I first was introduced to the work of Alex Karpovsky back in 2006 when The Hole Story was screened at the Minneapolis/St Paul International Film Festival. The Hole Story was an incredibly unique film that seamlessly melded fiction and non-fiction into a wonderfully funny and melancholy story about one man’s dream to try and make a pilot for his television show.

With Woodpecker Karpovsky once again uses his unique style of mixing fact and fiction, this time focusing on the fervor surrounding the sightings of the previously presumed extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker in the bayous of eastern Arkansas. Following one ardent bird watcher (Jon Hyrns) as he attempts to become the first person to definitively prove the elusive birds existence, Karpovsky also interviews many of the locals who are both thankful and frustrated by the birds sudden reappearance.

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After last week’s hijacking of the column in favor of hanging out with some old friends I knew this week I could have no excuse for not writing a review on Vampyr. Sure the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival opened this week but that wouldn’t get in my way. Yes, the multiplexes actually had a small handful of potentially decent movies for me to watch but that couldn’t possibly get in my way. And sure, I had a screening of the uncut version of The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly that I simply had to go to and Manda Bala burning up my Netflix queue but those were mere distractions while I prepared myself for Vampyr. Awesome distractions to be sure but they shouldn’t do anything more then slow me down. Then Ben Folds had to go and muck up my whole plans.

You see my girlfriend bought tickets to go see Ben Folds in concert this past Saturday night but somewhere along the way both of us, along with a friend of ours, somehow mistook the concert venue of St. Peter, Minnesota for St. Paul, Minnesota. We didn’t really think much of it at first, but once we MapQuested it we saw the error of our ways. See St. Peter, Minnesota was over an hour south of the Twin Cities. Needless to say this had a rather large effect on our plans.

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