On a more personal note, we had a really fun night last night.  After dinner, we wanted to head down to the Store Arch Bridge to see the Red Bull Illume exhibit.  We saw a large storm coming, but we decided we'd risk it.  When we got to the exhibit, we found that the photos didn't start projecting until sundown about 9:30pm, so we decided to wait it out.  But there was a huge wall cloud coming from the northeast, so we decided to take shelter in the Guthrie Theater building.  The new Guthrie is a spaced-aged design that is tons of fun to explore and includes many great overlooks of the Saint Anthony Falls area, so it was an ideal place to watch the store blow over.

First we stood out on the Endless Bridge, which is a cantilever stuck 178 feet out of the side of the building and puts you right above the center of the beautiful downtown river area.  We watched a huge wall cloud move across the sky and even withstood 70mph winds for a minute or two.  Then, of course, the rain started pouring, so we went into the indoor part of the Endless Bridge.

After hanging out in there for a bit, we went up to the Dowling Studio space, also known as the "Yellow Box".  This was an even higher overlook of the river area, but all the windows were colored a bright yellow.  I'd never been in this space, but it was really fun to watch the sun set and lightning flash through the sky in this alternate yellow world.  After the rain fully subsided, we went back to the Endless Bridge to see the lightining flash through the sky in its real bright purple hue.  It was amazing to see because you could see lightning for miles around in all directions.

Towards the end of that, we watched the huge lit-up photos from the Red Bull Illume exhibit turn on and it looked amazing.  (You can see a photo taken from the same spot on the home page of the Red Bull Illume site if you browse the photos at the bottom a bit.)  We then went down there and found some amazing photos, most of extreme sports of all kinds.  They were amazing, and if you have time some evening to come down in the next week, you really should do it.  The exhibit seems to be open pretty late, because the photos were still lit up at midnight when Isaac and I left the theater as well.

That's right, Isaac and I actually had to hurry past the Red Bull exhibit because we wanted to catch this weekend's blockbuster film, Hellboy II: The Golden Army.  In usual St. Anthony Main theater fashion, we walked in 3 or 4 minutes late for the start of the film due to 10 minutes of ticketing lines, but the rest of the experience was positive.  The second installment of Guillermo Del Toro's Dark Horse Comics adaptation almost matches the first one, although most of the "character development" revolved around a romance of some sort for almost every major character.  It was nice to see more of Doug Jones's Abe Sapien character, although he rarely kicks butt.  Del Toro goes a bit overboard, in my opinion, with the sets and otherworldly characters, making some look too much like Pan's Labrynth, which brought me a bit out of the Dark Horse Comics characters, I think.  Ron Perlman continued to do a great job as the reluctant but prideful superhero, Hellboy, while I felt Selma Blair's character continues just to be an emotional wreck.  The theater was pretty packed, but who knows if the series will warrant another installment or if Guillermo Del Toro will be doing it after the next four years or so on the Hobbit projects.  All in all, it was an entertaiing film, but definitely not one I'm gonna run out and buy on DVD (just like the last one).