On Location of "A Serious Man"

On Location
Originally uploaded by deeshader

My old friend Michael Tezla on location at the Red Owl on East 7th Street during the filming of the Coen Bros. "A Serious Man" The film is a black comedy period piece set in 1967, located in St. Louis Park where the Coen's grew up.

"A Serious Man" follows Larry Gropnik, a Jewish academic played by Michael Stuhlburg and his existential struggle as his wife Judith considers leaving him for his colleague Sy Ableman. Complicating his life, Larry's ne'er do well brother Arthur (played by Richard Kind) is living in the basement and won't leave and his daughter is stealing to pay for a nose job and son is dealing for marijuana.

Habanero Bill Wins Throwdown

My colleagues at Mpls/St. Paul magazine, Steve Marsh, Bill Swanson, and Stephanie March decided to challenge each other under the guidance (or threat) of Food Editor Adam Platt. The resulting winner may be of great surprise given popularly held theories of aging and digestion!

Boulangerie du Paris

My friend Mike is currently living in Paris and running a tech company there. His life in Paris reminds me of when I traveled to Paris to shoot a film back in the 1980s and especially those amazing breads, pastries and coffee's at the Boulangerie.

What's This Masterpiece Doing Here?

National Gallery Treasure hanging on a wall on Wardour Street
Originally uploaded by Dippingmytoes

The National Gallery of Art in London, in order to promote viewing of the treasures in it collection, began hanging some its most treasured pieces outdoors on the streets of London. This painting by Jan van Eyck is a masterpiece known as the "Arnolfini Portrait" (1434) a portrait of Giovanni di Nicolao Arnolfini and his wife in a Flemish bedchamber is on Wardour Street - a replica of course.

Conservatives Voted for Obama

I especially want to thank the Conservatives and Republicans who saw the light in this election and voted for Obama. An interesting statistic from the recent vote totals was that only 22% of all counties in the nation voted for McCain and most of them were in the deep South. This number shows that county's that voted for Obama were wide spread across urban, suburban, exurban and rural counties.

Thank you. I am optimistic it is possible to find common ground.

If you are a Christian you might want to watch this testimonal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBLnwMbYmUw

In the Middle for Obama

Obama is Beautiful World!

Everybody Loves Obama

A Beautiful Day in America

As an American born in the 1950s, witness to the 1960s, raised in the 1970s, came of age in the 1980s, disillusioned in 2000 and 2001... I am overwhelmed today. It's the dawning of a new age in America.

I would have to say that one of the most defining aspects of American life for my generation is the civil rights movement. As a kid my parents were Republicans and we moved to Washington, D.C. in 1967. Although my older brother and sister got caught up with being "Clean for Gene" and I was fascinated by seeing the Nixon administration up close as well as what went on inside Capitol Hill -- my parents were totally in favor of Civil Rights. They admired Dr. Martin Luther King and Jackie Robinson during his speaking tour across the country to break down racial barriers and segregation stayed in our house.

Yes, I repeat, Jackie Robinson stayed in our house because no hotel would allow him to rent a room in Moorhead Minnesota.. As kids we were thrilled. Robinson was a baseball legend. We didn't see race as an issue. We didn't find his black skin to be anything but cool.

Today, in America, a barrier went down. It is very satisfying and brings us all closer together as a nation.

The Ground Game

As you can tell I think and feel in my heart that this election will be won today on the ground. I believe Barack Obama when he says that this election is not about HIM it is about US. And what that means is that in every corner of the nation the young people and the old, the black brown, yellow, red and the white people make up of movement that will not be divided by hate, anger and extremism.

When I woke this morning I felt a palpable sense of expectation for something great about to come. I also was slightly haunted by the sense in this country of missed opportunities. For instance, a huge transformation of possibility was cut short when Bobby Kennedy was shot down in Los Angeles. And of course one cannot ever erase the pain in our hearts that Martin Luther King's life was cut short when he still has so much to offer the country in terms of moral leadership.

But today we have a huge potential in front of us for change and transformation. All those young people working in Obama office around the country are a movement. All I will say to them today is: YES WE CAN! This is election ours if we step up and take our country back.

Listening to Charles

In this time of nasty and dirty politics filled with lies and divisive attacks its is wonderful to hear a Charles Alexnader in Colorado talk honestly. Honesty is severely lacking in todays public life. Let's listen to Charles.

"A great moment: When the press was hitting hard on the pregnancy of Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter, he did not respond with a politically shrewd "I have no comment," or "We shouldn't judge." Instead he said, "My mother had me when she was 18," which shamed the press and others into silence. He showed grace when he didn't have to."

-Peggie Noonan, Wall Street Journal 10/31/2008

A Higher Purpose

Honesty is Virtue

This election in the past couple of weeks has become a referendum on HONESTY. And the most dishonest players in this race are McCain and Palin. The Republican candidates for the highest office in America spend little time talking about their own virtues and policies and almost all of their time speaking lies about their opponents.

When addressing an agitated extremist base, they attribute ideas, philosophies and polices that Obama and Biden have never endorsed, advocated, or supported to them with snide derision. On the campaign trail McCain and Palin's claims have grown increasingly more strident, inaccurate, and frankly wildly freaky.

In Iowa just a few days ago, Palin with her confusing malapropisms, told an audience Obama would confiscate property, investments, inventory, and destroy all the values we teach our children, moving America toward tyranny and away from freedom. This Communist red-baiting is HOGWASH and non-sense born of desperation. But what it clearly shows is the extent that McCain and Palin will use all kinds of lies and deceit to gain political power.

McCain and Palin are not truthful people we can trust with leadership in America.

Endorsement from Another General

In his endorsement of Barack Obama, Lt. General Robert G. Gard warns of flaws in character that are detrimental to McCain's ability to lead the country.

"The fields of foreign and national security policy, however, are John McCain's disqualifying weaknesses, in my view. McCain has demonstrated clearly that he is a dedicated ideologue when it comes to foreign policy, unwilling to consider opinions or even credible evidence contrary to his preconceived notions.
His temperament, marked not only by impatience but also by rude and sometimes hostile behavior, would discourage advisors from bringing to his attention views that might not be consistent with his preconceptions. A President with this combination of significant shortcomings would be a dangerous commander-in-chief, posing an unacceptable risk to the security of the nation.
McCain has adopted, promoted, and sustained the position of the so-called neo-conservatives and ultra-nationalists who believe that the United States should capitalize on American military superiority to spread democracy abroad. Overthrowing the Iraqi government was seen as the first step in transforming the politics of the Middle East by converting governments in the region to democracies friendly to the United States and its interests. McCain reportedly has bragged in private conversations that he was the first neo-con."

- Lt. General Robert G. Gard Jr. (USA, Ret.)

"Whack-Job" from Wasilla

Here is a woman who doesn't know the difference between socialism, communism and rheumatism. Yet she just keeps getting more and more wacko in her speeches and misrepresentations of the truth. McCain's own advisors have been calling her "Rogue Diva" and "Whack-Job"

Palin's Iowa speech is extremist stupid-talk way way out on the fringe since Obama never advocated confiscating wealth nor does he intent to raise taxes on the middle class. Lie, lies and distortions of reality is not the qualities we look for in the leaders we sent to Washington. Maybe they do in Alaska?

The statements from McCain ads about Palin that are more telling than the pet-names Rogue Diva and Whack-Job was the statement that she has the trust of nobody in the campaign and "her family." Wow, that's pretty rough-talk. Her own family doesn't trust her?

“But I also know this. I know that the size of our challenges have outgrown the smallness of our politics. I believe that Democrats and Republicans and Americans of every political stripe are hungry for new ideas, new leadership, and a new kind of politics — one that favors common sense over ideology; one that focuses on those values and ideals we hold in common as Americans.

“Most of all, I believe in your ability to make change happen. I know that the American people are a decent, generous people who are willing to work hard and sacrifice for future generations. And I am convinced that when we come together, our voices are more powerful than the most entrenched lobbyists, or the most vicious political attacks, or the full force of a status quo in Washington that wants to keep things just the way they are.”

- Barack Obama. October 27, 2008

So what? Did you say SO WHAT!

A lot of people like to assume that businessmen and self-starter entrepreneurs are Republicans and they support McCain. Not so. Absolutely no so. This group is a political PAC of businessmen I know who are progressive forward thinking citizens and strong supporters of Barack Obama.

Even before Obama came onto the national scene, this group of proven leaders in the business sector were deeply troubled with the direction of the country and the arrogance of power that Bush, Cheney and the Republicans used their office toward bad ends.

Opie and Andy

Ron Howard, Andy Griffith and the Fonz.

“Government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology.”

- Barack Obama, August 29th, 2008

Video Shows Hate in McCains House

Straight Talk from A Man of Honor

Colin Powell is a General, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State in the Bush Administration as well as a centrist Republican.

"What you won't hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon -- that sees our opponents as competitors to challenge, but not enemies to demonize."

– Barack Obama, June 3, 2008

McCain 4.0 or Not?

Hope and Change

As much as the professional spin-doctors and political cynics want to twist the truth and create a evil view of Barack Obama, he is just like the rest of us, a decent American who is committed to change for a better future and a greater America.

Listening to Republicans

Too Close for Comfort

Obama and the Third Way

"To me, a good politician should be like a good designer: someone who will not force a constituency or a client into making a choice between the lesser of two evils but who can put the energy into discovering a third, obviously better way to solve a problem. I would like to see more politicians who, like Barack Obama, show this kind of creative thinking."

- Innovative Architect and Designer Erin Moore who's firm FLOAT Architecture Research and Design was located in Tucson AZ until recently when moved to Williamette Valley, Oregon

McCain: What it means to be a Maverick

I guess one can be comforted with the fact that the RNC did return in its final night to the feeling of a morticians convention. You have to admire John McCain's heroic suffering in Vietnam but I was afraid not that I'd fall asleep during his speech but that HE would. Clearly, this man's time was 8 or 12 years ago but he's way past his prime.

Obviously, the rabid and extremists among us will never change their views on this political campaign. Those who seek government mandated creationism and prayer in the schools, the repeal of Roe vs. Wade, 50 more years of war for peace, and oil drilling and taxpayer subsidization of oil companies everywhere will not suddenly join the euphony of hopeful agreeableness and jump on the Obama train for change.

Likewise, women who have spent three and four decades fight for equal pay for equal work, the right of women to control their own bodies and choices of all kinds for women are not going to suddenly embrace the Phyllis Schlafly-styled Sarah Palin as their goddess Sophia arriving to elevate all women in history. Palin may have brought women's fertility into the political field of play but she ain't a 21st century crusader for the rights of women.

One thing that is clear from the RNC is John McCain is a maverick. All week long I wanted to know what being a maverick meant for the Senator from Arizona, a military-man from a long line of military men, and how it manifest itself in modern day Republican politics. Is being a maverick a good thing or bad thing? Being a maverick is not necessarily being an advocate for change or for better policies.

Apparently, being a maverick means being willing to stir things up, make rash and erratic decisions and having an all-be-damned attitude about it. It means getting angry and accusatory toward anyone who questions your vetting processes and finally the decisions the maverick makes. It means being willing, for the sake of winning and election, to drive wedge politics between urban and rural voters that will divid the nation rather than unite us to make America a better country.

I admire McCain service to country, however, it is time for McCain to put country first and go home to retirement with benefits. Enjoy one of your seven or eight or nine houses - you deserve it. You've made your sacrifice John, spending all of your life on the government payroll and we will not ask you to do more.

And more pointedly, I appreciate McCain's sacrifice for his men and country as a captured American soldier in Vietnam but I do not think we need the same old solutions of the past eight years to the issues we need solved today. We need change in America, not the old wars to fight and past battles with fixed terms of reference that have no relevance.

Sexism and Sarah Palin

Who "...retreats behind the apron strings." - Dick Morris

A Candidate to Change City Hall

Brian E. Anderson will return fun to City Hall. Careful, that's what Jesse Ventura said about the Governor's Mansion and look what happened to the Body.

All politics is local but think polka! Meet the Minneapolis Mayoral candidate who has the loyal support of his family.



Brian has a crackerjack team of political strategists who are prepare to take his campaign to a whole new level. Watch this behind the scenes clip from action inside the War Room:



Stand by your phones because you might receive his next call!

Finally, A Candidate of the People

Second Avenue, Village East, New York

Village East Cinemas, New York
Originally uploaded by Cezar Del Valle

For all the years I lived in the East Village, the Yiddish Art Theater, a building on 2nd Ave and 12th street with a bold and controversial history in the East Village was boarded up. Now it has been reopened as the Village East Cinema. The building is considered to be Romanesque Revival in style or also referred to as Queen Anne.

Second Avenue in New York was often called the Yiddish Tin Pan Alley and was considered a mecca for Jewish intellectuals and artists. This January marked the finale curtain for an era in the East Village when, regrettably, the Second Avenue Deli closed after a lease dispute between the landlord and the family heir Jeremy Lebewohl shut them down. The original founder Abe Lebewohl, a holocaust survivor was shot to death on March 4 1996 during a robbery. The Second Avenue Deli has confusingly reopened its doors in Murray Hill on East 33rd Street minus the Molly Picon Room and its walk of Yiddish stars.

During the 1980s it was often assumed that the Yiddish Art Theater had been the home of legend rock-and-roll promoter Bill Graham's Fillmore East, a venerate rock-and-roll institution during the 1960s but, in actuality, Fillmore was three blocks to the South on 2nd Ave. Along this gritty New York avenue, beneath 14th street and the origins of Park Avenue south lived a less luxurious working class immigrant Jewish cultural life where matzoh ball soup, corned beef, pastrami, knishes, gefilte fish, cholent and other notables of Jewish cuisine filled the gullet of working Jews who lied shoulder to shoulder with Beatniks (in the 50s) hippies (in the 60s) and eventually punk rockers and yuppies (in the 80s and 90s)

On one trip back to New York a few years ago, a friend commented that Williamsburg Brooklyn was the new East Village. Maybe that's not fair to Williamburg and with the history of the East Village it is not fair to 2nd Avenue, its rich cultural traditions and history of the 20th century.

The Cinema of Urgency

It is amazing that Juan Guzman is not dead. The story of Judge Juan Guzman and his investigation of Chile's General Augusto Pinochet is a portrait of courage exercised by an average man in the face of brutal repercussions and death.

Last night, the film that opened the Walker Art Film series, The Cinema of Urgency, was Elizabeth Farnsworth and Patricio Lanfranco's THE JUDGE AND THE GENERAL made for ITVS and scheduled to be shown on POV in mid-August. Farnsworth was born in south Minneapolis and her editor, Blair Gershkow who also attended last night's screening and stood up for Q&A afterward is a native of St. Louis Park, Minnesota - home of the Coen Bros., Thomas Friedman, and of course Al Franken.

The films Producer/Director Elizabeth Farnsworth was chief correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer from 1995-2000. She now freelances for The NewsHour and makes award-winning documentaries, including Thanh's War.

The remarkable story of Judge Guzman is about a conservative judge assigned to investigate crimes and human rights violations by the military dictatorship of Pinochet and his government. Originally, Guzman was a supporter of the military coup that brought Pincochet to power. He even felt that some of the violence surrounding the coup and the suspension of democratic processes might have been necessary to restore order in the face of chaos.

However, during Guzman's investigation, which miraculously occurred while Pinochet still held the reigns of power, he discovers a grisly truth of the murder and torture of socialists and anti-military government political activists. And in the face of threats on his life and accusations of the betrayal of his class, Guzman did not back down.

What makes Farnsworth's documentary so compelling is Guzman is not the radical maverick judge one might expect and instead he is a literary man, quiet and reserved, with a French wife who could well have been given a diplomatic portfolio by the conservative government that Salvador Allende defeated to become the first democratically elected Socialist government in South America.

Farnsworth also focuses on the human rather than political dimensions of the struggle for truth. Inside the story of the "disappeared" and mothers of resistance in Chile is another tragedy of a grandmother forced to turn her own daughter and son-in-law into the CIA trained Chilean secret police DINA in exchange for saving the life of her granddaughter who she was babysitting at the time. The brutality of DINA's torture and the excruciating pain of a grandmothers decision is unfathomable to us, still its echo reverberates in Abu Ghraib and secret detention facilities run by the American government today.

During the course of his investigation, Guzman's soul opens to the bright light of human rights in the face of conformity and the dark abyss of apathy when governments call their opposition terrorists. This should be a lesson to all Americans in these corrupt and desperate times.

As Guzman memorably states abut Chile's history, “A wounded country needs to know the truth” and healing can only come when the deceptions, manipulations and lies are exposed.

Minnesota North Shore Trip

Patricia and I took a summer vacation trip to Minnesota's majestic North Shore. Taking the legendary Highway 61 form Duluth's Bob Dylan Way, we traveled first to Beaver Bay and visited the Split Rock Lighthouse.

Built in 1910, the Split Rock is a marvel in architectural and mechanical engineering when no roads existed along the shoreline leading to Canada. All brick and mortar, materials, and labour had to arrive at the construction site by inland sea and lifted by hoist 168 feet to the top of the Split Rock and then assembled. Construction workers slept in tents in the mosquito infested forest while building the lighthouse and surrounding out buildings. The lamp, lens and rotational mechanics for the lighthouse itself weighed 4 tons. The bearing on which the axis turns is made of liquid mercury. The entire lighthouse community cost $75,000 to build in 1910.

The Split Rock Lighthouse was operational from 1910 to 1969 when it closed because Lake Superior ships contained their own satellite navigational devices and the lighthouse was no longer needed. In 1972 the Minnesota State Historical Society took over the management of Split Rock and reopened it to tourists. They don't build structures like this anymore.

Lunch back in Beaver Bay was at the Lemon Wolf Cafe, a place recommended to us as a favorite of the locals. Lemon Wolf serves fresh walleye and herring caught in Lake Superior by a local Beaver Bay fisherman. We felt the dining-room decor was a bit over the top, oddly chainsaw bears dominating the wolf name, but the food was delicious. Surprisingly, Lemon Wolf's homemade Grammy's Coconut Cream Pie vastly outclassed Betty's World Famous Pies in down the road in Two Harbors.

On the second day we visited the shipping harbor town of Two Harbors, Minnesota where gigantic Ore Docks built in 1883 loaded the iron ore from Minnesota's open pit mines. Two Harbors, still operational but at a reduced capacity, shipped millions of tons of ore to the East for decade after decade beginning in the late 1800s. In 1944 during the height of World War II, Two Harbors shipped 19.3 million tons of ore to fuel the American victory in Europe and the Pacific theater.

One of our most enjoyable adventures was visiting the Edna G. tugboat in the harbor after first doing a self-guided tour of the Two Harbors Lighthouse which is the oldest still operational lighthouse in America. (or at least Minnesota, okay?) and recently became a B&B. The Edna G, was named after the daughter of the president of the Duluth & Iron Range Railroad Company J.L. Greatsinger. The Edna G was built in 1893, spent most of it life on Lake Superior with the exception of being commissioned into the U.S. Navy during WWII and sent to Virginia. where it guided troop ships back into harbor upon their return from war. At the time of her retirement in 1981, the Edna G. was the last coal-fired, steam-powered tugboat operating on Lake Superior.

On the aft deck of the Edna G is a brass water canon the tub boat used to assist in extinguishing fires on ships out at sea and other emergencies. The "Invincible Nozzle" had so much water pressure, it could float thirty yards off shore and roll a Dodge van up a hill for 50 yards.

Our guide let Patricia pull the handle that blew the whistle in the pilot cabin. Check it out:



Back in Beaver Bay we enjoyed long walks in the woods and climbing on the rocky shore line of Lake Superior.

Finally we ended back in Duluth and went to the Tweed Art Museum at the University of Minnesota Duluth campus. In part of the museum we found a library dedicated to Olive Tezla, the mother of our good friend Michael Tezla who beginning in 1957, when her husband joined the English Department as a professor, was a strong supporter who helped built the Tweed. Just down the hall I discovered where my old MacPlus with its 20 MB (that's right megabyte NOT gigabyte) hard drive has been retired for historical reasons right next to the key punch and mechanical adding machines of our youth.

Next we went to the very notable artisan eatery, the New Scenic Cafe and we met the chef Scott Graden. Highly recommend!

Obama Comes to St. Paul in Victory

Last night Senator Barack Obama came to our home town of Saint Paul, Minnesota to claim an historic victory as the first African-American to win enough delegates votes to become the Presidential nominee of a National Party. Obama came from the back of the pack to defeat the heavily favored and highly connected D.C. insider Hillary Clinton. His message was clearly CHANGE and his supporters motto: "Yes We Can!"

In his Saint Paul victory speech, Obama showed how is has become one of the nations best political orators as national broadcast commentators compared him to FDR, JFK and Martin Luther King for his ability to deliver a moving speech. when he said, tonight after 56 hard fought primary contests our journey has come to an end, an palpable excitation of exhaustion and relief came over the crowd but being in the Xcel Center in Saint Paul marked Obama's determination that it isn't over yet. This will be the site of the RNC and John McCain's Republican nomination in September. Obama's long climb into history is still ahead and the next five months to the finish line has just begun.

Brazil na reta do parto normal

Ainda me lembro de quando eu era uma garotinha. Todo mundo sonha com o futuro, e eu, naquela epoca, sempre dizia que iria me casar em um vestido vermelho, morar no Rio de Janeiro e ter uma familia feliz. Filhos? Claro, mas adotados, porque parir sempre esteve for a de cogitacao. Crescendo num pais onde todos em sua volta nascem por uma cirurgia cesariana cria tensoes e medos. Ja esta mais que na hora de retornar ao basico instinto: gravidez e nascimento sao processos naturais e devemos nos acostumar a essa ideia.

O primeiro passo e se informar sobre o assunto e o Ministerio da Saude agora participa ativamente dessa questao com a Campanha Incentivo ao Parto Normal. A cesariana já representa 43% dos partos realizados no Brasil no setor público e no privado. Nos planos de saúde, esse percentual é ainda maior, chegando a 80%. Já no Sistema Único de Saúde, as cesáreas somam 26% do total de partos. O parto normal é o mais seguro tanto para a mãe quanto para o bebê. De acordo com a recomendação da Organização Mundial da Saúde, as cirurgias deveriam corresponder a, no máximo, 15% dos partos. E nosso direito e dever como mulheres de assegurar que a experiencia de vida de nossos filhos seja completa em todas a circunstancias, incluindo o parto.

Linha de Passe Wins Best Actress at Cannes

Sao Paulo. 20 million inhabitants, 200 kilometers of traffic, 300,000 messengers on motorcycles.

Walter Salle and Daniela Thomas have teamed once again to bring the socially conscious but not overtly politicalLinha de Passe to the screen. Sandra Corveloni, who plays their working-class mother in São Paulo won the best-actress award this weekend at Cannes.

At the heart of one of the toughest, most chaotic cities in the world, four brothers try to reinvent themselves in different ways. With the backdrop of Brazil in a state of emergency, every single one is looking for a way out.

Denis (João Baldasserini), the oldest, is one of the mass of motorcycles couriers daily transversing the swarming streets of Brazil; Dario (Vínicius de Oliveria), a talented soccer player hoping his skill at the game will be a path to a better life; Dinho (José Geraldo Rodrigues), tries his escape by joining an evangelical church; and youngest brother Reginaldo (Kaique de Jesus Santos), spends his days riding buses around the city, searching for his absent father.

de Oliveria, who previously starred in Salle's 1998 Central Station is the only professional actor among the four bothers, trained for four years in junior soccer league to play this role. However, Salles and Thomas achieve mastery in obtaining performances from all their young actors regardless of their acting experience.

Salles and Daniela Thomas have reunited to update their portrait Foreign Land made 12 years ago about urban Brazil, which they left in the economic throes of President Fernando Collor.

A Linha de passe is one of the most difficult of the futbol field-of-play rules (FIFA) that states an offensive player can’t be ahead of the ball and involved in the play unless there is a defender between him and the goalkeeper. Basically translated, the rule means a player is off-side, play is stopped and the equivalent in ice hockey would be a blue line offside or in basketball a zone violation. In other words, you can’t hang out at the other team’s goal waiting for the ball as your team comes down the pitch.

However, according to the filmmakers, Linha de Passe is also a children's game not unlike hackie-sack where a group of kids stand in a circle kicking a ball in the air, not to let the others down by letting the ball fall to the ground. Certainly, in Brazil both sides of this expression enrich the depth of the metaphor.

Salle and Thomas use the rule as a metaphor for the four Paolinistas brothers and their attempts to get ahead in modern Brazil.

Robert Rauschenberg (1925 - 2008)

Two artists that had a tremendous influence over my life as a painter in my 20s were Willem de Kooning and Robert Rauschenberg. Last night Rauschenberg died at age 82 in Florida. In one very memorable act, the course of art history collided, when Rauschenberg went to de Kooning's Greenwich Village studio with a bottle of Jack Daniels (de Kooning was an incorrigible alcoholic) to ask the modern master of painting and drawing, at the peak of his career, if he could erase one of his drawings. de Kooning wasn't very happy with the request but granted the young unknown painter his wish.

Message to You, Barry

Force be with you brother!

Trisha Brown at Northrup

In conjunction with The Year of Trisha being launched at the Walker Art Center, Patricia and I went to the mammoth Northrup Auditorium on Friday to see a career spectrum of Trisha Brown choreography. To say the least, we were disappointed.

Trisha Brown is an interdisciplinary artist who the Walker especially loves and fit nicely into Kathy Halbreich's concept and legecy of the Walker featuring works and artists that move across medium, practice, and aesthetic branch's of contemporary art. And now that the Walker has expanded its space to more fully embrace performance and dance with a majority of the new building being used as a auditorium (and restaurant) it is clear they have an even greater commitment to artists like Brown.

Probably what astonished us the most is that compared to other works and choreographers, the work we saw at Northrup was under cooked and not sophisticated in its use of the vocabulary of present day dance. In the first two pieces, I could only imagine that given the time in which they were first performed they somehow addressed a current restriction or use of the body that struck people as interestingly outside the norm. These movements don't do so anymore.

In the first piece Present Tense it was obvious Brown wants us to be conscious of the frame and the "edge of the frame." In doing so she had dancers half on the visual stage of play and half off. Throughout, Brown seemed to be challenging the edge of the parameters set forth in her field of vision. Yet, that was about all there was - a kind of formal observance of the stages frame while the dancers made dance-like movement. If there was an emotion statement Brown fails to connect and falls short of reaching it.

And, while her piece began in silence, and we had to listen a chorus of coughing from the audience, the small University of Minnesota Alumni band began to play in the lower halls and underground tunnels surrounding Northrup itself. At first being at the University of Minnesota, as I am sure Brown intended, we could not be sure if the band was simply rehearsing for a public campus event or if they were a part of the production. It was fun for awhile. But then Brown never seemed to commit to doing something more engaging with this trick than reinforce her simple ideas about the "edge of the frame."

In fact, much of the evening was filled with choreographic tricks that never translated themselves into deep or astonishing revelations. Patricia and I could not help but compare a piece we saw this winter at the Southern Theater by local group Black Label Movement. BLM took the language and techniques that Brown uses in only a cursory and under-developed way and brings incredible insight and a brilliance of understanding the fragile human condition.

Carl Flink's BLM's piece called "Wreck" had so many layers and innovations with the frame, the dancers movements, their inter-relationships on stage yet made all the more significant by attaching humans on the brink of being sucked into the vortex of the sea. It was like watching great choreography, athletic dance movement, and at the same time experiencing a deep connection you'd experience from watching a fantastic documentary film about survival and death.

Living here in Minneapolis is another astonishing couple Toni Pierce and Uri Sands whose choreography for their company TU is also amazingly innovative but the additional significance of layers of meaning brought from references in history and society enrich their works far beyond what Brown is offering on stage. The make bold decisions and back them up so that you feel the completeness not only of movement, stage, frame and sound, they feel richly a part of a text that speaks about who we are as human beings.

A big part of the problem throughout with Brown is that she doesn't seem to want to commit to the directions in which she is heading with her work. The final piece I love my robots uses "robots" (not really) that amount to nothing more than polls on platforms connected to motion sensors that criss-cross the stage. An interesting concept to work with, however there is not much significance to this piece in the end. There is no real meaningful of revealing interaction between the dancers and the "poles" and it adds up to a sum of nothing. It feels like an interesting idea lazily executed with 1970s technology.

Going back 25 or 30 years to a school of New York and national artists, Brown I find to be emblematic of their desire to challenge forms and conventions, perhaps ever reverse directions yet also unwilling to be tied down to specifics or details. Their defense for a failure to communication with their audience was always the veil of abstraction. Todays artists are not so obtuse and evasive.

Our current dancers and choreographers would do significantly more interesting things than Brown does. Perhaps that means on her shoulders we've come so much higher in the advancement of choreography. We owe Brown a debt of gratitude for being a paradigm buster but I'd rather being watching a newer generation that takes all these ideas and concepts so much incredibly further.

MUTUM: Story of Brazil's Recent Past

Patricia and I went to the Walker Art Center to see MUTUM during the Women's in the Directors Chair series. This Brazilian film by Sandra Kogut is about a family on an isolated subsistence farm in the arid backlands of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Our central character is Thiago, a ten year old boy who knows little about the outside world except for a few horseback trips into a nearby village.

Thiago's father is distressed by a passing way of life and trying to provide for his family. His mother bares the burden of her husbands anger and frustrations and Thiago throws himself between them as his mother protector.

The feature film is an adaption of Jose Guimaraes Rosa's novel and while it is fiction, it strikes at the heart of Brazil true agrarian migration and the poverty that devastated rural Brazilian states like Minas Gerais and Bahia.

Religion plays a significant role in MUTUM, as the mystery of how nature delivers its fate evades common experience or a social consciousness thus becoming an acceptance of an authority beyond that which you can see or touch. But there is no preaching and deifying of faith.

In many ways, MUTUM reminds me of the brilliant German documentary film THE STORY OF THE WEEPING CAMEL for the intensity and detail of how they story is told. Not much dialog and visual detail aplenty, it keeps your head in the world in which Thiago lives. We feel the full power of a thunderstorm as dramatic as it can be in a place where a person is not constantly barraged with manufactured drama.

MUTUM is a mood-piece, a film that is evocative and deeply detailed in creating the sense of a simple life where children spend the day playing with insects, teaching the papagaio to talk, and chasing chickens. The pacing and lack of dialog set the viewer in a different spatial and temporal frame -- a pace of life that is nearly incomprehensible to modern western over-stimulated audiences. But MUTUM's unhurried observations are well worth the effort to persist in watching.

The young actor whose name is also Thiago is astonishing and the film, with all its subtlety and nuance pays off hugely at the end -- even with its small and unsensational emotion. The emotional impact is deep but not blunt. You may never get the chance to see this film but if you do, let it transport you into a different world than the one your are accustomed to living.

But for Patricia and I, MUTUM is a family story and tells the tale of how her own parents were sent from the warm and loving confines of a family with little connection to the outside world, out at an very early age into a world they could never have imagined. For Patricia this is the gripping backstory of Mauro and Odelva who were forced off the land in their early teens and sent to Sao Paulo with nothing to help them get their start. Life can be cruel. And this is a gripping story of a distinctive kind of cruel.

A Voice of Reason in a Sea of Hyper-Reaction

An Emotional Response: Don't Sleep...

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

Walker Art Center tour guide Gary White takes us on a walk through the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and points out a few of the more than 40 pieces installed around the grounds. This year the Walker will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the garden with special outdoor events and activities.

A Tour of Minneapolis Architecture

This tour of Minneapolis is hosted by University of Minnesota, College of Design Professor John Comazzi and filmed and edited by Michael Tyburski. Recently, I was in other American cities and they showed me new architecture by world renown achitects. When I told them how many buildings Minneapolis has build in the last 5 years by top 20 architects people are astonished. One of the buildings this short tour neglects to show is the addition to the Minneapolis Children's Theater by Michael Graves. Have a look.

What It Means to Be an American

Yes We Can!

Lots of people today like to be cynical about HOPE. Right-wing hate-mongering evangelicals who want government to take control of people's lives. Warmongers tell us we will be at war for the next hundred years otherwise we will be surrender monkeys. $12 billion (yes, BILLION) dollars in taxpayer money gone missing and military contractors cannot account for it. Doomsayers tell us we cannot possible afford to keep Americans in health care. Hipsters who preach apathy. They think it makes them look cool or whatever...

Heading into Super Tuesday, when Minnesotans step up to the Presidental precinct caucus plate, I like Barack Obama's message of HOPE and CHANGE. No more Bush and no more Clintons and all their politics of cynacism, anger, and division.

WE WANT CHANGE!

Putting on Your Game Face

Super Bowl weekend. Patricia and I went to the Walker Art Center last night (Friday) to see David Neumann’s FEED FORWARD, the last piece this year in the WAC’s INSIDE OUT THERE series.

Neumann’s sets the stage as a playing court or field delineated by the space definitions, lines, message boards and hot spots that made game playing a challenge. This might sound pretentious and gooey with ‘significance’ as Walker curators like to be, “...Feed Forward reimagines the athletic event as contemporary performance,” but Neumann is not.

Neumann’s show is anything but heavy and droll with self-importance. Patricia and I, and the rest of the McGuire theater, were in stitches the whole night with laughter. Cycling through a whole bunch of sporting actions and moments beginning with gymnastics (contemporary dance's closest cousin) tennis, basketball, football, and tennis, Neumann makes light and grace of it all. As the dancers/performers take to the court, we are provided with commentariats who spray morsels of profundities about the players and the lingo laced nuances describing their actions. Probably most humorously, they also provide “color” for their performances.

From time to time, play-by-play men run out onto the court and get the athletes first hand reaction to their failure or success in competition. Growing up with the high media spectacle of sports rituals surrounding the national daily and weekly event, we embrace the conventions as a part of our cultural DNA. Everything about sports is closely regimented by a formal language of motion and the "sports speak" is rehearsed and filled with cliche. Neumann never quits being the humorist, as he highlights the parts of game that catch you off guard.

For instance, two female dancers line up facing each other and move in graceful and astonishing athletic motion, swinging the arms and hands as if the face of their tennis racket. Suddenly, they begin a loud lower gut grunt at the implied moment of impact. Exactly, when did that savage sound of exertion become common to the game of tennis? Now, it is almost signature to the power game that professional tennis (as opposed to gentlemanly English club tennis) has become. Neumann is hip to this insight, he highlights the moment but at the same time makes it funny.

Players run on and off the court as if to be set in and take out tag team style. This is action common to the rules of basketball but many other sports as well. On the sideline, a man wearing a sport coats with insignia on the pocket, shouts and yells obscenities, throws his hands in frustration, protest, and indignation and he too is choreographing high performance. It is all theater or performance and the roles are cast in bronze, silver and gold.

And then you also have the other non-competitors but the ones who somehow find themselves in the middle of the action. In this case it is the dancer, referee and this marginal yet highly significant player in the spectacle. Neumann interprets the Ref as a peacock and comic figure, whose value rests in their ability to arrest the flow of action and then perform hand signals. The dancer blows a whistle, runs to the middle of court, points with impunity and then wiggles his ass.

In the final segment of the performance, a celebrity pitcher enters through a backlight stage door (the bowels of the stadium) with hand raised in victory and massive display of arrogant warriorism. I’m thinking Roger Clements and steroids at this moment. He takes the mound, the dancer mimes all the pacing, spitting, kicking the dirt as we hear an internal voice that could easily be a standup routine on Comedy Central. The audience is rolling on the floor with laughter.

There are times when I think the Walker does itself a disservice by being too high minded and artsy in its talk about performances like this one. This is right out of Comedy Central and its wit is as incisive as Jon Stewart.

Stop the pretense, this is Super Bowl weekend and FEED FORWARD is the best way to get into the mind of it all.

Picasso and Portinari Paintings Recovered

Photo by: Marlene Bergamo/Folha Imagem

Two masterpiece paintings stolen nineteen days ago just before Christmas from Sao Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) were recovered today. The report of the paintings recovery came just a few hours ago. Brazilian police reported that they had arrested two men and recovered the invaluable and uninsured pantings by Pablo Picasso and Cândido Portinari.

The paintings were returned to MASP with an escort of armored police vehicles, overhead helicopters and as officers of the state police walked into the museum carrying the paintings, they were met by applause from the staff. MASP will reopen on Friday with the Picasso and Portinari back on the walls where they hung before the thief.

Police feared that the paintings were stolen on contract to an art collector and quickly whisked out of the country to avoid detection. However, the paintings were found in Ferraz de Vasconcelos, a metropolitan area of Sao Paulo where the two men were arrested. The paintings appear to be in good condition although no assessment was reported of possible damage or if the captured paintings are the original works and not stand-ins.

The "Portrait of Suzanne Bloch" by Pablo Picasso is estimated to be worth 50 million dollars, and "The Coffee Worker" by Brazil's Candido Portinari is estimated at nearly six million dollars. Both works are important in the canon of works by the two artists. Neither painting was insured, as are any of the paintings in the collection of MASP, prompting a nation debate about the security and administration of Brazil's premier modern art museum collection valued at more than $1 billion dollars.

Estado de S. Paulo newspaper reported MASP officials received two ransom requests for the paintings, including a letter asking for $10 million during the period they were missing. The paper is now saying that the two suspects in custody say they were offered $2.8 million to undertake the art heist.

Just before the New Year, state police conducting the investigation said that, based on interviews with the MASP staff that the art thieves had an inside collaborator. One of the museum guards encouraged others during the night shift to sleep and not pay attention to the video monitors installed to alert staff to the threat of thieves entering the building or approaching from the surrounding plaza. Whether this information lead to today's capture of the paintings and arrest is not yet known.

O Ano em que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias

Trailer: 2:24 minutes (Brazilian Portuguese)
Directed by: Cao Hamburger
Web site: http://www.oano.com.br/english/index.php

The Year My Parents Went on Vacation is a Brazilian film by Cao Hamburger set in the political turmoil of the 1970s. Mauro (Michel Joelsas) is a child living in the city with his radical leftist parents, forced into the underground and fearing his safety, sent him to live with his grandfather in a small town.

Just as Mauro arrives his grandfather dies and he is left trying to make due with strangers and maintain his passion for futebol as the World Cup in Mexico unfolds. This film won the audience award at Rio International Film Festival in 2007, played at Cannes and Berlin all through the year to high critical praise. Hamburger previously directed award winning television programs and "Filhos do Carnaval" for HBO. A Brazilian film worth watching for on DVD or renting.