Crazy days

Spent the weekend at a myriad of shows at the Minnesota Fringe Festival, writing for MinnPost and City Pages. Some of my MinnPost work is online. I plan to see a few more shows during the week -- things I wanted to catch from the beginning and others that have caught my fancy since. More updates to come.

A few midsummer recommendations:

1. Torchwood: Children of Earth. The latest in this Doctor Who spinoff series has stirred a ton of controversy, which I won't get into here, as it reveals a rather important plot point. The five-part miniseries is a crackling good time, however, and it's already out on DVD if you -- like me -- aren't cool enough to have BBC America (or live in Britain, where it was first broadcast earlier in July).

2. Neil Gamain and Adam Kupert, Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? To commemorate the "death" earlier this year of Batman, Gaiman and Kupert crafted a two-part story to run in the finales of Detective and Batman. Taking obvious cues from Alan Moore's classic 1980s send-of of Superman, Gaiman's script is typically mythic and strange; and Kupert's art deftly captures 70 years of Batman illustrators, from Bob Kane to the present day. The new hardcover compilation also includes some additional Gaiman Batman stories that also get under the skin (or would that be skin-tight suit?) of the character.

3. China Mieville The City and the City. Meiville is among the best "genre" authors around these days, transcending the limitations of fantasy, horror, children's adventures and anything else he tries his hand at. Here, he mixes a hard-boiled police procedural (where the detectives do actual honest-to-God detective work) and Franz Kafka. Descriptions don't really do the book justice -- Mieville takes a wild concept (two joined cities where citizens cannot "see" the other) and manages to craft a tale that hits hard at every turn.

4. Coraline. More Gaiman, though this time through the lens of filmmaker Henry Selik, whose stop-motion style (he's the genius behind The Nightmare Before Christmas) blends perfectly with a story about a lonely girl and an alternate world where everyone has buttons for eyes. The deluxe DVD even comes with a 3-D version of the film for you to enjoy.

And while I have an obvious conflict of interest here (my brother works on the show), fans of the odd should check out Transylvania TV, which combines pop culture detritus, mature humor and puppets to great effect.