PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

It's not often that you witness an image in a horror movie (or in any movie, really) that you instinctively recognize as iconic. The last one I can think of in the scare-flick genre would probably be Heather Donahue in The Blair Witch Project, with her wool cap, her nose running, and her mouth out of camera range as she videotapes a final, tearful apology. (Seeing that shot for the first time in 1999, you knew it was one that would endure - and be parodied ad nauseam.) But we now have a new addition to the Iconic Image Hall of Fame thanks to Paranormal Activity, which, like Blair Witch, was filmed on a shoestring budget, and which features a shot, like that of Donahue, that will no doubt be instantly identifiable for generations of horror-movie fans.

Music

The Klezmatics

Galvin Fine Arts Center

Friday, October 23, 7:30 p.m.

Described by Time Out New York as "the fearless standard-bearers in their field," the Klezmatics will perform at St. Ambrose University's Galvin Fine Arts Center on October 23. Mixing traditional folk stylings with everything from jazz to Latin rhythms to punk, the group will no doubt deliver an exceptional evening of live entertainment, but I'm thinking that the Klezmatics' career arc would also make for a pretty kick-ass movie.

"I think everyone has a complex relationship with where they're from," says Ryan Collins, the Moline native currently serving as Quad City Arts' poet-in-residence. "Especially if you've left and come back, which I've done more than once. But the prevailing opinion seems to be that there's nothing to do here. That it's kind of an in-between sort of place, you know?

"We're like a crossroads," he continues. "A place in between places. There's the state capital, the University of Iowa ... . These things are close, but, like, what's here?"

The question of "What's here?" in the Quad Cities is both directly and indirectly addressed in Collins' new chapbook, Complicated Weather. And the answer, as expressed in this thoughtful collection of poems, is as complex as the author's feelings about the area.

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY

Watching the early scenes of Capitalism: A Love Story, I found myself thinking, none too happily, that the bloom was finally off the rose, and that my fondness for Michael Moore documentaries had, at last, reached its end.