All in the tragic family

Art house giants come together for strange cinema

04/07/2010

Film
Clashing titans pack cineplexes across the country this week, but juggernauts of another variety can be found starting this Friday at the Music Box Theater, when a long-awaited collaboration between two art-house giants finally opens.
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The strains of family history

Modern and WWII-era Poland the setting for award-winning novel

03/31/2010

Book review
Brigid Pasulka was recently awarded the 2010 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for her debut novel A Long, Long Time Ago & Essentially True, the melancholy weaving of two strains of a Polish family’s history.
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Battling cancer with art

Cultural center shows off Chicagoan Hollis Sigler’s introspective work

03/24/2010

Visual art
Chicago artist Hollis Sigler learned she had breast cancer in 1985 and her 15-year struggle with the disease inspired a powerful and surreal outpouring of paintings on display through April 3 at the Chicago Cultural Center.
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Genetic theater

On the ‘DNA trail’ with Silk Road

03/17/2010

Theater review
The set says science. DNA strands, the deoxyribonucleic acid better known as the building blocks of life, line the back wall of the stage. It is a fitting nod to the concept that undergirds the new Silk Road Theater Project production, “The DNA Trail: A Genealogy of Short Plays about Ancestry, Identity, and Utter Confusion.”
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Which witch runs this city?

Play sets sights on urban development, with a twist

03/10/2010

Theater review
The Mir Theater, in association with Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs Theater, delves into the oddly intersecting worlds of urban planning, the mob and witchcraft - yes, witchcraft - with a new staging of "Beautiful City."
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Questions left unanswered

Scattershot script does in Hoffman-directed play

03/03/2010

Theater
A Goodman Theater world premiere, "The Long Red Road" is largely set on a South Dakota reservation, but it needn't be: its atrocities have no clear kinship with the historical pains of the Native American people.
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Baking up a good school

Book examines what worked - and what didn't - at 200 city schools

02/24/2010

Book review
A good school, it turns out, is a lot like a cake. Put in sugar, eggs and oil, but forget the flour, and all you end up with is a sweet, sloppy mess. Without all the right ingredients, success will continually evade you.
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The woodsman

Intuit spotlights the work of barber who cut more than hair

02/17/2010

Art
Ulysses Davis spent most of his adult life cutting hair. Born in 1914, the Fitzgerald, Ga. native worked as a blacksmith’s assistant before migrating east with family to sleepy, historic Savannah, where he opened a neighborhood barbershop behind his home in the 1950s. The shop served a dual purpose, though. It was also Davis’ personal art gallery.
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The Cabinet is open ... again

Redmoon Theater revives a past wonder for its birthday celebration

02/10/2010

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Robert Wiene’s silent classic from 1919, is one of the most stylish and influential films ever produced. It’s also one of the creepiest. A hallmark of German Expressionism, the film is a nightmare of off-kilter, exaggerated scenery and extreme chiaroscuro, where a gaunt somnambulist commits murder while under the manipulative hands of an insane asylum director.
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A fine cold day

02/03/2010

Brian Skonesey and his dog, Ace, pull a sled full of kids last Sunday during Snow Days Chicago, free three-day winter festival in Grant Park.
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