In early 2003 Weasel Walter quit Chicago for Oakland, where he assembled the latest Flying Luttenbachers lineup: bassist Mike Green of Burmese, former Colossamite guitarist Ed Rodriguez, now of the Gorge Trio, and of course himself on drums. The band’s sole constant member throughout its 13-year history, Weasel has mastered a distinctive compositional style–superfans can […]
Tag: Vol. 34 No. 1
Issue of Sep. 30 – Oct. 6, 2004
Posted inNews & Politics
The Promise Keepers; Statistics Don’t Lie . . . or Do They?; News Bite
How come people demanding Dan Rather’s sources aren’t asking where Robert Novak got his story on Valerie Plame?
Posted inArts & Culture
Bernhard Gal, Chao-Ming Tung
See Sunday. Gal joins local musicians Brian Labycz, Vadim Sprikut, and Jason Soliday for a set of live electronic improvisation. TV Pow headlines and the quartet of cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, trumpeter Axel Dorner, percussionist Michael Zerang, and bassist Jason Roebke plays second. Friday 1, 8:30 PM, Heaven Gallery, 1550 N. Milwaukee, second floor, 773-342-4597, $7. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Snips
Ideas you won’t hear from a major party. From an August 30 press release from Jerry Kohn, the Illinois Libertarian candidate for the U.S. Senate, who advocates cutting off the $4 billion in annual U.S. aid to Israel and the $3 billion to its immediate neighbors: “U.S. aid to Israel is one of the reasons […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Broken Glass
BROKEN GLASS | When Actors Workshop Theatre staged this Arthur Miller play three years ago, I saw the lead character, Sylvia, as a vulnerable but vibrant woman suffering psychosomatic paralysis, inspired either by sympathy for the Jews in Nazi Germany–it’s the 1930s–or by entrapment in a loveless marriage. Sylvia’s plight remains crucial, but watching this […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Doom in a Diner
Eric Appleton’s modern take on the ultimate dysfunctional family
Posted inNews & Politics
The Victims of Victims
Anthony Wilson killed 19-month-old Semaj Rice, and he’ll pay for it in prison. But who do you punish for generations of abuse and bureaucratic neglect?
Posted inNews & Politics
The Treatment
Friday 1 JUNIOR BROWN On the new Down Home Chrome (Telarc), Junior Brown effortlessly peels off leads that range from guit-steel improvisations as stylistically voracious as anything laid down by Speedy West to conventional guitar pyrotechnics where he tips his ten-gallon hat to Jimi Hendrix–he even covers “Foxy Lady.” But while he still uses his […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Head in the Clouds
This probing drama by British writer-director John Duigan (Wide Sargasso Sea) is set against the rise of fascism in Europe, yet the conflict that drives it–between personal liberty and social responsibility–hasn’t aged a bit. A glamorous libertine (Charlize Theron) bonds with a radicalized Irish student (Stuart Townsend) in prewar Britain but continues to take lovers […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Los Angeles Plays Itself
This brilliant and often hilarious 2003 essay film by Thom Andersen (Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer) assembles clips from 191 movies set in Los Angeles, juxtaposing their fantasies with the real city as seen by a loyal and well-informed native. That might sound like a slender premise for 169 minutes, but after five viewings I still feel […]
Posted inArts & Culture
White Suit Science
WHITE SUIT SCIENCE | By turns satiric, surreal, and painfully sincere, Shawn Reddy’s new play defies easy description. The hour-long piece begins as a discussion of Mark Twain and the myriad way his memory has been cheapened, particularly by impersonator Hal Holbrook and Twain’s hometown of Hannibal, Missouri. But soon enough, under the guise of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Credeaux Canvas
THE CREDEAUX CANVAS | In Keith Bunin’s 2001 play, Jean-Paul Credeaux is an obscure fin de siecle French artist whose enigmatic work three hungry young East Village bohos hope to exploit. The scam seems easy enough: pretty Amelia will pose for a Credeaux-style portrait, nerdy Winston will paint it, and slick Jamie will sell it […]
Posted inFilm
LA Existential
Thom Andersen crams architectural history, film criticism, political analysis, and more into a rhapsodic paean to his hometown.
Posted inArts & Culture
The White House Murder Case
THE WHITE HOUSE MURDER CASE | Black comedy requires actors to ignore bizarre turns of plot while satire demands they keep their distance from the characters. Neither genre is served by Chad Hansing’s earnest naturalistic staging of Jules Feiffer’s play for Fat Kid Productions. Then too, in 1970 it was comically ridiculous to suggest that […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bad Advice
BAD ADVICE | The program for this late-night, long-form improv show includes caricatures of the four cast members looking exactly like the kids from South Park: moonfaced, big-eyed, noseless waifs. Tres apt, because Bad Advice picks up on South Park’s comic strategy of wrapping profane material in cute packages. Everything starts out seeming positively winsome–or […]