Hollywood filmmaking reached its aesthetic apex in the 50s. Though many directors used the studios’ vast resources merely to tell stories, auteurs were breaking new ground with their use of composition, camera movement, and editing, presenting their narratives clearly enough to meet the demands of the mass audience yet artfully enough to be almost abstract […]
Tag: Vol. 28 No. 51
Issue of Sep. 23 – 29, 1999
Posted inArts & Culture
Earth and Sky
EARTH AND SKY, Circle Theatre, and MURDER IN GREEN MEADOWS, Attic Playhouse. Most murder mysteries are just an excuse to look into the heads of the story’s characters. In the “poetic thriller” Earth and Sky, Chicago playwright Douglas Post focuses on a young librarian, Sara, who suddenly finds herself searching the underworld for the truth […]
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Sabine Fabie
Sabine Fabie brought a bright flash to Chicago in the five years she performed here, through her partnership with Mark Schulze and with Loop Troop. But the frantic pace and the relentless search for new ideas that are part of a performer’s life became too much and she burned out. After a divorce, Fabie moved […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Story An August Knoxville News-Sentinel story profiled the self-described prophet Richard Settle, 44, who began spreading the gospel three years ago by vandalizing buildings in several states, sometimes by painting religious symbols on the buildings and urinating on walls. He has been charged with crimes in ten incidents and convicted so far in three. […]
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Taste of the Polish Film Festival
Taste of the Polish Film Festival This teaser for November’s Polish Film Festival runs Friday through Sunday, September 24 through 26, at the Copernicus Center, 5216 W. Lawrence. Unless otherwise noted, all films are shown with English subtitles. Tickets are $7. For more information call 773-486-9612. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 The Junction Two young women in […]
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Group Efforts: everything must go
The Evanston Historical Society’s annual flea market has always been a pretty good reason to roll out of bed on a Saturday morning. First there’s the allure of all that serendipitous stuff–donated by folks moving out of big old Evanston houses, assiduously collected by the ladies of the Guild of the Evanston Historical Society all […]
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Salamander
SALAMANDER When Erik Wivinus and Sean Connaughty first joined their guitars and voices as Salamander in 1992, says Wivinus, “We sounded like Low–only we hadn’t heard Low yet.” Since then the Minneapolis duo has broken up and and reformed, with various additional members, half a dozen times, and its sound has morphed along with the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
No Fireworks
Orgazmo killed in San Francisco. Its star wonders why it’s dying here.
Posted inArts & Culture
Michael Rabinowitz
MICHAEL RABINOWITZ Bassoonist Michael Rabinowitz named his most recent album, released on the Dutch label Edition Compusic, Rabinowitz in Utopia. While the title doesn’t scan as well as Alice in Wonderland, sharing a Dutch rhythm section with oboist Kathy Halvorson must have made Rabinowitz feel as if he’d stepped through the looking glass and found […]
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Hoodlum Soldier
I’ve seen about a dozen of the 57 features directed by the fascinating and criminally neglected Yasuzo Masumura (1924-1986), and while no two are alike in style, many are socially subversive and most skirt the edges of exploitation filmmaking. This 1965 black-and-white ‘Scope comedy is also known as Yakuza Soldier; Shintaro Katsu, star of the […]
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Scary Home Companion
SCARY HOME COMPANION, Lifeline Theatre. This 90-minute meditation on the macabre features sardonically spooky songs and sketches by Chicago playwright-composer Eric Lane Barnes. Ranging from campy versions of urban legends to audience-based improv to a very unironic depiction of a premature burial, this show includes a pun-laden scene centered on a family making “arm soup” […]
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Police Scanner
Thursday, September 16, 11:00 PM Dispatcher: Units in 11 and citywide, 7– N. Ridgeway, shots fired 7– N. Ridgeway, shots fired. Male black, black suit–he’s got the gun in his back pocket and he let three shots go. Anybody care to respond up there? Anybody at all? 7– N. Ridgeway, 7– N. Ridgeway. 1152: 1152, […]
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Nerves
NERVES Despite the title–New Animal–the recent second album by these local garage-punk heroes isn’t a grand departure from the trebly, spastic, one-speed-fits-all attack of their 1998 debut. But under producer Jack Endino, they have throttled back a little to include the occasional keyboard color (courtesy of Thrill Jockey labelmate the Lonesome Organist) or brutal slide-guitar […]
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Journalists in Denial, Part One: Self-Interest/Journalists in Denial, Part Two: Self-Preservation
By Michael Miner Journalists in Denial, Part One: Self-Interest Life sets up nicely for famous journalists like David Brinkley with corporate friends like ADM. They’ve worked a lifetime acquiring an image as someone whose word is gold. Now they can retire and cash it in. Reporters not eminent enough for testimonials often drift into PR. […]
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What Have We Learned?/Hit By a Bus
Greg Michie is a teacher with important lessons for central office bureaucrats.