Movie Corner: Limbo
5/5 Stars
Music Box/Brainstorm Media, Compliments of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival 43
Crime/ Mystery/Drama/Thriller
By HOWARD MCQUITTER II
The outback in South Australia is photographed in spectacular black and white in the film Limbo that richly deserves wider release. Limbo is a fictional town, at one time a mining and tourist place.
The film opens up with Travis Harley (Simon Baker), a weary, middle-aged detective, driving into Limbo to investigate a missing young Indigenous woman from 20 years ago, Charlotte Hayes. He stays at the town’s only motel: Limbo Motel. A good part of the motel is inside a cave. While he’s in his motel room, Travis melts down an unidentified opioid drug in a spoon and shoots up in his arm with a hypodermic needle. Heroin or fentanyl, or something else, the viewers do not know. (Director Ivan Sen’s Limbo is eerily similar to John Sturges’ 1955 Bad Day at Black Rock.)
The first potential witness Travis contacts is Charlie (Rob Collins), the older stepbrother of Charlotte, living in a trailer. Charlie, like the other local Indigenous residents, is rightfully suspicious and resentful of the dominant white society, including white cops. Charlie depends heavily on alcohol.… Read the rest “Movie Corner: Limbo”
Jazz and Poetry Return
to the Historic Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery
By PATRICK CABELLO HANSEL
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Open in new tab On Saturday, June 29 at 2 pm, the 4th Annual Poetry and Jazz in the Holy Ground returns to the historic Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery in south Minneapolis. The event will feature a jazz duo of Larry McDonough on keyboards and Richard Terrill on saxophone.
This year, the event will also include the launch of the poetry chapbook “THE NATIONS UNDERGROUND: Writing With Our Ancestors,” featuring over a dozen area poets who have written poems to or from their ancestors. Poets will read from the chapbook, along with featured poets Margaret Hasse, Patrick Cabello Hansel and Dralandra Larkins. There will also be a hands-on lantern making workshop led by local artists from the Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts.
“The desire to connect with our ancestors is as ancient as human history itself,” says chapbook editor Patrick Cabello Hansel. “Human beings consider cemeteries to be holy ground, where those who have gone are still present. The poems in this chapbook represent both the loss of loved ones and the love we still hold deeply.”
Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery is located at Lake and Cedar in south Minneapolis, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.… Read the rest “Jazz and Poetry Return
to the Historic Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery”
Democracy and You
from the series Raise Your Voice!
By PETER MOLENAAR
Democracy is by one definition: “a system of government by the whole population or all eligible members of a state.”
“All eligible members?” Note: the ancient Athenian democracy emerged in the context of the existing slave system. In the United States, democracy was initiated in the context of a developing capitalism in conjunction with the then modern system of chattel slavery.
In our world, the influence of a small minority called capitalists taints democracy. For this reason, many of us don’t vote! Indeed, our bourgeois-democracy is a reflection of the capitalist system. Before too long, our ruling class will be unwilling and incapable of resolving life and death issues confronting the masses.
Does the struggle within bourgeois-democratic institutions have any bearing on the realization of our socialist vision? I am not alone in answering: YES!
And neighbors beware: Go online to contemplate the Trump 2025 plan. Hey, there is the possibility of something even worse than our present bourgeois-democracy!
It then follows that we the majority must impose our will upon the state. Naturally, a workers’ democracy would evolve only as a reflection of the public ownership of the primary means of production.… Read the rest “Democracy and You”