ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT >>

• BEST ACTOR
  Kilbourne has earned a lot of notice on Twin Cities stages in recent years, most prominently in Hapgood at the Jungle in 2002 and The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer with Frank Theatre in 2003. It was in playing Langley Collyer in Richard Greenberg's The Dazzle, though, that he delivered a... More >>
• BEST ACTRESS
  The mark of a great actress is her ability to inhabit her role convincingly in any part or production, and Parks possesses this ephemeral quality. The last year has seen her in two Children's Theatre shows: the Somali/African American collision Snapshot Silhouette and the eco-warning Splash... More >>
• BEST AM RADIO PERSONALITY
  Patrick Reusse has become a ubiquitous presence on KSTP-AM (1500). The crotchety sports pundit pops up hourly on Bob Davis's maniacal morning show, regularly visits with Ron Rosenbaum and Mark O'Connell during the midday hours, and comes back again to chat with his old chum Joe Soucheray during... More >>
• BEST AREA PREMIERE
  Frank Theatre treated this local unveiling of Suzan-Lori Parks's play like the lopsided treasure it was, staging it on the floor of an empty machine shop and applying layers of dread, panic, and tempered affection to a prickly and unforgiving storyline. Shá Cage was both appealing and... More >>
• BEST ART CINEMA
  To celebrate its 10th anniversary, our local museum of the moving image is reeling in the years, spending three weeks on a dozen and a half of its best-attended, best-loved repertory titles: Hitchcock's Vertigo (May 11-12), Kurosawa's Yojimbo (May 9-10), Godard's Breathless (April 29 through... More >>
• BEST ART GALLERY
  Over the past year, this little gallery in northeast Minneapolis (run by artists Karl Raschke and Dave Salmela) has housed some of the most buzzed-about exhibits in town. From a show by local comic-book artists the International Cartoonist Conspiracy (which featured work by acclaimed comic-book... More >>
• BEST BUDGET MOVIE THEATER
  It's not just for the neighbors anymore. The only Minneapolis movie house of any kind within miles of its far-east locale attracts filmgoers from all over because, for one thing, it's an awfully nice room: both wide and long, with unusually comfy seats, a huge screen, and state-of-the-art... More >>
• BEST CHOREOGRAPHER
  A silent apparition, a punk rock goddess, a complex character from Shakespeare: Judith Howard summoned all of these presences in "Ophelia," a solo that fearlessly celebrated all aspects of the feminine psyche--and the unique ability to gracefully doff many, many petticoats in a postmodern nod... More >>
• BEST CLASSICAL PERFORMANCE OF THE PAST 12 MONTHS
  A bold organizational move that gave the musicians of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra responsibility for their own affairs--and their subsequent decision to have a series of "artistic partners," rather than one music director--has generated interest both locally and nationally. One of these... More >>
• BEST COLUMNIST
  Nick Coleman is old-school. He grew up in blue-collar St. Paul. When he needs material for his thrice-weekly Star Tribune column or wants to check his gut against the word on the street, he heads for a barbershop. He favors blunt, declarative sentences, with an occasional sprinkling of... More >>
• BEST COMEDY
  After the dust settled from Fringe 2004, SRO Productions picked two of the year's most popular productions for a best-of at the Loring Playhouse. Kicking off the evening was Theatre Latté Da's Knock!, which dove headlong into the world of a 12-year-old boy named Toehead (ostensibly a... More >>
• BEST COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER
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• BEST DANCE PERFORMANCE OF THE PAST 12 MONTHS
  10foot5 is more than one dancer, but when hoofers like these unite in a groove so deep that pieces of the stage floor start flying around, such details hardly matter. 10foot5 is the creation of Minneapolis brothers Andy and Rick Ausland, two lanky, tap-dancing, peace-loving guys who... More >>
• BEST DANCER
  In past Christmas seasons, we've seen Stephanie Fellner command the stage with a mixture of Mick Jagger swagger and Cruella de Ville mischief as the Rat Queen in the Ballet of the Dolls' production of the Nutcracker?! (Not So) Suite. This year she took on the considerably sweeter role of... More >>
• BEST DIRECTOR
  As an artistic director at Theatre de la Jeune Lune, as well as in outside projects, Serrand weds a unique and almost contrarian aesthetic to a propensity for producing tons of work. In recent months he's co-directed a new staging of Carmina Burana, a run of The Miser at Jeune Lune, and an... More >>
• BEST FILM
  Well-known as the hardest-working filmmaker in the cities, documentarian extraordinaire Matt Ehling (Urban Warrior) has, since 9/11, been crafting the sort of PBS-worthy docs that PBS doesn't dare to broadcast anymore. His latest is, you could say, a noble effort to inform us of what we might... More >>
• BEST FM RADIO PERSONALITY
  Her older brothers and sisters can speak of a time in the Twin Cities when another magical media icon Mary (Richards) could turn the world on with her smile. This Mary, heard weekday afternoons on the Current (89.3 FM), may not have earned a statue on Nicollet Mall (yet), but who needs false... More >>
• BEST HIP-HOP RADIO PROGRAM
  Two decades ago, there were one or two radio shows in town that played rap music. Now, hip hop is Top 40, with heavy rotation on commercial stations B96 (96.3 FM) and KDWB (101.3 FM), and also on KMOJ (89.9 FM) community radio every Friday and Saturday evening. Specialty shows on other... More >>
• BEST INDEPENDENT THEATER
  Theatergoers in the Twin Cities are often blissfully unaware of the embarrassment of independent riches in this town. In most other American cities of this size, there are but a handful of theatrical options on any given weekend. Here, a couple of dozen offerings are on the plate at any given... More >>
• BEST JAZZ RADIO PROGRAM
  The nighttime is the right time for jazz radio. It has actually been proven in the lab that saxophones, diminished chords, and recitations of album-jacket personnel lists sound 30 percent better after 10:00 p.m. Mindful of this fact, KFAI presents jazz Monday through Thursday from 10:30 p.m.... More >>
• BEST LOCAL IMPRESARIO
  When most of us think of international theater, what comes to mind is the Walker Art Center's programming of avant-garde, experimental, and often nonsensical productions. In that grand shadow, the Guthrie Theater and its World Stage Series director James Morrison slowly grew a divergent... More >>
• BEST MOVIE THEATER
  If the best movie theater is the one that has the best new movies, then this 10-year-old multiplex offshoot of the Uptown--run by the muscular Landmark Theatres--is clearly the best. In the past year, owing to the bargaining power of its parent company, the Lagoon has played exclusive host to... More >>
• BEST MUSEUM
  Thanks to a recent 260,000-square-foot expansion (designed by award-winning Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron), Minneapolis can proudly claim it has a museum equal to Paris's famed Pompidou Center. It's true--there's a world-class art museum right in the center of America! Even... More >>
• BEST MUSEUM EXHIBITION
  Science geeks and kindergarteners unite in the giddy pleasure of seeing the largest traveling exhibition of Chinese fossils ever to tour North America. The six-year-olds growl carnally at the velociraptor and rattle off facts to accompanying adults about the diet composition and prey-accusation... More >>
• BEST OPERA
  Even though it got blasted by critics for lacking any discernable plot, Maria de Buenos Aires was the sexiest, most arresting opera production to come along since, well, Jeune Lune's production of Carmen last year. With a seven-piece tango orchestra, gorgeous singing (and singers), and visual... More >>
• BEST PUBLIC ART PROJECT
  The corner of Franklin and Fifth Avenues, where many cars turn to catch the freeway, has long been a homely vista, especially when compared with the corner across the bridge where the Electric Fetus sits. A Dairy Queen stood empty on Franklin and Fifth for years, known as the "Crack Dairy... More >>
• BEST PUBLIC-ACCESS CABLE SHOW
  Cable access is a medium often associated with Pyrex-clutching church ladies and juvenile pranksters looking for 15 minutes of local quasi-fame. Kinpride, a 30-minute talk show, has shattered the mold on both counts with provocative but evenhanded discussion of issues surrounding the GLBT... More >>
• BEST PUNK ROCK RADIO SHOW
  Sure, there are a few local DJs that hew more closely to the sonic boundaries of punk rock, but for our money, no one embodies the spirit of anarchy and irreverence more than Eric of Voice Cried Softly. Where else can you hear the Shaggs on the heels of "Let the Eagle Soar" by John Ashcroft?... More >>
• BEST RADIO PROGRAM AFTER MIDNIGHT
  It's Saturday night after closing time, and you want music that you don't have to cue up yourself. Commercial radio feels alive, but commercials kill your mood. KMOJ (89.9 FM) has switched to slow jams, as if the party were already over. The Current (89.3 FM) plays some funky Talking Heads, but... More >>
• BEST RADIO STATION
  It should be admitted up front that KFAI's reluctance to program contemporary popular music during daytime weekday hours--and its parallel commitment to news programming--left a gap on the FM dial through which the Current (89.3 FM) has driven a semitruck. But would MPR's new alt-flagship be... More >>
• BEST SHOW WITH NO VISIBLE HUMAN BEINGS
  A little production company called Grinding Into Emptiness, composed of local artist Kristi Ternes and sometime Twin Cities resident Roger Peet, assembled last December at Bedlam Studio to put on a multimedia show rife with happy darkness. Autotomy combined shadow puppets, live music, and... More >>
• BEST SINGLE-ARTIST SHOW
  This exhibit had two tales to tell: one of the mid-20th-century American painter Beauford Delaney, whose modern art style changed dramatically when he moved from New York to Paris, and the other of Sue Canterbury, assistant curator of painting and modern sculpture at the Minneapolis Institute... More >>
• BEST SPORTS-TALK RADIO HOST
  Every year we struggle with this category. There's just too much inanity that goes with the territory of hosting a sports-talk show. In order to be successful, you've got to spend way too much time pandering to the kind of sub-chimpanzee listeners who believe that the main problem with the... More >>
• BEST STAGE PRODUCTION
  A month before last fall's presidential election, Mixed Blood Theatre rushed Jane Martin's Iraq War play, originally intended for the Guthrie, to the stage. It featured Chris Mulkey as Eddie, a gutbucket patriot proud that his son is off killing the enemy--until that son is killed, and Eddie... More >>
• BEST THEATER FOR DRAMA
  While last year's Guthrie Mainstage shows were of the sort that one admired rather than loved, the action taking place in the Guthrie Lab possessed a consistently high level of quality and adventurism that made it the closest thing to a sure bet. Lady with a Lapdog was Chekhov on truth serum,... More >>
• BEST TV NEWSCASTER
  Yeah, yeah, we know about her work as a flack for Republican politicos, a pharmaceutical giant, and Big Tobacco. Blurring the lines between PR and journalism has made Brucato the ultimate insider of the local TV dial--and not in a good way. But the sad commentary on the state of the local... More >>
• BEST TV SPORTS ANCHOR
  Only local sportscaster Eric Perkins could do a segment about a family who plays a snowy game of baseball to celebrate opening day of spring training, and allow it to descend into a bizarre, nightmare-fueled short film that features "Perk" as six different but equally whacked-out characters,... More >>
• BEST TV STATION
  Twice this year, public television found itself at the center of culture-war skirmishes. First, in January, conservatives raised a stink when an episode of Postcards from Buster, a PBS show about a cartoon rabbit, dared to show a same-sex couple. A month later, under threat of FCC fines, PBS... More >>
• BEST TV WEATHERPERSON
  When news anchor Paul Magers left KARE-11 in late 2003 for an unbelievably high-paying gig in Los Angeles, he left behind some pretty big Bruno Magli shoes to fill (and no doubt a large supply of self-tanner). Who would've expected that it'd be meteorologist Ken Barlow, and not Magers's... More >>