Natural Selection: Conservative Christian on a road trip with her dying husband’s secret junkie son. Really good.
Compliance: What will people do if they think they’re being told to do it by the police? Bad things.
The Girls in the Band: Women in jazz, from the swing era on. Recommended if you like women or music or humans.
New Skin for the Old Ceremony: New videos for old Leonard Cohen songs. My main takeaway: that’s a great-sounding recording!
Keyhole: Guy Maddin’s surreal haunted house gangster Odyssey. Spellbinding; like a cross between Fritz Lang and a less commercially-oriented David Lynch.
God Bless America: I didn’t see this, but I caught some of the Q&A. Bobcat Goldthwait seems like a good guy.
Wilders: The Movie: Contemporary Dutch right-winger we should all probably know more about. Undermined by weird storytelling choices like focusing on a journalist who can’t get an interview with him but does sometimes look stuff up on Google.
The Real American: Joe McCarthy: Cold War American right-winger we should all probably know more about. Undermined by weird storytelling choices like brooding, shadowy reenactments of all-too-illustrative moments from his life (possibly).
On Monday the Park & Recreation Board is hosting a screening of The Interrupters, a true story about countering violence with peace in Chicago, and probably my favorite film in last year’s festival.
Tales of the Night: Animated fairy tales. Pretty, sometimes, but vacant.
Father’s Chair: Road trip to find a runaway son. Thoughtful, moving.
A Trip to the Moon: Méliès in color, plus a documentary. The gags still work!
Tahrir 2011: 3 short docs on Egypt’s uprising. Best: watching cops talk about how they saw it.
Brooklyn Castle: A Brooklyn public school’s world-class chess team. Fascinating, inspiring, and not too chess-y.
The best thing about Brooklyn Castle was watching it with seven of the main subjects of the film, plus a whole new team from I.S. 318, in Minneapolis for this year’s tournament, which they won.
This Is My Land: Hebron: Israeli settlements. Well made, hard to watch.
Hope: Noir comedy about a vigilante guidance counselor. Very funny, mostly.
V/H/S: Lo-fi horror anthology. Creative and crafty, but my least favorite genre.
Recommended tomorrow at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival: Sound of Noise, a thriller of sorts about six terrorist percussionists (think of a violent Matthew Herbert, sort of) and the tone-deaf cop on their trail.
You can buy tickets online, but if you just show up and it’s sold out, see the Russian stop-motion feature The Ugly Duckling instead.
My name is Erik. I make music and web sites. I don't post much about those things here. Here are some things I post about:
You can ask me anything.
Believe it or not, this is an advertisement for a funeral home.
One of the most spectacular #lightning strikes we have ever seen. This photo was taken near the South...
TCDP TOP PICK: Minnesotans love their farmers’ markets—but if you’re like me, you go to a farmers’ market and think, “Well, this is pleasant! Whoa,...
My wife deftly rejected my slippery-slope argument re: same-emoji marriage.
In related news, my facebook feed is absolutely delightful right now.
New York And London Double-Exposed!
Today we’re spotlighting the work of photographer Daniella Zalcman, whose stunning New...
Updated!
I built him, I take care of him, I’ll fix him.
single exposure taken from manhattan bridge. glass prism held in front of lens. excerpt from photo series project.
