I can’t say that The Pledge, The Wedding Planner, Blooper Bunny, and Shadow of the Vampire have much in common, apart from the fact that they’re showing in Chicago this week. Yet all four do, to different degrees, feed off other movies. Frankly, that’s what I like most about The Wedding Planner—a romantic comedy starring Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey that aspires to and achieves the goofiness of a studio musical of the early 50s....
Totally tongue-in-cheek but never breaking character, Corn Productions’ elaborate depiction of a fictitious civilization in peril has been going strong since August 2000. Two and a half years later it’s lost none of its quirky sense of fun, from the batik-inspired costumes to the hilariously generic tribal choreography to the “flossary” of useful expressions. (For this ethnic group, “death” and “love” mean the same thing.) During its 60 rampaging minutes, Floss!...
Dear Sir/Madam: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Israel has used this recently in the reoccupation of Palestinian lands. When it was reported that the barbaric behavior of the IDF in Jenin produced war crimes, Israel refused the UN access to evaluate the claims, with the USA, predictably, providing the necessary diplomatic cover in the UN. Despite this cover-up, Amnesty International has determined there were war crimes in Jenin....
In a nod to the disposable nature of the show, and as a wonderful reminder of Factory Theater’s ability to make ten dollars look like a million bucks, Nick Digilio’s cast peels the scenery off the walls in between Laura McKenzie’s and Mark Sam Rosenthal’s one-acts in this evening of three. The production has nowhere to go but down after the opening play, a delirious snapshot of redneck speed freaks trapped in a trailer during a hurricane....
Growing up in quaint, historic Fairfield County, Connecticut, was awful, says Tim Aher. “I was alienated in this way that was so profound it couldn’t be reduced to some weird group-politics thing. So I spent a lot of time in my room woodshedding on the guitar and listening to metal.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In his senior year of high school he found salvation on IRC, a clunky on-line chat forum where he met other self-described “lonely teenage guys,” striking up a particularly close friendship with one named George Moore....
I like to read the Straight Dope columns on religious artifacts. You have covered the Ark of the Covenant and a little bit about the Dead Sea scrolls, and I would like to know about the Holy Grail. I wasn’t born into a Bible-reading family, so my knowledge of the subject is limited. I know it was used by Christ at the Last Supper and was used by Joseph of Arimathea to gather the blood of the fallen Christ....
Rock, Pop, etc. BLACK CROWES, OASIS, SPACEHOG Sun 5/20, 6:30 PM, Tweeter Center, I-80 and Harlem, Tinley Park. 708-614-1616 or 312-559-1212. BUMPUS performs at “After Hours” museum tour and party. Thu 5/17, 5:30-9:30 PM, ballroom, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan. 312-575-8000. DOOBIE BROTHERS Benefit for Sacred Heart Schools of Chicago. Fri 5/18, 8:30 PM, A. Finkl & Sons, 2011 N. Southport. 773-262-4446, ext. 345. DAVIS GAINES Benefit for Jane Addams Hull House....
Clint Jordan, who studied acting in prison, gives a gutsy but shaded performance as a career criminal paroled to a halfway house who lives in fear of the mistake that will land him back behind bars. Among the temptations littering his path are a drug addict who turns tricks to support her habit (throaty-voiced Kirsten Russell) and an impetuous roommate who invites him in on a robbery (Anthony Gorman). The story is hardly new, and it’s sidetracked by a contrived threat from the hooker’s pimp....
Faulkner’s Bicycle Faulkner’s Bicycle is a play about all the means people use to escape their lives, and about the ways in which those means inevitably fail. Though that sounds frustrating and painful, and indeed constraint is the watchword of the evening–the space is tiny, and the house manager urges the audience to withdraw any errant feet from the aisle–the result is actually quite freeing. Heather McDonald’s characters may not get anywhere, but as Faulkner trumpets at the end of The Sound and the Fury about his characters, “they endure....
Bailiwick Repertory’s 14th annual showcase of projects by emerging directors, coordinated by Jason Palmer, features programs of three or four short plays. The scripts run the gamut from selections by Romulus Linney, David Mamet, Thornton Wilder, William Saroyan, Heiner Muller, and Tennessee Williams to new works. The fest runs through June 19 at the Bailiwick Arts Center, 1229 W. Belmont. Performances are Monday-Wednesday at 7:30 PM. Tickets are $10; there is no late seating and only five-minute intermissions....
Rudy Ray Moore Moore, who was in his 30s at the time, was ripe for some inspiration. He’d been poking around the entertainment industry since he was a teenager, but he couldn’t seem to catch a break. As a kid in Cleveland, he’d billed himself as the Harlem Hillbilly, singing R & B-inflected country ballads. A little later, after some coaching by a local dancer named Billy Nightengale, he moved to Milwaukee and hooked up with a traveling revue, in which he donned a turban to become the gyrating acrobatic stepper Prince Dumarr....
THE ROOTS Phrenology (MCA) The mediocre crossover single “Break You Off,” featuring wan vocals from Musiq, is the Philadelphia hip-hop band’s sole concession to biz pressure–even their inclusion of murmured hooks from Nelly Furtado, Jill Scott, and Alicia Keys sounds like an aesthetic choice. Staying true to the restless spirit of invention that gave birth to hip-hop, they stake out new turf with a tossed-off hardcore track, a three-part epic dominated by an abstract instrumental section, and a scrappy soul-rock collaboration with Cody Chesnutt....
The classic kids’ book by Mary Rodgers about a mother and daughter who magically trade bodies for a day first hit the big screen in 1976 as a Disney comedy starring Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster. In this update, directed by Mark Waters (The House of Yes) and again produced by Disney, mom (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a stressed-out, multitasking psychiatrist who’s about to remarry, and her kid (Lindsay Lohan) is a high school rebel who loves the Hives and plays guitar in a garage band....
Jan Erkert has no shame. She’s never had any. In 1989 she performed a solo called Fame & Fortune in a pink Afro wig, a tutu, and tennies. In the 1991 Forgotten Sensations, members of her company rolled around on patches of sod and pretended to be babies nuzzling for their mothers’ breasts, then munched apples and oranges greedily. These images–as well as video close-ups of Erkert in a bathing cap pursing her lips and dragging her fingers down her cheeks–reappear in her new 70-minute solo piece, presented with help from numerous collaborators....
Poster making in Poland has long been connected more to the fine arts than to commercial advertising, as this exhibit of 20 Polish jazz posters at the DePaul University Art Gallery demonstrates. Some combine the weightiness and precise line often found in Polish painting, but the most intriguing add chaos to express the open-ended unpredictability of jazz. Roslaw Szaybo’s Miles Davis (1989) shows a multicolored stream rising like smoke from the trumpeter’s mouth–and a smaller stream rising from his eyebrow, suggesting that his music was spiritual too....
Lina Bertucci at Schneider, through October 26 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Bertucci, who was born in Milwaukee in 1959, dates her interest in the placement of figures in space to a job she had while in college: she and an aunt were the first women brakemen on the Milwaukee Road railway line. Bertucci began to take pictures at work, partly because she wanted to document the railroad and industrial milieu that was starting to disappear, and partly because the men there were harassing her: “I felt that the camera allowed me to maintain my identity–it was one way of giving myself some kind of power....
Look Who’s Talking Apparently dozens and dozens of labor leaders have signed this declaration, including Jonathan Tasini, national president of the NWU. “I disagree with Tasini on just about everything in the union,” Sustar tells me, “but I’m very proud of him for this.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The chairperson of the NWU steering committee is Helena Worthen, a professor with the University of Illinois’ Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations in Chicago....
Artistic director Eduardo Vilaro’s new pieces both have to do with assimilation, a subject he’s addressed before. But when it comes to Vilaro’s work, God is truly in the details–in the sensitively crafted phrases of his choreography. Vuelo del Alma (“Flight of the Soul”) consists of four snapshots evoking different aspects of the immigrant experience. In the filmic first part, all six dancers form a phalanx “running” in slow motion without getting anywhere; set to an odd mix of a recorded conversation between a child and mother plus a nightclub recording of Afro-Caribbean song and percussion, this twitchy section is marked by a striking gesture: one dancer holds another by the waist as she bends over backward, mouth open in a silent scream, and he attempts to calm–or stifle–her with a hand over her mouth....
The inspiration for artistic director Molly Shanahan’s newest piece was a sign in the window of a house on Sheridan Road in south Evanston: “Keep out,” it said. “A senior needs your help.” Intrigued by its mysterious mixed message, she started to think about the ways we “put ourselves forward.” Also aiming for choreographic boldness (“walking into a room knowing what you want to say”), she created The Signmakers, an often confrontational ensemble piece marked by a push-pull aesthetic: in one telling phrase, a dancer puts her hand to her chest, eyes cast down, and even though she seems drawn to the woman next to her jerks herself away....
MIKE DOUGHTY Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Whatever happened to the Great White Pseudo-Rap Class of 1994? Well, Beck went on to actual rock stardom (for a while there, anyway), while the mush-mouthed G. Love & Special Sauce have been reduced to serving as the house band on Ben Stein’s Comedy Central interview show. And, as always, Soul Coughing–specifically front man Mike Doughty–falls somewhere in between....
