I bet you like movies. I like movies, especially ones about lovable goofballs, my hometown, and, for some reason, this movie about fat Elvis saving a nursing home from a redneck mummy. I even sat through more than half of the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 best movies, a boon to Orville, a bane to my exercise regimen, before I realized the list was compiled by the same kind of people who claim to understand New Yorker cartoons.
But for some reason, whenever the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival comes around, I have a hard time getting excited. Paralysis will do that to you, and that’s exactly what I feel when I stare at a roster of 60 films I’ve heard little to nothing about. I should feel like a kid in a candy store; instead, well, it’s all Greek to me.
So I was curious to note that an unusually high number of films have been given unusually high marks this year, including four stars for a documentary about three girls in a war-torn Ugandan village who qualify for a national music and dance contest; lucky for you, that film is still to come, playing Sunday, the last day of the festival.
Also recommended: “This Mango is Now an iPod,” the Soap Factory’s surreal new show of sculpture, found objects, and other irrational installations, opening Saturday night and sure to be the place to be. Just don’t act like you understand any of it.
p.s. If you never saw Miranda July’s cute, quirky flick “Me and You and Everyone We Know,” you can at least read her new book, now being marketed in the coolest, punkest way possible. In fact, I want to write a book just to promote it this way…
Photo of work by Andy DuCett, showing at the Soap Factory
