Film
Friday, July 30, 2010
Chicagoland, Food Chain, Lit & Lectures, Film, Music, Food & Drink, Performing Arts Dinner & a Show: Friday 7/30
Posted by Whet Moser on Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 2:38 PM
- Spike & Mike Present New Generation Animation
Show: Spike & Mike Present New Generation Animation "These 19 short animations place a lower premium on grotesquery than the usual "Spike & Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation" package—most of them would be rated PG—but the artistic quality is as high as I remember from the Spike & Mike imprimatur in its heyday," writes Cliff Doerksen.
Midnight, Music Box, 3733 N. Southport Ave., 773-871-6604, musicboxtheatre.com
Dinner: Cafe Orchid "When Kurt Serpin says he’s cooking Ottoman cuisine, he doesn’t mean the extravagant feasts of the sultans, but he is talking about the traditional Turkish cuisine that evolved from the sultans’ expansive palace kitchens," writes Mike Sula.
1746 W. Addison St., 773-327-3808, cafeorchid.com
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Lit & Lectures, Film, Free Shit African Women and Science Fiction
Posted by Ed M. Koziarski on Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 2:26 PM
- Kudzani Moswela in "Pumzi"
35 years after the "Water War" has wiped out all plant and animal life on Earth, a woman (Kudzani Moswela) ventures out of her technological prison into the barren dessert, following her vision of a lone surviving tree, in Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu's (From a Whisper) 23-minute 2010 Sundance Selection Pumzi.
Pumzi screens for free, Sunday at 2 p.m. in the African Women and Science Fiction program at the DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th St.
The screening is part of the Illinois Humanities Council's Public Square Civic Cinema series and the African Jubilee Film Festival, co-presented by portoluz and UIC's African American Studies and Gender and Women's Studies departments.
Nigerian American YA novelist and Chicago State University professor Nnedi Okorafor (Zahrah the Windseeker) reads from her works and hosts a discussion after the screening.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Film, Food & Drink, Environment Fresh
Posted by Ed M. Koziarski on Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 1:31 PM
- Will Allen in "Fresh"
Milwaukee urban farmer Will Allen, Virginia sustainable farmer Joel Salatin, and In Defense of Food author Michael Pollan are among those challenging the industrialization of American agriculture and its resultant "food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity" in ana Sofie joanes's documentary Fresh.
It opens a weeklong run Friday at 8:45 p.m. the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St. Board members of Evanston/Skokie-based Talking Farm hold a Q&A after the Saturday 5:45 p.m. screening.
Chicagoland, Food Chain, Film, Music, Food & Drink, Performing Arts Dinner & a Show: Wednesday 7/28
Posted by Whet Moser on Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 12:11 PM
- Natacha Atlas
Show: Natacha Atlas Raised by an Arabic father and an English mother in a Moroccan neighborhood in the suburbs of Brussels, Natacha Atlas has spent her entire career exploring collisions of Western and Middle Eastern music. On her most recent album, Ana Hina, her singing is intimate, conversational, sometimes even hushed, and the restrained instrumental backdrops—compact string arrangements, tinkling piano, gently percolating Middle Eastern percussion, reeling Paris-cafe accordion, slaloming ney and clarinet—make it possible to hear a richness and variety of tone in her voice that was sometimes concealed in her earlier, dance-oriented work.
8:30 PM, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln, 773-728-6000, oldtownschool.org, $5 suggested donation.
Dinner: Los Nopales The grilled tilapia tacos at this low-key storefront are so good, so bright and fresh, that at these prices—$5.95 for three tacos ($6.95 at dinner)—it seems like you're stealing. The sweet, rich coffee flan we finished with was also a special—one of the friendly owners told us the chef, her husband, is constantly experimenting. That's the kind of thing you'd expect at a place far more swank; to find it in a modest storefront is beguiling.
4544 N. Western Ave., 773-334-3149, losnopalesrestaurant.com
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Chicagoland, Food Chain, Film, Music, Food & Drink, Performing Arts Dinner & a Show: Tuesday 7/27
Posted by Whet Moser on Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 12:09 PM
- El G
Show: Zizek Club Summer Tour The musicians associated with the Buenos Aires-based Zizek group—ZZK for short—start with hip-hop, house, and electro, add bits of dub, trance, and dancehall plus a dash of punk's turn-it-up energy, and then bend them all to fit the rhythmic structure of South American cumbia. "The result is a spark-throwing mass of sound that evokes fantasies of an El Dorado of Rave far below the equator," writes Miles Raymer. The bill, headliner first, is Tremor, El Remolon, Chancha Via Circuito, and El G.
10 PM, Beauty Bar, 1444 W. Chicago, 312-226-8828, $5.
Dinner: Mexique Imagine the intensity of native Mexican ingredients, finessed with French exuberance, and you have an idea of what you can expect at Mexique. One of the best new Chicago restaurants of 2008.
1529 W. Chicago Ave., 312-850-0288, mexiquechicago.com
Monday, July 26, 2010
Chicagoland, Food Chain, Film, Music, Food & Drink, Performing Arts Dinner & a Show: Monday 7/26
Posted by Whet Moser on Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 12:17 PM
- Bomba Estereo
Show: Bomba Estereo "This excellent combo, led by guitarist, bassist, and programmer Simon Mejia, emerged in 2005 from the electronica scene in Bogota, Colombia, and developed a frothy, propulsive take on cumbia and champeta (a kind of stew of local, African, and Caribbean styles)," writes Peter Margasak. "Mejia had been working toward this sound for some time, and lead singer Li Saumet turned out to be the key that made everything click."
6:30 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Randolph and Michigan, 312-742-1168, free; also 9 PM, Green Dolphin Street, 2200 N. Ashland, 773-620-7909, $15, $10 in advance, 18+.
Dinner: Kith & Kin Chefs David Carrier and Andrew Brochu both worked with or under Grant Achatz at one time or another—the former first at the French Laundry, then at Trio—though there's little that immediately brings to mind those fine-dining icons. Instead what you have is an attractive and affordable menu served in a room that suggests all of the comforts of neighborhood pubbery without resorting to the usual cliches clumsily adopted from the Irish or British. The best Chicago neighborhood restaurant of 2010.
1119 W. Webster Ave., 773-472-7070
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Chicagoland, Food Chain, Film, Food & Drink, Performing Arts Dinner & a Show: Sunday 7/25
Posted by Whet Moser on Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 10:46 AM
- Human Resources
Show: Human Resources This sharp, convincing, and utterly contemporary political film calls to mind some of Ken Loach's work, full of passion as well as precision. Laurent Cantet's subsequent film, L'Emploi des Temps (Time Out), a prizewinner in Venice, shows an even more masterful grasp of the business world and all that it entails. This filmmaker is definitely someone to get acquainted with.
5:30pm, Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St., 312-846-2600, siskelfilmcenter.org
Dinner: Bijan's Bistro This reincarnation of the venerable late-night hangout Bijan is amazingly unsullied by tourists. Regulars crowd around the gleaming mahogany bar, and Ralf, the courtly host, seems to know half the tables in the joint.
663 N. State St., 312-202-1904, bijansbistro.com
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Chicagoland, Food Chain, Film, Music, Food & Drink, Performing Arts Dinner & a Show: Saturday 7/24
Posted by Whet Moser on Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 12:14 PM
- Michael Brosilow
- Spoiler Alert: Everybody Dies
Show: Spoiler Alert: Everybody Dies Spoiler Alert isn't one of those holy-shit epoch-making Second City shows everybody hopes for. It's modest, amiable, and resolutely conventional at heart. Even, perhaps in unconscious homage to the company's 50th anniversary, a little retro.
8pm, 11pm, Second City, 1616 N. Wells, 312-337-3992, secondcity.com, $22-$27
Dinner: Perennial Seasonally oriented contemporary American restaurant from the team behind Boka and chefs Giuseppe Tentori and Ryan Poli.
1800 N. Lincoln Ave., 312-981-7070, perennialchicago.com
Friday, July 23, 2010
Film, Music Sonic Orphans
Posted by Ed M. Koziarski on Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 2:53 PM
The Nightingale, the Reader's choice for best alternative film venue, is back from hiatus with Sonic Orphans: Lost Music Films 1965-1987, a selection of music shorts shot or found by Los Angeles documentarian and photographer Bill Daniel.
The program includes 1965 news footage of Beatlemania sweeping San Francisco, 1977 performance footage of The Avengers, a 1980 show by Austin punk bands The Huns and Boy Problems, a 1986 clip of Sonic Youth performing in Houston, and footage from a 1987 Butthole Surfers show that Daniel says was "confiscated by the club for on-stage nudity, then inexplicably returned to me months later," plus a Johnny Cash kinoscope and "probably some other curious."
The Blue Ribbon Glee Club, in which Nightingale programmer Christy LeMaster sings, performs after the screening.
It's Sunday at 7 p.m. at 1084 N. Milwaukee. $7-10.
Chicagoland, Food Chain, Film, Music, Food & Drink, Performing Arts Dinner & a Show: Friday 7/23
Posted by Whet Moser on Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 2:05 PM
- The Freshman
Show The Freshman Released in 1925, this classic silent comedy tapped into the mingled envy and resentment many Americans then felt for the privileged few who could afford a higher education: when the bright-eyed innocent arrives at school, he's mercilessly ridden by smug upperclassmen and used as a tackling dummy by the football squad. Part of the Silent Summer Film Festival.
8pm, Portage, 4050 N. Milwaukee Ave., 773-736-4050, portagetheater.org
Dinner: La Peña Jaime Fidel Castillo mans the front of the house at this Portage Park storefront, while his wife, Maria, and her mother, Rosa Sanchez, cook the upscale, coastal Latin fare.
4212 N. Milwaukee Ave., 773-545-7022, lapenachicago.com
