1 Jeremy Messersmith's new album, "Heart Murmurs," shows what financial support from a record label can do for an indie artist trying not to sound so indie. The Twin Cities pop craftsman took his C-notes from Glassnote Records and churned out lusher string arrangements ("Bridges") and more pristine and epic-sounding rock songs ("Tourniquet," "It's Only Dancing") while still leaving room for intimate ballads ("Steve") that confirm his worth no matter the recording budget. Forget the Sufjan Stevens comparisons. We're talking Paul McCartney and Paul Simon here.
2 The best toy story since the last "Toy Story," "The Lego Movie" is a quirky charmer that will make you clap your tiny curved yellow hands in joy. Writers/director Phil Lord and Chris McKay, who worked similar wonders in "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" and "21 Jump Street," provide slam-bang silliness to keep the household's junior members entertained, along with sharp blockbuster parody and sly social satire for the rest. Comedy can be difficult. Here it just snaps together.
3 In the play "Ash Land," a harsh wind sweeps the plains, kicking up dust into the eyes of drought-weary farmers. For one family, the Stones, it seems more than they can bear. The mother dies, leaving a daughter, a husband and a sister, who tries to make the family whole even as the bank forecloses on neighbors all around them. This 90-minute work, created by the company Transatlantic Love Affair and playing at Illusion Theater through Feb. 22, is told without sets or props, yet we see it all vividly as the actors use techniques from mime and dance to suggest rocking chairs, a house, the wind and much more. IllusionTheater.org
4 If they think of Siberia at all, Americans may assume it is an eternal tundra, bleak and frozen in all seasons. That's as wrong about Siberia as it is about Minnesota. In the intriguing photo show "Siberia: Imagined and Reimagined," at the Weisman Art Museum through May 1, one charming image shows a girl twirling three hula hoops at a forested campsite that could be in Minnesota, except that her camp was sponsored by the Vissarions, a Siberian religious sect founded by a former traffic cop who claims to be Christ reincarnate. It's this strange mix of the seemingly familiar and the quixotic that makes these pictures so engrossing. www.wam.umn.edu
5 In "Still Life With Bread Crumbs," Anna Quindlen turns the May-December cliché on its head. Her protagonist is a notable art photographer who, at 60, is realizing that she's yesterday's news. Finances force her to rent out her penthouse apartment and move to a rustic cabin — and there she meets a plain-spoken, salt-of-the-earth roofer 15 years her junior. Quindlen's book is much more than a romance, though the relationship is sweet and goes deliciously all wrong. It's also a readable, believable wise tale about second chances, starting over, and going after what is most important in life. Quindlen will be at Wayzata Central Middle School at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
