Entertainment

Preparations for the Holiday Hootenanny at the Buena Vista County fairgrounds are progressing. The events are planned for the first and third weeks of December - Friday and Saturday the 4th and 5th and the same days on the 18th and 19th. Hours are 6-8 p.m. each night...

Writer’s Digest awarded Montana author Thomas J. Elpel First Place in Nonfiction for his natural history travelogue, “Five Months on the Missouri River: Paddling a Dugout Canoe.” Elpel partnered with Churchill Clark, the great-great-great-great grandson of Captain William Clark to carve the canoe. Together they whittled a 10,000 lb. Douglas fir log into a 500+ lb. canoe...

Des Moines Performing Arts (DMPA) announced four new programming initiatives as the organization remains unable to host traditional in-person events. The new slate of programming includes streaming performances, limited on-site opportunities as well as no-cost options designed to keep the performing arts alive for all audiences.  The new initiatives include:...

Thanksgiving needs a good PR firm. While Hallmark is dealing out Christmas movies by the bucketful before Halloween, name me a few good Turkey Day films. I’ll wait… *insert sound of patient whistling.Not so easy, is it? But let’s not just rush past a perfectly good holiday here. With a deep dive into the archives, here’s a list of movies to celebrate with while the cranberry sauce is running down your chin...

Good Eats & Good Beats is on tap at Century Farms Distillery in Spencer, Friday, November 20. Iowa Great Lakes favorite Scott Larsen will be playing acoustic sets from 5-8 p.m. Scott is best known for his full group, the Scott Larsen Band, but also plays unplugged sets as a solo or with longtime duo partner Keifer Brandt...

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra will bring your favorite rock holiday tradition directly into your home with an up-close-and-personal livestream performance of “Christmas Eve and Other Stories!”  Join TSO on Friday, December 18th at 7 p.m. Central for an intimate 90-minute performance of this beloved album. Tickets for this virtual event are on-sale now for $30 on tsolivestream.com. Limited quantities of livestream merchandise is available...

Through decades, deaths and disasters, AC/DC keeps thundering on. Forty-seven years along, and with the closest thing possible to their original lineup, the rockers on Friday are releasing “Power Up,” their first album in six years. It’s also the first since the 2017 death of Malcolm Young, who founded the band in Sydney, Australia in 1973 with his little brother, Angus. “Power Up” is dedicated to the elder brother and is shot through with his spirit and songwriting...

Three-quarters through “The Climb” comes a scene we’ve all come to expect in a romantic comedy: A wedding is interrupted by the best man who rushes into a church during a marriage ceremony and screams “I object!” He turns to the shocked bride and groom kneeling at the altar and — summoning all his courage — declares to one: “You deserve to be with someone who loves you for who you are.”...

Join Maddie Poppe for an intimate night of music at the Roof Garden Ballroom in Arnolds Park, Tuesday, Dec. 15. Showtime is 7 p.m. The Clarksville, Iowa native and Season 16 winner of ABC’s American Idol is releasing a Christmas Album later this month and touring Iowa with a just-announced show at the Roof Garden - Maddie’s only stop in northwest Iowa. Maddie Poppe’s Acoustic Christmas is presented at the Roof Garden Ballroom in partnership with The Iowa Rock ‘n Roll Music Association...

The Tank Anthony Band will perform Saturday, November 28, at Shiny Top Brewing, Fort Dodge. The Iowa Falls-based band offers a soulful county sound with influences from multiple genres. Tank is a Texas native and former Marine with five combat tours under his belt. After almost 13 years in the service, he moved to Iowa to pursue a career as a singer/songwriter...

In one history of the movies, “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz might look like a footnote. The former playwright had a hand in many famous pictures, including “The Wizard of Oz,” but most went uncredited. He was the smartest guy in the room, a drunk and a gambler who was dead at 55. And his kid brother, Joe, who directed and wrote “All About Eve,” would go on to be the better-known Mankiewicz...

Award winning Australian singer/ songwriter Peter D. Harper creates a heady mix of original roots music through his creative use of the harmonica and the didgeridoo. Harper and his band Midwest Kind will be returning to Byron’s in Pomeroy for a concert Sunday, November 22, 5-9 p.m...

Award-winning, Iowa songwriter Chad Elliott will release his 24th album, Tangle with the Ghost, on Nov. 13. “I am so proud of this album. The songs are universal, but it is Iowa music. Everyone who played on this album is from my home state. I love that,” Elliott said...

Superman, that boring lug, has thankfully flown the coop. Writer-director Thomas Bezucha’s Western thriller “Let Him Go” reunites Diane Lane and Kevin Costner, who as the Kents were easily the warmest presences in the otherwise dully dour “Man of Steel.”...

The Vista III theater in Storm Lake will again offer Holiday Merchant Movies. Watch for free tickets available in Storm Lake sponsoring businesses. Children must be supervised, and seating will be limited to meet safety and health requirements. This year’s shows include:...

It started in her bedroom with just a guitar, but Paris Jackson has turned coping with the heartache after a recent breakup into her debut solo album. Jackson, 22, has been a devoted music fan all her life and dabbled in making her own, but has been hesitant to call herself a singer-songwriter until now...

Jill & Dan will be in concert Saturday, Nov. 14 at Century Farms Distillery, 2304 Highway Blvd., Spencer. The show will be 6-8 p.m., with the venue open until 10 p.m. that night. The McCreary’s food truck will be serving tasty treats, 5-8 p.m. in the parking lot at the craft distillery...

If it didn’t actually exist, “Holidate” would sound like one of those fake movies within a movie. A couple of attractive singles decide on a low-stakes, no-commitment arrangement to be each other’s dates on holidays? It’s a perfect rom-com concept in that it’s equal parts ridiculous and shamefully appealing. ...

Area favorite the Browns will debut their holiday show Joy to the World, November 18 at their theater in LeMars. Showtime is 1:30 p.m. This will be the 6th Annual Christmas show for the family. A visit to see this high energy, family-friendly event is quickly becoming a Christmas tradition in the Siouxland area. ...

Well-traveled troubadour Grant Peeples will be in concert November 21 at Byron’s in Pomeroy. Showtime is 8 p.m. Peeples has made 10 studio records, including his latest, 2018’s Settling Scores Vol. II. His shows are a roiling mix of funny stuff and not-funny stuff.  He doesn’t do a lot of lo-ooove songs.   When appropriate... ...

One of America’s hottest comics, Jo Koy has come a long way from his modest beginnings at a Las Vegas coffee house. As one of today’s vastly growing stand-up comedians, Koy sells-out comedy clubs and theaters across the nation with his infectious, explosive energy onstage. The comedian pulls inspiration from his family, specifically his son, that inspires humor across all boundaries...

The acclaimed animator behind such powerful figures as Ariel, Aladdin, Tarzan and Rapunzel has a new heroine and she’s going further than any of his creations — the moon. Twelve-year-old Fei Fei builds a handmade rocket to blast into outer space in the new Netflix movie musical “Over the Moon,” the first animated film backed by a major Hollywood studio to feature an entirely Asian cast...

Salty View’s Acoustic Review will be on tap at Shiny Top Brewing in Fort Dodge for a Thanksgiving Eve concert, Wednesday, Nov. 25, 7 p.m. SV is a four piece all acoustic band based in Fort Dodge. Playing contemporary country, with other twists here and there, they play “the best in sing along drinking music,” featuring four-part harmonies and guitar instrumental work...

Since Sacha Baron Cohen first appeared as his Kazakh journalist on “Da Ali G Show,” Borat Sagdiyev has been remarkably consistent. The accent is the same. The gray suit is still rumpled. “Nahce” and “Mah Wahfe” regularly exude from him with a mangled melody. Borat hasn’t changed in the last 20 years. But America has...

The Witter Gallery is currently exhibiting a collection of artwork created by BVU alumni. The artwork, loaned to the gallery by the BVU art department, includes a wide variety of styles and mediums. A 1981 impressionistic painting by Cherie Courter is displayed next to a colorful, abstract encaustic work from 2013. Intaglio prints by former gallery staff member Nicole Nee hang beside a triptych made of oil and wax that portrays bones and human brains (perfect Halloween viewing!)...

The Surfin’ Safari Band will appear in the Rock the Roof concert series at the Roof Garden at Arnolds Park, October 29. Showtime is 6 p.m., with the Iowa Rock ’N’ Roll Music Association hosting. Tickets are $10 at the door or pre-order through eventbrite.com. Doors open at 5 p.m. and only 250 people will be admitted...

Hold the Lutefisk, It’s Beginning to Smell a Lot Like Christmas comedy musical show will appear at the Brown’s Theater in LeMars, Nov. 5-7. Shows are set for Thursday at 7 p.m., Friday at 1:30 and 7, and Saturday at 1:30. When you want an old-fashioned Looney Christmas, you know who to turn to - the musical, merry, menopausal members of the Looney Lutherans! This trio of warm, witty women help the audience enjoy the spirit of the season, the Lutheran way. ...

The Cherokee Chamber of Commerce is excited to announce it will be able to host the Children’s Costume Parade this year. Under the advisement of the Cherokee County Public Health Department, they will be taking extra precautions to help control the spread of COVID-19...

Anyone who doesn’t think human trafficking is a problem in the small-town Midwest should read J.D. Erickson’s entertaining and enlightening novel, Angels of the Night. Erickson lives in Sioux Falls, S.D. Police and anti-human trafficking activists are beset with a slate of trafficking victims who find themselves embroiled in several ways. Most tragic was the case of Mary Jacinto, a Latina woman whose battered and bruised body was found in a park restroom...

Blues guitar legend Studebaker John will perform Sunday, Nov. 1, at Byron’s in Pomeroy. Showtime is 5 p.m. Studebaker John Grimaldi was born in an Italian-American section of Chicago and started playing harmonica at age 7. Under the spell of music he heard on Maxwell Street, Chicago’s famed blues melting pot, Grimaldi began performing as Studebaker John and the Hawks in the ‘70s. ...