Eric Idle’s big musical adaptation of beloved cult film Monty Python and the Holy Grail manages to both re-create the original’s essence and be something completely different. It’s not only a brilliant bit of Monty Python-style comic anarchy–a nutty caper about King Arthur’s adventures–but a shameless burlesque of big Broadway musicals. Mike Nichols directs this […]
Tag: Vol. 35 No. 31
Issue of Apr. 27 – May. 3, 2006
Posted inArts & Culture
Holy Shit!
The show’s called Holy Shit!, but it’s actually the conventional sort: 20 skits that stink. Granted, some aren’t absolutely horrible. One nice bit involves a woman who gets sexually aroused whenever she hears Italian food names pronounced just so. But that’s allowed to fall apart. Likewise a potentially sweet piece about a little girl whose […]
Posted inArts & Culture
New Life for Abandoned Art
When she was about 12, painter Margot Bergman learned a valuable lesson for an artist: “I could be whole without other people.” She grew up in the only Jewish family in Paxton, Illinois (a town of about 3,500), in the late 1930s and 1940s. Her father started manufacturing brooms there in 1937, when she was […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
My boyfriend and I have been together for a little over four years. I love him more than I thought possible. One of the things that makes us so compatible is our similar take on jealousy and fidelity. I’m a bi woman; he’s a straight man. I don’t mind who he sleeps with, he doesn’t […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bodies of Work: The Chicago Festival of Disability Arts and Culture
Chicago’s first-ever festival focusing on work created by and about artists with disabilities includes performances, visual art, film and video, lectures, and workshops presented throughout the city and in some suburban locations through Sunday, April 30, with several visual art exhibits running beyond that date. More than 50 cultural institutions and community groups are participating; […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News They Shouldn’t Use ; The First Step Is Admitting You Have a Problem; News Bite
A watchdog catches more TV stations–including one in Chicago–using video news releases.
Posted inArts & Culture
Shoplifting
Devin Welch’s life as a band member has been almost comically cursed. Every group he’s helped get off the ground–the Vogue, the Soiled Doves, and the Chromatics–has been hailed as the second coming of postpunk in the northwest, only to burn out shortly after one album. For his latest combo, Shoplifting, Welch has reteamed with […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Snips
[snip] Conservative evolution. A lot of liberals may assume that because conservative, patriarchal families are reproducing faster than liberal secularist ones, America’s headed back to the Dark Ages. But as sociologist Kieran Healy writes at crookedtimber.org, “the terms ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ are moving targets. Even assuming all the kids of conservative parents grow up relatively […]
Posted inMusic
Alberta Adams
In the 40s and early 50s blues singer Alberta Adams was a regular headliner on Detroit’s Hastings Street strip, and she kept some big-name company on the road: Duke Ellington and Louis Jordan both hired her as a featured performer. But though she worked with top-flight musicians and recorded sides for prestigious labels like Chess […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Still Life With Iris
Tracking all the metaphors in Steven Dietz’s allegorical children’s play, inspired by the book Caretakers of Wonder, would require voluminous annotation. The story borrows from The Wizard of Oz and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: a little girl is forced by false benefactors to relinquish her memories, spurring her on a quest–with companions drawn from music […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Feu Therese
The first time I tried playing the self-titled debut from this Montreal quartet, I was in the car with a pregnant friend who was battling morning sickness, and we had to turn it off. The album starts with a clap of thunder and several minutes of wobbly synth squawk, and what my friend said was, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Treatment
Friday 28 ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO The Boxing Mirror, out Tuesday on Back Porch Records, is Alejandro Escovedo’s first disc of new material since he fell gravely ill from hepatitis C in 2003; the disease nearly killed him, so the occasional bromide like “Gonna learn how to live / Not to simply get by” (from “I Died […]
Posted inMusic
Against Me!
True to their confrontational name, the guys in Against Me! keep a pretty epic shit list. On their latest album, last year’s Searching for a Former Clarity (Fat Wreck Chords), front man Tom Gabel weighs in on, among other things, the record industry, Yahoo’s terms of service, the capriciousness of the punk scene, and the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Genuine Article
Tribal art dealer Larry Kolton wants the stuff the tourists can’t get–and he’ll risk life and limb to find it.
Posted inArts & Culture
Version>06 Parallel Cities
Lumpen and Public Media Institute produce this annual festival, now in its fifth year, focusing on radical art, media, technology, and politics, with an emphasis on work generated by underground and activist communities. This year’s festival continues Friday, April 28, through Sunday, May 7, in Bridgeport and scattered other locations and includes neighborhood tours, workshops, […]