Trampin’ (Columbia) is Patti Smith’s first album in four years, and it’s also the best and most consistently powerful one since her 1996 comeback, Gone Again. Whereas Gone Again was a grueling but soaring study–up close and from the inside–of death, loss, and the flight of the individual soul, and a deeply personal statement catalyzed […]
Tag: Vol. 33 No. 38
Issue of Jun. 17 – 23, 2004
Posted inArts & Culture
In Living Color
Risking the Abstract: The Mexican Modernism of Gunther Gerzso at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, through June 27 Tribal art was once extolled for its directness and elemental nature, though Western fascination with “primitive” art has also been linked to colonialism–to our own primitive lust for power. Painter Gunther Gerzso, an artist of Hungarian […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Pit Er Pat, Terror at the Opera
Pit Er Pat don’t care how many art-rock bands worship at the temple of the guitar. All hail the keyboard, they say–and not some campy synthesizer, but a gorgeous electric piano. On their debut, Emergency (Overcoat), the way their delicately flamboyant flourishes and doodles overlap is just a bit off, and the tunes turn out […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Moonstruck
What is Congressman Danny Davis’s relationship with the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, and what’s he doing with that crown?
Posted inNews & Politics
Punk Planet’s Expanding Orbit
The mega-zine teams up with Akashic Books and novelist Joe Meno to take back book publishing.
Posted inNews & Politics
Defending Reagan, Forgetting Her Job; Bird’s Right–But That’s No Help; News Bites
Defending Reagan, Forgetting Her Job AIDS came in and the cold war went out with the 80s. How you remember Ronald Reagan, who was president for most of that decade, could depend on which of those two great historic events touched you more profoundly. Rick Garcia, political director of the gay rights group Equality Illinois, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Romance of Magno Rubio
THE ROMANCE OF MAGNIO RUBIO, Victory Gardens Theater. Standing tall at four feet, six inches, the hero of Lonnie Carter’s play (adapted from Carlos Bulosan’s short story) demonstrates that hope and a sense of humor can carry human beings through the darkest circumstances. The setting is 1930s California, where young Magno–a barely literate Filipino laborer–shares […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
I just finished Dan Brown’s best seller The Da Vinci Code, about a thousand-year-old conspiracy involving the Catholic church. While the modern murder mystery part of the book is obviously fictional, you’re encouraged to believe that the historical background is authentic. As a Straight Dope reader I know otherwise, so I’m not going to ask […]
Posted inFilm
Phileas, Grab Your Nunchucks
Around the World in 80 Days * (Has redeeming facet) Directed by Frank Coraci Written by Michael Weiss, David Benullo, and David Goldstein With Jackie Chan, Steve Coogan, Cecile de France, and Jim Broadbent. Along with H.G. Wells, French novelist Jules Verne is considered the father of science fiction. His stories predicted such technological marvels […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Imelda
“My mother? Get beyond the shoes!” urges Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in this engrossing documentary (2003, 103 min.) about the former first lady of the Philippines. Of course, what lies beyond Imelda Marcos’s shoe collection (3,000 pairs by one estimate) is the $659 million that she and her husband funneled into Swiss bank accounts during their […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Sea Ray
“I think the most successful rock show would be one where people forget that there’s even anyone onstage,” said Sea Ray bassist I-Huei Go in a 2002 interview. And the Brooklyn-based chamber rockers do their best to distract your eyes while they play, projecting psychedelic videos over their bodies and onto two enormous screens. You’re […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Calendar
Friday 6/18 – Thursday 6/24 JUNE 18 FRIDAY The Baffler’s Tom Frank, in town earlier this month to plug his new book, What’s the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, is back–and he’s brought Howard Dean with him. The two appear with Studs Terkel tonight at 5:30 at the Harold Washington […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bitter Victory
Commenting on this remarkable 1957 feature in the Reader, Dave Kehr wrote, “Nicholas Ray’s direction of black-and-white CinemaScope, that freak child of the 50s, is consistently brilliant in this raw, confused masterpiece about two commando officers (Richard Burton and Curt Jurgens) lost in the North African desert after a dangerous raid. The moral parable fades […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Graney Grows Up
Leonce und Lena Hypocrites at the Athenaeum Theatre Requiem in a Light-Aqua Room Terrapin Theatre at the Athenaeum Theatre Georg Buchner’s three surviving dramatic texts show the playwright wrestling with divergent styles in a struggle to convey his bleak worldview. The three extant plays of Sean Graney, artistic director of the Hypocrites, reveal much the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rebecca Shore
In her 13 luminous abstract paintings at Byron Roche, Rebecca Shore applied egg tempera paint in translucent layers, “each modifying the previous ones.” In 2003 #25 the main blue gray field glows with the red below it, which can be seen plainly where she’s cut vertical curvy lines across the painting. Irregular clusters of hexagons […]