You’ve probably never heard of this crime picture and love story (1994), but it’s almost certainly the best American genre movie released so far this year–the sort of beautifully crafted personal effort that would qualify as a sleeper if our film industry still allowed sleepers to function as they did in the 50s. Given the […]
Tag: Vol. 24 No. 41
Issue of Jul. 20 – 26, 1995
Posted inArts & Culture
Maile Flanagan’s One-Woman Sound of Music
Buzzworks Theater Company, at Zebra Crossing Theatre Dear Ms. Andrews: For those of us who grew up as nauseated by The Sound of Music as your leading man Christopher Plummer was (he once called it “The Sound of Mucus,” you’ll remember), Maile Flanagan’s wicked spoof provides welcome relief. Flanagan’s One-Woman Sound of Music romps through […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Gene
Gene is an amusing scrap of a band from England. Awhile back it seemed as if the Smiths’ lethal combination of affected vocals (basket case Morrissey) and blasting guitars (the obsessive Johnny Marr) would disappear without a trace; now suddenly here’s a band doing exactly the same thing. Only not as well. The Smiths were […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Out of the Flat Iron, Into the Streets/Theater League Has Funds, Will Travel/Erratum
HotHouse owner Marguerite Horberg: forced out, or tapped out?
Posted inNews & Politics
The Color of Monet
With impressionism you can have it both ways–radical subversion and pretty flowers, all in one rapidly appreciating package.
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
I read that former Pennsylvania governor Robert Casey had never heard of Mumia Abu-Jamal, despite the thousands of letters and petitions for Abu-Jamal’s release that were sent to his office. Now that the new governor, Tom Ridge, has signed Abu-Jamal’s death warrant for August 17, I suspect he also has no idea who Mumia is. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Death in the Family
StreetSigns, at Shattered Globe Theatre James Agee’s 1957 memoir-novel is an elegy that resonates with hard-earned poetry and childlike lyricism. It depicts his family, living a quiet, stable life in Knoxville before World War I, stricken with a change too great for a child to grasp: Agee’s unflinching words preserve the boy’s paralysis when his […]
Posted inNews & Politics
10,000 arguments: one year on the tenants’ hot line
In any hour of any day the phone can ring, bringing another tale of woe. On this line maintained by the Metropolitan Tenants Organization, tenants complain about miserly or miscreant landlords. The hot line’s an impressive operation, winning praise from residents and Mayor Daley, whose administration is better known for close ties to developers than […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
Percentage of people boarding Orange Line trains daily who used to drive instead, according to a survey by the CTA’s market research department: more than 25 percent. “Chicago would have to host nearly three Democratic National Conventions next year to equal Loyola’s 1994 billion-dollar impact,” according to the school’s own report. “That impact also translates […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Dinner Theater
“So, what’s the latest on your love life?” “My love life. Betty, you’re a riot.” The woman with a ponytail was pretty; she wore a T-shirt advertising the Wisconsin Dells. Her beefy, bearded friend wore frayed flannel. We three were the only customers in this modest little Thai restaurant in Uptown; they took a nearby […]
Posted inArts & Culture
To See and Be Seen
Jack Pierson: Traveling Show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, through September 3 Hana Fechtner Golan at Gallery 1633, through July 30 “Everybody is a narcissist,” Jack Pierson told an interviewer. “That’s why people can respond to my work.” His photograph Palm Springs, one of 37 photos, drawings, and installations now on view at the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago Underground Film Festival
The second annual Chicago Underground Film Festival runs Friday through Sunday, July 21 through 23, at the Congress Hotel, 520 S. Michigan, and Saturday, July 22, at the International Cinema Museum, 319 W. Erie. Tickets for all programs are $5, with the exception of the Kenneth Anger and Ivan Stang programs, which are $8; a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Pushing Hands
The thematic concerns of Ang Lee’s recent hits The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman–familial obligation, misunderstanding between generations, cultural displacement–are also evident in Pushing Hands, his 1992 feature debut. Played with remarkable depth and stoicism by Sihung Lung, a former Taiwanese matinee idol whose career Lee has helped resuscitate, Chu is a tai […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Calendar
JULY Friday 21 The second annual Illinois Cowboy Poetry Gathering takes place this weekend in–where else?–Winnetka. The event includes two evenings of western poetry, music, and comedy tonight and tomorrow at the Winnetka Community House, 620 Lincoln in Winnetka, and two free daytime shows tomorrow afternoon at 1 in Hubbard Woods Park, Green Bay Road […]