1 The American Indian Movement, an activist group that was highly visible in the 1970s, is celebrated in an impressive photo exhibit, titled "I'm Not Your Indian Anymore," at the All My Relations Gallery in Minneapolis. The emotional power of the show comes in the unvarnished authenticity and you-are-there candor of the grainy images, including a wedding, a funeral and a clutch of camouflage-clad U.S. military men arriving at Wounded Knee. www.allmyrelationsarts.com
2 With the same eye for evocative detail and human character he showed in his classic Drive-by Truckers songs, Jason Isbell delivers his most personal and best album to date, "Southeastern." This one's a thematic double whammy for a twangy Southern rocker, powerfully touching on sobriety ("Cover Me Up") and divorce ("Songs That She Sang in the Shower"), but with the silver-lining postscript of being newly healthy and married and well on his way to becoming a songwriting superstar. Out Tuesday.
3 Lovely. Insightful. Sad. Funny. The film "Before Midnight," the third chapter in the continuing love affair of expatriate Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Parisian Celine (Julie Delpy), is essentially a couple walking and talking. But what a pair, and what dialogue! The actors, returning to the roles they originated 18 years ago, speak their own lines, which they wrote in collaboration with the series' director, Richard Linklater.
4 It is not a spoiler, really, to tell you that the missing daughter in Karen Joy Fowler's fascinating "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves" is not human. The college-age narrator, Rosemary, plumbs her memories to try to understand what happened the year she was 5 — the year her chimpanzee sister was taken away, her brother ran away and her parents collapsed. The book is more dark than funny, although Rosemary's voice is pithy and wry. This is not just a book about family, but a book about responsibility, love and an experiment grown horribly wrong.
5 "Model Files" on YouTube's VFiles channel is the perfect reality-show spoof in topic (New York fashion culture) and length (six minutes or so). Whether central character Preston Chaunsumlit is stalking the mean streets looking for "hot" babies to cast in an Opening Ceremony ad campaign or pondering the true meaning of being a shirtless "Hollister boy," he's skewering fashion's vapidity, narcissism and silly cutthroat competitiveness.
