Fun and infuriating in roughly equal proportions, Mike Figgis’s Time Code is an unusually bold experiment for a major studio. Its plot is outlandish and its characters the most overblown parodies this side of Robert Altman. In some respects, it’s even more cockamamy than James Toback’s Black and White and its sensationalist riffs. So you […]
Tag: Vol. 29 No. 30
Issue of Apr. 27 – May. 3, 2000
Posted inNews & Politics
Your New Sun-Times Flight Crew
By Michael Miner In the fullness of time someone from Chicago will again be asked to edit the Sun-Times. But for now it’s business as usual. The paper’s owners, who are Canadian, announced the other day that editor in chief Nigel Wade, who’s Australian, was stepping down and would be replaced on May 15 by […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Sports Section
The White Sox might at long last have stumbled on the remedy for their attendance woes. Nothing draws a crowd of Chicagoans, especially on the south side, like a fight–and the Sox engaged in a full-scale bench-clearing, blind-punch-throwing, spikes-gouging brouhaha Saturday afternoon against the Detroit Tigers. A crowd of 38,912 had slowly filled Comiskey Park […]
Posted inMusic
Local Record Roundup
Local Record Roundup DISTURBED The Sickness (Giant) These south-siders, sporting the requisite body piercings and carefully sculpted goatees, are Chicago’s entry in the tortured metal sweepstakes. Front man David Draiman shifts from post-Metallica gruffness to sensitive-guy alt-rock balladeering to padded-cell ranting with mechanical precision, and his boilerplate screeds invoke hatred and violence as cool responses […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Life in the Fest Lane
Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa doesn’t just attend fiml festivals–she collects them.
Posted inArts & Culture
The Irish Drummer Girl
The Irish Drummer Girl (or: War for Love), Breadline Theatre Group. Michael Oswalt’s new play may be formulaic but it’s also a lot of fun. The work offers a laundry list of standard plot contrivances from classical Greek, Elizabethan, and Restoration theater as well as melodrama and commedia dell’arte. Crammed into this work are hidden […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
LIZ CARROLL 4/28, IRISH AMERICAN HERITAGE CENTER It’s been said that the Chicago Irish are more Irish than the Irish, which might partly explain how it is that the woman recognized by some as the world’s greatest Irish fiddle player lives in Evanston. Born into a musical family, Carroll wrote her first reel at nine, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
2 White Guys
It should be mentioned up front that neither member of 2 White Guys is a white guy: this local sketch comedy duo consists of African-American male Jordan Peele and white female Rebecca Drysdale. What really makes 2 White Guys stand out from the crowd is how well they play to each other’s strengths. Peele employs […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Words Like Bullets
After his little brother was kidnapped and executed by gangbangers, Kweisi Dunlap put down his rage and picked up a pen.
Posted inArts & Culture
Wadada Leo Smith
WADADA LEO SMITH In its early years the Chicago-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians–which is presently celebrating its 35th anniversary with a series of eight concerts that began Wednesday–had a surfeit of saxophonists but only a handful of trumpeters. The most prominent of these was Lester Bowie, best known for his work in […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
I’m a newly remarried 50-year-old man. My wife and I have settled into a comfortable vanilla-sex routine. I enjoy it. My problem is that I also enjoy kinky sex. When I was single I used to see pro-doms pretty regularly. I’ve tried to introduce BDSM to my wife gently but without much success. She’s obviously […]
Posted inFilm
94 Years and 1 Nursing Home Later
Laurel Greenberg’s compassionate 1999 video documentary about the last decade in her grandmother’s life combines family chronicle, psychiatric case history, and autobiographical essay to examine the modern dilemma of retired seniors who must themselves cope with the deteriorating health of their parents. Born in the Ukraine and bound by tradition, Belle spent most of her […]
Posted inNews & Politics
You Never Call
Dear editor: Ben Joravsky wrote an extensive article describing the zoning disputes in the 35th Ward [April 21]. The article uses 2559 N. Bernard as an example of the conflicts between neighbors, who sum it up as 96 people are unhappy and 2 are happy. As the co-owner of that property, I guess I am […]
Posted inNews & Politics
West Side Story
My father believed that the family should have dinner together. Marge worked downtown, and she didn’t get out until six. She worked for this fancy haber-dasher on South Michigan. They had shops in Paris, New York, and Chicago. I remember that the ties were $7. Can you imagine paying $7 for a tie? The office […]