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Max Sparber

A performer, playwright and long-time arts and culture journalist, Max Sparber has served as a theater critic, arts/entertainment editor, editor in chief and feature writer at a variety of publications, including a three-year stint at City Pages. In 2007 he won a Frank Premack Award for Public Affairs Journalism.

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Max About Town

An intriguing autumnal weekend: films, a new Paulus piece and Wynton Marsalis

By Max Sparber | 09/30/11
Ah, autumn, the two or three weeks of sweater and windbreaker weather Minnesota offers us before blanketing us with snow.
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The rise and fall and rise of the flash mob

By Max Sparber | 09/29/11
There were dancers, after a fashion, on Nicollet Mall yesterday and the previous day; they've shown up around town since the start of August, and will remain until Oct. 6.
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Speakers for the dead: 'Of Dolls and Murder' screens tonight

By Max Sparber | 09/28/11
In the world of death, it's hard to be a superstar. Any little detail from the land of the dead is likely to fascinate the living, a fact that popular culture has capitalized on.
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Unhaunted: Touring nooks and crannies in the James J. Hill House

By Max Sparber | 09/27/11
If ever there was a building that looked as though it should be haunted, it's the James J. Hill house in St.
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Why Brad Pitt isn't a movie star, and why 'Moneyball' is the sort of film he should star in

By Max Sparber | 09/26/11
Brad Pitt is a character actor whom Hollywood insists on treating like a movie star, and it's been bad for him. Some people can carry a film with the sheer force of their charisma.
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Weekend's what's what: hothouse theater, beer by the river, zines in the park

By Max Sparber | 09/23/11
It's Friday, and that can mean only one thing: My Facebook feed will fill up with complaints about changes Facebook has made to their service.
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It's the cure that will kill you: An exhibit of questionable medicine

By Max Sparber | 09/22/11
I suspect I am predisposed to enjoying medical-themed exhibits, as I come from a medical family. My father, now retired, was a research professor on the subject of psychopharmacology, while my mother is a pharmacist.
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Into the past: 'Astronaut Dad' and horror author Carl Jacobi

By Max Sparber | 09/21/11
Every so often I like to stop by comic-book shops and ask if there is anything by local authors and artists.
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Concurrent 'Much Ado,' 'Hamlet' productions raise the question: Why Shakespeare?

By Max Sparber | 09/20/11
"Much Ado About Nothing" opened at the Guthrie last week. It's a typically fine production, with the lead actors earnest and expressive and the comic actors positively balmy.
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To live and die in Echo Park: 'Drive'

By Max Sparber | 09/19/11
"Drive" is getting a lot of people excited nowadays. It’s a heist-gone-wrong film, mostly set around the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles — one of my old neighborhoods, and I just complained that films rarely actually look like