The Rake: Gray Matters

Sydney Pollack Gave Me a Boner

Cristina Cordova — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:53:08 -0500

The Twitter post sat under my profile photo for almost two days.

"Bummed about Sydney Pollack."

It was pithy, but it was all I could muster at 2:30 in the morning. Sydney was dead. I had woken up in the middle of the night and rolled a drowsy finger over the laptop's touchpad to light up the screen. The news feeds, usually dormant on Sunday nights, served up the reports.

I Have Fun Everywhere I Go

Cristina Cordova — Mon, 26 May 2008 17:40:37 -0500

I have no tolerance for pot dealers who insist on sharing a bowl every time they conclude a transaction. I don't need to seal my drug deals with shiny happy-people vibes; that's what I bring the money for. But that's just me; when it comes to harnessing good vibes, I'll take the mayhem of Altamont over the "brotherhood" of Woodstock every time.

The Films of Carlos Reygadas

Cristina Cordova — Tue, 06 May 2008 21:09:04 -0500

The screen is black. A mass of ambient sounds emerges to pull the viewer into an immediate state of hypnosis. Crickets and a plethora of other insects are making their voices heard. Cattle and roosters join in, birds chirping, all while the camera slowly spins around with the grace of a Hitchcock film. At first a bit disorientating, soon it's evident we're looking at the nighttime sky onscreen, clouds and stars all together to form a perfect symbiosis with the soundtrack. The camera settles, and some light appears on the horizon. As the sun rises, two

In Defense of Street Art

Cristina Cordova — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:19:40 -0500

I was a street artist. If you prefer, I was a vandal. I started out, as most artists do, humbly. A can of russet Rustoleum with a couple of friends, scrawling vague leftist slogans on the abandoned railroad factory buildings in my hometown. Alleyway dumpsters and streetlit governmental properties were my first canvases. Then came small stencils: a tiny smokestack to spray on the outside of the asbestos-stuffed empty shells of our small town's industrial past. They were just little gestures, not even aesthetically pleasing, but to us it was the start of

Return of the Great White Way

Cristina Cordova — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:32:15 -0600

The way it looks now, it's hard to imagine that Hennepin Avenue was once a Great White Way of cinematic wonder, each downtown block blessed with at least one tempting marquee adorned with blinding lights. In my own early years of moviegoing, I was able to take my pick of many single screen palaces on the strip, all showing the hottest new releases — at least, "hot" in the eyes of a preteen horror buff. This included the State (where I saw Blacula), the Mann (Blackenstein!), the Orpheum (Godzilla Vs.

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With Liberty and Luxury for All

Lisa Pahl — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:03:36 -0600

Luxury is big business these days, and not just because the world of the rich is more prosperous and populous than ever. The rest of us are also becoming avid consumers of goods and services that were once exclusive to the super-wealthy. Obviously your definition of “luxury” depends on where you reside on the economic food chain—there’s a difference, for instance, between a Dior T-shirt purchased at an outlet and an invitation to a Dior couture show.
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Stop the Clock

Lisa Pahl — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:01:42 -0600

Perhaps no place on Minnesota’s Iron Range personifies its mythical, often misunderstood boom-calamity-boom nature better than tiny Kinney (its population flutters around two hundred), located in the middle of the Mesabi Range on Highway 169. In 1977, faced with an outdated water system and difficulty securing state or federal assistance, Kinney attempted to secede from the Union.
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Oh, Our Wretched Uteri

Cristina Cordova — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:13:51 -0600

I saw the ad recently when, after a long, tiring workday, I was passing the evening as I often do: Snuggled up to the boyfriend on the sofa, flipping through an issue of Vanity Fair, and only vaguely paying attention to the television. But then a singsong remake of “We’re Not Gonna Take It”—yes, the Twisted Sister strain—snagged my ear.
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The Devil Wears Nada

cristina — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:33:47 -0500

“Combining collegiate potty humor with flashes of surrealistic brilliance, comedies such as Anchorman, Wedding Crashers, and Old School represent the height of the Hollywood crossover, appealing to old smart alecks, young dumb alecks, and anyone in between who appreciates gratuitous nudity and boner gags.”
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The Insanely Eupeptic

cristina — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:36:27 -0500

“ … Sure, it’s all there, but it’s kind of a tease. We’re definitely guilty of teasing.” —Joel Coen, on Barton Fink
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Honorable Exit

admin — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500

My mother took me on a wild, unforgettable ride the morning she died. Drugged and nearly comatose for about twenty-four hours, she suddenly started breathing heavily, opened her dull, mucus-covered eyes, and began writhing her shoulders off the bed. I was holding her hand, and she gripped me so hard that her bones stabbed painfully into my palm. This intense, disquieting resistance lasted between five and ten minutes, and then Jeanne Northridge Robson was dead from cancer at age fifty-nine.
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Plays on Location

admin — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0500
“Edifice complex.” That’s the diagnosis playwright Edward Albee gave to American arts organizations—more specifically, it seemed, to nonprofit regional theaters—when he spoke at the Westminster Town Hall forum in 2005. Though the pun drew laughs, Albee followed with a hard, damning statistic. “Ninety-five percent of the money we give as a country does not go to creative artists; it goes into buildings and organizations,” he pointed out. “But great music, great art, great theater can be performed on the streets. It does not need a fancy theater to occur.”
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Twenty-first Century Big Top

admin — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0500
My brothers and my mother were all dancers, outside of whatever else they did, like acrobatics, high wire, trapeze,” Donald O’Connor once said. The Hollywood dance icon knew inherently why a dancer is like a circus performer: because both create physical illusions by subverting gravity and harnessing momentum. During his classic and clownish “Make ’Em Laugh” routine in Singin’ in the Rain, O’Connor abandons himself to pratfalls and klutzy collisions with consummate grace and timing.
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Holiday in Cambodia

admin — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0500

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The Mystery of the Girl Who Didn’t Care

admin — Tue, 29 May 2007 00:00:00 -0500

I raised three daughters who spent their childhoods reading Harry Potter. So I had never encountered the Nancy Drew mysteries until Malcolm, my seven-year-old son, received a copy of one in a bookstore earlier this year. Apparently, Nancy Drew wasn’t selling, so to spark interest the store was giving away The Secret of the Old Clock, the first book in the series, with purchase of any two children’s books. The story, to me, was rather predictable, and Nancy Drew, the eighteen-year-old daughter of a well-to-do attorney, was so wholesome as to be unbelievable.
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Second Chance for Third Second

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0500

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A Room of His Own

admin — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500

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The Sex Lives of Your Neighbors

admin — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500

In ancient Rome, handwritten copies of a daily gazette called the Acta Diurna were posted in prominent public locations to keep citizens informed on everything from military developments to the latest divorces—and you can bet which part was read most avidly. In colonial America, the New World’s first newspaper, published in 1690, made a splash by publicizing a rumor that the king of France had royally screwed his son’s wife.
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“Look at me—I’m OK.”

admin — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0600

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One for the Sons of Bitches

admin — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0600

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Big Box Theater

admin — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:00:00 -0600

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Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

Cristina Cordova — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:47:00 -0600

For the Bible Tells Me So, Daniel Karslake’s 2007 documentary on the history of the religious right’s hate-hate affair with the gay community, begins with news footage of a celebrity who was once a household name, but is now long forgotten ... and yet, thanks to Minnesota 6th District Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, she is not at all unfamiliar to us.
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On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

admin — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0600

The best news the fans of James Bond books could have heard last year was that Paul Haggis was working on the screenplay for Casino Royale, and that this movie would stick closely to Ian Fleming’s book. Haggis, the writer of Crash and Flags of Our Fathers, teamed up with writers of the last few Bond-taculars to restore some intelligence to what had become a franchise sustained only by a spectacular chase, followed by a fight, followed by an explosion, followed by sex. Repeat as necessary.
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Utterly Clueless, Ahead of the Curve

admin — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0500

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Not Just Kid Stuff

admin — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 00:00:00 -0500

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The Bottomless Welles

admin — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 00:00:00 -0500

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On Sofas and Sublimity

admin — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 00:00:00 -0500

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“My job is to ruin everything.”

admin — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0500

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Man of La Mancha

admin — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0500

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The Buck-Naked Truth

admin — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0500

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