Film historian, author, and Film Noir Foundation treasurer Alan Rode hosts Noir City: Chicago August 29 through September 1 at the Music Box Theatre.
Tag: Vol. 51 No. 23
Issue of August 18, 2022
Still Here: Chicago’s oldest camera store has survived a fire, a flood, and two pandemics.
By Zinya Salfiti
On the cover: Photo by Carolina Sanchez. For more of Sanchez’s work, go to carofotos.com
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Posted inFilm
‘Sexy and sinister’
It’s been a few years since Noir City: Chicago emerged from dark alleyways celebrating film noir, movies that embody the seedier side of everyday life. The pandemic paused the festival . . . but this year it’s back at the Music Box Theatre.
Posted inTheater Review
The Bechdels, tested
Alison Bechdel’s family, captured first in her 2006 graphic memoir Fun Home and then in a Tony Award-winning 2015 chamber musical (music by Jeanine Tesori, book and lyrics by Lisa Kron), feels right at (uneasy) home on the intimate Copley Theatre stage in downtown Aurora. Presented as part of Paramount’s “Bold” series of seemingly more […]
Posted inTheater Review
When the swash buckles
There’s a reason you rarely see Zorro: The Musical, the 2008 show inspired by a masked Spanish hero (conceived of by Johnston McCulley in 1919 and since the subject of numerous books and movies) who defeats evil and tyranny by expert swashbuckling. Scratch that. There are myriad reasons. Among them: Zorro: The MusicalThrough 8/21: Wed 1 PM, […]
Posted inNews
Rogers Park neighbors debate a new men’s shelter
Meanwhile, life goes on for houseless Touhy Park occupants.
Posted inNews
Central Camera Co. stays focused
The century-old camera store has weathered a fire, a flood, and COVID-19.
Posted inOn Culture
Pox Americana
Last Sunday, stuffed with antibiotics, numbed by painkillers, and facing a date with an oral surgeon the next morning, I made my way to the International Museum of Surgical Science for an artist’s talk by James R. Wilke. It’s not the best way to visit this unique repository for the medical devices of yesteryear, but […]
Posted inOn Prisons
On demand, without apology
Stripping the right to abortion harms incarcerated women.
Posted inMusic
Peaches celebrates the 20th sexiversary of her debut full-length, The Teaches of Peaches
After COVID quashed touring for much of 2020 and 2021, we seem to have collectively agreed that anyone celebrating a significant album anniversary could do their victory lap whenever they damn well pleased. Of course, Berlin-based Canadian musician and artist Merrill Nisker has never asked for or needed anyone’s permission, not even before she dropped […]
Posted inMusic
Charles Stepney built lasting cathedrals inside Black music
Charles Stepney: Out of the ShadowsRotary Connection 222, a large ensemble led by bassist Junius Paul, will perform music from the catalog of Charles Stepney under the creative direction of the Stepney family and Chicago record label International Anthem. Damon Locks & Black Monument Ensemble open. Thu 8/18, 6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, 201 E. Randolph, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Maybe we’re crazy
Have you ever been playfully called “crazy” and laughed, only to cry silently in the basement bathroom for two hours? No? Just me? Well, if you’ve ever stared into the abyss and questioned your own sanity for more than a hot second, Kellye Howard’s latest one-woman show, Crazy or Nah?!, running this weekend as part […]
Posted inTheater Review
Screwball smear tactics
Politics has always been a “smelly kitchen,” to borrow a phrase from Jean Anouilh’s version of Antigone. But in 1933, two new cooks entered that kitchen. And the recipes they came up with continue to befoul the air of American elections. Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker (a widow and a married man who eventually became […]
Posted inMusic
Guitarist Eli Winter taps into Chicago’s musical resources
People pick their college for a lot of reasons beyond education. In Eli Winter’s case, one of the factors that persuaded him to choose the University of Chicago was the chance to engage with the city’s music scene. While growing up in Houston, Texas, the guitarist was particularly drawn to the way Chicago musicians from […]
Posted inMusic
Ruido Fest celebrates the diverse sounds of Latin alternative music in its return to Union Park
Ruido Fest stands out as more intentional and visionary than most of Chicago’s destination festivals. When it launched in 2015, it was billed as the country’s only three-day outdoor music event focused entirely on Latin alternative music, though that description only hints at what to expect. Ruido Fest’s eclectic international lineup crosses generations and genres, […]
Posted inMusic
Chicago native Addy Harris makes tender, commanding indie rock as Rat Tally
Addy Harris sings with a dewy softness in her group Rat Tally, but you can hear and feel the iron will behind her performances even over a roaring rock band. On Rat Tally’s debut album, the brand-new In My Car, the Chicago native sets diaristic confessions to sometimes tender, sometimes hard-edged indie-rock melodies that draw […]