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Film This week's movie action

Posted by J.R. Jones on Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 9:00 AM

Careful—spiritual epiphany in progress

This week Ben Sachs reviews House of Pleasures, Bertrand Bonello's French drama about a bordello at the turn of the 20th century; it opens Friday for a week-long run at Gene Siskel Film Center. Like the critic Walter Benjamin, writes Sachs, Bonello tries "to achieve spiritual epiphany through engagement with the material world." I suppose if you're going to do this, there are worse places to start than a French bordello.

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Soul Week / Music / Politics My playlist of political soul

Posted by Mick Dumke on Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 8:00 AM

Nina Simone

The best soul isn’t always about girls, boys, love, longing, hotness, and heartbreak. Though I can’t hear enough versions of “The Tracks of My Tears,” and it’s impossible for me to tire of Solomon Burke singing about when my baby leaves me all alone, or Aretha assuring me she’ll never love another man the way she loves me, or Isaac Hayes hollering at that girl to walk on by, or—I mean, there’s one after another that makes you really feel , even more deeply than you were already feeling, what it means to dig somebody.

Still, soul developed along with the civil rights movement, so it should go without saying that some of the best freaking music ever made on this planet is driven by social and political commentary—a love for the world combined with a prophetic indictment of its evils and a vow to keep on keeping on.

As always, the music really does the talking and the teaching, so let me turn to it. Here’s a playlist of some of my favorite political soul cuts—that is, my favorites at the moment, since tomorrow I may have a whole new list. This one’s skewed toward the 70s, but then again, so am I.

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Mudville / Sports Blackhawks deep-sixed

Posted by Ted Cox on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 4:44 PM

Wikimedia Commons

The Blackhawks were supposed to go to Colorado to get well Tuesday — kind of like a visit to The Magic Mountain. But instead things only got worse.

The Hawks scored first, to open the second period, but then gave up two quick ones. Patrick Kane stopped the bleeding with a backhand, but the third period saw the Avalanche bury the Hawks with three goals, the last an empty-netter. It was the Hawks' sixth straight loss, which of course means they remain winless four games into the demanding nine-game road trip they have to open the second half after the all-star game.

The disturbing thing, though, looking at the so-called highlights, was that all of Colorado's first three goals came on sloppy turnovers. Points off turnovers isn't usually a statistic kept in hockey, but the Hawks are making an unfortunate case for it.

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Visual Art Mart kills Art Chicago

Posted by Deanna Isaacs on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 4:03 PM

Is there a white flag waving over the Merchandise Mart? Yesterday the Mart abruptly and briefly posted an announcement that Art Chicago (or Next Art Chicago, as they were calling it), scheduled for April 27-29, has been canceled, forever.

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I Saw You More I Saw Yous!

Posted by Sam Worley on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 4:00 PM

Johnny Sampson

For this week’s cover story we sifted through about a year’s worth of I Saw Yous, and we found some real gems, a few of which we persuaded Johnny Sampson to illustrate. We also did a little embroidery of our own, and responded to the ads in whatever way felt most appropriate—emoticons, light verse, heavy sarcasm. Now, as Kevin Warwick explained yesterday, we’re inviting you to do the same in the comments section. I started to dig through the archives but realized a couple of recent I Saw Yous were as intriguing as anything we’d seen—here’s a back-and-forth that revolves around some dude’s mustache. You’ll notice that the location listing for the second one is “The Reader.” This Reader? I dunno! Are the calls coming from inside the building?

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Media / Politics / News Bites Alinsky and Terkel, talking

Posted by Michael Miner on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 3:18 PM

Republicans from Newt Gingrich on down who have been trying to hang Saul Alinsky on Barack Obama are handicapped by their apparent failure to have any idea who it is they're talking about.

Alinsky was a community organizer born and raised in Chicago who worked closely with friends in high places in the Catholic Church. On what was probably his last visit to Chicago before he died in 1972, Alinsky appeared at the First Unitarian Church of Chicago, spoke sympathetically of the middle class and dismissively of demonstrators, and said the only way to change the system is from within it. He also spoke about demonizing the opposition. An organizer can't afford to grant that the enemy is 45 percent good and 55 percent bad, he said, because "people won't put themselves on the line for 10 percent."

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Religion / Onstage / Performing Arts / Dance The latest Reader performing arts reviews and previews

Posted by Sharon Lurye on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 2:45 PM

Michael Brosilow
Hesperia

Shame is an overwhelming emotion. When it mixes with religion, it becomes an explosive force. Two plays this week go right ahead and light the fuse: Hesperia and Disgrace. In the former, a porn star joins an evangelical community, hoping to regain her innocence. In the latter, a corporate lawyer tries to run as far away from his Muslim upbringing as he can. Reader critic Zac Thompson recommends Hesperia, saying that playwright Randall Colburn paints his characters as, well, real characters, rather than chick tract stereotypes.

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Paranormal / Science Feline fears, confirmed

Posted by Sam Worley on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 2:17 PM

Holy fuck, it’s true—my cat might be the end of me. And yours, perhaps, could be the end of you. In the March 2012 issue of the Atlantic (h/t the Awl, number one source for cat news on the Internet), Kathleen McAuliffe reports on Czech scientist Jaroslav Flegr, who researches Toxoplasma gondii—you know, the cat shit-borne parasite that causes toxoplasmosis? Flegr is unusually intimate with the parasite because he’s got it. It occurred to him that this might be the case 30 years ago, when he read about a flatworm parasite that uses an ant to get itself inside a sheep’s stomache. Jagr realized that his behavior “shared similarities with that of the reckless ant,” writes McAuliffe: He stepped into moving traffic. He spoke his mind in a communist country. He wasn’t bothered by gunfire.

Was he infected with a mind-controlling parasite? He was!

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Crickets / Music This week on the B Side

Posted by Miles Raymer on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 1:31 PM

My interview with Ninja from South African zef-rap phenomenon Die Antwoord for this week's Reader was one of the most grueling transcription jobs I've ever done, thanks to his thick accent, the speed at which he speaks, and the extent to which he will expound on the questions asked of him—not to mention the quality of the phone connection to Johannesburg via a three-way call through a publicist's office in New York. (If you ever interview him, plan on five to seven times the amount of time you'd normally give yourself to transcribe.) But the story of Die Antwoord making a million dollars off of Interscope, then walking away owning the album the label bankrolled? It's wonderful and worth the effort.

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Twitter

LATENT_DESIGN: Another causality of the #Chicago #art #wars RT @Ra_Joy: Mart kills Art Chicago http://t.co/newxpUtj
9:02 am on Friday, February 10 retweet
ericgewiz: And speaking of @annaclyne, check out this profile of her from the Chicago Reader: http://t.co/83DXOqKe
9:01 am on Friday, February 10 retweet
Ra_Joy: Mart kills Art Chicago http://t.co/NymbYuY3
8:59 am on Friday, February 10 retweet
chicagonewsnow: My playlist of political soul http://t.co/irp5AVls #chicago
8:59 am on Friday, February 10 retweet
richsullivan: Facebook can maybe wreck your life http://t.co/Ci3IMn9v via @mshalhoup #sm
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