman or the Walker or the Guthrie—but architecture is about what’s inside as well, and the Lagoon Cinema is a quietly wonderful example of elegant design. Tall windows opposite the snack counter face onto bustling Lagoon Avenue, the theaters feature distinctive tree-like light elements with sculpted waves echoing...
SUNDAY PICK | "Stuck Between Stations" sticks...
Some non-local viewers have found it absurd when Stuck Between Stations characters Casper (Sam Rosen) and Becky (Zoe Lister Jones) visit the set of Minneapolis cable access show Freaky Deeky, but that’s actually one of the more plausible things that happens in the duo’s overnight odyssey, which also has them strolling south from the Walker Art Center to Grumpy’s Northeast and...
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SATURDAY PICK | Red Bull Crashed Ice: St. Paul...
The Vulcans used to be the bad boys of winter in the Capital City, but on the threat index, their fire engines and shady past are no match for the 250-pound men in hockey pads who will be barreling down a ramp from the Cathedral steps at the first stop of the Red Bull Crashed Ice American tour. (Presumably the male-only nature of the event appealed to the Archdiocese.) Mayor Chris Coleman is...
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"The Lion King" is still a stunner at 15
On stage, The Lion King feels like a vibrant celebration of African life—but once you start tracing its cultural pedigree, your mind reels. The story was cribbed from Shakespeare by Iowa-born sci-fi guru Thomas Disch, then set to music by flamboyant Brit Elton John with lyrics by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s main man Tim Rice. The film was produced by the American mythmakers at Disney,...