Family and friends of Divine Providence Community Home gathered together to Monday evening for Family Fun Night. Captured are some of the scenes from the evening.

On a fact-finding mission to learn about the needs of the Sleepy Eye area, Sen. Amy Klobuchar visited with Mayor Jim Broich on Saturday. During their short discussion, Broich laid out several items of concern to the City of Sleepy Eye.
 

Sometimes the most intriguing books are those not easily categorized. While Boston-area writer Dawn Paul’s new book is fiction, it straddles a cognitive divide between memoir and invention, between what we feel is real and what we believe is imagination.

This week’s suggestions: Watch the X Paralympic Winter Games, check out one of the new movies, get ready for the time change, prepare for Selection Sunday and start celebrating St. Patrick’s Day.

Leon Chiappini hooks a tire-sized cymbal around his finger and spins it like a basketball. He hits it and listens for the ding, the gravel and the growl: elements of crash that the average ear can’t hear. If it’s not perfect, Chiappini tosses it in the reject pile. “After 49 years, I’d better know if it’s good,” he said with a laugh.

What you didn't know... in a quick minute!

Patriot Ledger film critic Al Alexander makes his annual picks for the top winners at the Academy Awards, which are being handed out Sunday.

What you didn't know... in a quick minute!

Corrupt cops may be “in” right now in Hollywood (see this weekend’s new release, “Brooklyn’s Finest,” from “Training Day” director Antoine Fuqua), but my favorite kind of movie cop is a buddy cop.

Roughly 15 years ago, two freshmen at Ithaca College were eager to do anything except study, so they began melding one’s poetry with the other’s guitar work. All these years later, would-be poet/songwriter Andy Campolieto and guitarist Ben Lee are the main figures in the Americana band Jo Henley, whose second full-length album “Inside Out” was released Feb. 16.

Michael Corleone, meet Malik El Djebena. I think you’ll find you have a lot in common, especially seeing how you both were so adamant about avoiding the thug life before fate and circumstance dictated otherwise.

If it weren’t for the cars and the telephones and the contemporary small-town setting, “Terribly Happy” could easily be mistaken for an old-fashioned Western. It’s a sort of classic story about a new sheriff coming to town, but not being exactly welcomed with open arms.

Alexis Bledel was a breath of fresh air when she boomeranged from TV’s “Gilmore Girls” to the big screen in “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.” But like a lot of young actresses, things quickly went south.

Spooks, from both the metaphysical and espionage worlds, cast an ominous presence over Roman Polanski's “The Ghost Writer,” but it’s the underlying parallels to its author’s real life that prove most haunting.

For the duration of its grim two-hour ride, “Brooklyn’s Finest” is on to something in the vein of “Training Day,” “The Departed” and dash of “Crash.” It is a frenetic and tough police drama that puts the lives of three nearly burnt-out cops on a bloody collision course.