‘Arts’ Archives
Semilla Youth Leaders Add Beauty and Community to Phillips
By CAROL LEE CHASE and MARY ELLEN KALUZA The mural nearing completion. PHOTO: Carol Lee Chase Youth Leaders collaborating, working, and building friendships. PHOTO: Carol Lee Chase Over the summer a group of Youth Leaders ages 11-15, working with Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts, painted a mural on the doors and the steps of St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church sanctuary at 2742 15th Avenue South in the Phillips neighborhood. Lynda Grafito, an active Twin Cities community artist and printmaker from Colombia, guided this project which wrapped up at the end of August. We asked Lynda what excited her most about this project: I am very excited about how much the youth have been involved in this project. I feel that they have learned a lot, have become familiar with the materials, painting, creating and installing mosaics, and memorizing each step to follow. But the most important thing about this whole experience is that they are making new friends and having [...]
Twisters
from the series Movie Corner... 4/5 Stars Action/Adventure/DramaUniversal Pictures By HOWARD MCQUITTER II Howard McQuitter II I had a wild dream shortly after I retired that turned into a storm (tornado) chaser dream. I thought a tornado chaser had to be a more fun, more dangerous and more frenzied job than an ambulance chaser. I haven’t seen a tornado touchdown since I was a kid growing up in Minneapolis. (I have seen the aftermath of that violent, twirling mass of nature, though.) Remembering that dream, I went to see director Lee Issac Chung’s, (director of Minari 2020, Munyurangabo 2007), Twisters - a spinoff of director Jan de Bont’s Twister (1996) starring Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Twisters is such a high octane affair at certain times, it leaves one hyperventilating from what’s up on the screen. (In the original Twister a cow floated across a truck’s windshield during a tornado.) Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), born and raised [...]
Janet Planet
from the series Movie Corner A24 Films, Compliments of the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival By Howard McQuitter II Howard McQuitter II Annie Baker won the Pulitzer Prize for writing The Flick and her directing debut film is Janet Planet. I will regretfully say, watching Janet Planet is more than a challenge and uncompelling to say the least.I can also comment that the film takes place in a picturesque New England in 1991, when a single mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and her very manipulative, eleven-year-old daughter, Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) live in a cabin. Lacy is not enjoying summer camp so she tells her mother if she doesn’t come and get her, she will kill herself. The girl has already lied to the camp leaders by saying her mother’s boyfriend had been in a car accident and is dying. A24 As for Janet, she seems to go through three transitory relationships. First, she has a slow-witted, weird boyfriend, Wayne (Will Patton) who looks like he [...]
