The Evil Dead Each Friday, we recommend seven Old Movies to Watch Now, all of which come recommended by one of our critics and can currently be screened online. Read the review, watch the movie, feel accomplished. • Nightjohn, Charles Burnett’s story of slaves in the Antebellum South.
Léos Carax’s The Lovers on the Bridge A couple Sundays back was the yahrzeit of my cousin Naomi, so I went with my parents and a handful of other relations to the Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park for the unveiling of her gravestone. The few times I’ve gone to this cemetery, whoever’s driven has taken Harlem Avenue for the final leg of the trip. We go past the Blue Line terminus near the Eisenhower Expressway, and the mass of idle train cars makes me think of coffins converging in some sort of traffic jam of the dead....
The drama, based on Philip K. Dick’s novel, offers some chilling imagery of an alternate history. In the United States circa 1962, a giant swastika shines in Times Square, crowds of American children happily shout “Sieg Heil,” and Nazi soldiers gun down civilians in the street. The country is split into three sections: the Greater Nazi Reich, the Japanese Pacific States, and a neutral zone between them. Visually, the show is beautiful: it simultaneously captures the look of a period piece as well as a futuristic, alien world....
Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body—it is heritage. —Ta-Nehisi Coates from Between the World and Me More thrillingly, Michael’s struck up an affair with a white coworker named Sarah, who has a taste for unorthodox sex. Our hero confides to best friend Simon—also white—that their first date ended with a spanking in a stairwell. Correction: This review has been amended to reflect the name of the actor who plays Sarah, Erin Barlow....
Keep the faith, Chicago theater lovers. If your trust in the integrity of Steppenwolf and Tracy Letts was in any way shaken by the tortured, execrable sitcom CBS rendered from their Chicago-based stage comedy Superior Donuts (despite their ultimate lack of involvement in the final product, save residuals), Letts wants you to rest assured that the old gang is still as scrappy and pugnacious as ever! “I couldn’t restrain myself ....
Al Podgorski/Sun-Times Media Mayor Rahm at this morning’s City Council special meeting Like a Roman emperor who had just conquered the world, Mayor Rahm strode before the City Council this morning for his annual budget address—all he needed was a toga. On the front page of the Sun-Times was a big, color picture of discarded “Karen Lewis for Mayor” buttons. The headline read: “What now? Lewis leaves a would-be movement without a standard-bearer....
American Theater Company suffered a major loss in May, when artistic director PJ Paparelli died at age 40 after a car accident in Scotland, just weeks after the opening of The Project(s), his acclaimed documentary-theater piece about public housing in Chicago. ATC is dedicating its 2015—’16 season to the writer-director’s legacy, but don’t expect a lot of solemn reverence. Interim artistic director Bonnie Metzgar has said the company intends to carry on with the sort of bold, socially engaged work Paparelli championed....
There are plenty of shows, films, and concerts happening this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Fri 9/14-Sun 9/16: Court Theatre’s Radio Golf makes a rousing conclusion to August Wilson’s “Century Cycle.” Fri 7:30 PM, Sat-Sun 2 and 7:30 PM, Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis, 773-753-4472, courttheatre.org, $50-$74, $37.50-$55.50 students
This is the fifth installment in our occasional series on poverty and segregation in Chicago’s schools. Castro’s happy about the choice she made. Some prejudices she bore against African-Americans have been dispelled by having them as classmates, she says. Her boyfriend, also a Wells junior, is African-American. She likes her teachers. “A lot of them stay after school to help their students. They make sure you understand a topic before they move on....
Patrick Hull is owner and curator of Vertical Gallery in Ukrainian Village, which exhibits urban, contemporary, and street art. But take a glance at his LinkedIn profile pic, and you might assume otherwise: the former marketing executive sits in an office chair sporting a crisp white shirt and tie, an argyle sweater vest, and a can-do smile. His resumé of past high-powered positions—at Birkenstock USA, Caboodle Cartridge, Woodruff-Sawyer & Co.—is impressive, but what does this conservative-looking dude “with proven ability to grow market share for diverse companies” know about street art?...
What I Love About Concrete Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.
Alison Green Slowdive at the 2014 Pitchfork Music Festival In his Soundboard capsule for Slowdive’s sold-out show on Thursday night at the Vic, Kevin Warwick refers to the band’s 1993 album Souvlaki as their masterpiece. He’s right that it’s the band’s best and probably their most heralded album, but don’t overlook the 1995 album Pygmalion. A weightless, lightly drummed album of looping liquid guitars, echoing female vocals, and painkiller-slow tempos, it foreshadows many experimental-indie artists of the last five years, including Julianna Barwick, Grouper, and countless other bands reliant on breathy female vocal loops and sun-kissed guitar licks....
Richard Rankin The Body What lesson do you learn from sitting down with two of Thrill Jockey‘s hardest and heaviest signees? It’s that a good friend will never let you down.
To Catch a Thief Each Friday, we recommend seven Old Movies to Watch Now, all of which come recommended by one of our critics and can currently be screened online. Read the review, watch the movie, feel accomplished. • To Catch a Thief, one of Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock’s best collaborations.
Q I’m a 25-year-old straight guy. Last month, I was in the locker room at my gym. It was 4 AM, and I was the only one around. I was getting ready to leave, when I noticed someone exiting the showers. He kinda caught me looking (he was very well endowed), and I quickly turned my head, embarrassed. About 20 seconds later, he came around the corner and said, “Hey, how ya doin’?...
Pianist and composer David Moore is hardly alone in his love of American minimalism (particularly the hypnotically repetitive constructions of Steve Reich), but with his project Bing & Ruth he replaces that aesthetic’s often mathematical precision with something more fluid and human. On Bing & Ruth’s third and most recent album, No Home of the Mind (4AD), the group’s sound is at its leanest yet. As usual, Moore’s arpeggiated piano patterns cascade so rapidly that they almost blur into striated long tones, becoming graceful, billowing sheets of sound whose risings and fallings border on new age territory....
Turn it up to 11 with Spinal Tap. Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.
Alison Eden Spray Paint Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.
Every city has its own exportable signature-food cliches. We have our deep dish. Philly has cheesesteaks. Seattle has . . . teriyaki. But so far the ubiquity of grilled and sweetly glazed proteins in the Emerald City, a Korean-Japanese fusion born in the 70s, hasn’t spread too far beyond the west coast. That’s beginning to change with Glaze Teriyaki, a New York-based chain fronted by a native Seattleite, with branches in San Francisco and (soon) Madison....
“Keep your sisters close/ You gotta keep your sisters close,” backup singers breathe into the retro-90s R&B chorus on Natalie Prass’ “Sisters.” In line with the title of her new album, The Future and the Past, the Virginia singer-songwriter couches her up-to-the-minute anti-Trump feminism in sounds inspired by the music of an earlier era. The album is swathed in 80s Janet Jackson-style beats and Mariah Carey-quality hooks, summoning the spirit of iconic pop divas to help us boogie and twirl in the face of the rolling political apocalypse....
