The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

I didn't really want to write about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I didn't like the movie, and I feel like my time is better served by writing about things I do like, but the Oscars seem to have fallen in love with the film, and that makes it newly important. In a sentence, I found the film to be a rickety and overlong affair that misapplies its essential concept and some superlative effects work to tell a story that is fundamentally shallow. The film purports to be the story of a life lived backward, but squanders that theme. The original story, by F.

There have been quite a few marginal film genres that have unexpectedly changed themselves into art. The Western, for instance, which kicked around the trenches of Hollywood for a long time as a reliable but poorly regarded genre, and then, suddenly, grew up, transforming from simplistic morality tales set on horseback to a mature and unblinking look at the mythology of the creation of the United States.

Darren Aronofsky's film The Wrestler, which netted Mickey Rourke a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture last night, is not the first movie to have that title. Back in 1974, here in Minneapolis, American Wrestling Association owner Verne Gagne produced his own movie, inspired by his own status us the AWA's undefeatable champion, starring himself and Ed Asner as a wrestling promoter.

The National Book Award winner was just announced, and Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country came out on top. Good for him. I haven't read it. So I'm still saying Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project, which was on the shortlist, should have won.