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Canadian Charles Ross reenacts George Lucas’s classics in a fleet and fun 60-minute show directed by fellow Canadian T.J. Dawe. With good humor and at times offering impressive impersonations, Ross re-creates all the essentials from the first three “Star Wars” movies. He’s best as a petulant Luke or a prissy C-3PO, and his Jabba the Hutt is a testament to his inventiveness, but Ross tackles the special effects too, becoming an exploding starfighter or a storm trooper’s transport walker without the aid of props....

The Laramie Project A month after the crime, Moises Kaufman and members of New York’s Tectonic Theater Project (which Kaufman founded) made the first of six pilgrimages to Laramie, where they interviewed townspeople. They ended up creating a play not only about Laramie–its response to the crime and its aftermath, its soul-searching, its debate over values–but about their own changed perspectives on small-town America. The Laramie Project premiered last year in Denver and was subsequently presented overseas, off-Broadway, and around the United States, from La Jolla to Laramie....

Thirty years ago the body of preservationist Richard Nickel was found beneath the rubble of the old Stock Exchange at Washington and LaSalle. He’d been part of a futile fight to save the Louis Sullivan building, and he was inside photographing and trying to salvage some of the last remnants when the building collapsed on him. The exchange’s trading floor was preserved and put on permanent display at the Art Institute, along with a plaque paying tribute to Nickel, who was hailed as a hero by everyone from writers to aldermen....

The 18th annual Chicago Latino Film Festival, presented by the International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago, runs Friday, April 5, through Thursday, April 18. Film and video screenings will be at the Biograph, 2433 N. Lincoln; DePaul Univ. Alliance for Latino Empowerment, 2320 N. Kenmore, room 154; Dominican Univ., 7900 W. Division, River Forest; Facets Cinematheque, 1517 W. Fullerton; Metzli Video Cinema, 1440 W. 18th St.; Northwestern Univ. Thorne Auditorium, 750 N....

A double feature of my two favorite Preston Sturges comedies, both of them sublimely wacko. Christmas in July, his second feature as writer-director (1940, 66 min.), is in many ways his most underrated movie, a riotous satire of capitalism that bites so deep it hurts. An ambitious office clerk (Dick Powell), determined to strike it rich in an advertising contest with his stupid slogan (“If you can’t sleep, it isn’t the coffee, it’s the bunk”), is tricked by a few of his coworkers into believing that he’s actually won, promptly gets promoted, and goes on a shopping spree for his neighbors and relatives....

Over the course of four albums, Clem Snide singer-guitarist Eef Barzelay has perfected the flirtation technique of the soulful nerd like no one since Arto Lindsay. His lyrics on the band’s latest, Soft Spot (Spinart), indicate that he’s more self-conscious about his persona than ever: “All Green” riffs obviously on the soul man’s name; “Close the Door” could be a nod to the Teddy Pendergrass bodice ripper of the same title....

Photographer Stephen Szoradi started his ongoing series on industry and infrastructure as a student at Bennington College in the late 80s. He grew up in Washington, D.C., where “there’s not a single smokestack,” he says. “In Vermont there was a whole blue-collar workforce that I’d never seen.” Szoradi began taking pictures of New England quarries “to understand how things were made….I thought it would be a project I might be able to sustain for the rest of my life....

Since the spectacular success of his first novel, Trainspotting, ten years ago, Scottish writer Irvine Welsh has solidified his reputation as the profane scribe of the drug-addled and disenfranchised, producing four more novels in addition to multiple novellas, plays, and short stories. He’s also gotten into film production, journalism, teaching, and humanitarian work on behalf of UNICEF and other organizations. Earlier this year he landed in Chicago for a five-month stint as a writer in residence in the fiction writing program at Columbia College....

I’m here at this fabulous 60th birthday party for Barbra Streisand, my favorite singer in the whole world. Everybody at this party loves Barbra; in fact my dear friend the host, Victor, won an award for his Barbra impression of “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” I made two memento boxes for the hosts by using a collection of Barbra photos and images of her album covers. Inside the boxes I put the series of E-mails that we were all sending each other getting ready for the big night....

Leon Smith is the best athlete in t the gym, but he’s not here to play. He leans back in a metal chair and watches his brother run the floor at the Savannah Center, on the campus of Indiana University Northwest, during a September free-agent tryout for the Continental Basketball Association’s Gary Steelheads. Of the 30 hopefuls participating, five or six have the fluidity, control, and head-turning athleticism required to someday compete in the CBA, considered a stepping stone to the NBA....

GET UP KIDS, SUPERCHUNK 7/12, METRO; 7/13 & 7/14, HOUSE OF BLUES In the bio accompanying the Get Up Kids’ new On a Wire (Vagrant), front man Matthew Pryor makes a lot of excuses for the lack of new releases over the last two years or so, laying most of the blame on the usually prolific band’s inability to write while on tour. But he neglects to mention the promising, if frighteningly withdrawn, solo record he made as the New Amsterdams, which had a fair amount of fresh new writing on it indeed....

EVIL BEAVER 8/29, METRO Evil Beaver’s gotten fat: the local duo’s second album, Pleased to Eat You (out September 8 on their Frooty Nation label), has a big, thick, cavern-filling roar harking back to a certain moment years ago starring L7 and Seven Year Bitch. Recorded in LA by former Chicagoan Dave Trumfio, the riff-heavy girl riot is just barely on the acceptably dirty edge of slickness. A reevaluation of grunge is surely on its way, and this is a fine place to start....

By David Harrell “How you doin’, li’l brotha,” he says, offering me the filthiest hand I’ve ever seen. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Look,” he says, “man to man, brotha to brotha. I’m just a homeless man out here on the streets tryin’ to survive. Vietnam vet. Just tryin’ to stay alive. You know how hard it can be out here for a black man....

Presented by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, this six-day festival of experimental film and video runs Tuesday, March 4, through Sunday, March 9. Screenings this week are at the Chicago Cultural Center, 77 E. Washington, and admission is free; for more information call 312-744-6630. Programs marked with an * are highly recommended. The schedule for March 4 through 6 follows; a full festival schedule through March 9 is available on-line at www....

Richard Linklater’s exciting and innovative feature was shot on digital video, then transformed into a new kind of animation that works wonders with the subtleties of body language and creates hallucinatory effects with palpitating backgrounds. There isn’t much of a story in any ordinary sense–just a lot of encounters and philosophical dialogues as a young college graduate walks around Austin, Texas, trying to decide if he’s dreaming or awake. In a way the movie rethinks and replays most of Linklater’s previous features in the fresh terms of this animation process: the overall narrative drift through Austin recalls Slacker; the hero is Dazed and Confused’s Wiley Wiggins; Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke are discovered in bed, continuing a conversation they started in Before Sunrise; and Linklater himself puts in a couple of appearances....

“Man, I gotta buy me some sex! I ain’t seen a prostitute in three goddamn days!” Outside a raw wind sends garbage swirling through the gutters and vacant lots of what used to be the Maxwell Street Market. These days the area is pretty deserted, even on Sundays. But on this Sunday, beneath a gray sky, a stream of blues musicians, friends, hangers-on, and street people is making its way toward the taco joint....

Many years ago in Lagos, the former capital of Nigeria, there was a hotel called Boolat, owned by a woman who created the name by combining the first letters of the names of her ten children–Bimpe, Beatrice, Bolade, Oluyemisi, Olumide, Omolara, Olashile, Layi, Adeniji, and Taiwo. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The sixth eldest, Beatrice Hardnick, moved to the States in 1991 in an attempt to gain independence from her well-to-do family....

The eighth annual Asian American Showcase, presented by the Foundation for Asian American Independent Media and the Gene Siskel Film Center, runs Friday, April 4, through Sunday, April 13. Screenings will be at the Film Center. Tickets are $8, $4 for Film Center members; for more information call 312-846-2600. Films marked with an * are highly recommended. Following is the schedule through April 10; a complete schedule is available on-line at www....

Although he was Catholic, King Alfonso X of Spain (1221-’84) demanded tolerance of Islam and Judaism–earning him the epithet “King of the Three Religions”–and he went so far as to encourage artistic and musical cross-pollination. One fruit of this cultural exchange was the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a collection of more than 400 sacred songs in praise of the Virgin Mary; some were composed by, and all were approved by, the monarch himself....

Previously produced by the Aardvark theater company, this festival of women’s theater has been taken over by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs in conjunction with Prop Thtr. Running through May 10, the festival features artists in the fields of theater, performance, poetry, dance, and music. Two programs remain, both at the Storefront Theater in the Gallery 37 Center for the Arts, 66 E. Randolph. Tickets cost $12 per program and can be purchased by phone at 312-742-8497 or on-line at www....