Review: Lyric Opera’s Hip-Hopera The Factotum Is a Cut Above
Barbershops and beauty salons are important cultural hubs for communities of color. “In my day, a barber was more than just somebody who sit around in a FUBU shirt with […]
Review: Witnessing the Swan Song of Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill
Quite a few people say they love the music of Billie Holiday, having heard only God Bless the Child or—the song controversial in its time—Strange Fruit. Those songs cannot come […]
Review: Close Explores Sexuality, Masculinity and Tragedy at a Fragile Crossroads in Teen Life
The second feature film from Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont, Close may be the most devastating film of recent memory, one that grapples with very serious, very painful subjects with such […]
Review: With Clunky, Heavy-Handed Tension, Knock at the Cabin Is Another Miss from M. Night Shyamalan
Filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable) has been struggling a bit on the creative front of late. Although his 2015 film The Visit was a hoot, what he […]
Review: Wuthering Heights at Chicago Shakes Deftly Adapts Brontë’s Dense Novel with Innovation, Palpable Passion
Since its publication in 1847, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights has been adapted into numerous film versions, but only a few brave souls have tried to wrangle her complicated, multi-generational story […]
Dispatch: Puppet Fest Wraps Up With Shows Garish, Gorgeous and Grand Guignol
Chicago’s 5th annual International Puppet Theater Festival wrapped up this weekend after presenting more than 100 puppet productions and events around the city. The final production was an inventive staging […]
Interview: Filmmaker Jason Eisener on Kids vs. Aliens, Alien Creature Design and All That Slime
In 2007, writer/director/editor Jason Eisener won a contest for directing the best grindhouse trailer for the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino collaboration Grindhouse. The trailer was for a fake film called Hobo […]
Review: Squirrel Flower Was So Good at Sleeping Village, It Hurt My Feelings
Guest review by Lorenzo Zenitsky. My first Squirrel Flower concert and my first time at Sleeping Village were a tandem success story for the ages, and by ages, I mean […]
Review: At Goodman Theatre, the ripple, the wave that carried me home Dramatizes Racial Injustice Through Swimming Pool Segregation
“Water is a complicated element. It heals, destroys, rescues, erases. It drowns. It saves. It holds memory. It washes away pain….” That statement by Janice, the narrator in the ripple, […]
Review: Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel Is a Feast for the Senses at Lyric Opera
What do you get when you mix Englebert Humperdinck, a visual homage to German expressionism, Weimar decadence, and gorgeous singing? The answer is Hansel and Gretel at the Lyric Opera. […]
Premier: LOTEC’s Driving “Won’t You” From Their First New Album Since 2001!
LOTEC began their existence as Land Of The El Caminos, and remained active through the late ’90s and into the aughts. They garnered acclaim for their hard-charging sound, grafting Fanelli’s […]
Review: The Man Who Created a Funny Flat Planet—Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes, by Rob Wilkins
Chicago doesn’t play much of a role in Rob Wilkins’s biography of his boss, Terry Pratchett, the British mega-selling author of the fantasy-science fiction Discworld series whose life was cut […]