Singer-guitarist Brent Larson formed the Motion in 1999, the beginning of the end of the glory days of midwestern indie rock–but that didn’t stop him from plugging away. Save for Larson’s burnout guitar solos, the trio sounded like almost everything playing at the Empty Bottle that week; they released a self-titled CD on their own label, Sad Loud America, that was adrenalized but unaffecting. They’ve since revamped their sound, introducing a little space and more grime; Larson no longer screams at the same volume throughout each song....

Ismail Merchant–the Indian half of the Merchant-Ivory team–directed this low-key but wisely observant adaptation of V.S. Naipaul’s first novel, about a village masseur named Ganesh whose spiritual guidebooks and reputation as a healer bring him fame and fortune during the 1950s. His rise as a charismatic leader in the Indian community of Trinidad, his championing of his people in the British-controlled legislature, and his ultimate retreat from worldly affairs are narrated by Partap, an Indian educated at Oxford whose childhood depression has been “cured” by Ganesh and who’s since become one of his advisers....

Clare Frohrip has two heads of hair, both of which she takes care of herself. She started cutting her own hair–short in the back and on the sides, longer and spiky on top–when she was in high school with a pair of scissors and an electric razor. “Usually when I go in to have a professional look at it they tell me I’m doing fine,” she says. But for her Polly Jean Harvey impersonation in the PJ Harvey tribute band 50 Ft....

It’s not easy to negotiate the subject of motherhood–to chart a course between the Scylla of sentimentality and the Charybdis of gleeful attack. Yet why should it be so hard? I have a mother; you have one. I am a mother. Maybe you are too, or will be one day. But motherhood is a lost continent, a terrain so vast and intricate and overgrown with feelings that few even attempt to map it....

Cinderella, Cinderella, Comedy-Sportz. Bucking the trend of imbuing fairy tales, especially this one, with allusions to mythic journeys and feminist psychology, this interactive matinee gets back to basics: girl mistreated, evil steps, good fairy godmother, prince, slipper–you know the drill. The improv-derived script moves the story along while allowing the performers to take some amusing liberties with the characters. Lauren Bishop’s dewy-eyed Cinderella plays straight waif to a larger-than-life stepmother (Matt Elwell, weighing in at about 270 and playing the role like a swarthy Divine), some butt-ugly stepsisters (Brendan Dowling and Joey Bland), and a vaudevillian pair of fairy godmothers: Heather Simms as poofy, bewanded Maggaline and Theresa Ryan as Frances, decked out in a practical pink running suit and silver sneakers....

Who’s really on drugs here? According to a household survey detailed in the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority’s “Research Bulletin” (August), the percentage of Illinois adults who said they used an illegal drug in Illinois in 1990: 4.9. In 1998: 7.6. The number of prison sentences handed out for drug offenses in Illinois in 1990: about 8,000. In 1998: about 14,000. The number of words on whether the drug war is succeeding, even on its own terms, in the report: 0....

Events that may never achieve federal sponsorship. As a counterweight to the “annual abuse of the constitution” known as the National Day of Prayer, members of the “community of reason,” including the American Humanist Association, are sponsoring a National Day of Reason on May 6, 2004 (nationaldayofreason.org). Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The threat of academic probation spurred improvements at some schools, according to a recent study of measures taken between 1999 and 2001 by the Chicago Board of Education, reports Elizabeth Duffrin in Catalyst Chicago (April)....

You know Chicago is prospering when new construction can be called a disease. Two surveyors for the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois recently examined construction activity in an 18-square-block section of East Village and a 17-block stretch of Damen between Waveland and Diversey (the “Cornerstone,” January). In both areas they found that “more than 20 percent of the structures had been built in the past 10 years. In most cases, the new structures were three-to-four story condominium towers....

Secret Ballot Secret Ballot is…a demonstration of the fact that society at large has much more integrity than the forces that govern it. This is as true in Iran as it is in the United States. –Babak Payami Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Was this wishful thinking as well? A second look at this road movie made me think yes and no. Yes because Iran isn’t entirely a democracy and because Bush would never want to see this movie in a million years....

EMERSON STRING QUARTET Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » What’s the best string quartet in the world? Some might pick the Juilliard, others the Arditti, and a few partisans of new music the Kronos. But I’m convinced that among the people who’d bother ranking quartets in the first place, most would choose the Emerson. Formed in 1976 and based in New England–the group takes its name from poet Ralph Waldo–the Emerson has only improved on the technical finesse, graceful phrasing, and cultivated sense of rhythm that distinguished it early on....

The sixth annual European Union Film Festival continues Friday, March 14, through Thursday, March 27, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State. Admission is $8, $4 for Film Center members. For further information call 312-846-2800. Films marked with an * are highly recommended. The schedule for March 14 through 20 follows; a full festival schedule through March 27 is available on-line at www.chicagoreader.com. The Twilight Hour Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Fascia, Ma’at Production Association of Afrikan Centered Theatre, at Chicago Dramatists. Shepsu Aakhu’s new play, directed by Mignon McPherson Nance, is both frustrating and emotionally satisfying. Its goal–to tell the story of five generations of a troubled African-American family simultaneously–is often undermined by an obstinate insubstantiality: it’s difficult to pin down the action and characters. When an actress comes back onstage with a minor hairdo change, is she playing the same character as when she left?...

In the liner notes to his long-overdue debut as a leader, the new Like-Coping (Delmark), guitarist Jeff Parker admits he was uneasy about launching a project under his own name. “I have always felt that music-making is a communal gesture,” he writes. “When an aggregation of musicians get together to create, particularly in a setting that deals with improvisation, the most compelling results, for me, are those that embrace the whole, rather than the sum of the parts....

Born in Glen Ellyn to Korean parents, violinist Jennifer Koh studied early on at the Music Institute of Chicago with Almita and Roland Vamos, the wife-and-husband teaching team that has groomed two generations of string players, including their own sons. She played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at age 13, began collecting honors shortly after (Tchaikovsky Competition, Avery Fisher Prize), and soon got an agent, who’s booked engagements with many second-tier orchestras in North America (the usual course for young soloists who show exceptional promise)....

Known less accurately as And Life Goes On…(to distinguish it from Bertrand Tavernier’s Life and Nothing But), this 1992 masterpiece by Abbas Kiarostami uses nonprofessional actors to restage real events. Accompanied by his little boy, a film director from Tehran drives into the mountainous region of northern Iran, recently devastated by an earthquake that’s killed more than 50,000 people. He searches through various villages for two child actors who appeared in Where Is the Friend’s House?...

LORAXX Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Yellville, the second album from the greatest power trio this town has produced since Shellac, is what some people would call an EP: its 11 tracks don’t even hit the half-hour mark. But not one of the brutal, elegant bursts of articulate rage is any shorter or longer than it needs to be, and each of them is a stellar example of the hit-hard-and-from-many-directions school of punk....

Although Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s landmark Farnsworth House is in the distant town of Plano, on the Fox River about 20 miles southwest of Aurora, it’s as much a part of Chicago’s architectural legacy as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House or Unity Temple. It was the first house Mies built in America, the forerunner to his great glass-and-steel towers (such as the 860-880 N. Lake Shore Drive apartments), and the specific inspiration for Philip Johnson’s own landmark glass house in New Canaan, Connecticut....

The Great Society Jeannie Flannery, wife of a Chicago ward committeeman, seeks to claim her rightful place in the Kennedy clan–she may be a cousin of Joan, whom her husband derides as married to “the Zeppo of the Kennedys.” Young Father Mike eagerly awaits the opportunity to take over the parish from his dying superior, and Jeannie’s sister-in-law, Anne Marie, aims at financial security through a scheme involving carnival rides with a space-program theme....

Chicago singer Ricky Allen only had one national hit–the torrid 1963 single “Cut You A-Loose”–but in his heyday his local drawing power rivaled Muddy Waters’s. On Allen’s records from the 60s, he evokes both the uptown slickness of Sam Cooke (occasionally emulating Cooke’s trademark yodel) and the gospel-infused fervor of Solomon Burke–and even on a tale of betrayal or loss, his warm tone and buoyant confidence with rhythm make him sound like a man trying to dance away his troubles....

The thought of fathering a bunch of kids who I don’t know and will never meet actually turns me on. Is that weird or what? Are there any restrictions against gay guys donating to sperm banks? Are there sperm banks that specialize in hooking up gay spunk with lesbians? How do I go about this? “It’s complicated,” said Lisa. “We’re a licensed sperm bank [and have to] follow the guidelines put out by the American Association of Tissue Banks....