Friday 9/14 – Thursday 9/20 SEPTEMBER 14 FRIDAY The Experimental Film Coalition fell apart a couple of years ago, but its Onion City Film Festival has been resurrected this year by Chicago Filmmakers, which used to provide the venue for the event. This year it boasts 60 works from around the world, including four by […]
Tag: Vol. 30 No. 50
Issue of Sep. 13 – 19, 2001
Posted inArts & Culture
With or Without Wings
Those writing about illness usually do so after someone close to them has died. But Mierka Girten in her one-woman show is not crying over another young woman afflicted with multiple sclerosis–she is that young woman. With or Without Wings–produced here by the Baum House and the nonprofit Mookie Jam organization, which benefits artists with […]
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Boom Town
Boom Town, Pyewacket, at Angel Island. On the surface, the theme of movie actor Jeff Daniels’s Boom Town (not to be confused with Steven Dietz’s play of the same name) is suburban sprawl: small-town Michigan residents Stuart and Angela Tompkins are falling behind in the payments on their convenience store but propose to improve business […]
Posted inMusic
Out Go the Lights/Someone’s in the Kitchen With Neko/Vandermark Your Calendar
Out Go the Lights The jam-packed record release party at the Fireside Bowl for Milemarker’s Anaesthetic (Jade Tree) last Saturday was marked by a fairly typical postpunk intensity: guitarist Dave Laney’s emo wail was offset by keyboardist Roby Newton’s love-it-or-hate-it quasi-operatic chirp, while bassist Al Burian and tem-porary drummer Noah Leger (formerly of Hurl and […]
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Luna Negra Dance Theater
In her trio Carmen, New York choreographer Nancy Turano divides in three the character of opera’s most famous Gypsy, setting her distilled story to selections from Bizet’s score punctuated by laughter, sirens, and the occasional odd mutter. Progressing from external to more internal views, Turano makes her first Carmen so angry and defiant and iconoclastic […]
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World Music Festival
The festival runs Thursday, September 20, through Saturday, September 29, at locations around the city. See next week’s issue for a complete, critical, and up-to-date pullout guide. Call 312-742-1938 for more information.
Posted inArts & Culture
Brassy
BRASSY Like Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, Muffin Spencer emigrated to the UK in search of rock, moving from her native New Hampshire to Manchester in 1985–while her older brother Jon was in New York starting Pussy Galore. After a decade of bartending, trying to play music in the narrowly fashionable town, and watching her […]
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Program 5
The Fourth Watch (2000) is the finest movie to date by puppet artist and filmmaker Janie Geiser. Silent-movie actors filmed off a video monitor are superimposed on the interior of a dollhouse, their flickering images so expertly fused with the miniature rooms’ bright, solid colors that their ominous presence in these fragile spaces evokes both […]
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Buddy & Julie Miller
BUDDY & JULIE MILLER Buddy and Julie Miller have made a total of five superb “solo” albums–three for him, two for her–but nearly all of their work has been collaborative. The husband and wife perform on each other’s recordings, tour as a duo, and often write songs together. Now they’ve finally made a recording that’s […]
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World Music Festival
Thursday, SePtember 20 noon | Gangbe Brass Band Daley Center 7:30 PM | Daniela Mercury Gigi Gangbe Brass Band Park West Friday, September 21 noon | Peace Day Daley Center noon | Native American Equinox Celebration Welles Park 12:30 PM | Gigi Borders Books & Music (State) 12:30 PM | Emeline Michel Museum of Broadcast […]
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Breathing Underwater
Breathing Underwater, Running With Scissors, at the Storefront Theater. On the surface this latest work from the multidisciplinary collective Running With Scissors is the story of a depressed man about to throw himself into Lake Michigan. He’s distracted from the Siren’s gripping song by the arrival of an elderly woman who tells him, “You don’t […]
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To Relax and Laugh
To Relax and Laugh, at the Lunar Cabaret, and Feeling Sorry for Roman Polanski, at the Lunar Cabaret. When you consider that understanding what makes humans tick is an impossible goal, writer Barrie Cole’s progress on this question is nothing short of awe inspiring. What’s characterized her work to date, besides simple hard-nosed obstinacy, is […]
Posted inMusic
Allison Moorer
In the music press, it was Allison Moorer’s big sister, Shelby Lynne, who was the bee’s knees last year. Lynne’s surprising resurrection after years of major-label mediocrity made for good copy, and My Name Is Shelby Lynne (Island) was admittedly a great record–but it couldn’t hold a candle to Moorer’s nearly perfect and sadly ignored […]
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The Green Cricket and Braising
The Green Cricket and Braising, at the Lunar Cabaret, Ragman, at the Lunar Cabaret, Si la gente quiere comer carne, le damos carne, at Pulaski Park. Most theaters say they encourage new work by “emerging authors,” but few do more than pay token attention, usually to a favored (and well-connected) few. Who can blame them? […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Films by Lynne Sachs
These two poetic essays by Lynne Sachs offer the perfect antidote to PBS: there’s no omniscient narrator talking down to the viewer, reciting facts and explaining what to think, yet the story of each is perfectly clear. Investigation of a Flame examines the Catonsville Nine, who in 1968 stole records from a Maryland draft office […]