Ella: The First Lady of Song (The Ella Fitzgerald Story), Black Ensemble Theater. In writer-director Jackie Taylor’s musical homage to the grande dame of jazz, three performers portray Ella Fitzgerald from youth into her 70s. Evelyn Danner is the most vivid, giving the singer’s early hits a real sense of joy. And as the elder […]
Tag: Vol. 32 No. 12
Issue of Dec. 19 – 25, 2002
Posted inArts & Culture
Fudoh: The Next Generation
Or “I Was a Teenage Yakuza.” Japanese director Takashi Miike scored his first big American success with the erotic suspense film Audition (1999), but he already had 18 films to his credit in 1996, when he made this masterfully executed and hilariously hyperbolic gangland drama. Ten years after seeing his brother murdered by his yakuza […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Peter Jackson’s epic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings continues with this dark and desperate tale of warfare between men and monsters, more graphic in its violence and more fantastic in its imaginings than the first film. The Fellowship of the Ring, charged with returning a powerful ring to its supernatural source […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
I am a 22-year-old virgin going to college in Texas. I have never had a girlfriend (from a stupid foreign culture, my mom doesn’t allow dating, etc) and will wind up in an arranged marriage in two years. What point is there for me to get in a relationship when I’m destined for an arranged […]
Posted inFilm
Blood on His Hands
Gangs of New York *** (A must-see) Directed by Martin Scorsese Written by Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian, and Kenneth Lonergan With Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz, Liam Neeson, Jim Broadbent, John C. Reilly, Henry Thomas, Brendan Gleeson, and David Hemmings. For almost the first two-thirds of Martin Scorsese’s 168-minute Gangs of New York, I […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Seussical the Musical
Seussical the Musical, Cadillac Palace Theatre. You know you’re in trouble when the funniest parts of a musical based on the verse of Dr. Seuss have nothing to do with the source. Gymnast-singer Cathy Rigby, star of this touring production, gets laughs by spraying viewers with liquid string, leaping into the laps of box-seat patrons, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Sports Section
Last summer Major League Baseball polled fans on the most memorable moment in baseball history. It provided a ballot full of suggestions, such as Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, Cal Ripken snapping Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-game record (the eventual winner), and Carlton Fisk’s game-winning World Series homer in 1975. But none of my own most […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Behind the Times/Saved From the Dustbin of History/Thinkin’ Lincoln
Behind the Times One of the regulars at Savories coffeehouse in Old Town was explaining Liesel Pritzker’s lawsuit to somebody who didn’t know anything about it. Her account was so lucid that I interrupted. You must have read yesterday’s New York Times piece, I said. She had. Anyone who reads the Times regularly is used […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chi Lives: inspiration comes out of the blue
In the weeks following September 11, 2001, Kevin Stacy was in a bit of a crisis. Hospitalized that summer with a form of arthritis called Reiter’s syndrome, he was then back at home, doing his best to recover and watching a lot of TV, when he was struck by the sudden proliferation of those I […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
BUMPUS 12/20, METRO How funny is it that one of Chicago’s best funk outfits looks so much like an emo band? The loss of charismatic singer Rachael Yamagata to RCA could have robbed Bumpus of more than just stage presence, but to compensate they’ve piled on instrumental muscle, enlisting a new keyboardist and a new […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Violent Visions
Kazimierz Kalkowski at the Society for Arts, through January 6 The bizarre figures and gnarled forms in Kazimierz Kalkowski’s 29 ceramic sculptures at the Society for Arts recall the tradition of the grotesque: in her catalog essay, Zofia Watrak links Kalkowski to Bosch, Brueghel, Callot, Goya, and Daumier. But his work is also in the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Lone Pamphleteer
Mark Weinberg wins a battle in his ongoing war against any force that tries to silence him.
Posted inArts & Culture
Winter Pageant
Secular humanists and pagans need holiday cheer too, and Redmoon Theater’s deliberately artless annual celebration of the winter solstice gives it to them. This year Lookingglass Theatre stalwart John Musial conceived and directs the show, and musical polymath Mark Messing heads up the four-piece band. A beleaguered mother (Meghan Strell) and her daughter (Katie Connolly) […]