The Lyric Opera Center for American Artists gives rise to a book, Fortissimo, and an especially promising new singer.
Tag: Vol. 34 No. 49
Issue of Sep. 1 – 7, 2005
Posted inArts & Culture
Earth, Wind, and Tires
In “Borderlands,” a series of lush, almost surreal large-format images at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Eirik Johnson presents urban and near urban areas that have largely been abandoned to nature. Often one wonders about the story behind what’s shown. In Untitled (Sweater), an orange sweater and a brown shirt are tied together and stretched […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Snips
[snip] Park the space shuttle already, argues Maciej Ceglowski at idlewords.com. It’s expensive, dangerous, and pointless, while comparatively cheap unmanned probes of Mars, Titan, and various comets are making valuable scientific discoveries. NASA clings to its mission of “exploration,” citing the European voyages of discovery 500 years ago. But as Ceglowski notes, “The great explorers […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Safe Conduct and La nuit fantastique
These two features, which open the Film Center’s monthlong series “Gilding the Cage: French Cinema of the Occupation,” show that there are both rational and irrational ways of understanding the period. Bertrand Tavernier based his fascinating drama Safe Conduct (2001, 163 min.) on the memories of two of his friends–Jean Aurenche, an apolitical screenwriter, and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Sons & Daughters, The Double
Love the Cup (Domino), the debut EP by Glasgow quartet SONS & DAUGHTERS, was filled with twanging guitars, bleak lyrical themes, and boom-chicka-boom beats–a fitting approach for a band that named a song after Johnny Cash. But though they still kick up some sawdust on their first full-length album, The Repulsion Box (Domino), they’re hardly […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Treatment
Friday 2 BODEANS Summer festivals and “pavilions” are the natural habitat of this Milwaukee institution, which is pushing a new album, the two-CD set Homebrewed: Live at the Pabst (Back Porch). The record collects their greatest hits in a way that’s so frighteningly slick that it doesn’t sound “live” so much as “high-definition”–anthem after anthem […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Improbable Past
Michael Frayn’s acclaimed Copenhagen is everything historical fiction shouldn’t be.
Posted inArts & Culture
Soweto Kinch
Continuing the age-old jazz tradition of using pop currents for improvisational navigation, a handful of American jazz musicians have embraced the rhythms of hip-hop, starting with altoist Steve Coleman in the 80s and continuing through to trumpeter Maurice Brown in this decade. Recently some British players have taken this synthesis a step further, expanding the […]
Posted inFilm
The Fat, the Odd, and the Ugly
Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia has won a cult following by celebrating society’s losers–and punishing the winners.
Posted inNews & Politics
Adversity Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
It took a losing streak to get Sox fans to show some emotion.
Posted inArts & Culture
El crimen perfecto
A dapper salesman in a Madrid department store (Guillermo Toledo) lives a life of consumerist splendor, parading around in the latest fashions and bedding his beautiful clerks in the furniture department, but after he’s passed over for a promotion his resentment draws him into a tangle of criminal intrigue. Spanish cult director Alex de la […]
Posted inNews & Politics
End Game
Gary Stern is the only guy in the world still making pinball machines.
Posted inNews & Politics
You Can Fool All of the People Some of the Time; Credit Report; Ray Nordstrand, 1932-2005
In the history of hoaxes, the Kodee Kennings story is a doozy.
Posted inNews & Politics
The Poor, Poor Park Grill
Even if they end up paying property taxes, they still have a ridiculously good deal.
Posted inArts & Culture
The Reader’s Guide to the 27th Annual Jazz Festival
As usual the Chicago Jazz Festival is recognizing a few big-name anniversaries–40 years of the AACM, 70 of Down Beat magazine, and what would’ve been Charlie Parker’s 85th birthday–and celebrating a handful of jazz greats both living and dead. (This year it’s Roy Haynes and Eddie Johnson in the former category and Tony Williams, Charlie […]