American Movie Wisconsin filmmaker Mark Borchardt tries to raise money for a feature by finishing a short called Coven in this intimate documentary directed and shot by Chris Smith (American Job). Smith and producer Sarah Price, who recorded the sound, are unseen as they capture what appears to be the raw experience of the sometimes […]
Tag: Vol. 29 No. 16
Issue of Jan. 20 – 26, 2000
Posted inNews & Politics
Give Miner the Finger
simon.qxd Dear sir: Has Mr. News Bites [Hot Type, January 7] found his lost finger yet? If not, he shouldn’t have any trouble finding one lying on the street as there are thousands of them dropped by all the folk who count their fingers from zero to nine and find that one is missing. Stuart […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Crazy Locomotive
THE CRAZY LOCOMOTIVE, Trap Door Theatre. If the scrappy Trap Door Theatre stumbles a lot, perhaps that’s because the company tends to choose demanding, convention-defying plays that would throw even the most seasoned professionals for a loop. With their production of Stanislaw Witkiewicz’s The Crazy Locomotive, however, they hit the ground running and never break […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Authenticity Killed the Cat
Authenticity Killed The Cat, FluxWorks Theater Company, at Second City, Donny’s Skybox Studio. The seven short plays by four writers in this collection all seem to revolve around the themes of love, lust, and loss. And all bear the unmistakable stamp of young adulthood: the characters’ fundamental inability to break patterns of self-destructive behavior. If […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lysistrata 2000
Lysistrata 2000, Revel Theater Company and Walking By Productions, at Bailiwick Repertory. Sometimes too much is more than enough: Greek novelist Melia Tataki’s rather muddled adaptation of Aristophanes’ antiwar comedy takes wretched excess to new and dizzying heights. While the bawdy original can hardly be called a subtle piece of theater, its economy ensures its […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Truth Hurts
Dangerous Corner Greasy Joan & Company at Victory Gardens Theater By Adam Langer Telling the truth, observes one character in J.B. Priestley’s crafty 1932 psychological thriller, is as dangerous as careening around a corner at 60 miles an hour. And as it turns out, it’s even more risky in the play: some expert drivers might […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Axel Dorner
AXEL D…RNER Considering the wealth of small jazz and improv labels that have cropped up here and in Europe over the last few years, it’s almost criminal that superb German trumpeter Axel Dšrner has yet to record as anything but a sideman–few other horn players on the planet have the technical reach or imagination to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Maggie Brown
MAGGIE BROWN The lighter, softer second voice on Abbey Lincoln’s 1998 album Wholly Earth (Verve) belongs to Chicago vocalist Maggie Brown–but only Lincoln’s thick, smeary timbre could make Brown sound light or soft. At last year’s Chicago Jazz Festival she parlayed a ten-minute set into a restrained but powerful tribute to gospel pioneer Thomas A. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Do bears actually sleep straight through winter, and if so, how do they keep from dehydrating? –Ashley S., Memphis, TN Easy–they don’t pee. You were expecting maybe Gatorade? You may think hibernation is another bit of naturalist hype, like the millipede having a thousand legs or the century plant blooming every hundred years. Uh-uh. Although […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chi Lives: how Jenny Bacon jumped into the fire
If you went to the theater a lot in the late 80s and early 90s, you probably saw Jenny Bacon at Remains, Lookingglass, and the Goodman, rising from small parts like a milkmaid in Puntila and His Hired Man to starring roles in The Arabian Nights and Dancing at Lughnasa. But as a student at […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Calendar
Friday 1/21 – Thursday 1/27 JANUARY By Cara Jepsen 21 FRIDAY Since it was founded by Quakers in 1917 the American Friends Service Committee has worked with Japanese-Americans imprisoned in internment camps and with Jesse Jackson to end housing segregation. The group is currently zeroing in on world trade, hoping the spread of capitalism will […]
Posted inArts & Culture
In Print: the book with the reinforced toe
Bridget Brown doesn’t have strong feelings about panty hose. But a few years ago the title “A History of Panty Hose in America” popped into her head and wouldn’t leave. “I guess I thought it had potential,” says the Madison-based graphic designer and fiction writer. “A lot of my stuff comes from the title or […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Matapat
MATAPAT French Canada doesn’t get mentioned once in the Rough Guide to world music, which is hard to understand–the region’s music has plainly audible connections to much-loved Cajun and Celtic forms, so it’d seem like a popular phenomenon waiting to happen. The three members of Matapat (previously known as Bourque, Bernard & Lepage) have further […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Preserving Disorder
Gerda Meyer Bernstein at Fassbender, through February 5 Jeffrey Wolin: Telling Stories at Catherine Edelman, through February 12 The Exquisite Corpse at Printworks, through February 12 Marco Nereo Rotelli: Art and Poetry and Art at Bianca Pilat Contemporary Art, through January 29 By Fred Camper “To live,” as Anton von Webern quoted German poet Friedrich […]