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Music / Post No Bills 12 O'Clock Track: O Têrço, "Flauta"

Posted by Peter Margasak on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 12:00 PM

From the mid- to late 60s, Forma was one of Brazil's best record labels, releasing top-notch bossa nova with a progressive bent. Among the artists in its catalog are Baden Powell, Quarteto em Cy, Moacir Santos, Deodato, and Carlos Lyra. I had no idea O Têrço had also cut music for Forma until Brazilian reissue label Discobertas released a pair of titles by the band in late 2010. O Têrço's music was a long way from bossa nova; they're best known as one of the country's most celebrated prog-rock outfits of the early to mid-70s. But on their self-titled debut for Forma, released in 1970, they hadn't quite reached the heights of heaviness that would soon define them. There's nothing lightweight on the debut, and you can clearly hear the churning of elaborate ideas, but the psych-pop aesthetic isn't too far from what Os Mutantes were putting down a few years earlier. O Têrço still exist, but unless you have a grudge against your ears, I wouldn't bother with their recent recordings.

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Film Oscar-nominated short animations: A Wild Life

Posted by J.R. Jones on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 11:00 AM

All this week I've been reviewing the Oscar nominees for best short animation, which open Friday at Landmark's Century Centre. Check back this time tomorrow for the last installment.

Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby's A Wild Life is one of two Oscar contenders that were funded by the National Film Board of Canada (the other is Patrick Doyon's Dimanche), which only goes to show that, for all the supposed evils of European-style socialism, it certainly has better cartoons. This hand-painted western story is distinguished by its handsome brushwork, which gives a tactile sense of the paint and a fair amount of expression to the simply drawn characters. Like many young Brits at the turn of the 20th century, the hero takes off for Canada in search of adventure, and Forbis and Tilby often frame their period details in static images: clothing, personal items, commercial products. In voice-over the hero explains how the call of the wild keeps pulling him farther west across the continent; all the while, black-and-white titles explain what a comet is. I expected this to end with the cowboy getting hit by the comet, but as it turns out, he is the comet, destined to disintegrate. A clip from the film follows the jump.

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Food Chain / Food & Drink This Week's Food and Drink Events

Posted by Daniel Gerzina on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 10:30 AM

Friday10
At Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar tonight artist and wine buff Thomas Arvid is unveiling three new paintings to go along with a wine dinner featuring California whites and reds and dishes like ahi tuna skewers and petite fillet au poivre. Reservations required. 6:30 PM, Fleming's Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar, 25 E. Ohio, 312-329-9463, $150 per person.

More events after the jump.

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Food Chain / Food & Drink This week in Food & Drink

Posted by Kate Schmidt on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 10:03 AM

Deer Isle shrimp, cauliflower, cuttlefish noodles, chorizo, marcona almonds, and spoon bread

Jen Moran
Deer Isle shrimp, cauliflower, cuttlefish noodles, chorizo, marcona almonds, and spoon bread

Mike Sula reviews Acadia, on the near south side, where Courtright's vet Ryan McCaskey is offering fine dining in which foams, emulsions, powders, and garnishes manage to coalesce and harmonize, adding synergy to dishes rather than seeming like manifestations of technique for its own sake (as he found at Goosefoot last week). McCaskey's aided and abetted by bartender Michael Simon, whose cocktails like the Cognac Dreamsicle—champagne, vermouth, and orange liqueur—and the Amnesiac, made with absinthe ice cubes, may just keep you from the wine list.

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Inside the Reader In this week's Reader: We bother with Valentine's Day

Posted by Tal Rosenberg on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 9:00 AM

In this week's Reader, we caved and did a Valentine's Day issue. But it turned out really well, and Julia Thiel, Kevin Warwick, and Sam Worley did an excellent job putting this feature together. Start at our table of contents page and work your way through—I promise that you will be entertained. Come back to the Bleader this week to submit your own responses to I Saw Yous, and check out Regrets Week, next week's edition of "Variations on a Theme."

Michael Miner expounds on the "connection" between Obama and Saul Alinsky.

In Mudville, Mick Dumke ponders why he roots for losers.

And it might be overkill with the Valentine's Day issue, but just in case, here's Savage Love.

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Soul Week / Music Minnie Riperton's "Reasons"

Posted by Miles Raymer on Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 8:00 AM

The story of Minnie Riperton's life is all kinds of frustrating. Although she possessed one of the most shockingly beautiful voices in the history of pop music—a tender and supple thing that somehow spanned a physically impressive five-octave range—there were only a few years where she was alive and the world at large cared much at all. The Chicago-based psych-pop-rock-soul outfit Rotary Connection that she fronted early in her career wasn't the commercial A-bomb that Marshall Chess presumably was hoping for when he put it together, and her 1970 solo debut, Come to My Garden, was, upon its release, a straight-up flop. (Both Garden and the Rotary Connection catalog have since found a loving audience in the record geek community.) Despite those setbacks fate, Stevie Wonder, and an Epic Records intern managed to conspire to produce 1974's Perfect Angel—its breakout single "Lovin' You" brought Riperton to the level of fame that she deserved, which she enjoyed until her death from cancer just five years later.

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I Saw You I saw you respond to an I Saw You

Posted by Kevin Warwick on Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 6:15 PM

Johnny Sampson

Go ahead and tell me that you've never trolled the Reader's I Saw Yous or Craigslist's Missed Connections, and I probably won't believe you. What if the attractive girl sitting across from you on the Blue Line happened to notice your rugged good looks and wanted to offer a suggestive glance or two over a cup of coffee? It would be a shame for you not to know.

Or maybe you're not even searching for Internet love but simply playing the voyeur and dreaming up responses to side-pocket attempts at romance. Either way, I bet you've clicked through posts that are set in your neighborhood.

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Paranormal / Food Chain / Food & Drink The Asparamancer

Posted by Mike Sula on Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 5:07 PM

This was shot last month. Take it with a grain of salt. Everybody knows you don't consult an oracle that uses out of season produce. Video after the jump.

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The Reefer / Politics Memo to Mayor Rahm: You won!

Posted by Ben Joravsky on Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 4:26 PM

Believe it or not, I have an old friend who works for the central office at the Chicago Public Schools.

I won't reveal his/her name 'cause if I do, Mayor Emanuel will have a fit and send him/her a dead fish for even talking to me.

I'm not sure what the mayor has against me. It couldn't have been anything I wrote—or over the fact that I went to Evanston while he went to New Trier. Those old high school rivalries last forever!

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Twitter

Chicago_Reader: RT @MikeSula Acadia: Ryan McCaskey's Maineliner http://t.co/bNZabkNh
12:03 pm on Thursday, February 9 retweet
pmontoro: Today's 12 O'Clock Track: O Terco's "Flauta," pleasantly schizophrenic Brazilian psych-pop from 1970. http://t.co/LgXom830
12:03 pm on Thursday, February 9 retweet
getCRUXed: CRUX versus FLOUR. http://t.co/yOAq2ils
11:55 am on Thursday, February 9 retweet
brunoamato: Otimo texto sobre o filme do Bonello. RT @1bsachs My essay on Bertrand Bonello's HOUSE OF PLEASURES (by way of Berlin): http://t.co/K4NV423P
11:51 am on Thursday, February 9 retweet

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Index of the Reader's annual fiction issues since 2000

Savage Love

What are these two old married dudes thinking?

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Valentine's Day: Why bother? An unlikely ode to the most odious of holidays

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