To the editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Out of his own sense of ethics, Doug approached Jeanne Bishop to let her know he had written a play that was partly based on historical events surrounding her and her family. He did this once the play was in preproduction but well before rehearsals started in order to make her aware of the contents of the play....
Films by Vincente Minnelli These layers of artifice and role-playing are perfectly suited to the fantasy elements of Minnelli’s style–to his splendid panoplies of color and of diverse objects. The musical numbers also allow plenty of room for the imagination: as Manuela fantasizes about Macoco, the night is illuminated by fires, metaphors for her passion that contrast with the well-ordered spaces of her home. The Pirate offers many such paeans to the power of the imagination, the film’s sensuous colors seeming to disrupt the staid interiors, as if the colors themselves had become advocates for fantasy....
Madison, WI Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The concept is simple. Each member of the bank donates time doing something he or she is good at–be it installing a sink, babysitting, dog walking, driving, or planning a time-bank meeting–and in return can receive the same number of hours of services from any other member. The bank keeps track–one hour equals one virtual dollar. “It’s not a barter system,” Jeff is quick to say....
The Nomi Song *** (A must see) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Like a lot of music fans, I got my first glimpse of Nomi when he appeared as a backup singer for David Bowie on Saturday Night Live in December 1979, and my first eyeful when Nomi belted out the soprano chorus of “Total Eclipse” in the concert movie Urgh! A Music War (1981)....
Melinda and Melinda Brainteaser movies have been enjoying a certain vogue in the past few years. The taste for them can be traced back to at least 1994 and the jigsaw-puzzle narrative of Pulp Fiction. But the trend got started in earnest in 2000, with the release of Memento, which tells a complicated story backward, and it gained further momentum two years later when the same gimmick was combined with sex and violence in Irreversible....
Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Charles Flowers, director of the Christian youth “boot camp” Love Demonstrated Ministries in Banquete, Texas, was charged with aggravated assault in August; authorities said that when one 15-year-old camper wouldn’t keep pace during a morning run in June, Flowers and an employee tied a rope to her and dragged her along behind a van. Also in August, Wiley Drake, a Baptist pastor in Buena Park, California, acknowledged that after an activist group urged the IRS to investigate his church’s nonprofit status (in light of his recent endorsement of presidential candidate Mike Huckabee), he instructed his followers to pray for the deaths of the group’s leaders....
David Cohn, better known as Serengeti, has a lot of characters living in his head. “Kenny,” a northwest-sider with a mustache as big as Mike Ditka’s forehead, likes to lounge around the house in Zubaz pants and owns all of Brian Dennehy’s and Tom Berenger’s movies on laser disc. When he’s not playing softball with the guys he’s cruising around town looking for a decent Pontiac Fiero with a for sale sign....
Thirty-nine years ago trombonist Paul Rutherford wrote a pair of sprightly, ingratiating free-jazz themes for Challenge (reissued in 2001 by Emanem), the first album by the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. The title of one of those tunes, “2.B.Ornette,” tells you exactly where he was coming from at the time, but he soon abandoned both composition and the jazz idiom. Iskra 1903, his early-70s trio with Derek Bailey and Barry Guy, was one of the first groups he used to cut ties with convention; on his landmark 1974 solo debut, The Gentle Harm of the Bourgeoisie, he sounds truly liberated, his trombone speaking in hitherto unknown tongues....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The mayor of Prospect Heights, Rodney Pace, was commenting on $100,000 in flood-control funds earmarked for his town that Governor Blagojevich had lopped from the state budget. “You can thank the governor because we’re out on River Road, sandbagging, where that frickin’ levee is supposed to go that that money would help fund,” said Pace — according to the Sun-Times, that is....
The Children’s Hour | Timeline Theatre Company WHERE TimeLine Theatre Company, Wellington Avenue United Church of Christ, 615 W. Wellington Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Maybe Hellman did consider lesbianism just a plot device. But “unnatural” love and society’s disapproval of it are fundamental to the play, just as anti-Semitism is central to The Merchant of Venice. Audiences still argue over whether Shakespeare was criticizing or endorsing the prejudice Shylock endures, and the homosexual element in The Children’s Hour stirs similar debate....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Novak: “What is difficult to believe is that any one of us—you, me, or Heather—knows more than God does about His love for every individual. He called each other out from nothingness, having known each of us by name, ‘from before Time was.’ We are not God’s judge. He is ours.” What makes this discussion so weird is that both parties call themselves conservatives....
THE HEARTLESS STONE: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE WORLD OF DIAMONDS, DECEIT, AND DESIRE | Tom Zoellner | St. Martin’s Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The business practices of the London-based De Beers cartel are meticulously dissected: the artificial supply controls that maintain an illusion of scarcity; the marketing blitz through which it conquered the indifferent market of Japan; the crushing blows it deals to any upstart competitor....
The 22nd annual festival runs Friday, October 28, through Sunday, November 6, with weekend programs at Facets Cinematheque, 1517 W. Fullerton, and the Vittum Theater, 1012 N. Noble. Tickets are $8, $6 for children, and $5 for Facets members; for more information call 866-468-3401. A full festival schedule is available at www.cicff.org. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The two strongest live-action features, both from Germany, deftly combine comic fantasy with lessons about family and personal responsibility....
This New York band led by drummer-composer John Hollenbeck creates gorgeous blends of melody and texture that blur the lines between jazz and contemporary classical. The back cover of its third album, the superb new Semi-Formal (Cuneiform), features a gridlike illustration that maps out the music’s shifting instrumentation and brief windows of improvisation, but the songs never sound coldly schematic. The band–reedist Chris Speed, vibist Matt Moran, bassist Drew Gress, and accordionist-guitarist Ted Reichman–sketches out Hollenbeck’s tunes with a light touch, embroidering the rich harmonies and lovely melodies in empathic, imaginative ways....
The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs would like to weigh in on the recent settlement of the lawsuit brought against us by Mr. Hodes, by suggesting that press coverage of lawsuits should try in good faith to match what actually occurs in the courtroom and is reflected in court papers. Contrary to Ms. Isaacs’s response to Darrell Mitchell’s letter [May 20] major portions of Hodes’s lawsuit were dismissed because the judge held that having proxies attend Public Art Committee meetings was reasonable and lawful under the ordinance, even before we amended the ordinance to explicitly allow proxies....
What would you make of someone who intentionally leaves a pubic hair on your toilet seat every time he visits your home? This guy is ostensibly straight (married, even). I’m gay, and my boyfriend and I have known him since college. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Here’s an interesting, somewhat related anecdote, PBP: I bought a new legal pad a few months ago, and when I went to use it a photo fell out....
Director David H. Bell turns the Bard’s shortest tragedy into a 75-minute fever dream of irrepressible ambition and inescapable doom. Pile-driving percussionist Ethan Deppe accompanies with what sounds like the wrath of God. Decked out in leather and tattoos, the 12 young, fit cast members fully flesh out the play’s sound and fury, whether expressed in brooding ritual or explicit violence. (Don’t bring children under ten.) As the killer spouses, Ben Viccellio and Cassandra Bissell make the guilt as convincing as the greed and pride....
When it’s springtime in Chicago the only reasonable question to ask about a play is whether it’s worth the time spent inside. The Rogue Theater production of Nate White’s The Stoic is way too tedious to warrant a “yes.” This tale of dangerously whacked-out, estranged siblings reunited by the death of their father is ungainly and inchoate, often failing to manage the connections and effects it clearly yearns to make. Still, that yearning is a saving grace....
STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING sss DIRECTED BY ANDREW WAGNER WRITTEN BY FRED PARNES AND WAGNER WITH FRANK LANGELLA, LILI TAYLOR, LAUREN AMBROSE, AND ADRIAN LESTER Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I also saw Starting Out in the Evening—adapted from Brian Morton’s novel by Wagner and cowriter Fred Parnes—in mid-July. It’s finally opening this week. Much of the film’s novelty derives from its characters, the sort one almost never finds in “commercial” films—both flawed and sympathetic—and it keeps them vivid, ambiguous, and three-dimensional throughout....
Don’t Deanna Isaacs and the Reader have a journalistic obligation to verify facts rather than act as an unfiltered conduit for unsubstantiated accusations? If Deanna had checked with the Illinois Arts Council or other Acme members she would have heard a much different story. The two recent articles [December 31 and January 7] give a one-sided story. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The flooding [at the Acme Artists’ Community] is worse because certain members of the Acme condo association have been blocking [Near Northwest Arts Council] and its contractors from making plumbing repairs to the complex since August....
