Chicago Reader: Our Town

A �Lost Boy� Finds His Calling

mail@chicagoreader.com (Ed M. Koziarski) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0600

Brutally driven from Sudan as a child, Garang Mayuol is bringing clean water to the suffering villagers back home. A new documentary chronicles his journey. by Ed M. Koziarski Garang Mayuol was in the cow pasture with his father when the shooting started. He was five years old, living in Lang, a tiny rural community in southern Sudan. It was 1987, four years into the second Sudanese civil war. The Arab Muslim majority government in Khartoum was cracking down on the mostly black Christian and animist separatists in the south, and government-backed militias descended on Lang with devastating force. Mayuol and his father fled on foot. "My dad said,…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Feminists on Wheels

mail@chicagoreader.com (Jessica Hopper) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0500

Road tripping across the country to find out if the F word still has meaning by Jessica Hopper In some ways, Nona Willis Aronowitz didn't get to know her mother until after she lost her to lung cancer in late 2006. Ellen Willis was one of the first female rock critics, and notably the first pop critic of either gender at the New Yorker. Her influence on the form was substantial, but she was at least as well known as a radical feminist—she cofounded the "women's lib" group Redstockings with Shulamith Firestone in 1969 and No More Nice…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Walgreens Can't Kill Quirk

mail@chicagoreader.com (Cliff Doerksen) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0500

Ousted by the chain, Oak Park's independent Sears Pharmacy keeps its sense of humor. by Cliff Doerksen The sign dominates the southeast corner of Oak Park Avenue and Madison Street in Oak Park. Rendered in that variably sized sans serif font familiar to anyone who's ever walked past a supermarket, it reads: We thank the Village and All its Residents for Supporting Us on this corner for over 60 years. IT HAS BEEN AN HONOR AND PRIVILEGE. THE NEW TENANT HAS A WONDERFUL PLAN TO TRANSFORM THIS CORNER. THEY ARE INVESTING IN OUR TOWN AND WE SHOULD…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The Making of a Chicago Outfit

mail@chicagoreader.com (Ed M. Koziarski) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0500

How six recent Columbia College grads got Hollywood muscle to help them make their mob movie by Ed M. Koziarski Chris Charles says he warned his star up front: "But I don't think it really registered till his first day of shooting in downtown Chicago." Charles had cast Frank Vincent as the lead in Chicago Overcoat, an independent drama that will receive its world premiere Saturday, October 10, at the Chicago International Film Festival. Known almost exclusively for playing gangsters—including New York crime boss Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos and Billy Batts, who ends up in a trunk in Goodfellas—Vincent,…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

The Quiet Disaster

mail@chicagoreader.com (Ed M. Koziarski) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Tracy Ullman documented the Cedar Rapids floods - and the city's struggle to right itself long after most of the cameras had left. by Ed M. Koziarski Tracy Ullman got a call in June 2008 from her best friend's mother, who lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. "She said, 'It's raining horribly out here—you should come out and make a documentary,'" says Ullman, a Chicagoan and documentary film producer. Ullman was hesitant. "Documentaries are time-consuming and expensive," she says. "It seemed like a lot, without any basis for a budget." But Ullman's best friend, Audree Larson, a photographer who owns and operates a portrait studio in Cedar Rapids…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

Don�t Blame the Managers

mail@chicagoreader.com (Ted Cox) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:00:00 -0500

The Cubs and Sox both fizzled this year; sometimes in baseball it just doesn�t happen. by Ted Cox When the White Sox acquired Jake Peavy, shortly before the interleague trade deadline on July 31, he was supposed to be the addition that would make them serious World Series contenders. Yet by the time he actually debuted on September 19, not only the team's championship hopes but their mere playoff aspirations were all but dashed. It was that sort of baseball season on both sides of town. It was the summer that wasn't. Peavy's Chicago debut, which turned out…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

William Burroughs, Unabridged

mail@chicagoreader.com (Ed M. Koziarski) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 04:00:00 -0500

Jonathan Leyser works to finish the first documentary covering William Burroughs's entire life. by Ed M. Koziarski Jonathan "Yony" Leyser's brief career has been all about celebrating outsiders, in sordid but sympathetic portraits of transgender and anarchist communes, addicts and migrant workers. Now the 24-year-old filmmaker and photographer, who's been kicked out of two art schools, is nearly finished with an ambitious assessment of perhaps the greatest literary outlaw of the 20th century. Leyser's William S. Burroughs: A Man Within is the first full-length documentary to look at the entire life of the Beat and punk icon,…]]> [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]