To the editors: [Re: “Reading: Superman’s Make-over,” by Geoffrey Johnson, November 20.] I was so disappointed that the first Superman movie did not follow the comics that I never went to the sequels. Here’s my list of the most glaring inconsistencies: 1) The Phantom Zone projector did not look like Hula-Hoops in the comics; 2) […]
Tag: Vol. 17 No. 12
Issue of Jan. 7 – 13, 1988
Posted inArts & Culture
Art Facts: Billie Lawless and his dancing electric organs
What’s that strange image along the side of the road? Is it a bird? A plane? No, it’s four large, neon dancing penises! They flash on and off, and they sport top hats, canes, and bow ties, Fred Astaire style. In the two years since Green Lightning was erected at Harrison and Wells as part […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Reading: Last Among First Ladies
What was Mary Todd Lincoln’s problem? Was she a shrew? A victim? A thwarted feminist?
Posted inArts & Culture
Double Messieurs
Stylistically distinctive (with a rhythmically inventive use of jump cuts), impressively acted (by Jean-Francois Stevenin, Yves Afonso, and Carole Bouquet), and simultaneously unpredictable and rather bewildering as narrative, Jean-Francois Stevenin’s second feature, made in 1986, looks like nothing else in contemporary French cinema. Stevenin, who is mainly known as a rather ubiquitous actor, plays a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
On Exhibit: a menagerie of microscopic monsters
If you were one of those kids who dreaded an errand into a dim, dank basement and who ran back out three steps at a time, sure there was something horrid hiding in the gloom–you were right. Scoffers should take in the “Microspace” show at the Chicago Academy of Sciences, an exhibit of photographs taken […]
Posted inNews & Politics
A book to go by: case studies in community development
For years, the folks at the Clarence Darrow Community Center complained about the lousy lunches being served by their day-care program. And then, in late 1980, they decided to do something about it. They fired their catering service and began cooking lunches themselves for the 90 or so youngsters–most of them low-income residents of the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Live Dancers Tonite
LIVE DANCERS TONITE SBTH Theatre Company at Sneakers Annex Nostalgia not only isn’t what it used to be, it seems to take less and less time to trigger. The memory-mongering of Live Dancers Tonite is applied to the early 70s. Ah, that innocent era of Watergate hearings and a strategically frantic withdrawal from an undeclared […]
Posted inNews & Politics
39th and Indiana
Once, when it was cold and raining, I caught the train at 39th and Indiana. “What are you doing here?” asked a motherly woman–my mother’s age, but three times her size. Because no one ever talks to anyone else on the trains, let alone the platforms, I was surprised. “I’m going home,” I told her. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
A Plant Dies in Cragin
And skilled laborers give way to retail clerks, as Chicago changes from the city that works to the city that shops.
Posted inFilm
Class Encounters
BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED *** (A must-see) Directed by Matthew Robbins Written by Robbins, Brad Bird, Brent Maddock, and S.S. Wilson With Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, and Michael Carmine. Batteries Not Included is either the most ingenuous or the most subversive film of the year, and I’m not sure there’s a way of figuring out which. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Big Time
Your lover’s leaving you, your job is in shambles, you’re kidnapped by fundamentalist Islamic terrorists–what’s an 80s guy to do? Keith Reddin’s sharp, swift play wryly targets the philosophical conflict between the religious zealots of the Middle East and the spiritually empty compulsive achievers of the West. In extending the play’s engagement, the Remains Theatre […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Caged
Probably the most ferociously effective and polemically potent women’s prison film ever made, John Cromwell’s 1950 melodrama charts the gradual hardening of an innocent 19-year-old (Eleanor Parker) in relation to the brutality of her surroundings. Parker and Hope Emerson (as a sadistic prison guard) both received Oscar nominations for their roles here; others in the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
When we are fortunate enough to discover someone willing to visit our excruciatingly drab apartment, a topic which invariably comes up is the nature and origin of our vintage red lava lamp. Just what is a lava lamp and how does it work? Is it the result of some ghastly industrial accident or did someone […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Anootation of Figaro
THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO Northlight Theatre The Northlight Marriage of Figaro’s a pleasure. A classic satire, cunningly realized. The actors are marvelous. The design elements are gorgeous. Richard Nelson’s adaptation oozes playful elegance. And Beaumarchais’ 18th-century tale of sex and intrigue is a subversive masterpiece: a clownish, savage, delightful demonstration of how very personal–how downright […]