World Trade Center With Nicolas Cage, Michael Pena, Maria Bello, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jay Hernandez, Armando Riesco, and Michael Shannon Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and Jimeno (Michael Pena) got trapped by a cave-in between the two towers while they were heading for the north one to rescue people on the upper floors. Both were immobilized for many hours, though they were close enough to talk to each other....
Afraid of terrorists? Ready to clear-cut the Bill of Rights so they’ve got no place to hide? John Mueller, a professor of political science at Ohio State (he holds the Woody Hayes chair of national security policy) wants you to calm down. Writing in the September/ October issue of Foreign Affairs, he ponders the assertion by the Department of Homeland Security at its creation in 2002 that “today’s terrorists can strike at any place, at any time, and with virtually any weapon....
Though little-known in Chicago, Canadian Marc-Andre Hamelin is one of the most technically phenomenal pianists playing anywhere today. His shockingly underattended Ravinia recital last summer was a revelation: the Ives Concord Sonata was brilliant, and the Schumann Fantasy was so riveting I don’t think anyone in the room breathed. He’s also fascinating to watch, hardly moving even when the music is at its most demanding and emotionally intense. At first this makes him seem disconnected, but his concentration is Zen-like–it’s as if he becomes a conduit for the composer, and everything but the music ceases to exist....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Take Ruthann Friedman, for instance. She had a brief flirtation with the music biz back in the day, largely because she wrote the tune “Windy,” which became a huge hit for soft rock pioneers the Association. She came up with it while staying at David Crosby’s guest house, and, indeed, according to the liner notes for the reissue of 1969’s Constant Companion (Water), her sole official release, she associated with folks like Van Dyke Parks, Joni Mitchell, and Dr....
This is such a dive bar that there’s a skinny, scrappy dog walking around and you just can’t help but love it–I do mean dive in a very complimentary way. I used to come here all the time, but since the hair incident, not so much. I was here that night with two girlfriends, and we were playing pool and having a little drinkage. The more you drink the better you play, and we had gotten really, really good....
Anna, a 45-year-old grandmother from Roseland, sat on the steps beneath the entrance dock of a boarded-up building on Elston just south of Armitage. It was an unseasonably warm afternoon in early April, and Anna was having a smoke outside the artwork she was living in. Next to her was a ramshackle collection of panels made of plywood and shipping pallets, onto which painted wood objects, scraps of lumber, store signage, and other street detritus had been screwed together to form three-dimensional collages....
“Sorry, the kitchen’s closed.” If you’re a night owl you’ve heard that any number of times in Chicago, a city where, despite its renowned theater and music scenes, it’s suprisingly difficult to get fed after the show. This guide to late-night dining will help. From downtown to Devon, Maxwell Street to Chinatown and beyond, here’s where you can eat after midnight, seven days a week. Hours reflect when the kitchen closes; the TK icon indicates a 24-hour spot....
Neurotic comedian Richard Lewis likes to say that he was “born and lowered in New Jersey.” He calls his grandparents “depressed-again Jews” and relates that his parents made him so crazy he’d eat M&M’s one at a time, sipping water after each one. Plenty of stand-ups, Jewish and not, have turned kvetch into shtick, but Lewis has a morbid, feverishly self-loathing edge that naturally draws audiences’ sympathies even as it challenges....
Though the subject of American hysteria about the Middle East is timely, this clunky play doesn’t make any comprehensible points. The story–which was hastily rewritten in response to legal troubles, as the Reader reported–revolves around Liz Fletcher, a feisty Middle Eastern studies professor who’s sure her brother’s murder is not connected to her human rights work in Palestine. Playwright Douglas Post mines all the cliches–the media distorts stories! national security agencies lie!...
Margaret Thayer HH: Are rove beetles the largest family of beetles? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » MT: In North America they’re the largest family, but worldwide they may be second to weevils. MT: There have been annual meetings of staphylinid workers for the last 19 years, started by East German workers when they had difficulty traveling elsewhere. The 2004 meeting was attended by around 40 people, mostly taxonomists, but another 20 or so of us missed it....
Two related questions: As a cat owner, I’ve been a little concerned recently about rumors that cat poop can cause schizophrenic behavior in people who are overexposed to the waste. How much truth is in this–and if there is any truth to it, what amount can possibly count as overexposure? I’m also bothered by the supposed risk to pregnant women that changing the litter box can cause–not so much to them as to the fetus, through bacteria and whatnot....
Friday 30 BARBEZ Anybody can piddle around with themes of romance and sex, but these New Yorkers are past all that–in fact there aren’t any other humans at all on their beautiful and desolate planet. Each melancholy melody or obsessive ostinato seems to belong to its own dimension, and the group’s third album, Insignificance (Important), sounds like it just happened to capture the whole lineup–which includes Pamelia Kurstin on theremin, Dan Coates on modified Palm Pilot, and Danny Tunick on vibes and marimba–at the one point in all of space and time where they intersected perfectly....
Maybe it was a case of opening-night jitters. Maybe the show needed a few more rehearsals, as recurrent flubbed lines seemed to indicate. Whatever, Frank Merle’s intelligent, well-paced staging of Michael Gazzo’s seminal 1955 drama–the first postwar Broadway play to deal with drug addiction–never achieved the tragic scope it should have. It wasn’t for lack of talent. The production features such off-Loop heavy hitters as the usually rock-solid Jeremy Glickstein as the protagonist, a Korean war POW whose hospital-induced morphine habit nearly destroys his family and leaves him deeply in debt to three thuggish pushers....
Sarah Vowell has made a career of putting herself front and center, her personality the lens through which an audience views her generally thoughtful, well-researched essays and radio pieces, regardless of topic. Intelligent and well-schooled in all sorts of liberal arts arcana, Vowell punctuates her pop-culture safaris with enough insight to justify the often self-involved cul-de-sacs her approach inevitably generates. But in recent years she’s drifted from considerations of the meaning of Frank Sinatra into examinations of watershed moments in American history, such as the genocidal deportation of the Trail of Tears, and when foregrounding herself in these forays, Vowell tends to occlude as much as she illuminates....
Friday 5/7 – Thursday 5/13 Last year 26-year-old Jason West won the mayoral election in New Paltz, New York, and became the first Green Party mayor in that state. Early this year he made the news again as one of only three mayors across the country to grant marriage licenses to gay couples; he’s now facing several misdemeanor charges for performing same-sex marriages. Tonight West comes to town for the rally The Battle for Equal Marriage, where he’ll speak alongside former National Organization of Women president Patricia Ireland, veteran lesbian activist Robin Tyler, and the Illinois Green Party’s candidate in the recent senatorial election, Scott Summers....
The Illusionist Stories, like conjuring tricks, are invented because history is inadequate to our dreams. –Steven Millhauser, “Eisenheim the Illusionist” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Obviously the texture and tone of these films are different. But Burger’s exceptional gifts as a storyteller and as a director of actors are fully apparent in both, and he’s up to something similar in both, playing with the imagination and credulity of the viewer....
Some of the aldermen trickling into the City Council meeting the day after the election looked a little ragged. Many of them are Democratic ward committeemen and had stayed up waiting for the new $50 million balloting system to spit out the final returns. “All the committeemen are tired today,” said Third Ward alderman Dorothy Tillman. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The aldermen, who will be on the ballot themselves in February, also seemed relieved, even cocky....
It is extremely difficult to divorce one’s viewpoint and background from being objective when analyzing the film The Passion of the Christ. All of us come with certain predispositions when judging something we like or dislike. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I respect anyone for expressing his or her opinion, providing they have their facts straight. Clearly that is not the case when Jonathan Rosenbaum gave his review regarding Mel Gibson’s film [Section Two]....
WHEN Through 10/14: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s delivered by a highly watchable cast in this midwest premiere by Congo Square Theatre, directed by Derrick Sanders. The Caribbean accents are a departure for the company, which has focused on African-American playwrights for most of its eight years, notably August Wilson. But in British actor and writer Kwei-Armah they’ve found a playwright whose gift for street poetry and feeling for intergenerational conflict is in sync with their own acting skills....
Some events require advance registration or reservations; call ahead to confirm. Robie House Secrets and Shadows Tour a 7-9 PM (tours begin every 20 minutes), 5757 S. Woodlawn, 708-848-1976, $12-$16. Dream Halloween Annual fund-raiser for the Children Affected by AIDS Foundation, hosted by CSI: NY’s Melinda Kanakaredes. a Windy City field house, 2367 W. Logan, 312-580-1150, caaf4kids.org, 5-8:30 PM, $100-$200. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Halloween Pumpkin Patches The Chicago Park District sponsors “patches” featuring pumpkin decorating, hayrides, and other family-oriented events....
