ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT >>

• BEST ACTOR
  This past year, Steve Hendrickson may have been the hardest-working actor in town. Most recently, he appeared as the self-loathing Roy Cohn in Pillsbury House Theatre's production of Angels in America. Before that he was clowning through Shakespeare in local prisons and homeless shelters with... More >>
• BEST ACTRESS
  Though Sally Wingert is perhaps the most visible actress in the Twin Cities, you'll never see her acting. When she takes center stage, as in the Guthrie's 1999 production of Lillian Garrett-Groag's The Magic Fire or the more recent Lake Hollywood at the Guthrie Lab, Wingert is so attuned to the... More >>
• BEST AM RADIO PERSONALITY
  If drink is the curse of the working class, talk radio is the curse of the driving class. And in the Twin Cities, where cars still rule, what a curse that is. With each passing year, the blather on the AM side of the dial becomes more insufferable. From sunup to sundown, T.D. Mischke's... More >>
• BEST ART CINEMA
  The latest rumor of U Film's demise (there are usually two or three in a given year) came courtesy of Split Screen host John Pierson, who broke the "news" to the Web site indieWIRE a few months ago that "the University has finally closed Al [Milgrom] down after 35 years." While fielding calls... More >>
• BEST ART GALLERY
  While Franklin Art Works--located in the restored New Franklin Theater--is a work in progress, since its November opening director Tim Peterson has made this space a major player on the local art scene. How has he done this in such a short time? It helps that this renovated movie palace has a... More >>
• BEST ARTISTIC COLLABORATION
  Dance is tricky enough without purposely avoiding the ground, yet choreographer Robin Stiehm's City at the Southern Theater not only dared to literally elevate the action but did so within a decaying, futuristic urban world. Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities inspired Stiehm's vision, but scenic... More >>
• BEST BOOK BY A LOCAL AUTHOR
  Jonis Agee has a thing for cars. Though her passion for NASCAR races may not be widely shared at the College of St. Catherine, where she teaches, her story collection of last year, Taking the Wall (on local Coffee House Press), provided an opportunity to examine the drivers and pit crews... More >>
• BEST BUDGET MOVIE THEATER
  The lovingly preserved art-deco lobby, the gigantic screen, and the DTS and Dolby sound speak for themselves, but even at a second-run theater, the programming counts most. And the Riverview has improved its already careful selection, mostly in terms of volume: On some weekends, there are four... More >>
• BEST CHAMBER ENSEMBLE
  If chamber music were baseball, this might be dubbed a "rebuilding year" for the SPCO. Chamber music is not baseball, luckily. Despite the impending departure of sprightly music director Hugh Wolff, the SPCO continues to demonstrate why it is considered among the nation's preeminent small... More >>
• BEST CHOREOGRAPHER
  Dancers who make the move to choreographer are not always blessed with a smooth transition. Performance depends upon the ability to interpret another's vision with clarity, to communicate intangible ideas through movement. Making dances demands a combination of skills, not the least of which is... More >>
• BEST CONDUCTOR
  True, his appearances locally are fewer today than in the years he served as music director of the Minnesota Orchestra (from 1960 to 1979), during which time he had an instrumental hand in getting Orchestra Hall built. But when the orchestra's conductor laureate does turn up--last fall, for... More >>
• BEST DANCER
  Is it possible for someone to be fluent in dance? We've all heard about that flowery concept known as the "language of movement," but surely there is more to this notion, a meaning that transcends press-release superlatives. Watching Emily Johnson perform in Paula Mann's recent Light and Dark:... More >>
• BEST FILM
  Writer-director Tim McCusker's hypercaffeinated meditation on the similarities between a battlefield and a French bakery in St. Paul may be the most outrageously verbose local movie ever made--and it runs only 20:15. "The redeeming roll is sweet, it's true," says the pastry-loving,... More >>
• BEST FILM FESTIVAL
  This category will remain no contest as long as U Film Society's Al Milgrom continues his annual workaholic binge otherwise known as the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival. The recent 2000 edition flaunted more than 100 films from more than 49 countries, including a great many... More >>
• BEST FM RADIO PERSONALITY
  Sometimes greatness is knowing when to get out of the way. When we tune in to MPR on a Sunday afternoon, we don't really care how cold it is in Bemidji, and we definitely aren't up for the news read by a guy who sounds as stiff as our social-studies teacher. We want the best six hours of radio... More >>
• BEST GROUP ART SHOW
  Oh, to be a new "nomadic" arts organization like Radiator bursting on the scene, heart all aflutter with its first show! This exhibition from late September of last year was a colorful, energetic, and witty conglomeration of work by ten young local artists. And its mere existence indicates that... More >>
• BEST INDIE THEATER
  Let's start with a caveat: An indie theater is a company that does not have a permanent home. That said, we might still be misemploying the term indie by applying it to Hidden Theatre. Such is this six-year-old company's prowess that they are widely considered one of the best theaters in town... More >>
• BEST JAZZ RADIO PROGRAM
  There is a public radio station in New York City, WKCR-FM (89.9), that periodically devotes 100 consecutive programming hours to the recordings of jazz's giants. These broadcast bonanzas often come when an artist dies, or on a birthday. Seventy hours of the complete recordings of the Modern... More >>
• BEST MOVIE THEATER
  At the start of its fifth year, our favorite local museum of the moving image has made a few concessions to modernity, installing new seats and a booming Dolby system to make its repertoire of classics, cult movies, and recent raves feel and sound even better. But the theater's distinguishing... More >>
• BEST MUSEUM
  After viewing a particularly fine year of cutting-edge art, we give a nod to the only museum in town that makes us feel like we're in New York City for an afternoon (and yes, that entails a gaggle of those art snobs who intimidate us). Highlights of the past 12 months, which included a wide... More >>
• BEST OPERA
  The Minnesota Opera, now in its 37th year, has built a reputation for postmodern experimentation (although those who attended the company's recent Semiramide can attest that said experiments are not always fruitful). While 1999's Faust was about as far from the avant-garde as opera gets, it was... More >>
• BEST OUTFIT WORN BY THE TIMBERWOLVES PERFORMANCE TEAM
  Having spied various members of the performance team working out at the Arena Health Club in downtown Minneapolis, we know how hard it is to don the blue and black. One poor woman spends more than two hours a day, three days a week on a StairMaster. Two hours! (And you thought Bill Walton had... More >>
• BEST PIRATE RADIO STATION
  Formed by local members of the resurgent left-wing labor union International Workers of the World--a.k.a. the Wobblies--Free Radio Twin Cities takes advantage of its freedom from official license to broadcast lively radical political commentary and music designed for adventurous dial hoppers.... More >>
• BEST PUBLIC-ACCESS CABLE TV PROGRAM
  You can keep your clear waters and your scenic lakes--those distant spots near the redoubts of one's summer cabin. And you can keep your walleye and your northern, too. This MTN cable-access show, airing Saturdays at 7:00 p.m., features men in waders, heavy coats, and boots, catching all kinds... More >>
• BEST RADIO STATION
  Like the student DJs that run the board, Radio K's sound is a likable mix of professionalism and rabid enthusiasm. The smoothest Brazilian pop and the rawest local punk bands sit next to one another in the CD player, while seasoned announcers who sound like they could host any morning show in... More >>
• BEST SINGLE ARTIST SHOW
  Unlike last year's cinematic installment of the Star Wars saga (to say nothing of this year's museum show) the big-budget Bruce Conner retrospective blowout at the Walker Art Center was good enough to live up to its preshow hype. Consider these scenes: "Dark Brown" (1959) was a tear-jerking and... More >>
• BEST SPORTS TALK RADIO HOSTS
  Denny Green apologists, overpaid pros, and cheeseheads: Be warned. The big show on KFAN is here to stay. In a genre bursting at the seams with shtick (white-guy jive, middlebrow machismo, unrighteous rage), Chad and Barreiro, on the air from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, are... More >>
• BEST STAGE PRODUCTION
  As the driving force behind Frank Theatre, Wendy Knox is the ideal mix of pragmatist and dreamer: She is as artistically adventurous as any director in town, but also sensible enough never to let her ambition overleap her company's resources. Last year's Frank production of Brecht/Weill's The... More >>
• BEST THEATER FOR COMEDY
  It's not difficult to make an audience laugh. Neither is it difficult to make one cry. What is difficult--and rare--is to inspire an audience to laugh at themselves, for to do so, they must first recognize their ridiculousness reflected onstage. Such is the art and the magic of Theatre de la... More >>
• BEST THEATER FOR DRAMA
  If Penumbra had never done anything but nurture the work of celebrated playwright August Wilson, this 23-year-old St. Paul theater would still be one of the jewels in our civic crown. Under the sure guidance of founder Lou Bellamy, however, Penumbra has fostered the art of countless writers,... More >>
• BEST THEATER FOR NEW WORK
  There are quite a few noteworthy local theater companies specializing in contemporary work--Hidden Theatre, 15 Head, Outward Spiral, and Eye of the Storm come first to mind. Yet we have to give the nod to Bain Boehlke's Jungle for producing two new plays by local playwrights this season. It... More >>
• BEST THEATRICAL SALVAGE
  So far, the only success downtown's Shubert Theater has enjoyed is as a public engineering project--a nifty $4.7 million exercise in lifting and hauling. In the meantime, a pair of unreconstructed cineastes, previously prosperous in the field of ice-cream sales, have been turning a $155,000... More >>
• BEST TV NEWSCASTER
  Accuracy? That's up to the editors. Empathy? Leave it to Oprah. These days, an evening news anchor should be just that: A functional fixture that tethers our collective consciousness to the ground while the usual slew of scandals, crises, and meteorological misfortunes tug our frail Midwestern... More >>
• BEST TV SPORTS ANCHOR
  When we turn on the tube to catch the latest stats and scores, we occasionally wonder what would happen if all the world's sportscasters were to switch network affiliates for a day; would anyone notice? An even better experiment might be to cross genetic material from each and breed an... More >>
• BEST TV STATION
  Last year's winner, Fox-29 (WFTC-TV), screwed up bigtime by cutting back its daily Simpsons diet and adding two portions of the lifeless, inexplicably popular Third Rock From the Sun. (We only wish Simpsons fans had staged the kind of protest that saved Cheers reruns from the KARE-11 chopping... More >>
• BEST TV WEATHERPERSON
  When Douglas Paul Kruhoeffer, a.k.a. Paul Douglas, left KARE-11's "back yard" in 1994 for a forecasting job in Chicago, we guessed the guy had just gotten too big for this place. After all, the affable weatherman had, among other things, created a computer graphics firm (which provided special... More >>
• BEST WRITER AT A LOCAL DAILY
  "It troubles me to say this, but I'm looking forward to watching television," confessed Pioneer Press media columnist Brian Lambert in a November 1999 column. "These days, I watch because I'm paid to, not because I like it any more than I did before I took this job." Lambert has been watching... More >>
• BEST WRITERS' WORKSHOP
  At this year's Gotham Awards for Independent Screenwriting, where two Minnesota locals won prizes, host Sandra Bernhardt was heard to exclaim: "God, what's going on? It seems like all the good projects are coming out of Minnesota." With all the well-known mainstream writing centers and... More >>
• BEST-DRESSED TV NEWS ANCHOR
  Clothes, that old windbag Polonius was known to say, do often make the man. Nowhere, perhaps, does that cliché seem more apt than in the sterile confines of the newsroom, where women with sensibly short hair make uneasy chitchat with mellow fellows in charcoal-gray suits. Let's face it:... More >>