Soulful Robots On The Gig Poster Of The Week
ARTIST: Scott Williams SHOW: Supreme La Rock, Paola Puente, and the Soul Summit DJs at Double Door on Sat 9/19 MORE INFO: scottwilliamsdesign.com
ARTIST: Scott Williams SHOW: Supreme La Rock, Paola Puente, and the Soul Summit DJs at Double Door on Sat 9/19 MORE INFO: scottwilliamsdesign.com
Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.
The Air and Water Show flies through town this weekend, but there’s plenty of other things to do. Here’s some of what we recommend: Sat 8/19: Former colleagues and friends speak about the vaunted late film critic Roger Ebert—friendly foil to Gene Siskel on TV’s Siskel and Ebert—at his Chicago Literary Hall of Fame Induction hosted by the American Writers Museum (180 N. Michigan). Ebert’s widow, Chaz Ebert, accepts the award on his behalf....
Ever since some D.C. punks rejected the hardcore aesthetic they brought to bear in the mid-80s, emo has been about change. It’s morphed with each subsequent wave while retaining an essence that connects the dominant contemporary vision back to the roots of the family tree. D.C. duo the Obsessives are as much a representation of a band ready and willing to muck it through the trenches of emo’s rising fourth wave as they are one that may soon front the genre at large....
ARTIST: George Hansen SHOW: Bill MacKay performs during the John Hulburt record release party at Logan Hardware on Sat 9/12
Sun-Times Media Peter Lisagor Is it a time to worry? Sue Stevens sounds just as blase. She joined the Headline Club in 1969, she’s a former president, and at the moment she’s regional director of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Headline Club’s parent group. She’s seen it all. “With journalists it’s like herding cats,” she tells me. “You don’t know until the last minute what you’ve got.” Ever since the bottom fell out of (1) mainstream journalism and (2) the economy, Stevens has been expecting a Lisagor contest to come along that nobody would enter because nobody could afford to, not even the handful of journalists with actual jobs....
Whether you’re into nude cycling or peculiar musical gizmos, there’s no shortage of happenings this weekend. (And, hey, there’s always Blues Fest!) Sat 6/10: No shirt, no pants, no problem. The World Naked Bike Ride is coming to Chicago. Celebrate human-powered transportation and body positivity by cycling through the city unclothed and unembarrassed. A meet-up location will be disclosed in the days leading up to the event. 6-8 PM
In this week’s issue I have some choice words for The Peanuts Movie, the new 3-D feature starring Charles Schulz’s neurotic children and their borderline psychotic dog. Speaking of canines, Ben Sachs takes a look at Heart of a Dog, a new essay film by electronic musician Laurie Anderson. And we’ve got a review of Trumbo, with Bryan Cranston chasing an Oscar in the role of blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo....
In early 2007 a little restaurant called Baccala opened in Wicker Park, inspired by chef John Bubala’s visit to Piemonte, in northwestern Italy, one of the greatest food regions in the world. Bound on three sides by the Alps, it has given the planet a lot of treasure: revered wines like Barolo, Barbaresco, and Asti; cheeses like robiola and Castelmagno; egg-rich pastas like agnolotti and tajarin; classic dishes like vitello tonnato and the magisterial bollito misto; and the king of the Tuber genus, the white truffle of Alba....
Usama Alshaibi of the Chicago Underground Film Festival and Carlos Jiménez Flores of the Chicago Latino Film Festival discuss depictions of race and ethnicity in popular media. For Love in the Caserio Adapted from a play by Antonio Morales, this 2013 drama transplants Romeo and Juliet to a Puerto Rican ghetto, with the handsome young lovers (Anoushka Medina and Xavier Antonio Morales) divided by feuding drug crews. Director Luis Enrique Rodriguez shot the movie in the shabby Llorens neighborhood near Ocean Park, recruiting some players from the area, and the montage sequences offer some vibrant local color....
Peter Gannushkin/Downtownmusic.net Peter Evans This Sunday afternoon International Contemporary Ensemble presents the latest event in its OpenICE concert series at the Chicago Cultural Center. ICE, of course, is one the most adventurous and accomplished exponents of contemporary composition, but this weekend’s concert veers toward raucous improvised music with a duet performance by trumpeter Peter Evans and pianist Cory Smythe. Both musicians are equally at home in many disparate contexts—from harrowing modern composition to modern jazz—and this event, billed as Early Jazz to White Noise, promises to draw on those expansive abilities....
Carol Friedman Jessye Norman 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.
KeySmart started as a side project for CEO Michael Tunney, according to KeySmart’s sales manager—and Michael’s brother—Kevin Tunney. Sales later became too much for Michael to handle alone, so Kevin joined in to help. “There’s still more international markets to expand into, but the goal is to make the company just KeySmart,” Kevin said. “In general, keys won’t be around forever, whether that be in five,10, or 20 years. ....
What better way to kick off the Halloween weekend than watching a disgusting, gory video from bloody death-metal staples Cannibal Corpse? Today’s 12 O’Clock Track is “Kill or Become,” which is taken from the band’s latest album, last year’s A Skeletal Domain. “Kill or Become,” of course, is about murdering hordes of zombies—the song’s brutal chorus erupts with, “Fire up the chainsaw! Hack their fucking heads off”—and in the video, the lyrics come to life in all their vile glory....
Stonehearst Asylum In this week’s issue, Ben Sachs reviews the old-school gothic thriller Stonehearst Asylum, with Ben Kingsley and Michael Caine; adapted from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether,” it’s the tale of a young psychiatrist who arrives at a remote mental hospital to learn that the doctor in charge allows even the most unhinged patients to mingle freely with the hospital staff. The movie opens Friday at South Barrington 30; there are actually 30 screening rooms in this place, which probably makes it more of a madhouse than the one in the movie....
AFP PHOTO/THE NEW YORK TIMES/DOUG MILLS Dean Baquet Former colleagues generally speak highly of Dean Baquet, who just became executive editor of the New York Times as executive editor Jill Abramson was tossed out on her ear by publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. last week. Baquet joined the Times after being fired as editor of the Tribune Company’s Los Angeles Times. Earlier, he was a Tribune reporter. I apparently saw Baquet on a bad day....
It’s been a busy few days on the local opera beat, starting with a little shocker: over the weekend, Chicago Opera Theater announced that its innovative, high-profile artistic director, Andreas Mitisek, will leave the company when his contract expires at end of August. Mitisek will have an ongoing relationship with COT as a guest conductor and director. And, according to Clayton, the company “will continue to discuss coproductions with Long Beach Opera,” which Mitisek also heads....
In the last few days, I’ve heard a lot of people say there’s no way Mayor Emanuel would have defeated Jesus “Chuy” Garcia had voters been able to see the video of police officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. This is something I know a little about—as I’m the guy who unsuccessfully begged and pleaded for voters to oust Rahm and Mayor Daley, for that matter. By February, word had already emerged about the tape of the shooting....
ALEXANDER RICHTER Action Bronson 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.
CHANDLER WEST/SUN-TIMES 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.