At Chicago Writers & Readers Weekend at Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore, 20 local mystery and history writers will talk about their craft in five panels, for an audience of 30 people. It’s hard to imagine even C & S owner Augie Aleksy, the Chicago area’s most intrepid bookseller, going to so much trouble for the […]
Tag: Vol. 33 No. 30
Issue of Apr. 22 – 28, 2004
Posted inArts & Culture
Zero Day
Like Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, this 2002 feature presents a fictionalized version of the Columbine massacre with teenage actors using their own given names. But in contrast to the other film’s arty structure and elegiac tone, director Ben Coccio creates a horrifying verite-style portrait of two high school misfits (Andre Keuck and Calvin Robertson) as […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
SOUND ON SURVIVAL 4/22, 23, VELVET LOUNGE In the early 80s alto sax player Marco Eneidi left the Bay Area for New York, where he found his fortune on the free-jazz scene; opportunities to learn from Jimmy Lyons, Bill Dixon, and Cecil Taylor are nothing if not golden, and Eneidi developed a trusting, confident touch […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Deep in the Jungle
DEEP IN THE JUNGLE, Lifeline Theatre. In this show based on the Dan Yaccarino kids’ book, a lion lords it over the other animals in the jungle: if they don’t do what he says, he eats them. But after joining the circus in search of fame, he learns a valuable lesson about bullying. James E. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Murs, Perceptionists
Murs came of age in LA during the Chronic sessions, but all you hear of it is the hard edge in his voice and the trademark west-coast shuffle in his cadence: instead of glorifying his violent surroundings, he’s always preferred to scoop out his own guts and serve them on a paper plate. He’s poised […]
Posted inFilm
Armed, Dangerous, and Completely Ordinary
Zero Day **** (Masterpiece) Directed by Ben Coccio Written by Ben and Chris Coccio With Andre Keuck, Calvin Robertson, Rachel Benichak, Chris Coccio, and Gerhard Keuck. When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold marched into Columbine High School and murdered a teacher and 12 students in April 1999, I wasn’t one of those people wringing their […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Back From the Brink
Peregrine falcons have adapted to city life, but species without the star power are still languishing.
Posted inNews & Politics
Whole Lot of Nothing
This sunken eyesore is hard to miss–unless, apparently, you’re an alderman who could do something about it.
Posted inNews & Politics
City File
Let’s see, Arlington Heights is to Ford Heights as Germany is to France? Chicago Metropolis 2020 recently won the American Planning Association’s Daniel Burnham award for its Chicago-area plan combining land use and transportation under a regional authority. Ruth Eckdish Knack writes in the April issue of Planning magazine that the group’s executive director, Frank […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Frame 312
FRAME 312, Eclipse Theatre Company, at Victory Gardens Theater. Frame 312 of the famous Zapruder movie shows John Kennedy in midassassination: a bullet’s already hit him, another’s about to finish him off. In frame 313 his head explodes. Keith Reddin’s play turns on the premise that something in frame 312 proves Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Notes From the Bottletree
NOTES FROM THE BOTTLETREE, Ma’at Production Association of Afrikan Centered Theatre, at Victory Gardens Theater. MPAACT’s metier seems to be moving family dramas that examine the sense of duty, longing, and pride felt by the adult daughters of dysfunctional fathers. In Addae Moon’s new play, blocked artist Jules (Alana Arenas) must deal with the death […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Datebook
APRIL 23 FRIDAY Even if your budget is more Ikea than Louis XV, at this weekend’s seventh annual Chicago Antiques Fair you can ogle furniture, jewelry, ceramics, and more courtesy of dealers from around the country and Europe. The show, on the second floor of the Merchandise Mart, 350 N. Orleans in Chicago, runs today […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago Sinfonietta
An orchestra’s fourth, or utility, trumpet is rarely asked to perform a concerto, but the level of talent today is so high that many nonprincipals are more than capable of accomplished solo playing. As the CSO’s fourth trumpet for nearly two seasons, Tage Larsen has turned in polished, commanding performances regardless of where he’s been […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Girl in Hyacinth Blue
GIRL IN HYACINTH BLUE, New Leaf Theatre, at the Lincoln Park Cultural Center. Writer-director Morgan Leavitt’s powerful adaptation of Susan Vreeland’s luminous novel traces the history of a Vermeer painting as it travels from owner to owner, a story told mostly through melancholy interior monologues. The play moves backward in time, beginning in the present […]