Silence Once Begun, Chicagoan Jesse Ball’s fourth novel, is a great page-turner. I say this in part because the simple language, the spareness of the exposition, and the systematic implementation of a blueprint the reader is given at the outset are as hypnotic as any metronome. I also say it because there’s very little on each page. The expansive margins and blank pages between frequent chapter breaks push the reader swiftly forward....
Less than 24 hours before its splashy debut party at Logan Arcade last month, VEC9 caught fire. Literally. The arcade game’s three creators were busy showing it off to the arcade bar’s enthusiastic staff when a crusty wire shorted and blew a transformer, setting some of the internal machinery ablaze. VEC9’s key component is a rickety brand of technology not seen in arcade games in a generation: a vector monitor....
“She’s back, she’s dead, and she thinks we’re still dating!” shouts Anton Yelchin with an irrepressible gleam in his eye about a half hour into Burying the Ex, a genial horror comedy now available to rent at Redbox kiosks. That moment pretty much sums up the plot and tone of the movie. No matter how lowbrow or silly the material gets, everyone seems to be having a good time in Ex, and no wonder: it’s the first feature in more than five years to be directed by Joe Dante (Gremlins, Small Soldiers), one of the most fun-loving filmmakers alive....
Laura Colella in Breakfast With Curtis Breakfast With Curtis There I go again, making the movie sound like something it’s not. Curtis is hardly a public service announcement—rather, it’s the freshest American comedy to play Chicago so far this year. One scene in the film for which I’m especially grateful (and which the pleasant weather has made me think about the most) comes in the second half. Two of Curtis’s bohemian neighbors (played by Colella and Adele Parker) decide to celebrate their elderly landlady’s birthday by throwing a tea party in the backyard....
, a George Sanders vehicle that centers on a hostage crisis at the Los Angeles Public Library.) And as an added bonus, everything in Noir City will screen from 35-millimeter. Another compelling rarity in this year’s Noir City is the 1954 drama Drive a Crooked Road, which screens tomorrow at 4:45 PM. Written by a young Blake Edwards and directed by the underrated Richard Quine (Bell Book and Candle, Strangers When We Meet), the film stars Mickey Rooney as a mechanic who agrees to serve as a getaway driver in a robbery after he falls in love with a gangster’s girlfriend....
A tagline on one of the promotional posters for the new (as of last month) season of HBO’s True Detective says, “We get the world we deserve.” Season two is set primarily in Vinci, a fictional armpit of southern California where the industrial waste flows like wine and every person in power has his slimy fingers in one criminal conspiracy or another. They’re scummy people, and Vinci is the scummy world they deserve....
Three years ago Brooklyn-based artist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh started a mural project to bring attention to the street harassment of women. The series, “Stop Telling Women to Smile,” features the stoic faces of those who’ve felt uncomfortable and unsafe while walking their city’s streets. The latest addition to the series, commissioned by Columbia College, includes the faces of local women peering out over the corner of Eighth and Wabash. “It happens everywhere,” Fazlalizadeh says of catcalling and other forms of verbal harassment toward women....
In his liner-note essay for the new Bach Trios (Nonesuch) pianist and composer Timo Andres writes of Bach’s work, “Part of the utility of his music is its protean adaptability to any number of instrumental combinations; the labor of performing is divided easily into voices or parts, each a satisfying narrative thread on its own.” Indeed, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, bassist Edgar Meyer, and mandolinist Chris Thile traverse a variety of works the composer originally penned for different instruments....
Macall B. Polay Sophie Turner and Peter Dinklage in season four of Game of Thrones If there’s a thing the makers of Game of Thrones do well—and they do a lot of things well—it’s juggling an impossible number of characters and story lines, and occupying all corners of the realm, without creating something that’s disjointed, rushed, or gives short shrift to anything or anyone in particular. Jaime, plenty worse for the wear, has returned to Westeros, which he probably regrets because everyone is treating him like a real piece of shit....
The Chef: Lee Kuebler (Milwalky Trace)The Challenger:Zoe Schor (Ada St.)The Ingredient: Goat testicles In terms of cuisine, Kuebler says, goat testicles are a lot like sweetbreads: “they’re similar in color, texture, flavor . . . they’re really mild.” He took inspiration from the way he ate bull testicles when he visited his grandpa’s farm in western Nebraska as a child: breaded and panfried and placed between slices of white bread with mayonnaise....
Courtesy of Blake Blake Local rapper Blake Gardner spent years releasing music as Jams Dean, but recently he decided to dump the name and just go by Blake—just Blake. Yesterday he dropped his first video since changing his name and it’s for “Your Boyfriend Sucks,” a charming tune about the joy and anguish of being a lady’s side-guy. The video is pretty delightful—in it the MC parties down with local rock outfit Rabble Rabble, shares some soft-serve ice cream with Trannika Rex at Tastee Freez, and gets pissed off when he stumbles upon Trannika and the titular boyfriend sharing a treat at Bang Bang Pie....
Adam Mohundro and Christian Dawson launched Tinkerbelles in 2013 following the breakup of their previous group, Gypsyblood, which specialized in nervy indie rock that could fill up your chest like a hot-air balloon. Tinkerbelles’ ambition is similar, and they achieve it with the bare necessities—Mohundro plays bass, Dawson sits behind the kit, both sing, and they string together gigantic, catchy songs with what feels like minimal effort. On their debut full-length, Confetti at the Bottom (released by local collective Teepeespeek), Tinkerbelles use copious reverb to create space in their compact melodies, allowing songs to land with tectonic force while hewing to simple, succinct templates....
One of the major plot points of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon’s 2000 novel that’s just been anointed this year’s One Book, One Chicago, involves the Golem of Prague, a giant created from clay sometime in the 16th century and brought to life by Rabbi Judah Loew by some obscure and ancient magic in order to protect the Jews of the city. “As he watched Joe stand, blazing, on the fire escape, Sammy felt an ache in his chest that turned out to be, as so often occurs when memory and desire conjoin with a transient effect of the weather, the pang of creation....
Revolution’s 4th Year Beer by candlelight On Saturday Revolution Brewing threw itself a huge sold-out birthday party at its Kedzie tap room and brewery, which opened in May 2012, a little more than two years after its Logan Square brewpub. The 4th Year Crazy Party, as it was called, featured 13 food-and-beer pairings, showing off not just the talents of Revolution’s brewers but also the considerable ingenuity of the kitchen staff at the pub....
Ricky B The addictive, hyped-up party rap sound from New Orleans known as bounce has been around long before Big Freedia scored her own Fuse show and toured with the reunited Postal Service. One of the players in the bounce scene back in the 90s was Ricky Bickham, aka Ricky B, who was rumored to have died in the aughts after he stopped recording and performing in 2001. Bickham returned to the stage in 2010, and last month he made his first trip to Chicago to play songs off Urban Unrest and Sinking City’s 2013 Ricky B compilation B Is for Bounce: New Orleans Rap Classics 1994-95....
I’m a junkie for newspaper dramas, from Park Row to All the President’s Men to Shattered Glass, and Spotlight promises to be a good or even a great one, with a gifted writer-director and a powerhouse cast. Thomas McCarthy—whose dramas The Station Agent (2003), The Visitor (2007), and Win Win (2011) mark him as one of the more original voices in American indie cinema—focuses on the Boston Globe‘s “Spotlight” investigative team, whose January 2002 series “Abuse in the Catholic Church” exposed the Boston archdiocese’s harboring of pedophile priests....
Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. Some of the opening’s attendees did dress to the nines, including the event’s organizer, Kristen Kaza of No Small Plans Productions and a Siskel Center council member, who was decked out in a gorgeous vintage jumpsuit herself. Another style maven was Darlene Schuff, pictured above. Part of the Advanced Style entourage—she showed me proof on her iPhone—Darlene looked like she was plucked right from the movie....
Scoring some big stars, year five of the two-day Moonrunners Festival is a packed affair that will showcase alt-country, rockabilly, bluegrass, outlaw country, and every other nook of Americana and roots music—all of it soaked with a beardy, tattooed flavor. Friday headliner the Legendary Shack Shakers have now been around long enough to justify their name—even as age has left them undimmed—while Saturday brings Shooter Jennings, son of Waylon, who’s an actor and a historian as well as a restless musician who won’t stick to one genre....
QTwo questions, Dan. Most gay men don’t mind seeing girls with their straight boyfriends in gay dance/party bars and clubs, BROS, but girls and unavailable/apprehensive straight boys ruin the vibe in darker, sleazier gay pickup joints. So stick to the party palaces (dance floors and drag shows), avoid the pickup joints (hard rock and trough urinals), and you’ll be fine. A Bodybuilders grease themselves up with baby oil—which gets all over everything and requires frequent reapplication....
When I read about the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare with what we may as well start calling “Trumpcare,” I called Sandy, my good friend who lives in New York City. In other words, as bad as things are with Obamacare, he’s pretty sure Trump will only make them worse. The most sensible plan for America to adopt would be a single-payer system, where the federal government acts like a middleman, collecting premiums from patients in the form of taxes and paying out bills to health-care providers....
