Drummer and singer Larry Taylor learned the blues from his stepfather, Eddie Taylor, the guitarist who helped pioneer the postwar Chicago style. He’s since played sideman to other greats, including A.C. Reed, Willie Kent, and Johnny Littlejohn, but for several years he’s also fronted his own band. On his debut CD, the new They Were […]
Tag: Vol. 34 No. 11
Issue of Dec. 9 – 15, 2004
Posted inNews & Politics
The Treatment
Friday 10 ELVIS COSTELLO TRIBUTE Promoter Chris Anderson used to book shows at Tommy Nevin’s Pub in Evanston, but since the bar stopped regularly scheduling live music in October he’s looked elsewhere to host his ambitious tribute shows, which in the past have honored Warren Zevon, Ray Davies, and Tom Waits. This two-night extravaganza doesn’t […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Same Planet Different World Dance Theatre
Variety is this company’s aim: its annual concert features five pieces by five choreographers. New to Chicago is David Berkey’s The Waiting Game, a quartet whose structure–a solo, a duet, and another solo–suggests first someone alone and longing for love, then a happy couple together, then someone alone again. Berkey died this fall at age […]
Posted inNews & Politics
POV Shots
Jonathan Rosenbaum has written intelligently often enough that his gaffes and errors just amaze me. In this last month two different films have played in Chicago which have scenes in which Rosenbaum thinks characters are hallucinating. In Irma Vep Hong Kong movie star Maggie Cheung plays a Hong Kong actress named Maggie Cheung, who travels […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Will of One Woman
The Cultural Center and Columbia College together couldn’t work out a way to save the Harold Washington Library’s vast and amazing 16-millimeter film collection. But Nancy Watrous could.
Posted inArts & Culture
Mojo
A common criticism of Jez Butterworth’s 1996 shout-’em-up, set in the hopped-up, mobbed-up London music scene of the late 50s, is that for all its post-Mamet, post-Tarantino aggression, its conflicts are stakeless, lacking any deep insight or universal resonance. For my money, however, the real problem with Mojo is that it’s a black, black comedy […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Novak, the CIA, and the Facts
Michael Miner’s Hot Type column, “Robert Novak’s Not Talking,” November 26, was remarkable for its display of contempt for facts. I don’t care what Miner thinks of any of our editorials. I do care when he egregiously misrepresents the newspaper. Let’s start with his insinuation that the paper was “just going through the motions of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Holiday Arts and Crafts Sales
Listings of holiday craft fairs, trunk shows, open studios, and special gallery events will run through December. Send information to artlistings@ chicagoreader.com. Check back for schedule updates or call for more information. Admission is free unless otherwise noted. About Face Theatre Holiday Market Jewelry, decorative crafts, bath and body products, handmade chocolates, and more. Staged […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Tiff & Mom and the Meaning of the Magi Gift Mix-up
This latest Corn Productions show is not awful in the obvious ways: the acting and singing are competent, the dancing is simple but appropriately silly, and the costumes are sometimes quite funny. Instead these 80 minutes are painful because of the crass stupidity of the humor, as scenes inspired by faith and familiar holiday traditions […]
Posted inMusic
Back From Cyberspace
After two years of blogging, roller-skating, and bathing her cat, Edith Frost is on the road again and getting ready to record a new album.
Posted inArts & Culture
Brother to Brother
The world of the Harlem Renaissance becomes an emotional lifeline for a troubled young college student (Anthony Mackie) in this smart and passionate debut feature by Rodney Evans. As a gay black man, the hero feels doubly isolated: macho classmates in his African-American studies course consider him a disgrace to the race, while his uncertain […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The One-Man “Star Wars” Trilogy
Canadian Charles Ross reenacts George Lucas’s classics in a fleet and fun 60-minute show directed by fellow Canadian T.J. Dawe. With good humor and at times offering impressive impersonations, Ross re-creates all the essentials from the first three “Star Wars” movies. He’s best as a petulant Luke or a prissy C-3PO, and his Jabba the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Moolaade
This masterwork by Ousmane Sembene, the 81-year-old father of African cinema and one of Senegal’s greatest novelists, is the second film in a trilogy celebrating African women (after Faat Kine, a 2000 comedy about a sassy, self-made city woman). It focuses on the defiant second wife of an elder in a West African village who […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Last January pianist Jonathan Biss made his Orchestra Hall debut, playing Schumann with the Staatskapelle Berlin. This weekend Biss, who at 24 has already performed with most of the major U.S. orchestras, will play Mozart with the CSO. His first CD, released in May, confirms that he’s a thoughtful, passionate musician who consistently serves the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Merry Jewish Christmas
A plot twist and a scene featuring prayers performed in a made-up sign language almost save this predictable comedy–but not quite. Josh Levine’s one-act about a gay Jewish man coming out to his family while concealing that his longtime lover is not Jewish steals shamelessly from every Abie’s Irish Rose comedy in history, with particular […]