I Am Cuba, Siberian Mammoth no stars (Worthless) I Am Cuba, Siberian Mammoth is a 2004 Brazilian documentary about the making of the legendary 1964 Russian-Cuban production I Am Cuba, a preposterous, beautiful, mannerist epic of Marxist agitprop celebrating the Cuban revolution. Early on the documentary–which, like the other two films reviewed here, is showing this week at the Chicago International Documentary Festival–focuses on one of the key sequences in the original film....

Misleading people and making them laugh both require frustrating their expectations, something writer-performers Patrick O’Brien and Peter Grosz have mastered in this clever sketch show directed by T.J. Jagodowski. Facts are misrepresented in posters and playbills, and audience members are misdirected in various ways each night; the show itself offers a puzzling array of in-the-dark characters in vignettes ranging from several seconds to several minutes. In the sharply executed opening sequence, a couple’s vacuous relationship is dramatized not by over-the-top caricature but by crisp pantomime–the two are going through the motions....

This 1939 play is old-fashioned in the worst senses of the word: banal, predictable, corny. It’s what’s often called a gentle comedy, a phrase that here means entirely lacking in humor or drama. Paul Osborn’s account of a weekend in the life of four elderly sisters raises issues with dramatic potential–the road not taken, the regrets that accompany aging, family members’ collusion in creating myths and hiding the truth, the potential to mature deep into adulthood....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The music lineup for November’s Sun Ra symposium, Traveling the Spaceways, has been announced. It will take place at the Hyde Park Art Center, which is also hosting Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn & Chicago’s Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68, a major exhibition of art and ephemera from Sun Ra’s Chicago days. (My piece for the Reader on the exhibition is here....

Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Until the policy was changed in October, the 18 school cafeterias in the North Penn School District, northwest of Philadelphia, had for years been washing and reusing their disposable plastic cutlery, though students had long expressed disgust at having to eat with utensils covered in bite marks. Diners will now be issued a fresh set of cutlery at each meal, though officials estimated that the old system saved about $15,000 a year....

“I don’t know if Tinsley Mortimer’s hair really has tiny blond roots in the middle. That’s what I’ve heard. Is that true? I’ve seen the pictures . . . but I don’t know.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » What took Kuriskunal from Urbana to Manhattan–from speculating about Tinsley Mortimer to actual lip-to-cheek contact–was Park Avenue Peerage, a blog where he collects party pictures and recounts the comings and goings of that insular social set who get themselves photographed at New York parties in fancy dresses....

Elizabeth Berg signs her latest novel, The Handmaid and the Carpenter. Thu 12/14, 7 PM, Burke’s Books, 116 Main, Park Ridge, 847-692-2300. “Creative Living in the City” Reps from Friends of the Parks and the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation discuss “Completing the South Lakefront Park System: The Last Four Miles.” Thu 12/14, 12:15 PM, Chicago Cultural Center, Claudia Cassidy Theater, 78 E. Washington, 312-744-6630. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Patricia Hampl (A Romantic Education) discusses Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime....

Subtitled “Tales From a Little Red Dot,” this festival of contemporary films from Singapore continues Friday, January 28, at the University of Chicago Film Studies Center, 5811 S. Ellis, and Saturday, January 29, at the Biological Sciences Learning Center, room 115, 924 E. 57th. Saturday will be devoted to the work of director Royston Tan, beginning at 10 AM with a retrospective of his early shorts, music videos, and commercials, and continuing at 1:30 with his 2003 debut feature, 15....

Last year in an interview for Magnet, Ben Chasny claimed he had “bipolar tendencies.” The guitarist meant to contrast the ultraheavy rock he plays in the quintet Comets on Fire with the psych-folk tunes he writes for Six Organs of Admittance–which is usually just Chasny and his four-track, despite the name. (He says it comes from a Buddhist term for the five senses plus the soul.) But the last couple Six Organs albums, with their mercurial swings of style and mood, prove that Chasny is perfectly capable of cycling from one extreme to another all by his lonesome....

Cereality Cereal Bar & Cafe The national media has given Cereality a big wet kiss. “The latest fast-food concept is so absurdly simple, self-indulgent and reflective of one’s inner child that, well, how can it fail?” asked USA Today in May 2004. Other national coverage ensued in People, Time, Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, and Business 2.0. But last fall, after Roth and Bacher announced plans to open a Chicago location, local reaction was decidedly mixed....

[snip] Abstinence makes the, uh, heart grow fonder. “There is no evidence at all that telling kids not to fool around has any more impact when the message is promoted by schools than it does when parents say the same thing at home,” writes Arthur Caplan of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania at msnbc.com. “Eleven states have tried to evaluate their abstinence-only programs and the results have been dismal....

The year before the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Dale Goulding was on a personal mission to reach Saddam Hussein–or at least his literary agent. The veteran Chicago director and cofounder of the European Repertory Company had made up his mind to adapt Saddam’s first novel, Zabiba and the King, for the stage, though he knew getting his hands on the book would be no easy task. It’s hardly surprising that Saddam would write an anti-American, anti-Jewish book, and the dozen or so reviews you can find in English dismiss Zabiba as an amateurish, megalomaniacal agitprop soap opera....

Things are changing at the Wheaton Grand Theater: after this month the local bands that have been rocking the old movie palace will no longer be the main attraction. Wheaton resident Ezio Magarotto, who’s been booking all-ages shows at the theater over the last year, was abruptly dismissed from his volunteer job on March 1. A new open mike series for music, poetry, and improv scheduled to begin this month has been canceled, and the packed schedule Magarotto had booked from April to mid-June has been dumped....

WHERE Landmark’s Century Centre (2828 N. Clark), River East 21 (322 E. Illinois), and Thorne Auditorium (375 E. Chicago) LISTINGS ONLINE chicagoreader.com A 17-year-old travels from village to city looking for his father in this first feature (2005) by mainland Chinese director Ying Liang, who used friends and relatives as his cast and a borrowed video camera. In Mandarin with subtitles. 100 min. aRiver East, 4:30 PM Flannel Pajamas A 2005 South Korean feature by writer-director Shin Dong-il (The Holy Family) about the friendship between a divorced film teacher and an evangelist who’s a conscientious objector....

The Constantines Lord knows I’m not especially good at that kind of prognostication. Maybe I’m just not organized enough–my office is crammed with an ever-growing pile of CDs that all end up separated from their cases sooner or later. Sometimes I feel like I could listen to this stuff 24 hours a day without a single galvanizing jolt of unexpected pleasure–it’s like sifting through all the sand on a beach because you think you spilled a packet of heroin there a couple years ago....

Rock, Pop, Etc. AMY ARMSTRONG & FREDDY ALLEN perform and host the “Chicago Collegiate Pride Idol” talent competition as part of the Gay/Lesbian Pride Fest. Sat 4/17, 6:45 PM, Chicago Illini Union, University of Illinois at Chicago, 828 S. Wolcott. 312-413-9862. SHAWN CHRISTOPHER BAND, KYM FRANKLIN, SWAY CHICAGO Fri 4/16, 8 PM, Congress Theater, 2135 N. Milwaukee. www.congresschicago.com. DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE, BEN KWELLER, WILLY MASON Sold out. Thu 4/15, 6:30 PM, the Vic, 3145 N....

The Boston Red Sox swaggered into town for the American League playoffs oozing charisma from every pore. Even in batting practice it was overwhelming: mountain man Johnny Damon, cap off, hair flying, ripping line drives from foul line to foul line; David Ortiz, “Big Papi,” bareheaded as well but affecting wraparound sunglasses, smashing long flies into the seats; Manny Ramirez, “ManRam,” braids sticking out from under his cap, the fluttering fingers of his right hand held high on his long, left-handed follow-through; Trot Nixon lashing liners with that flat swing; Jason Varitek, the no-nonsense catcher, the captain, the glue....

The Hold Steady Rock ‘n’ roll was born when adult songwriters learned to credibly imitate teenagers. Sure, there were other factors at play: by the late 50s Ike Turner, Wynonie Harris, and countless others had years of experience playing R & B, jump blues, or whatever else listeners called the licks, beats, and attitudes that were later commodified as the sound of young white America. And it took an otherworldly lust object like Elvis to crystallize teens’ desires so perfectly....

Bert Stabler’s rather confusing article on Intuit’s current exhibition, “Revelation! The Quilts of Marie ‘Big Mama’ Roseman,” is rife with assumptions and innuendos [“The Mystical Other,” June 2]. While I am employed at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in the capacity of collections and exhibitions coordinator, the following is my own personal critique of Stabler’s article and in no way does it reflect the views or opinions of the organization....

The seventh edition of this annual celebration of the art of improvisational comedy brings together performers from around the U.S. and abroad; Chicago, of course, is heavily represented. This year’s festival, the largest yet, is divided into several series–Mainstage, Showcase, Sketch, Solo, Duo, and Fringe–as well as an all-night improv session, a series of daytime “Lunchbreak” performances (presented in conjunction with the city’s cultural affairs department), forums, workshops, and numerous special events....