This time it’s come down to a pack of cigarettes. His son is on the bare floor, coloring hard. A picture of a chicken. He looks at the dirt stuck on the boy’s chubby, rash-reddened leg and in his white hair. He sees the boy miss the page and make waxy yellow loops on the […]
Tag: Vol. 35 No. 13
Issue of Dec. 22 – 28, 2005
Posted inArts & Culture
Flipside
An odd double bill by two companies, “Flipside” has a snappy second half. Taco Flavored Eggrolls’ Eat This! A Culture-Ostomy begins with unabashedly enthusiastic dancing to Billy Idol and maintains the high-energy hilarity throughout its 55 minutes of sketch comedy. Exploring ethnicity in fresh and funny ways, the company mainly depicts clashing cultures, often across […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Wolf Creek
Holiday counterprogramming at its finest. This gut-churning horror indie is based on true stories of tourists disappearing in the vast Australian outback. A couple of young British women (Kestie Morassi and Cassandra Magrath) hook up with an Australian friend (Nathan Phillips) for a car trip to the site of a giant meteor crater. After they […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Reading Is Incidental
Brian Dettmer cuts up books. Carefully slicing away big parts of the pages and covers, he leaves the binding intact and an image or key words on each page. Displayed behind glass in wooden cases, the layered leaves resemble archaeological strata. Usually he chooses old, unused books. “How often do you use an old atlas […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Sam and Bessie
[Chicago, 1957. A lived-in, working class apartment in a six-flat in Albany Park. The decor reflects a notion of gentility from the 30s, which is when the current occupants moved in: cut-glass candy bowls and Chinese figures in painted porcelain. Sofa downstage center, in the parlor. Big winged leather chair beside it. Bedroom door upstage […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chairs
Performers in long-form improvisations often reach for laughs by creating mundane, low-stakes situations: roommates arguing over food, couples bickering about each other’s bad habits. But Chairs has a premise tailor-made to eliminate this possibility: every performance begins with a death. Whose is determined by a quick game of musical chairs, then the events preceding the […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Must the Show Go On?; Katrina: A Windfall for the Arts?
What happened when eight members of the cast of The Eight questioned whether eight audience members was enough.
Posted inFilm
Casanova
Heath Ledger, starring as the fabled 18th-century Venetian lover, meets his match in a spirited, protofeminist beauty (Sienna Miller). Lasse Hallstrom (Chocolat) directs a sparking screenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher (Stage Beauty) and Kimberly Simi; it starts as a frothy boudoir comedy but evolves into a masquerade by turns sweetly meditative and sharply satirical. Oliver Platt […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Corporation, Inc.: Holiday Bonus
Long-form improv inevitably involves some initial meandering to discover the story’s through line. And when performers adopt nonassertive personas, that further prolongs the process. Most of the situations in Humor Solutions’ interactive show will be familiar to corporate workers: the office Romeo’s amorous exploits, the chirpy receptionist’s possible dismissal, the perennial online porn problem. On […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Double Fault
You won’t remember me unless you’re a trivia freak with a stack of Tennis back issues, but that’s cool. Hardly anyone, even in the industry, follows the game well enough to know anyone but the men’s and women’s winners at Wimbledon, plus a few other genuine American heroes. …
Posted inArts & Culture
Bob Dogan Quintet
Bob Dogan sits big and craggy at the piano, but his lines are taut and trim: he economizes on even his busiest solos, playing several notes fewer than you’d expect, and his small, airy statements prompt you to inch toward his music rather than lean back from it. (Amazingly, he honed this approach while he […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Paul Green School of Rock All-Stars
In Rock School, Don Argott’s documentary about a Philadelphia after-school program for young would-be rock stars, founder Paul Green comes off like a cross between Buddy Rich and an overcaffeinated junior-high basketball coach, and some moviegoers took issue with his, um, unorthodox teaching methods–which usually involve screaming, swearing, and/or slamming doors. But kids are still […]
Posted inArts & Culture
William Eggleston in the Real World
Michael Almereyda–whose previous documentary, This So-Called Disaster (2003), carefully observed Sam Shepard directing one of his autobiographical plays–ponders the reticence and creative vision of master photographer William Eggleston, shown mainly in Kentucky (working on a project for filmmaker Gus Van Sant) and Memphis (the photographer’s home base). There’s a certain amount of tension between Eggleston, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lasagna
Kemp was having a crisis of confidence. After two months waiting tables at Angelo’s, a family Italian restaurant inside the largest mall in Birmingham, he’d discovered that dinners included salad only, not soup and salad as at lunch. A minor mistake, his girlfriend insisted–don’t worry about it. …
Posted inArts & Culture
Arachibutyrophobia
“OK, this time’s for real,” Sheldon said. The spoonful of freshly stirred peanut butter quivered in his hand, a sheen of oil running along his thumb. “Laer rof semit siht yako,” Max said, his freckled cheeks glowing with anticipation. Sheldon touched the spoon to his lips. He paused, waiting for the thunderclap outside to pass. […]