**** CALENDAR (Masterpiece) Directed and written by Atom Egoyan With Arsinee Khanjian, Ashot Adamian, and Atom Egoyan. In terms of craft, originality, and intelligence, there are few young filmmakers in the world today to match Atom Egoyan–a Canadian writer-director with a bee in his bonnet about video, photography, voyeurism, sexual obsession, troubled families, and personal […]
Tag: Vol. 23 No. 45
Issue of Aug. 18 – 24, 1994
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Story After a spirited debate at the great Midwestern Think-Off on June 26 in New York Mills, Minnesota, the audience of professional and amateur philosophers officially affirmed, by a vote of 70 to 54, that life has meaning. Winning debater and sometime fisherman Peter Hilts argued that life has meaning even for a fish; […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Restaurant Tours: cigar smoking not prohibited
As USA Today is fond of reminding us, ascetic health consciousness is on the wane, and self-indulgence is back in fashion. If so, that’s fine with Nathan Jarvinen. The fortysomething real estate developer so relishes a good cigar that he converted the first floor of one of his residential properties into a cafe that would […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Through Children’s Eyes
GEOGRAPHY IS DISCOVERY: EXPLORING THE WORLD THROUGH CHILDREN’S ART at the Field Museum, through October 2 There’s something a bit odd about Maasai Dance Celebrating Cattle Raid, one of the 77 works of children’s art from 26 countries on six continents now on view at the Field Museum. Though the title suggests a boisterous celebration […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
By some accounts, the social security trust funds now have over half a trillion dollars, while others say the money in these funds is so phony it may as well have Art Linkletter’s picture on it. Are the assets in these funds actually worth half a trillion dollars, or is it all a sham? –Daniel […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Abbie Hoffman Died for Our Sins VI
Every August Rich Cotovsky–actor, director, off-Loop theater owner, and licensed pharmacist–dons a curly black wig and a shirt made from the American flag and presides over one of the city’s edgiest theater festivals as the living incarnation of Abbie Hoffman, circa 1969. For the duration of the two-and-a-half-day marathon of plays and performance art, founded […]
Posted inNews & Politics
In and Out
Finally Chicago has an openly gay elected official. It took 20 years of political education and one tireless candidate.
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago
CHICAGO, Prologue Theatre Productions, at Court Theatre. Mean and lean, crude and cynical, Bob Fosse’s music-hall musical Chicago would be sleazy-sick satire–if its lurid tale of dim-witted murderers Roxie and Velma weren’t so prophetic. Set in 1926, this play anticipates the O.J. trial–it’s all there, tabloid sensationalism, purchased justice, murder as show biz. The show’s […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Playwrights Wronged/News Bites
Playwrights Wronged Local actors/playwrights Carrie Betlyn and Peggy Dunne are noising it about that they’ve been wronged by Arthur Miller. Their bid for sympathy turns on their own enthusiasm, idealism, and obscurity, and the spectacle of a great man hiding behind not just an agent but contract law. Betlyn and Dunne wish to stage their […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Mi Vida Loca
A funky independent feature by Allison Anders (Gas Food Lodging), set in the Los Angeles barrios and concentrating on the friendships between working-class women there. The stylistic boldness may get a little top-heavy in spots, but in general this is funny, insightful, and imaginatively told. The cinematographer, interestingly, is Rodrigo Garcia, son of writer Gabriel […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Gays ‘n’ Pols
1975: Grant Ford, publisher of Gay Life, declares for alderman of the 44th Ward and then, after voter registration efforts are well under way, mysteriously drops out of the race and supports te regular Democratic candidate. 1986: A gay rights ordinance is defeated in City Council, a “wake-up call for the community.” 1987: Dr. Ron […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
Excuse me, my supervisory monitor shows that you haven’t been thinking very hard for the last 30 seconds. University of Illinois scientists say they can now measure mental activity through the scalp. Psychologist Arthur F. Kramer: “We know more about the [brain] voltage fluctuations in terms of psychological processes. We now have computer hardware that […]
Posted inArts & Culture
James House
After his own first two albums failed him commercially, James House got a major boost from Dwight Yoakam’s 1993 recording of his beautifully plaintive “Ain’t That Lonely Yet.” That song–which House copenned with country tunesmith Kostas–earned him a Grammy nomination, and recently his tune “In a Week or Two” became a hit for Diamond Rio. […]