Unintended
A new book takes a look at the policy makers behind Chicago’s public housing system
10/14/2009
In the quintessential baby boom town of Park Forest, Illinois, there was almost one child for every adult in the early 1960s. The ratio was high - nearly twice that of most places. Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes, the public housing development that once lined S. State Street, had a ratio of 2.86. Almost three children for every one adult. Read More...
Gold-metal cinema
Dizzying schedule presents the globe through film
10/07/2009
Film
The 45th annual Chicago International Film Festival offers nothing less
than a pitch-perfect opportunity to experience the world through fine
cinema. Read More...
Spread thin
'Fake' is whodunit, parlor drama and romance - but none are nailed
09/30/2009
"Fake," the new Steppenwolf production, opens on the parlor of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is a room that, in the hands of set designer Todd Rosenthal, looks like the interior of an alchemist’s chest. The year is 1914, and Doyle (played by Francis Guinan), the bluff, mustachioed Brit responsible for the indomitable Sherlock Holmes, has gathered an unlikely quartet of guests. Read More...
Glimpses of Chicago past
Siskel Center explores groundbreaking early film
09/23/2009
The Gene Siskel Film Center’s early October program “Vision in Motion: Filmmaking at the Institute of Design, 1944-70” examines one of the first art-film programs in the United States. Now part of the Illinois Institute of Technology, the Bauhaus-inspired Institute of Design offered film classes in Chicago as early as 1942. Read More...
Far out
Architecture
09/16/2009
What will Chicago look like in 2109? That's the question begged by a new exhibition now on display at the Chicago Tourism Center, 72 E. Randolph. Read More...
New ways to order in
The tech-centric find GrubHub
09/09/2009
Dining
A deflated economy inevitably finds fewer consumers eating out, but
GrubHub.com co-founder and CEO Matt Maloney has found a sweet spot even
in hard times by marketing home delivery to the tech- and social
media-savvy. Read More...
Where the brunch is
Jam is a hit in Ukrainian Village
09/02/2009
Dining
The horde of people lining the curb outside of Jam on a recent Saturday
made for a scene of subdued chaos. Some of the tumult makes its way
into the storefront, where close quarters and an open kitchen make for
a constant bustle. Read More...
HiFi
The book that became a film that became theatre
08/26/2009
The challenge of transforming a movie about music snobs—based on Nick Hornby’s book about music snobs—into musical theatre is a peculiar one. Read More...
Marching and music
‘Ballou’ is a poignant examination of a great high school band
08/19/2009
Film review
Ballou High School in Washington D.C.’s East Side is similar to a lot
of schools in troubled urban areas in the United States. Located in a
community plagued by crime, poverty and high unemployment, students
enter the school through metal detectors when entering. Crimes
sometimes occur inside the building. Read More...
Outsiders in
Biographies and art coalesce in this fascinating show
08/12/2009
Art Review
Outsider artists are defined as those without formal training or
contact with the mainstream art establishment. Often they’re
marginalized in a larger sense, as in the case of mental patients and
social misfits, whose work goes undiscovered until after their deaths.
As is often the case with outsider art, the story of the creators
behind the work can be as compelling as the works themselves. Read More...