Carolyn Holbrook
Patrick’s Cabaret

Carolyn Holbrook has been a vital presence in Twin Cities lit, heading up SASE: The Write Place, which she threw together some 13 years ago basically out of grit and mother wit. Latest at The Write Place is another installment of its lauded “Women of Color Reading” series. This week, writers Sherry Quan Lee and Lori Young-Williams are featured. Lee, who’s working on her book How to Write A Suicide Note to Save Your Life, was managing editor of the fourth and fifth annual Asian American Renaissance journals and has published her memoir Chinese Blackbird. Chapbook poet and Spokesman-Recorder contributor Young-Williams is facilitator/coordinator of Poetic Black Fusion, a grassroots writing group for poets of African and African-American background. The event is hosted by Coya Hope Artichoker, a well-known reader in lit circles. The “Women of Color Reading” is part of the Carol Connolly Reading Series, sponsored by SASE: The Write Place along with Patrick’s Cabaret and the Minnesota Women’s Press. 7 p.m. Free. 3010 Minnehaha Ave. S., Mpls. 612-822-2500 or SaseOnline.org. Dwight Hobbes


Alice Notley
Walker Art Center

That Walker Art Center, damn their eyes: they keep coming up with, to loosely quote Joni Mitchell, real good stuff for free. This time it’s a reading by poet Alice Notley as part of its Free Verse series. Lauded as a prominent member of the eclectic second generation of the New York School, she’s also praised for work that demonstrates a continuing fascination with the desert and with the people there (she used to live in Arizona). Notley, who was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry, has said that her speech is the voice of “the new wife, and the new mother” in her own time, but that her first aim is to make a poem, rather than present a platform of social reform. So, go ahead, get next to some top-rated poetry by a much-fêted wordsmith. All you have to pay is attention. The Free Verse series is co-sponsored by Rain Taxi Review of Books. 6 p.m. Free. 1750 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls. 612-375-7600. Hobbes

Ang Lee Films
Walker Art Center

Walker Art Center kicks off its homage to director Ang Lee (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “The Hulk,” “Brokeback Mountain”) with a weekend of his lighter side. The first two films will be shown on Friday evening. In “Pushing Hands,” based on the isolation Lee felt after moving from China to the United States, venerable tai chi master Mr. Chu moves from Beijing to New York and winds up bumping heads with his American daughter-in-law. In “The Wedding Banquet,” Manhattan yuppie real-estate magnate Wai Tung hasn’t the heart to tell his parents that he’s gay. When he lies about his upcoming marriage, they surprise him by arriving from Taiwan for the wedding. On Sunday, Lee reflects on “Eat Drink, Man Woman,” the closing installment of what he calls his “Father Knows Best” trilogy, “Sometimes the things children need to hear most are often the things that parents find hardest to say, and vice versa. When that happens, we resort to ritual. For the Chu family, the ritual is the Sunday dinner ... At each dinner the family comes together and then something happens that pushes them farther apart.” His comedy about communicating across the generation gap employs just enough drama to get the touching points across without deadening the warm, lighthearted sensibility. At times, it’s going to put you in mind of Wayne Wang’s “The Joy Luck Club,” but that’s only because we see so few films about Chinese life this side of Jackie Chan yuckfests or the two-dimensional bad guys of flicks like “The Art of War” or “Lethal Weapon 4.” The retrospective series, which runs through mid-December, is titled “Ang Lee with James Schamus: East Meets Western,” highlighting Lee’s association with producer Schamus. Taiwan/U.S., in English and Mandarin with English subtitles Call for showtimes. $8/$6. 1750 Hennepin Ave., Mpls. 612-375-7600. Hobbes

I Am Cuba
Bell Auditorium

Admired as much as Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane,” Sergie Eisenstein’s “Potemkin” proved in the 1920s that Communist films could reach the height of cinematic art. “I Am Cuba” continues this tradition 40 years later. Made a week after the Cuban missile crisis, “socialist realism” merges with Latin passion. The film relates four stories ofthe common people’s resistance to injustices under the vicious Batista regime that Castro’s revolution overthrew. With relentless right-wing propaganda and the U.S. travel ban to Cuba, this might be your only alternative view of this tiny nation with higher literacy than ours and universal healthcare. Nov. 11 - 17, 6:30 & 9:30 p.m. (matinee 3:30 p.m. Sat. – Sun.), $8 /$5; festival pass $50/$40. 10 Church St. SE, Mpls. 612-331-7563. mnFilmArts.org/bell. Lydia Howell

Icy Shores CD Release Show
The Uptown Bar

Right away, the Icy Shores’ Catlick Records debut What You Get and How You Get It aligns itself with the kind of soft-loud aesthetic that has stood the Foo Fighters in such good stead for years on album opener “Backseat.” It’s spot-on power-punk-pop, and the album follows suit, hitting all the right notes from the design (pastoral, hand-drawn animal imagery + handwritten band name + swirly linework = indie rock) to the profound-sentence-fragment album title to the shimmery guitars that break into curtains of distortion. They’re not a band that takes a lot of risks, but rather deliver a very solid, melodic disc (and no doubt live show) that follows in the footsteps of Hey Mercedes, the Get-Up Kids and Nada Surf. And I mean closely: this effort easily stands up to bands with much bigger budgets, and that’s no mean feat for a local band. With Careers in Modeling and Action vs. Action. 9:30 p.m. 21+. $5. 3018 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls. 612-823-4719. Steve McPherson

Palestinian/Israeli Nonviolent Resistance
St. Joan of Arc Church

Largely unnoticed by the world’s press, thousands of Palestinians and hundreds of Israeli supporters are waging a major nonviolent resistance movement against the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and especially against the Annexation Wall. Ayed Morrar and Jonathan Pollack are among the major figures in the nonviolent struggle against the occupation. Morrar, a community leader from the West Bank village of Budrus, and Pollack, an activist from Tel Aviv, stand for a new vision of Palestinian/Israeli partnership based on human rights for all. While world leaders praise Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza as a step toward peace, they also demand that the Palestinian Authority suppress armed resistance to Israel’s military occupation. Thur. 7 p.m. St. Joan of Arc Church, 4537 3rd Ave. S., Mpls.; Fri. 5 p.m. Nov. 11, Macalester College, Carnegie Hall, room 6, 1600 Grand Ave., St. Paul. Free. K. Flo Razowsky

Sadie Hawkins Day, & Neil Young’s plus Cyn Collins’ B-Day
Hexagon Bar

OK, so, Neil Young was born on this day, already a reason to celebrate. But there’s more. This show also celebrates the day of the birth of local writer Cyn Collins, the fastest music pundit to traverse both sides of the river six times in one night so she won’t miss anything. Early attendees get to eat free Indian food from Sahib’s Restaurant, with music starting at 9:30 p.m. If that wasn’t enough, it’s also Sadie Hawkins Day, a nearly-defunct holiday that we women could use as an excuse to hook up with that beautiful man that up until now, was only an idea every time we saw him. New Vintage (Baby Grant Johnson Band), Kruddler, Fort Wilson Riot and the Knotwells provide musical entertainment. 9 p.m. Free. 2600 27th Ave. S., Mpls. 612-532-3688. Rebecca Thurn

Deadly Snakes
Seventh St. Entry

The Deadly Snakes proudly wear their influences on their collective sleeve: the Zombies, the Kinks, Love and basically whatever you can find on the Nuggets box sets, but that’s somewhat misleading. They’re often lumped in with the resurgent garage band movement that heartily embraces lo-fi recording techniques, but while they certainly have a throwback sound, they’ve continued to expand their sonic palette on this, their fourth release: “Sissy Blues” has boisterous horns and “Gore Veil” boasts the distinctive tones of mellotron flutes. Boasting a six-man lineup, they’re sure to fill up the tiny stage of the Entry, but don’t expect flower headdresses and hippy-jamming; these guys have built a reputation for exciting live shows. A lot of bands just ape ‘60s sounds because they have nothing original to say, but the Deadly Snakes make great pop songs out of a library of sounds from one of rock’s golden ages. With special guests. 8 p.m. 21+. $8. 29 N. 7th St., Mpls. 612-332-1775. McPherson

Mobius Band
Seventh St. Entry

Plenty of indie rock bands are populated by guys and girls who couldn’t tell a minor/major 7 chord from a drink ticket, but the Mobius Band are not among them. Harnessing a diverse musical education including everything from African drumming to a cappella singing, this trio brings the rock, but not before dragging it through all manner of electronic blips and bloops. After honing their glitch-pop sound through many gigs at the tiny Fire and Water coffeehouse in Western Massachusetts and a series of handcrafted EPs, they jumped up to the big time (well, relative big time) with the City vs. Country EP and then the full-length The Loving Sounds of Static on Ghostly International and now they have everyone from Pitchfork to Entertainment Weekly singing their praises. City vs. Country seems like an apt moniker for their sound: a blend of the pastoral and organic with the mechanized and industrial. They do it all with such easy aplomb and a keen ear for pop melody on tracks like “I Had a Very Good Year” and “Radio Coup” that you find yourself wondering why they’re not on the O.C. soundtrack already. Sometimes, you learn all that stuff about diminished arpeggios and djembes and koras so you can forget about it and focus on making great music. With Tom Vek. 8 p.m. 21+. $10/$12. 29 N. 7th St., Mpls. 612-332-1775. McPherson