Picture of the author

James Orbesen

ARTICLES: 11
Lit

Title 13: Good Game Plan, Faulty Execution

Title 13, the debut novel of Michael A. Ferro, has all the trappings of an engaging conspiracy thriller. There are secret internal documents regarding the personal information of US citizens, […]

James Orbesen /
Lit, Reviews

Review: Anne Elizabeth Moore’s Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes

Body Horror, Anne Elizabeth Moore

Much has been made of the importance of the body as a site of social, cultural, and economic forces. From books like Judy Norsigian’s Our Bodies, Ourselves and Dorothy Roberts’ […]

James Orbesen /
Lit, Reviews

Review: Ron Faiola’s Wisconsin Supper Clubs Another Round

Ron Faiola is no stranger to supper clubs, especially those scattered throughout our neighbor state to the north. Wisconsin Supper Clubs: Another Round is his second glossy coffee-table book focusing on […]

James Orbesen /
Lit, Reviews

Book Review: Kevin Smokler’s Brat Pack America

Movies are a global business. This is something close to an axiom given how Hollywood iconography has swaddled the globe. Audiences from Berlin to (formerly) Bombay became acquainted with silver […]

James Orbesen /
Art & Museums, Design, Film & TV

Chicago Ideas Week: The Implications of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) has long been confined to the imagination of science fiction or to the nightmares of popular culture. The concept of a fully formed AI, often incorrectly conflated […]

James Orbesen /
Art & Museums, Lit, Photography

“A Calling, Not a Job” Project&’s Working in America

Chicago icon and national treasure Studs Terkel made a career out of chronicling the stories of others. A new art exhibit, opening September 14th at the Harold Washington Library, is […]

James Orbesen /
Lit, Reviews

Book Review: Jack Pendarvis’ Movie Stars

Author, former columnist, and story editor for the exceptional (and long running) animated series Adventure Time, Jack Pendarvis, has a gift for blunt, ironic, and forceful language. This is on […]

James Orbesen /
Lit, Reviews

826CHI Debuts The Monster Gasped, OMG!

Among the many treasures one could stumble across at this past weekend’s Printer’s Row Lit Fest, one of the finest, and most polyphonic, comes from 826CHI, a literacy and education […]

James Orbesen /
Interviews, Lit

An Interview with Jessa Crispin, the Bookslut

Jessa Crispin, world traveler and occasional Chicago resident recently shuttered her website Bookslut, a review and interview publication that’s been running hot since 2002 (full disclosure: I wrote for Bookslut […]

James Orbesen /
Comedy, Stages, Theater

This Great Nation, Much Enduring by Chicago Slam Works: Speaking Politics

With the election season finally heading into an actual election after months and months of primary contests, director J.W. Basilo and head writer Shelley Elaine Geiszler’s hybrid production put on […]

James Orbesen /
Stages

In The Heat of the Night by Shattered Globe: Both Timely and Timeless

Picture of the author

In Matt Pelfrey’s adaptation of the famous John Ball novel, In the Heat of the Night, starring Manny Buckley and Joseph Wiens as the antagonists, and directed by Louis Contey, appearances and […]

James Orbesen /