When it comes to pure artifice, it’s hard to think of a more thorough practitioner than Chris Isaak. From his retro 50s look to his retro 50s sounds, Isaak couldn’t be more fake if he were a Las Vegas act. Yet despite his all-consuming obsession with looking like a pinup guy from the past–this former […]
Tag: Vol. 25 No. 11
Issue of Dec. 21 – 27, 1995
Posted inArts & Culture
Clark Terry & Arturo Sandoval
If they’d subtitled this show “The World of Trumpets, “few would complain: together the Cuban-born Arturo Sandoval and the Saint Louis native Clark Terry encompass a fair amount of their instrument’s virtuosic terrain. What’s more, Sandoval belongs to the lineage of Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown, while Terry was a role model for the young […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lamerica
This masterful and extremely moving feature by Gianni Amelio (Open Doors, Stolen Children) is a powerful piece of storytelling that recalls some of the best Italian neorealist films. It depicts the adventures of an Italian con artist (Enrico Lo Verso) trying to set up a fake corporation in postcommunist Albania in order to get his […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
SEASON TO RISK 12/22, METRO Default leaders of the current Kansas City, Missouri, punk rock explosion, Season to Risk teeter predictably between grinding-metal and ugly posthardcore machinations. Their most recent offering, In a Perfect World (Red Decibel/Columbia), delivers the requisite noise, chaos, and rage but lacks songs, originality, and verve. Just because you meet the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Light Opera Works
Perhaps the most famous and beloved operetta of all time, Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus is quintessential Viennese schmaltz disguised as a lighthearted cautionary tale against overindulgence. Its narrative is convoluted, as marital infidelities, friendly rivalries, and assorted past grievances are aired at a masked ball on New Year’s Eve. And of course on the morning […]
Posted inArts & Culture
False Idol
Nixon * (Has redeeming facet) Directed by Oliver Stone Written by Stephen J. Rivele, Christopher Wilkinson, and Stone With Anthony Hopkins, Joan Allen, James Woods, J.T. Walsh, Paul Sorvino, Powers Boothe, David Hyde Pierce, E.G. Marshall, Madeleine Kahn, David Paymer, and Mary Steenburgen. Did we really win the cold war? I know that capitalism prevailed […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Hard Truths
East Texas Hot Links Onyx Theatre Ensemble at the Edgewater Theatre Center In a stunning debut, Onyx Theatre Ensemble–Chicago’s newest black theater company–is performing Eugene Lee’s breathtaking 1990 play, East Texas Hot Links. Never previously seen in Chicago, this play examining racism in the 1950s deep south was acclaimed at the New York Shakespeare Festival […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Cool and Collected: For the Love of Leather
For his book States of Desire, author Edmund White set out on a cross-country trip to document the changing profile of gay America in the late 1970s. Upon his arrival in Chicago, however, he came face to face with the old school. White found Chuck Renslow to be “the best known gay personality in the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Story A 62-year-old woman pleaded guilty to stealing about 500 pieces of mail from her neighbors’ mailboxes in Roanoke, Virginia, in November–her third such offense in five years. Although she’d been found sane and competent for trial, she was diagnosed as having an “irresistible impulse” to steal mail, so the judge kept her confined […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Mekons with Kathy Acker
If there’s one thing to expect from the Mekons these days it’s change. Unwilling to rest on their laurels, the Mekons enthusiastically take chances, dabbling in various forms without accidentally assuming their shapes. This gig previews material from their forthcoming album Pussy, King of the Pirates (Quarterstick), an intriguing collaboration with postmodern novelist Kathy Acker. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Political Football
Just what type of “laissez-faire liberal” is Ted Cox (The Sports Section, November 24)? Why can’t he identify a single lesson laissez-faire liberalism teaches us about the National Football League? Even a “namby-pamby Great Society” sympathizer like myself can see them. First, NFL teams have faced and continue to face actual and threatened competition. The […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Theater
Chairs Plus Sofas An hour-long examination of “the experience of sitting, drawn from both the perspective of the sitter and the sittee.” Performed backwards, with the second half in four dimensions. “The ironies and intricacies of this piece are multitudinous,” says a Reader critic, “not the least of which is that the audience is, itself, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Closing Doors in Humboldt Park
Subsidized Housing for People With AIDS Hits a Snag
Posted inNews & Politics
The Bard of Brentwood
“If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” With that historic rhyme, defense attorney Johnnie Cochran instantly replaced the Reverend Jesse Jackson as the country’s most quoted poet. Since then, more Cochran compositions have come to light. . . “If the pants had a crease, you must release.” –Tog Cleaners v. Los Angeles County, 1979 “If […]