This endearingly crazy 1971 Brazilian film defies classification: its Portuguese title (Bangue bangue) refers to films we’d probably call “shoot-’em-ups,” director Andrea Tonacci called it a “Maoist detective comedy,” yet American audiences would probably consider it an experimental film. The anonymous urban protagonist experiences a series of absurd situations–including a crazy cab ride, an encounter […]
Tag: Vol. 28 No. 52
Issue of Sep. 30 – Oct. 6, 1999
Posted inArts & Culture
Jack McDuff with the Chicago Jazz Orchestra
JACK McDUFF with the CHICAGO JAZZ ORCHESTRA Putting a Hammond B-3 organ in front of a jazz orchestra has always struck me as overkill; with its multiple tone colors and capacity to play as many as three independent lines at once, the B-3 is practically a big band all by itself. Only a few arrangers […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Blue Remembered Hills
BLUE REMEMBERED HILLS, Terrapin Theatre, at National Pastime Theater. Nine out of ten Chicago companies would slaughter Dennis Potter’s 1979 fable, originally written for British television. Seven adults play rambunctious seven-year-olds crashing about in the English woods during World War II: for the better part of 90 minutes they cajole, ridicule, bullyrag, mistreat, and belittle […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
THOSE BASTARD SOULS 9/30, the hideout; 10/1, schubas; 10/2, EMPTY BOTTLE With the release of their second album, Debt & Departure (V2), this side project of the Grifters’ Dave Shouse seems to have grown into a going concern–more so than the Grifters, anyhow. The new record (which rethinks several tunes from the Souls’ 1996 indie […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Pretty Vacant
The Trouble With Peggy: Pieces of Guggenheim at the Blue Rider Theatre By Justin Hayford Sometimes ambition does itself in. Peggy Guggenheim, perhaps America’s most influential champion of modern art, had enough ambition to do herself in several times over. Whether she did or not is open to debate. In amassing one of the most […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Tap Dance
No one in Hyde Park seems to mind the loopholes that will allow the survival of a certain local institution. No one, that is, except this man.
Posted inArts & Culture
Bluff
Bluff, Victory Gardens Theater. Without a doubt, former Chicago resident Jeffrey Sweet’s latest work is an exceptionally well crafted piece of theater, a testament to his continued skill as a playwright. Like Flyovers–which received its world premiere at Victory Gardens two seasons ago–Bluff showcases Sweet’s remarkable knack for balancing scathingly funny one-liners with realistic, gut-wrenching […]
Posted inArts & Culture
True Books
Computers as Tutors: Solving the Crisis in Education, by Frederick Bennett, PhD (Faben, $25). Synopsis: Teachers suffer from “sickness, accidents, psychological problems, boredom, and burnout.” Computers will do a better job. Students will get the social interaction they need by stretching and going to the bathroom. Representative quote: “By occasionally shifting machines and physical locations, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Razzle Dazzle
Fosse at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre By Albert Williams “Life is just a bowl of cherries,” advises a 1931 vaudeville song by Lew Brown and Ray Henderson. “Don’t take it serious, life’s too mysterious.” The lyric, crooned slowly and soulfully by the captivating Reva Rice at the start of the […]
Posted inMusic
New Model Army
Naked Raygun Basement Screams Throb Throb All Rise Jettison Understand? Raygun . . . Naked Raygun (Quarterstick) By Peter Margasak My first Naked Raygun show, at Tuts in Lakeview in 1983, was an oasis in a long summer of faceless hardcore. Metal influences and thrash were beginning to dominate punk rock, and most of the […]
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A Chorus Line and Whose Chorus Line Is It Anyway?
A CHORUS LINE, Drury Lane Theatre Evergreen Park, and WHOSE CHORUS LINE IS IT ANYWAY?, ComedySportz, at the TurnAround Theatre. Who could have guessed that all those 50s and 60s experiments in mixing theater with the frontiers of psychology–group therapy, encounter groups, psychodrama–would have resulted in a show as safe and essentially harmless as the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Incident at Vichy
Incident at Vichy, Writers’ Theatre Chicago. Lately the American theater seems so devoid of a conscience that just hearing Arthur Miller’s voice is refreshing–particularly in this top-notch production of his gripping, underappreciated morality play, written when he was still in his prime, about suspects rounded up by Nazi officers in occupied France. In this almost […]
Posted inMusic
Bottle Rockets’ New Trajectory/Outet In
Bottle Rockets’ New Trajectory Local favorites the Bottle Rockets are coming to the Riviera on Thursday with Lucinda Williams, and they share more with the maverick country-rock singer than a marquee. The group, based in Festus, Missouri, hasn’t been through quite what Williams has endured, but it’s sure taken its share of shit from the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
There’s Somebody Out There
Hollywood is in for a rude awakening as foreign films become more available to American audiences. The 35th Chicago International Film Festival has a taste of what’s in store.