EXPERIMENTAL | Bill Meyer Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » After living in Chicago for more than a decade, during which he played with groups such as Town & Country and Pillow, Vida moved to Brooklyn in 2009. He immersed himself in electronic music and enrolled in Bard College’s MFA program, the academic base of one of the 20th century’s great sound-art pioneers, the late Maryanne Amacher....
For a brief moment last week, directly after Miley Cyrus‘s new Bangerz (RCA) leaked, it looked like people might start discussing the actual music on the album rather than the barrage of partial nudity and questionable cultural appropriation that’s doubled as its prerelease promotional campaign. But then star photographer Terry Richardson, who’s made a career out of shooting salacious images of young women (and who directed the video for Cyrus’s single “Wrecking Ball“), posted photos on his blog that—after years of Miley handbras, Miley sideboobs, and other coy ways of almost baring her breasts—finally gave the world a more or less unobstructed view of her nipples....
Charley Varrick On Mon 7/22 at the Patio Theater, the Northwest Chicago Film Society presents the great Don Siegel film The Lineup. Siegel should be a familiar name, as he’s the director behind such canonical American favorites as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the Dirty Harry films. A master formalist who relished the opportunity to jam as much movement, commotion, and physical action as possible into a single scene, Siegel’s films are also supremely serious examinations of criminality and violence, as well as solitary males prone to both—and averse to civilized behavior....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The festival was to begin at 8 PM Friday with one of the worst baseball movies ever made, the bathetic, self-important Field of Dreams (1989), in which Ray Liotta plays a right-handed-hitting Shoeless Joe Jackson and not even James Earl Jones can save the ponderous solliloquy on the meaning of “this game.” The double feature is only moderately redeemed by Eight Men Out (1988), screening at 10 PM, in which D....
For nearly 35 years Chicago has had only one major annual comics convention—Chicago Comic Con, also known as Wizard World since it was taken over by New York-based Wizard Entertainment in 1997. That’s about to change. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » While Reed is a newcomer to comic book conventions, having staged its first in New York four years ago, it’s also “the world’s leading organiser of trade and consumer events,” with 2,500 employees in 35 offices around the globe, according to its Web site....
SEPTEMBER Columbia College Glass Curtain Gallery 1104 S. Wabash: RE:figure Work by Edna Dapo, Amber Hawk Swanson, Betsy Schneider, Stacia Yeapanis, and others. Reception Thu 9/10, 5-8 PM. 9/8-10/30. Mon-Wed and Fri 9-5, Thu 9-7, 312-369-6643. Andrew Bae 300 W. Superior: Jae Ko Paper sculptures. Reception Fri 9/11. 9/11-10/10. Tue-Sat 10-6, 312-335-8601, andrewbaegallery.com. Melanee Cooper 740 N. Franklin: Headlong Past and Fast Forward Paintings by Alicia LaChance. Reception Fri 9/11, 5-8 PM....
On NPR this morning I heard a tease for an interview with Tom Hooper, who directed the new movie version of Broadway’s Les Miserables. In it they had him talking about how unnatural it is for characters to break into song every so often, the way they do in the typical musical. I wasn’t in the car long enough to hear the actual piece, and there are only highlights available online as I write this, so it’s entirely possible that the tease was completely misleading and Hooper segued into a brilliant defense of the stage musical as it’s come down to us through Rodgers & Hammerstein, Bernstein, Kern, Sondheim, and the rest....
This touring program runs Thursday, June 3, through thursday, June 10, at Facets Cinematheque and the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago. Unless otherwise noted, tickets are $9, free for Facets members. Following are selected screenings; for more information and a complete schedule call 773-281-4114 or see facets.org. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Afghan Star After the people of Afghanistan voted to lift restrictions on public singing and dancing in 2004, the independent Tolo TV channel, inevitably perhaps, launched a native version of Britain’s Got Talent and American Idol, called Afghan Star....
School of the Art Institute graduate Eileen Lillian Doyle (aka Gertie Garbage) started Garbage World in 2009, enlisting friends to help her create a performance festival characterized by “more allowances than limitations,” based on personal responsibility and trust. Six cycles in, with versions both here and in Philadelphia, the project has remained consistent—no rules or themes, just fun with freedom. Gertie Garbage opens this fest, themed “Homecoming,” with a food-fetish and burlesque mash-up incorporating the following: pastries, body stockings, gelatin from beef bones....
Slattery didn’t realize the value of the photos. “I was just going to, like, shellac them to a van or something.” — “Master of Markets” by Anne Ford Noboss17 The next problem is the assumption that both parties are freely consenting. Consent revolves around the concept of choice—that a person is presented with a wide variety of viable options and makes an informed decision about which one is best for them....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I imagine it’s hard to leave your homeland when it’s rocked by political strife, but the great Malian singer Khaira Arby is back in the U.S. for her third tour since debuting here in fall 2010—she performs Thursday night at the Old Town School. In a recent interview published by the Washington City Paper, Arby expressed her concerns about the coup in her country: “The innocent victims are my worry....
Go back to the “Valentine’s Day: Why Bother?” table of contents page Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I like to think that I was doing my part for the war in Iraq. I wasn’t enlisted, and I wasn’t involved in the rehabilitation services for the troops when they came home. Instead, I was prehabilitating our fighters by keeping their homes happy. While they were away with their heads in the sand, I was here in the Land of Lincoln, banging their wives....
Ortiz (right) with Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook Tony Adler’s positive review aside, I was most excited to attend The Motherfucker With the Hat at the Steppenwolf so that I could finally see John Ortiz in a lead performance. A New York friend had been raving for years about this actor’s stage work (he cofounded LAByrinth Theater with Philip Seymour Hoffman, with whom he’s performed numerous times), and watching him in Silver Linings Playbook gave me a sense of what he could do with a substantial role....
Paul Radoy had a few things he wanted to say to Mayor Daley, and on a hot evening last August he got his chance. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “I’m not expecting the city to come and pick up the trash that blows around the streets here—that’s something we have to take care of,” he told me later. “But I am expecting the city to keep the roads from crumbling, to keep the curbs from crumbling....
Politics is easy when you’re angry. Demonize your opponent and you free yourself from accountability. Playwright Naomi Wallace doesn’t allow herself that luxury. Her work is confrontational precisely because her depictions of the “enemy” aren’t. Though no stranger to fervor, Wallace understands that class systems, ideologies, economic philosophies, and social roles are too fluid and complex for blithe contempt. She has the audacity to ask a question when it’d be more convenient and satisfying to make a statement....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On the right side of the page is a small article by Tim Novak about the $29,000-a-year property tax break that Board of Review commissioners Joe Berrios, Brendhan Houlihan and Larry Rogers gave to Michael Tadin. If you recall, Tadin’s the City Hall insider whose trucking company picked up several million dollars in contracts from the notorious Hired Truck program....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » There were relatively few youngsters who performed at Riot Fest day two, but certainly plenty in the crowd—many of them having been dropped off by mom a block away (I witnessed this while standing on the corner of Kedzie and Division, experiencing vivid flashbacks of my teenage years) and at least in one them holing up in a porta-potty for an inordinate amount of time while angry adults (myself included) beat on the door....
Q I’m a 23-year-old female college student whose life consists of going to class and going to the gym. I got hurt in my last relationship, so I’ve been staying away from dating for a while. I’m attractive, and I notice guys checking me out—making the gym a second home does have benefits!—but I’m afraid I come off as unapproachable. Don’t you hate that? Best of Chicago voting is live now....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ambient musician Lee Noble has a good sense of humor, and last night at the Empty Bottle he needed it. Noble performed to a small and rather indifferent crowd on the final night of the Adventures in Modern Music festival, and the Nashville native reached for some sort of connection with the crowd by cracking jokes—even at his own expense....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last night was a big night down here for Chicago. I personally caught Brenmar, a solo set by Bruce from Yakuza, Office, and the Ponys, and ran into a bunch of other Chi-towners on the street and at shows. I missed David Vandervelde and Catfish Haven, but reports on them were strongly positive. I also missed Flosstradamus‘s set after the Pack—I’d already stumbled back to my hotel to fall asleep in front of Angel reruns for the second night in a row —but in usual Floss style they’re playing something like 387 parties while they’re down here, so I’m sure I’ll catch at least one....
