ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT >>

• BEST ACTOR
  Short, lean, ruddy-cheeked, and mop-topped, young actor Casey Greig is one of the most recognizable faces in the local theater scene. In fact, Greig is impossible to ignore, whether he's effortlessly stealing scenes in the Jungle Theater's production of Torch Song Trilogy or fleshing out larger... More >>
• BEST ACTRESS
  The Frank Theatre has made excellent use of actress Phyllis Wright's seemingly perpetual scowl these past few seasons. First there was Perfect Pie, in which Wright acted out the role of a defeated Canadian farm wife with slouched shoulders, a droll monotone, and lively eyes. More recently,... More >>
• BEST AM RADIO PERSONALITY
  Every weeknight at 8:00 p.m., a coup occurs on KSTP radio. Martial music announces the arrival of the Mischke Broadcast, relegating Jason Lewis's right-wing circle-jerk to ruins. In its place a parallel universe rises, where all news is open to interpretation, Willie Dixon is more important... More >>
• BEST ART CINEMA
  In the wake of Al Milgrom's recent show-stopping announcement--that U Film has finally accepted Oak Street Cinema's long-standing proposal to merge the two organizations, beginning in July--let's take one more opportunity to thank him for four decades of devotion to one of the most distinctive... More >>
• BEST ART GALLERY
  It takes a keen eye and a steady nerve to run an art gallery. The eye is necessary to bag artists in their native habitat--the wild estuaries and studio complexes where they feed and breed and make their art. Sometimes, no one has noticed these beautiful creatures before. One false look and the... More >>
• BEST ART SERVICE
  A nod here must go to Springboard for the Arts, the laudable St. Paul-based group that assists artists with career planning, money management, taxes, rights licensing, and job-seeking. (It even provides low-interest loans for entrepreneurial arts projects and small grants to help artists meet... More >>
• BEST BOOK BY A LOCAL AUTHOR
  Usually when we think of great books we think of those that use words to paint a picture and create an idea of place, time, and emotion. But last year, the most interesting portrait of a time and community was accomplished with literal snapshots (and some fascinating text, too). Lake Street... More >>
• BEST CHOREOGRAPHER
  According to the cliché, two heads are better than one. But in the case of Danial Shapiro and Joanie Smith, it's the noggins and the bodies beneath them that make for a complementary pairing. Shapiro works a damn-the-torpedoes moxie while Smith is all elegant understatement. As leaders... More >>
• BEST COLUMNIST
  The story was a doozy. Billy Baldwin, a 63-year-old parking-lot attendant in St. Paul's Midway neighborhood, loses his son in the destruction of the World Trade Center. Two months later four of his family members are killed in a head-on collision in Wisconsin. Overcome by compassion, the office... More >>
• BEST DANCE PERFORMANCE OF THE PAST 12 MONTHS (LOCAL)
  There's something to be said for a performer who can put on a pair of pants five sizes too big and dance around to Dolly Parton with a serious look on her face--and, in the process, thoroughly convince us that she has a very bright future. Emily Johnson, of course, doesn't have to explain what... More >>
• BEST DANCE PERFORMANCE OF THE PAST 12 MONTHS (ROAD SHOW)
  When the avant-garde Judson Dance Theater was in its early-Sixties heyday in a small church on New York's Washington Square, none of the artists involved likely thought that, some 40 years later, mainstream audiences would be applauding their efforts. Then again, Mikhail Baryshnikov's White Oak... More >>
• BEST DANCER
  After months of rigorous rehearsal and performance, you'd think Greg Waletski, an 11-year member of Zenon Dance Company, would want to take a break from physical exertion. Instead, he heads to Bristol Bay, Alaska, and spends the summer working as a commercial salmon fisherman. One wonders if... More >>
• BEST DIRECTOR
  Joel Sass set out to dazzle us this year, particularly with two plays he directed for his own company, Mary Worth: The History of the Devil and Shakespeare's R&J. His extraordinary sense of low-budget spectacle and his ability to draw epic-sized performances out of every actor must be given... More >>
• BEST FILM
  One of the most fascinating characters in 20th-century Minnesota history--former Sen. Eugene McCarthy, best known for his impassioned 1968 campaign against the Vietnam War--is the subject of this half-hour documentary directed for the St. Paul-based Center for International Education by Mike... More >>
• BEST FM RADIO PERSONALITY
  For those of us who are not morning people, starting the day is a treacherous process that pits the desire for information against a grumpy impatience with same. Thank goodness for Cathy Wurzer. The host of Minnesota Public Radio's Morning Edition, Wurzer is with us every day from 4:00 a.m. to... More >>
• BEST HIP-HOP RADIO PROGRAM
  Now that hip hop is a thriving commercial entity, everybody wants a piece of it. (Though it's a shocking indication of how slowly capitalism moves in these parts that hip hop's infiltration of commercial Twin Cities radio took so long.) But regardless of industry trends, KMOJ has been breaking... More >>
• BEST INDEPENDENT THEATER
  It's been a year of transformation for this half-decade-old company, cofounded and overseen by the pathologically overworked Zach Curtis: They grew more professional, switched venues, and gained greater visibility. We've commented on their shows throughout this past year, such as the Matt... More >>
• BEST JAZZ RADIO PROGRAM
  Tom Surowicz sees more live concerts than anyone in town, which not only adds new chapters to his encyclopedic musical knowledge, but also enables him to corral great radio guests such as Blue Note bassist Herbie Lewis and local luminaries such as Herb Pilhofer, Peg Carrothers, and Steve Yeager... More >>
• BEST LOCAL IMPRESARIO
  In 1998 we bestowed the title of Best Local Director upon Philip Bither, the Walker Art Center's performing arts curator, but now, four years later, he deserves a grander accolade. No one around town is provoking audiences the way this guy is. A particularly fine example of Bither's booking... More >>
• BEST MOVIE THEATER
  At a time when even upscale cafés have turned to unspooling art cinema as an appetizer, the Cities' venerable museum of the moving image has focused on a healthier variety of film nourishment: local premieres (e.g., the surrealist Little Otik, the globalization doc Life and Debt, the... More >>
• BEST MUSEUM
  Sometimes the obvious choice is the best choice. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is the down comforter and cup of cocoa of local museums. It is the known entity, the old standby where we've spent countless hours and never left feeling unsatisfied. By now, we can all recite its charms by... More >>
• BEST MUSEUM EXHIBITION
  Do you miss the late 1990s: the heady techno-optimism, the delusional market bubble, the free Internet offers? Remember when everything was e-this, and e-that? When the goatee-and-pierced-face set was going to run the world? Remember when virtual reality--with its clunky headsets and electronic... More >>
• BEST NEW TALK SHOW HOST
  Ian Punnett is a kinder, gentler, more intelligent version of Dr. Laura Schlessinger. In January the Atlanta transplant took over the 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. time slot on KSTP-AM (1500) from the browbeating advice guru--and for that alone he deserves our heartfelt thanks. Punnett's show largely... More >>
• BEST PUBLIC-ACCESS CABLE TV PROGRAM
  Since the spring of 1998, south Minneapolis's Anderson brothers (Pat, Mike, and Ricky) have been quietly cranking out the most entertaining fishing show you'll find anywhere--let alone on public-access television. Truth be told, the commercial fishing program has become a tired genre, an... More >>
• BEST RADIO STATION
  "One world, two frequencies" may be the only slogan in local radio that isn't either glib or patently false. In fact, KFAI brings more communities to "community radio" than any other station in Minnesota. Weekly programming includes Hmong pop music, jazz for people who listen to too much jazz,... More >>
• BEST READING OF THE PAST 12 MONTHS
  More like an anti-reading, wherein our lovable, pudgy agent provocateur, Michael Moore, reads exactly zero words from his new bestseller, Stupid White Men. Instead, for two hours he improvisationally entertains and enlightens the overflowing crowd of Smart White Lefties. Highlights: 1) M.M.... More >>
• BEST REPORTER
  Why is the Pioneer Press generally more readable than its much bigger, richer rival across the river, the self-declared "Newspaper of the Twin Cities"? There are too many reasons to list here. But a comparison of the papers' coverage of the biggest political story in Minnesota's recent... More >>
• BEST SINGLE-ARTIST SHOW
  Eerily exquisite and dazzlingly beautiful, Kaplow's show stood out from the masses of obvious art devoted to identity issues and political dogma. The nature of this installation was seemingly simple. At the center of the piece was a video projection screen, suspended in mid-gallery by taut... More >>
• BEST SPORTS TALK RADIO SHOW
  When Jesse Ventura's gubernatorial bid got him bumped off KFAN four years ago, Paul Allen and Jeffrey Dubay were a stopgap replacement. Allen, who announces the races at Canterbury Park, improvised a hip, wise-guy shtick liberally borrowed from national radio personality Jim Rome. Dubay, who'd... More >>
• BEST STAGE PRODUCTION
  Well, Andrew Kim is gone, at least temporarily. This multi-hyphenate talent, last year's Best Director choice in City Pages, has packed up his masks and puppets and moved to Seattle (although word has it he will return to assist in this year's May Day Parade). But before ditching the Twin... More >>
• BEST THEATER FOR COMEDY
  Bedlam Theater doesn't do many new plays--one every eight months or so, at most--but they get our kudos this year for three compelling reasons. First, there was their sole full-length play from this past season, the recently closed Terminus. This came across like a comical gloss on portentous... More >>
• BEST THEATER FOR NEW WORK
  It's time to tip our hat to this venerable five-year-old outfit whose sole mission is to create new work--and by new, we mean really new. Artistic director David Moore Jr., a Yale man and the former executive director of the Playwrights' Center, takes an almost perverse pleasure in seeking out... More >>
• BEST TV NEWSCASTER
  As chief political correspondent for the now-defunct (but nonetheless noble) NewsNight Minnesota and for Almanac--still the most substantive local news program by leagues--Lahammer has distinguished herself through both the depth and breadth of her reporting. And it doesn't hurt that, of all... More >>
• BEST TV SPORTS ANCHOR
  As KARE-11's third-string sportscaster, Eric Perkins anchors the sports news only if both Randy Shaver and Tim McNiff are otherwise engaged. But though it might be a rare occasion, watching Perkins on air is a refreshing experience. Sure, he's got television in his genes: His father, Jack... More >>
• BEST TV STATION
  The medium of television has so much promise, such great potential--yet here we are watching Judge Judy. Consumers, it seems, are sending a message, and that message is: "I read the paper or have Internet sources for news. High art is best left to film, stage, and canvas. The box in my living... More >>
• BEST TV WEATHERPERSON
  In a lot of places, it might seem weird to have a favorite TV weatherperson--they're all pretty much interchangeable, right? But this is Minnesota, where weather is less a facet of nature than a collective fixation, something to be ruminated upon, guessed at, and complained about till Doomsday.... More >>
• BEST VENUE FOR DANCE
  Oh, if those walls could talk! For more than 90 years the Southern Theater has anchored the Seven Corners intersection on the West Bank, evolving from a Swedish-themed vaudeville venue into a porno-movie playhouse, a heavy-equipment garage, the swanky Gaslight Restaurant, a Guthrie Theater... More >>
• BEST ZINE
  Any homemade, black-and-white comic book that opens with the words Minneapolis, two weeks into the start of WWIII... and then shows an image of a destroyed downtown skyline deserves some credit for capturing the Zeitgeist. Yet this tale of adolescent apocalypse survivors (available at zine... More >>
• BEST-DRESSED TV NEWSCASTER
  A few months ago, there was a minor stir when a CNN promo touted anchor Paula Zahn as "just a little sexy." Embarrassed network execs immediately killed the ad and apologized profusely. But why? It's no great secret that TV news is largely show business, or that show business is largely about... More >>