The turning point in Frank Borzage’s magnificent The Mortal Storm (1940), one of the first Hollywood films to condemn Nazism, is a scene in which a professor in southern Germany, Roth, witnesses a book burning. Alone in his study at night, he sees the light from the fire dancing on his walls and goes to […]
Tag: Vol. 30 No. 40
Issue of Jul. 5 – 11, 2001
Posted inArts & Culture
Lightning Bolt
LIGHTNING BOLT It’s hard to believe just two guys can make this much noise. Bassist Brian Gibson stands in front of a precarious wall of amps, playing like he’s got ten extra fingers, while drummer Brian Chippendale tries to hammer his drums into the floor and emits occasional melodic nonsense through a microphone hidden inside […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories According to a May report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, recent art auctions in New York City fetched $30,000 for Tom Friedman’s Untitled (a coffee-stained Styrofoam cup pinned to a piece of wood along with a ladybug), nearly $500,000 for Robert Gober’s Untitled (Broom Sink) (a fancifully constructed washbasin), and $5.6 million for […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Hans Burgener, Martin Schutz & Barre Phillips
HANS BURGENER, MARTIN SCHUTZ & BARRE PHILLIPS Using “texture” is old hat in free improv, but the music on Heat Transfer (For 4 Ears), the second and most recent album by the trio of violinist Hans Burgener, cellist Martin Schutz, and bassist Barre Phillips, is practically sculptural. The musicians, who’ve cumulatively covered a lot of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Guilty Until Proven Guilty
It doesn’t take much for an ex-con to find himself back behind bars.
Posted inNews & Politics
Using the Old Bean
Katerina Carson concentrates on making the coffeehouse of her dreams.
Posted inArts & Culture
In Performance: heading outside for a frozen treat
Last fall choreographer and multimedia artist Ann Carlson started sifting through thousands of archival images from the Chicago Historical Society and other sources for her new site-specific project, Night Light. Eventually, Carlson and two local researchers settled on nine photos “where the place can be identified,” she says. “Sometimes it’s ridiculously obvious, like the lions […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
I recently started dating a girl who has a strange fetish. The first time we slept together, she wanted to wear a Catholic schoolgirl outfit. The schoolgirl fantasy turned me on, although I thought it was a bit odd to go that far our first time together. Now she’s taking things even farther, going to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Coin
COIN Plenty of bands are cashing in on the 80s revival with kitschy synth-pop, but although the sounds Coin uses are recycled from that era, the place you most likely heard them back then was your local video arcade. The main mind behind the Tucson-based act is Thermos Malling, Bob Log’s partner in the defunct […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Search for Intelligent Life
Students at the back-room Philosophy Institute get in deep.
Posted inNews & Politics
Sports Section
One team usually emerges ascendant from the interleague series between the White Sox and the Cubs, the other on the decline. But their first meeting this season, at Comiskey Park, produced a split decision, the Sox winning two of the three games but each team laying bare the other’s weaknesses. Far from diminishing the baseball […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Halfway House/Great Beast’s Cop Drama/Seeing Blue
With construction on their fancy new home in the Loop running behind schedule, it’s Hit or Miss for Noble Fool’s Jimmy Binns and Greg Gilmore.
Posted inArts & Culture
Pineapple
This week Facets Multimedia Center kicks off a monthlong retrospective of work by the talented Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai (who will attend selected screenings Friday through Sunday). Pineapple (1983, 78 min.), a fascinating social history of the growing and processing of pineapple, extends back to 1898, when Sanford Dole became the first governor of Hawaii, […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
EL GRAN SILENCIO 7/6, ARAGON On their 1998 album for Ark 21, Libres y locos, the Mexican group El Gran Silencio concocted a sprawling mix of hip-hop, dancehall, hard rock, and Mexican regional styles like cumbia and nortena. It was clear from the outset that they couldn’t claim mastery over any one of these, but […]