Dear Reader, Your book review “The Space Waste” (June 2) failed to note: (1) Millions visit the desolate Grand Canyon each year; they are not content just to send their cameras; tourism is now expected to be the first great space industry. (2) Everyone viewing Earth from space has been awestruck and returned rededicated to […]
Tag: Vol. 24 No. 38
Issue of Jun. 29 – Jul. 5, 1995
Posted inArts & Culture
Chris Knox
One of the founding fathers of New Zealand’s fertile punk rock scene, Chris Knox has quietly built up a substantial body of work that clearly establishes his highly unusual but thoroughly persuasive pop smarts. After graduating from the Enemy and Toy Love in the late 70s and forming the legendary Tall Dwarfs with Alec Bathgate, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Give the Lady What She Wants
Give the Lady What She Wants, Touchstone Theatre. The ads for Kendall Marlowe’s new comedy proclaimed it a “hit” before performances had even begun; but despite the hopeful hype, it’s much more of a miss. Attempting to emulate the comedies of Noel Coward and Philip Barry, whose portraits of witty socialites provided escape from Depression-era […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Red Desert
Michelangelo Antonioni’s first feature in color (1964) remains a high-water mark for using colors creatively, expressionistically, and beautifully; to get the precise hues he wanted, Antonioni had entire fields painted. Restored prints make it clear why audiences were so excited a quarter of a century ago by his innovations, which include not only expressive use […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Three Tall Women
Conventional wisdom says that there are no second acts in American lives–which makes Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women all the more remarkable. After a dry spell of nearly two decades, during which play after play of his fizzled, the playwright everyone had written off wrote a play with much of the power and insight of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Every so often I read about certain prehistoric reptiles not being true dinosaurs. A trip to the encyclopedia yielded the statement that at the same time there were dinosaurs there were also pterosaurs, crocodiles, etc, who were not dinosaurs. But it never actually defined what a dinosaur was. So what exactly differentiates a dinosaur from […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Spoonful of Saccharin
Another Midsummer Night Goodman Theatre If we shadows have offended, . . . Gentles do not reprehend: If you pardon, we will mend . . . –Puck, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream One reason the Goodman Theatre likes to end with a musical each year, I think, is that an upbeat crowd pleaser can soothe […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Weekly on a Roll/Cheap Copy/Little Murders
A month on earth is scant proof of staying power. Yet so fresh, so screwy is the concept behind Chicago’s newest free weekly that all this column’s doubts are swept before it, including grave ones about distribution, profit potential, and suitability for reading without poking out an eye. The Chicago Scroll is one page thick. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
Letters we couldn’t finish because we were rolling on the floor. From a dog food company: “If dogs could talk, what might they say? Chances are they would fret about fat. Sixty percent of American dogs are overweight…” “Only Loop employers knew what parking cost” when contacted in a survey of parking provided by Chicago-area […]
Posted inMusic
Two Strands of DNA
Arto Lindsay Trio Aggregates 1-26 (Knitting Factory Works) Ikue Mori Painted Desert (Avant) A play on new wave, the tag “no wave” was applied to a wing of New York’s late-70s punk-rock scene after the influential Brian Eno-produced 1978 compilation No New York. The album introduced to an unsuspecting public the sounds of the Contortions, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
In Performance: Warren Leming’s fringe benefit
“Nontraditional cabaret theater” is how radical Renaissance man Warren Leming describes Out of Context, a two-day benefit for the quarterly publication Context: A Journal of Arts, Politics, and Community. Or in his other words, “The creme de la creme of the un-hyperfunded Chicago fringe.” No stranger to Chicago’s fringe theater scene, Leming has lined up […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love
This sweet, tender, exciting 1994 feature by writer-director Maria Maggenti is about the puppy love that blossoms between two high school seniors: a rebellious tomboy pothead gas-station attendant who lives with her aunt in an all-lesbian household and a popular wealthy black intellectual. Maggenti doesn’t always have her technique together–there are some awkward voice-overs, and […]