A Woman Is a Woman ** (Worth seeing) Directed and written by Jean-Luc Godard With Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Marie Dubois. Even after 40 years I’m still not sure how I feel about A Woman Is a Woman (1961), Jean-Luc Godard’s third feature. The first time I saw it, as a college […]
Tag: Vol. 32 No. 43
Issue of Jul. 24 – 30, 2003
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
Dear Readers: I’m on vacation. I’m actually sitting on the beach as I write this, knocking back margaritas and watching my boyfriend’s tan lines come in. But you know what? I’m still thinking about you and your problems. I’m always thinking about you and your problems–and isn’t that just like me? While I may get […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Buddy DeFranco
With the arrival of bebop and its emphasis on the darker, meatier timbre of paired trumpet and sax, the clarinet–the instrument that had ruled the swing era–suddenly seemed out of place. Then Buddy DeFranco got hold of it. After working with some of the most famous swing bandleaders in the early 40s, DeFranco was still […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lil’ Kim
Like so many of her male counterparts, Lil’ Kim fixates on sex less as a source of pleasure than a means of wielding power. (Sometimes I wonder if Kim has ever had an orgasm. Sometimes I wonder if she’s even considered the possibility.) Male dominance being what it is, however, even her dimmest Y-chromosomed adversaries […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Call of the Wild
I knew his life involved addiction, danger, and despair. So when he advertised for a driver to help him peddle his videos, naturally I jumped at the chance.
Posted inArts & Culture
An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein
An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein, Fat Kid Productions and Outside the Box Theatre Company, at Athenaeum Theatre. In most circles Shel Silverstein is known as a writer of children’s books, but he got his start as a writer and cartoonist for Playboy, and the magazine’s contradictions cling to him like stale cigar smoke. He […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bailiwick Repertory Directors’ Festival: “GLBT Briefs”
The final installment of Bailiwick Repertory’s 2003 showcase of emerging directors focuses on gay- and lesbian-themed works. The series runs through July 30 at the Bailiwick Arts Center, 1229 W. Belmont. Performances take place Monday-Wednesday at 7:30 PM; each evening features three or four short plays. Tickets are $10 per evening. For reservations and information, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Masses Are Asses
The Masses Are Asses, Chicago Art Theatre, at Heartland Studio Theater. As staggering a combo of virtuosic and wretched as I’ve seen, this Pedro Pietri play may just set a new standard for audience frustration. The first half is dizzying, dazzling, a tour de force of whip-smart wordplay and nimbly shifting scenario whose surreality camouflages […]
Posted inNews & Politics
More Than a Handful
When my autistic son is good, he’s very, very good. But when he’s bad, it’s horrid.
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
THE LOCUST 7/25, FIRESIDE BOWL This San Diego quartet has just released a new album, Plague Soundscapes (their first on Anti-). Cramming 23 songs into just over 20 minutes, it’s as stimulant-addled as you could want: close kin to hardcore but lighter, faster, and, in its own yappy, short-lived way, more abusive. It’s also rather […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Elements of Style: getting a charge out of a bag
Roommates Jane Palmer and Marianne Fairbanks were eating breakfast in their loft one Monday in January, discussing a deep frustration with feeling powerless. Though it would be another month before George Bush would liken the millions of protesters around the world to a “focus group,” the futility of appealing to a president bent on war […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Midsummer Night’s Dream/Short Shakespeare! “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Will Act for Food, at WNEP Theater and Short Shakespeare! “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Shakespeare’s craziest comedy can take a directorial licking and keep on ticking, as both of these productions prove. Will Act for Food director Daniel Shea reimagines the play as a Twilight Zone episode, with […]
Posted inNews & Politics
City File
Warblers’ EMS. “We don’t know exactly what happens in this maze of tall buildings,” musician and Loop bird rescuer Robbie Hunsinger tells Chicago Wilderness (Summer). Somehow during spring and fall migrations “the birds–a lot of thrushes, warblers, ovenbirds–get pulled down into these canyons then fly into lit windows and reflective glass, or else just become […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lost in Yonkers
Lost in Yonkers, Eclipse Theatre Company, at Victory Gardens Theater. Neil Simon’s tragicomic study of family pathology won 1991’s Tony Award for best play and the Pulitzer Prize. Set in 1942, it centers on two teenage brothers placed in the custody of their stern grandmother when their father moves south to become a scrap dealer […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Jeffrey Brown
Round-eyed and spindly-limbed, the black-and-white freehand figures that populate Jeffrey Brown’s autobiographical comics ooze childlike wonder even when they’re having sex, smoking pot, or analyzing their problems with sex and pot. In his first book, Clumsy (2002), Brown charted the hopeful excitement and depressing decay of his long-distance relationship with a girl named Theresa. His […]