There was no way for the Cubs to enjoy good fortune this month without stirring up memories of past disasters. I went apple picking in Michigan two Sundays ago and remembered seeing, on a TV at the same orchard, LaTroy Hawkins blow a three-run lead in New York as the Cubs began their 2004 collapse. This time I emerged to hear the Cubs on the car radio beating the Cardinals 4-2 in Saint Louis to stay a game ahead of the Milwaukee Brewers....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “I have no idea what they mean by that. If, in fact, it were the most important thing a human being could do, then why are no men doing it? They’d rather make war, make foreign policy, invent nuclear weapons, decode DNA, paint The Last Supper, put the dome on St. Peter’s Cathedral; they’d prefer to do all those things that are much less important than raising babies?...
In the Hypocrites’ staging of Tony Kushner’s first play in a diptych, director Sean Graney creates nearly every set piece using four big, clunky coffins–which his actors must lug through scene changes. While a sense of lurking death is what gives this seminal AIDS drama its terrifying urgency, plunked front and center it becomes overkill. It’s a choice symptomatic of the problems in this uneven production. Too often, especially during the first act, the actors artificially inflate their characters’ emotions....
Writer-director Mary Zimmerman and Lookingglass Theatre made a big splash with their 1990 version of Homer’s Odyssey and later turned the stage of the Ivanhoe Theater into a wading pool to retell Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Now they’ve plunged into the waters of Greek myth again with this engrossing evening of theatrical poetry, melding cool whimsy with somber compassion. Based on ancient epic poems, it includes many of the dark details omitted in storybook and film renditions of the saga of Jason and the Argonauts, explorers who traveled to the edge of the world to steal the fabled Golden Fleece....
Goldmine Shithouse Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Pretty, and pretty orderly. Sure, there’s some necessary roughness. Each of the 40 pieces is backed by a square or rectangular plywood board screwed onto a crude wood frame, both wood and screws often left visible through the paint and other materials. There are lots of dribbles, unmotivated swatches of color, messages (handwritten as well as stenciled), and self-consciously naive drawings scratched into surfaces like so many doodles on a high school student’s desk....
Seasonal Halloween parties, parades, haunted houses, and other special events are scheduled throughout the city and suburbs. Please note that this information is subject to change, and some events require advance registration or reservations. We strongly suggest calling ahead to confirm. Following is a list of events through 10/20; a schedule with later events is posted at www.chicagoreader.com. Fall Campfire Storytelling a Humboldt Park Boathouse, 1359 N. Sacramento, 312-742-7549, 6-8 PM....
Nick Giles is not an amazing performer. The 18-year-old boy, 25-year-old woman, and 42-year-old man he plays in his 30-minute solo piece, produced by Hometown Theatre Project, all look and sound vaguely alike. He’s not an amazing storyteller either. Though all three tales touch on grand themes–love, death, life-changing tragedies–he doesn’t delve deeply enough to make them compelling. Giles does have a likable presence onstage, however. And halfhearted attempts at differentiating his characters’ body language suggest that one day his performances will improve....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “And, in addition to the above factors, I also wanted to land them in a distant-from-NY state where there was a relatively high percentage of the population that was from Southeast Asia, thus CA. I always assumed that the standing demand from the people who were most familiar with the fruit, the natives of Southeast Asia and anyone who had traveled there, would guarantee a sell-out for this fruit even if Americans were late to the party....
Presented by the Music Box and Movieside Film Festival, this 24-hour marathon of horror movies begins at noon on Saturday, October 15, in the Music Box’s main theater, 3733 N. Southport. Tickets for the whole marathon are $24, and ticket holders may leave and reenter the theater. Showtimes are approximate; for more information call 773-871-6604 or visit www.musicboxtheatre.com. Pulse Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Archetypal 50s science fiction–light on brains and heavy on sexual innuendo (1954)....
British playwright Dennis Kelly bluntly examines the contemporary culture of fear and the curtailment of civil rights in response to terrorism. Four vigilante Brits enact justice on a teenager who does a classroom project on bin Laden. Convicting the youth of terrorism without evidence, they halfheartedly interrogate before attacking him brutally. But Kelly tries too hard–his points are overstated even if you agree with them. And Dog & Pony Theatre Company’s midwest premiere lacks intensity....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On Thursday legendary Brazilian arranger Rogerio Duprat died in Sao Paulo at 74. Although he set out to be a composer, with a strong predilection for the avant-garde — in the early 60s he traveled to Europe to study with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez — he ultimately made his name creating wild orchestral settings for singers like Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Ze, Gal Costa, and Os Mutantes at the height of the tropicalia movement, making himself a key architect of its sound....
On 2002’s Cobblestone Runway, Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith was so euphoric about his new love that his usually lacerating wit seemed about as dangerous as a butter knife. He’s still counting his blessings on the new Retriever (Nettwerk), spelling out the many ways his partner brings out the best in him, but on tunes like “Hard Bargain” and “Not About to Lose” he looks at both sides of the coin, reminding himself that a good relationship alone won’t lead to happiness–and that he can wreck his own contentment if he doesn’t maintain a positive outlook....
Frank Capra’s very atypical drama about an American missionary (Barbara Stanwyck) taken prisoner by a Chinese warlord (Nils Asther) is not only his masterpiece but also one of the greatest love stories to come out of Hollywood in the 30s–subtle, delicate, moody, mystical, and passionate. Joseph Walker shot it through filters and with textured shadows that suggest Sternberg; Edward Paramore wrote the script, adapted from a story by Grace Zaring Stone....
In May the General Assembly quietly approved a bill that cut in half the number of petition signatures a Chicago mayoral candidate needs to make the ballot, from 25,000 to 12,500. The backers of the bill, which Governor Blagojevich is expected to sign, say it makes the city’s election law fairer, but local independents aren’t rejoicing. “If they say it’s reform don’t believe them,” says Jay Stone, a political activist whose father is 50th Ward alderman Bernard Stone....
Just a few hours after setting out for Florida, Scott Ligon realized what he’d gotten himself into. He was on his way to a gig he’d impulsively accepted the day before–a month playing keyboard on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. His latest band had just broken up, and he’d been thinking that it was time to leave Morton, Illinois, the Peoria suburb where he’d spent much of his life, and try out the music scene in New York....
The state senate’s recent vote on Marty Cohen’s nomination for chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission shakes up more than a few preconceptions about party ideologies. The party of big business took a surprisingly strong stand for the consumer and against deregulation. The so-called party of the people hung one of their own out to dry and stabbed constituents in the back. Confirmation hearings are often brutal. But this vote left even insiders shaking their heads....
Iconoclastic playwright Neil LaBute can seem a genius or a sensationalistic pig depending on the quality of the production. This sluggish, uninspired staging of one of LaBute’s recent plays, a Chicago premiere, makes him seem particularly porcine–and didactic. Part of the problem is the script, which is way too talky and full of obvious symbolism; for example, the hero is a naif named Adam who’s seduced by a two-faced woman named Evelyn (get it?...
I’ve heard a rumor that eating charred hot dogs or hamburgers (or anything else) cooked on a charcoal grill (not a gas grill) can cause cancer. Apparently there is a chemical reaction that takes place when the meat is burned. Have you heard anything supporting this? –Chad, via e-mail Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Does barbecuing cause cancer? Let’s put it this way. Grilled meat contains known and suspected carcinogens....
The guitar propped against the wall was built from scratch. Its creator, Phil Taylor, describes it as a robot guitar–there’s an LCD screen in the upper right corner of the body, a knob that functions like a joystick at its base, and tiny hammers on the bridge that hit the strings, with an internal computer that controls the whole thing. Think player piano with different technology. “It works, it totally works,” he says....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Something I’d been puzzling over myself. The scene in question, which occurs a couple minutes into Costa’s Colossal Youth (2006), a cinema pauvre exercise in painterly light and shadow (at Siskel Film Center 12/1 and 12/4), involves a woman on a bed nattering on about diapers, and more than once in this excruciatingly long, immobile take was I on the verge of tuning her—and the film—completely out....
