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Few artists seemed less likely to offer any insight into the state of the union following September 11 than Tori Amos–Charlie Daniels, I suppose, or maybe Ron Howard. I’d always been bugged by Amos’s seeming conviction that her most obvious ideas (covering Eminem to showcase his misogyny, for instance, or using drum machines) were novel simply because they’d just occurred to her, and I never liked the way she laced Kate Bush’s spaciness into a corset of tinkling conservatory pretension....

It’s often said that strong roles for women are rare nowadays, but three new movies—Under the Sand, Ghost World, and The Deep End—have the virtue of handing a juicy, sympathetic part to a talented actress and letting her run with it. All three are directed by men, which raises the question of whether women will find these portraits as potent and sensitive as I do. Yet even if they qualify to some degree as male fantasies, I’d argue that they’re more in touch with our everyday reality and our history than a male fantasy like Apocalypse Now Redux....

Yesterday’s News Today The trouble with most juicy tidbits is they go stale faster than doughnuts. But Armour and cocolumnist Ellen Warren will now have to come up with tidbits so succulent they’ll still taste good after three days on the shelf. These will be prime tidbits indeed. “You’d almost have to predict the future and hope nobody predicts the future before you do,” says Armour, pondering what’s to come. “You’d probably have to put a different spin on things....

The Chicago Jazz Festival is among the world’s longest-running outdoor events: at 24, it’s older than some of its attendees. But not until the late 80s did the festival begin its transformation into the citywide free-for-all it is today, with club owners, record-shop managers, and cultural institutions all looking for ways to share the wealth of talent that descends on Chicago (and emerges from its holes-in-the-wall) for the weekend. Nowadays the wide array of ancillary events, which range from early-morning brunches to late-night jam sessions, means there’s hardly a waking moment when you can’t find some jazz going on....

Benjamin Chickadel: Nature may be the subject of Chickadel’s art, but reminiscence is its source. Born in Delaware, the artist moved with his family to Montana at age ten and passed his remaining childhood there and in Seattle. He spent much of his time in the wilderness, hiking and fly-fishing with his father and brother, so his art is personal, recalling the setting of those earlier times. But it also invites us to contemplate the human tendency to mythologize nature....

In San Francisco in the early 80s, filmmaker Jeffrey Skoller helped found a “mobile” cinema that showed movies in different locations every week: art galleries, clubs, community centers. Some of the films were experimental, but what Skoller was really interested in experimenting with was venue. By the 1970s most screenings of any kind were arranged by salaried professionals, and Skoller’s project represented a return to the early days of avant-garde cinema, the period after World War II, when artists initiated their own screenings....

Curious Position Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Things could get more curious in the near future for the Curious Theatre Branch. The experimental company, which by its own description has been “emerging” for 15 years, will lose its 60-seat Lakeview home a year from now, an event that’s likely to be a catalyst for other changes. Founded in 1988 by Beau O’Reilly and Jenny Magnus, the resolutely antiauthoritarian fringe troupe has produced 56 new plays to date (none published; few ever produced by anyone else) in a collaborative and communal damn-the-box-office environment....

JUNE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Icelandic artist Arnor Bieltvedt originally planned to follow the family tradition and become a businessman. He’d already gone through college as a business major and completed a master’s degree when a friend asked him to paint a portrait and, he says, “a door opened.” Bieltvedt started all over, earning an undergraduate degree in art from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Washington University....

By Albert Williams In his new biography Uncle Mame, journalist Eric Myers aims to brush aside such misconceptions and reclaim Dennis from the obscurity into which he sank after the failure of his last book, 3-D, published in 1972, four years before his death. Dennis–born Edward Everett Tanner III in 1921–merits recognition as one of 20th-century literature’s most talented and intriguing comic writers. This would be true even if Auntie Mame had been his only claim to fame; screwball socialite and bohemian butterfly Mame Dennis Burnside ranks as one of American fiction’s most memorable adventuresses, right up there with Scarlett O’Hara, Lorelei Lee, Holly Golightly, and Myra Breckinridge....

Conductor and harpsichordist William Christie named Les Arts Florissants, his troupe of singers and period instrumentalists, after a short opera by 17th-century French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier–and unsurprisingly, since its formation in 1979 the group has been vital to the resuscitation of the French Baroque repertoire, performing long-neglected major works by Lully, Rameau, Couperin, and, above all, Charpentier. Les Arts Florissants is based in France, and Christie himself is now a French citizen, but his love for French music began during his childhood in Buffalo, New York, when he heard a recording of Couperin’s motets....

Perishable Perishable? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A beguiling mix of revisionist roots rock, improvisation, and quiet soul, Roomsound cemented Califone’s position as one of the city’s most exciting bands. They quickly came to rival Him as the label’s best-selling act, garnering reams of critical praise, and by December the lineup, always loose, had coalesced around Rutili, Massarella, banjoist and guitarist Jim Becker, bassist Matt Fields, and drummer Joe Adamik....

Seducing the Audience, CarniKid Productions, at Frankie J’s MethaDome Theatre. If you’ve seen the recurring Saturday Night Live sketch “The Continental”–in which Christopher Walken plays a smooth-talking lothario who speaks directly to the camera–then you’ve got the gist of Dan Carr’s “slightly more than one-man show.” Sitting at a restaurant table center stage, Carr treats the audience as his date, leaking uncomfortable information about himself and occasionally engaging his imaginary companion....

Many Americans are disgusted by the U.S. government’s response to last year’s terrorist attacks, but you wouldn’t know that from most of the music released since then. On their fierce new album, One Beat (Kill Rock Stars), Portland’s Sleater-Kinney step up and tackle the issue with an approach that’s neither didactic pronouncement nor self-absorbed reaction. Corin Tucker’s personal memories on “Far Away” aren’t particularly profound. But when she sings, “7:30 AM, nurse the baby on the couch / Then the phone rings / ‘Turn on the TV,’” she captures the exact moment that a normal day was plunged into frightening confusion....

Not long ago I heard that William Beecher had died. For 28 years, starting in 1955, he was the director of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, the offbeat natural history museum in Lincoln Park. For a short time he was my boss. Ed, a capable artist and a Moonie, was generally assigned the most mundane chores, like scraping tape residue off the exhibit cases. He always wore headphones when he worked, listening to recordings of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon as he performed his tasks with endless patience....

When you turn to your friends for relationship advice, who really wants to hear the cold hard truth? I know I don’t–I want to be reassured of my sex appeal and supported in the pursuit of whatever or whoever I’m after. According to Sex and the City consultant Greg Behrendt and executive story editor Liz Tuccillo, authors of the newish book He’s Just Not That Into You, this means I’ve got my head up my ass....

After accumulating a massive following and inspiring a number of copycat acts in the course of their 13 years on the Renaissance Faire circuit, “Dirk Perfect” and “Guido Crescendo,” aka the Swordsmen, bring their swashbuckling comedy show indoors for one night only, in conjunction with Noble Fool Theater Company’s “Wild Card Wednesdays” series. Since these self-styled “bold and stupid men” are, in real life, David B. Woolley and Douglas R. Mumaw–two of America’s foremost fight choreographers–their act features dazzling swordplay in addition to wordplay that’s likewise honed to perfection....

TIERNEY SUTTON Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In recent years, most younger vocalists in jazz have possessed a certain ruggedness–the smoky tones of Cassandra Wilson and Jeanie Bryson, the growling baritone of Kevin Mahogany, the take-no-prisoners improvisations of Kurt Elling. Tierney Sutton bucks that trend with an unusually pure, uncomplicated soprano, the kind you often hear from a folk-rock diva. She abstains from the affectations that most jazz singers, for better or worse, use to establish their individuality–and this paradoxically gives her voice an individuality of its own, like a piece of precisely crafted porcelain among blocks of granite and marble....

This latest Corn Productions show is not awful in the obvious ways: the acting and singing are competent, the dancing is simple but appropriately silly, and the costumes are sometimes quite funny. Instead these 80 minutes are painful because of the crass stupidity of the humor, as scenes inspired by faith and familiar holiday traditions are cause for an endless stream of sex jokes. There’s no real point being made as baby Jesus hosts a gross Letterman-esque talk show, Charlie Brown gets frustrated by the pandenominationalism of Peanuts, or the coarse title characters enact an O....

The best country comes from the strangest places: former Chicagoan Dallas Wayne was born in Branson, Missouri, but he made his name in Finland, where he released five albums before moving back to the States last year. His approach is way too raw for Nashville these days, but if you’re hungry for timeless honky-tonk, you’ll find it just right. On his latest album, Here I Am in Dallas (Hightone), no more than a few seconds have elapsed before he’s drowning a heartache in beer (“Bouncin’ Beer Cans off the Jukebox”), and his “If These Walls Could Cry” seems to be a nod to “Hello Walls,” the classic by Faron Young, who’s also responsible for the title track....

This multimedia production by the Builders Association, a New York-based experimental ensemble founded by former Wooster Group dramaturge Marianne Weems, pays tribute to four visionaries of American entertainment. Two of them are well remembered today–Chicago-born Florenz Ziegfeld for his extravagant Broadway revues of the 1920s and Busby Berkeley for the still astonishing choreography and camera work in his 1930s movie musicals. Less familiar are dancer Loie Fuller (born in 1862 in Fullersburg, Illinois) and designer-inventor Steele MacKaye....