Music

Bill Birdsong Miller

Galvin Fine Art Center

Friday, October 22, 7:30 p.m.

If you're familiar with our calendars of events at RCReader.com, you know that event listings are separated into a number of different categories, among them "Music," "Lectures," "Visual Arts," "Movies," and "Kids' Stuff." Bill Birdsong Miller might be the only visiting artist I've run across whose credits make him a good fit for all of them.

Augustana College opens its 2010-11 theatre season with the student/faculty collaboration Wrestling with Angels & Demons, and true to its title, the play will find its performers doing a fair share of wrestling. Yet rather than physical (or metaphysical) beings, the production's student actors will actually be grappling with questions: What is democracy? What is the American Dream? And a question that many of us have contemplated this year: Is Rod Blagojevich really blacker than Barack Obama?

LET ME IN

With apologies to those firmly on either Team Edward or Team Jacob, I was, until recently, convinced that the best vampire movie of the past 10 years was director Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In, the widely acclaimed, beautiful, and very scary Swedish thriller from 2008. But after seeing director Matt Reeves' new remake, Let Me In, I'm thinking that - Heresey Alert! - this one just might trump it.

Friday, September 24, 11:30-ish: I attend a morning screening of You Again, and pretty much know what I'm in for as soon as the Touchstone Pictures logo appears: a brightly lit, jauntily scored, aggressively manic entertainment with plenty of "heart" and no laughs whatsoever. (I half-expect a Tim Allen cameo, but instead get a Dwayne Johnson cameo, which probably should've been more expected.)