A Wolf in Journalist’s Clothing “To explain the truth to my son,” said Orrio. “I asked him what he had thought of me. He remained silent. But finally he confessed that he believed I was a worm. ‘What do you think now?’ I insisted. And he started to cry, like I am doing now.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s not shocking that Orrio managed to deceive a Chicago reporter....
Friday 9/6 – Thursday 9/12 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » 7 SATURDAY Former graffiti artist and Aerosoul Crew cofounder Carlos “Dzine” Rolon divides his time between Chicago and Paris these days and says his current work “is inspired by the free-form style of music and how a DJ or producer adds layer upon layer to create their sound.” In his new large-scale wall installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Dzine uses 10 to 15 layers of paint to “send out strong vibes mixed with sexual undertones designed to seduce the viewer....
Friday 5/30 – Thursday 6/5 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Japanese game shows. The Turkish version of Star Wars. Andy Kaufman and David Letterman. Ted Nugent blowing away keyboards with an automatic rifle. Once a month in Atlanta, the zine Chunklet teams up with video and magazine distributor 5 Minutes to Live to host screenings of video clips like these and more. Now they’ve packaged the best for the rest of us as the three-volume Lost and Found Video Series....
Friday 2/7 – Thursday 2/13 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » 8 SATURDAY In 1946, Michael Reese Hospital hired its first African-American physician, gastroenterologist Leonidas Berry. One of the nation’s foremost experts on digestive disorders, he invented the Eder-Berry biopsy gastroscope, which was used to obtain tissue samples from the stomach (and is now on display at the Smithsonian), but wasn’t granted full attending physician status until 1964....
Dave Douglas’s Charms of the Night Sky Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Trumpeter Dave Douglas has described Charms of the Night Sky, his quartet with bassist Greg Cohen, violinist Mark Feldman, and accordionist Guy Klucevsek, as a group that “plays new music that challenges genre boundaries.” That’s as unhelpful as it is bland–the same thing could be said of several other bands Douglas plays in, including the Tiny Bell Trio, his double quartet Sanctuary, and John Zorn’s Masada....
The invigorating tenor saxist Eric Alexander has been including pianist Harold Mabern in his groups since his debut recording, the 1992 Delmark release Straight Up. The May-December pair first met as student and teacher–the saxophonist studied with Mabern at William Paterson University in New Jersey–and they appear together on Alexander’s terrific new Summit Meeting (Milestone), as well as in his working quartet. Each spent his formative years in the crucible of Chicago jazz, albeit three decades apart, before moving on to New York–something else that may have helped them bond....
The fifth annual European Union Film Festival continues Friday through Thursday, February 22 through 28, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State. Admission is $8, $4 for Film Center members. For further information call 312-846-2800. All films will be shown in 35-millimeter prints, and those marked with an * are highly recommended. The Piano Teacher Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This powerful feature by Laurent Cantet (Human Resources) has probably generated more buzz than any other European feature shown last fall at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, all of it deserved....
The half-drunk, 200-strong crowd assembled at the Chicago Brauhaus at 10 PM on a recent Saturday was already flush with the spirit of Oktoberfest by the time Gody Windischhofer, in forest green lederhosen, lurched to the front of the stage, raised his cocktail, and began to shout. “Oi! Oi! Oi!” yelled the crowd. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Oktoberfest at the Brauhaus is a boisterous affair....
Ensembles from Spain and Mexico join local troupes in the Goodman Theatre’s first-ever showcase of Latino theater. Coordinated by actor-director Henry Godinez, the fest features readings, performances, and discussions in both Spanish and English. The Goodman Latino Theater Festival runs through July 20 at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn. Times and ticket prices vary as shown in the schedule below; for reservations and more information, call 312-443-3800 or log on to www....
In the spring of 1965, a few months after an exhibit of Ruth Duckworth’s work opened at the Renaissance Society gallery in Hyde Park–her first showing in this country–the German-born ceramic artist was invited to the home of the chairman of the University of Chicago’s geophysics department. Duckworth went on to become a professor of fine arts at U. of C., a position she held until 1977, when she began devoting herself to making art full-time....
James Grigsby, whose elaborate solo performances often achieved an operatic furor, knew how to carve out an impenetrable solitude for himself. Hours before his audience would arrive at the MoMing Dance and Arts Center, once Chicago’s premier performance art venue, he would enter the dark, vaulting theater with his thermos of herbal tea and meditate. Then he would begin a long routine of stretches and vocal exercises–all for pieces that rarely lasted longer than 30 minutes....
If I were to come back as a pop critic, I’d want to do it in Brazil: since the 50s Brazilian popular song has boasted a level of harmonic and emotional sophistication that matches the complexity of its layered rhythms, and which pretty much puts the mass of American pop to shame. This is the tradition mined by Brazilian-born Chicago drummer Luiz Ewerling (best known these days for his contributions to Marshall Vente’s Tropicale), and more often than not he hits pay dirt....
Lead Stories In December 2001 the Days Inn in Hicksville, New York (near John F. Kennedy International Airport), was fined and ordered to issue partial refunds to customers after people stranded by the air-travel shutdown on September 11 were charged $399 a day for rooms normally priced at $139….The New York Times reported last October that at least 76 families of people killed in the September 11 attacks received portfolios from Providence Inc....
Five-year-old Nino stares solemnly at the camera from behind an oversize bow tie. His baggy overalls, cut from the same yellow, pink, and green patterned cloth, are garish against the red canvas of the tent behind him. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The photographer, Chicagoan Tone Stockenstrom, has spent the last three summers training kids at the Picolino Circus in Salvador, Brazil, in photography....
RAISED IN CAPTIVITY, Circle Theatre. If Nicky Silver had written a play about a gay man trying to overcome the numbness that’s afflicted him for the 11 years since his lover died, he might have given the American theater a compelling story. Of course, that would require the hard work of creating a believable, psychologically complex world. So instead Silver creates one human being–Sebastian, a gay man living through “emotional and sexual celibacy”–and surrounds him with grossly overwritten cartoons: a wacky, self-loathing psychologist who pokes out her eyes in an act of penance and becomes a wandering religious zealot; a wacky, self-loathing sister who sings “This Could Be the Start of Something Big” at their mother’s funeral; and her wacky, self-loathing husband, who abandons his dentistry practice, barricades himself in the house, and becomes a full-time painter–but uses only white paint so he “won’t screw up....
While I am extremely grateful to the Reader for the “highly recommended” rating given to Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies in last week’s CUFF reviews [August 17], I feel compelled to respond to the implicit charge of racism in your writer’s criticism of the fact that “blaxploitation directors like Melvin Van Peebles are conspicuously absent” from our work. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Aside from a highly questionable labeling of Van Peebles as a “blaxploitation” filmmaker (the only one of his films that falls anywhere near that category is Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, and Van Peebles himself doesn’t see that one as a “blaxploitation” film, or so he told me when I interviewed him for a magazine piece in 1998), your writer seems to have failed to notice that Schlock!...
DANIELSON FAMILE 3/2, SCHUBAS Sometimes they sound like King Missile sans sarcasm or Bongwater sans sex, sometimes like a church youth choir gone horribly awry and sometimes like pure weirdo-folk-rock genius, but it’s their overt Christianity as much as their loopy sound that qualifies this New Jersey family act as “outsider rock.” Because their approach bears so little resemblance to either traditional gospel (which it very occasionally references) or saccharine contemporary Christian pop (which it occasionally seems to satirize), their hipster fans are forced to deal with active, engaged belief as an essential part of a daunting creative process....
Brooklyn postpunk revivalists the Rapture released their raw debut, Mirror, in 1999, but they didn’t really make a splash until their Sub Pop EP Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks came out in 2001. Though the gnarly noise rock that dominated the disc was nothing special, a couple songs pointed in fresh directions. Matty Safer’s walloping bass line added a body-friendly element to the weird rhythmic angles of “Modern Romance,” and drummer Vito Roccoforte’s slow disco beat on the title track, while a bit unsteady, demonstrated a willingness to reach out to a broader audience....
The notion that communal creation requires musicians to surrender their individual selves to the group for the good of the music is one you hear a lot in free-improv circles, but few combos put that ideal into practice like the European trio of reedist Urs Leimgruber, pianist Jacques Demierre, and bassist Barre Phillips. The group’s sole album, the superb Wing Vane (Victo, 2001), sounds like a thoroughly collective endeavor–the empathy between these musicians is astounding, as evidenced by the way Leimgruber’s squeaks fill in the spaces between the thwacks of Phillips’s bass and Demierre’s piano phrases....
Miae Lim and Doug Kane, the former owners of Big Wig down the street, opened Mirai Sushi, a stylish sushi and sake bar, in late December. The two-story glass facade sets the tone for the softly lit, minimalist space inside. The ambitious menu includes nigiri and maki sushi, daily fish specials, and several unique creations. The ise ebi, for example, is a lobster, seaweed, and lotus root salad attractively set in a lobster tail shell and topped with a half-opened quail egg that’s meant to be poured over the dish....
