I would like to thank Lisa Alspector for her review of Gummo [Movies at chicagoreader.com]. I now feel less terrified about the movie I just watched. Erik Hons Waterloo, Ontario
Tag: Vol. 30 No. 38
Issue of Jun. 21 – 27, 2001
Posted inArts & Culture
Natural Order
Edward Weston: The Last Years in Carmel at the Art Institute of Chicago, through September 16 By Fred Camper When I first looked at reproductions of Edward Weston’s prints almost 30 years ago, I found them inert and dull, skillful but lifeless. And I figured that since Weston himself had published these black-and-white photos in […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Let the Volunteers Earn Their Pay!
Let me get this straight. In recycling versus bottle bills, a voluntary action that makes one aware of the costs of one’s throwaway mentality is a bad thing, but a law enforced at the point of a gun, as all laws are, is a good thing. Whoops, forgot, a gun pointed at a “producer” always […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Window Undressing
A few minutes after midnight on a recent Thursday, security guard Larry Ellis finished placing several police barricades in front of the Sears on State Street. Warning “Do Not Cross” in white letters, the blue blockades signaled day’s end for the four Australian actors hired by the city to live in Sears’s display windows like […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Reader to Reader
During all the reports of the taping of the last Bozo’s Circus show, we were informed over and over again of the omnipresent Billy Corgan’s great affection for the beloved clown, and how he just had to appear on the final broadcast. (Why wasn’t Bozo invited to jam with the Pumpkins during their own farewell […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Dept of Humility: Corrections and Clarifications
To the editor: I wish to correct a few minor inaccuracies in Deanna Isaacs’s piece on my book, Mis-directing the Play [Culture Club, June 15]. She refers to my having put in “stints” at Northlight and the Goodman. I believe the word connotes a period of paid employment. I would not like to be perceived […]
Posted inArts & Culture
X-Patriots
Darien Sills-Evans directed and stars in this touching and thoughtful drama about two African-American men, each of whom finds love in the Netherlands. A restless, fast-talking expatriate (Sills-Evans), living with his Dutch wife in the Hague, becomes so frustrated over his stalled acting career that he invites his calm, sensitive ex-roommate from New York (Bobby […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
The votes are in. They’ve been counted, recounted, and…actually, I’m going resist making the stock Florida/hanging-chad/Republican-coup jokes. After all, this is serious business: What term, from this day forward, will be the commonly accepted slang for a woman fucking a man in the ass with a strap-on dildo? Three candidates stood in this election: “bob,” […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Richard Lloyd, Steve Wynn
RICHARD LLOYD, STEVE WYNN Richard Lloyd and Steve Wynn launched their careers in two of the most revered bands of the punk and postpunk eras, yet they’ll probably both be thrilled if they draw 300 people to the Empty Bottle this week. Both men have spent nearly two decades trying to recapture the glory of […]
Posted inFilm
Lost In Their Parts
The Anniversary Party was written and directed by two actors, Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh, who created all the parts specifically for themselves and actors they knew. So it’s no surprise that a handful of the characters at this dusk-to-dawn Hollywood party, celebrating the sixth wedding anniversary of Joe (Cumming) and Sally (Leigh), are […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Police Scanner
Saturday, June 9, 12:15 AM Dispatcher: Any kind of condition besides it bein’ in the head? 1130: I’ll say he’s good, but they’ll probably tell you critical. Shot in the head, but he’s responsive. Tuesday, June 12, 12:55 AM 1950: Can we have a wagon come by, assist the citizen home? He’s in a wheelchair. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Sins of the Father
SINS OF THE FATHER, SummerNITE, at the Theatre Building. Written and performed earlier this year by Northern Illinois University students in Dublin, Ireland, this show is presented here with most of the original cast intact. And this 90-minute piece about intolerance in an unnamed police state is very much an evening of student theater. The […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Could It Be Magic? The Barry Manilow Songbook
COULD IT BE MAGIC? THE BARRY MANILOW SONGBOOK, Mercury Theater. Like the recordings that inspired it, this musical revue is alternately schlocky and sophisticated, corny and catchy. Written and directed by 70s superstar Manilow and veteran TV writers Mitzie and Ken Welch (whose credits include Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett’s brilliant 1962 Carnegie Hall concert), […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Bomb-itty of Errors
The Bomb-itty of Errors, at the Royal George Theatre Center. At its best, hip-hop is intensely theatrical, a forum for pointed social commentary and a means of making personal narratives accessible. In a sense, hip-hop’s strengths can be tied to the Elizabethan era; Shakespeare was a profound social critic and wily bender of genres. And […]