Arts – Page 23 – the Addison Recorder

Your Guide to Being Outside in Chicago this Summer

June 5, 2014 by Meryl Williams Leave a Comment

It’s June! To celebrate, I offer you an alternative to Alex’s Stay In and Watch Some Stuff suggestion. Get our there and live your lives, readers! We didn’t collectively survive a polar vortex just so we could remain indoors during the precious weeks this city doesn’t feel terrible outside.

Below is a select list of my picks for a Chicago Summer 2014 bucket list. Check out the Reader’s 110 Days of Summer or DNAinfo’s 2014 summer festivals guide for many more suggestions.

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Why You Need to Binge-Watch OITNB by Friday Morning

June 3, 2014 by Meryl Williams Leave a Comment

Netflix original series “Orange is the New Black” comes back with a brand new season Friday, which means if you just maybe don’t go to work tomorrow, there’s still time to watch the 13 magnificent episodes that made up season one. Please note also that this show has an almost all-female cast, which is a rarity I’d like to support and encourage the popularity of.

Give it ’til episode three. I almost guarantee you’ll want to keep watching after that one. Here are some reasons this show is awesome.

Pretty persuasive.

Stay Inside and Watch Some Stuff!

May 27, 2014 by Alex Bean Leave a Comment

America is willing the Von Trapps to victory!

Summer is my least favorite season. Monstrous humidity, bland movies, and no school. Combine all these and the Bean-mind atrophies. But I admit that summer is full of possibilities. Some say those should include outdoor recreation, camping, or taking vacations. I disagree. Why get even sweatier when summer offers great and unexpected things you can find on your computer or TV screen? Somewhere Michelle Obama and the Surgeon General are screaming out loud and don’t know why. Oh well. To the suggestions!
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Comedy Fellowship: The Nerdologues “Lord of the Wrigley”

May 26, 2014 by Travis J. Cook Leave a Comment

The proceedings start simply. Ethereal music plays, familiar music that one might have seen in a blockbuster movie or three over time. Our minds imagine sweeping mountainsides, deep canyons, and ground-covering mists filled with secrets. Two hooded figures take the stage and narrate (with the aid of pictograms) the dark history of the rise and fall of an evil dragon and its wraith servants, trapped within the bowels of dark, chaotic temples, of legendary times when an ancient city was governed by corruption and desolation, and of the hundred year peace since those dark times.

Well, hundred-plus. The Cubs haven’t won a world championship since 1908, after all. That pesky dragon has been kept under wraps beneath U.S. Cellular Field, with the wraiths sealed inside a certain, demonic statue outside of Wrigley Field.

So goes the latest offering by the Chicago-based Nerdologues, The Lord of the Wrigley: Fellowship of the Cubs. Having opened at Public House Theatre on Friday, May 23rd, the long form sketch troupe has crafted a piece that brings together the separate worlds of Chicago baseball and Lord of the Rings-inspired nerdisms. Well, not so separate, theorizes Nerdologues founder/producer/actor Kevin Reader. “Think about it,” says Reader. “you and a bunch of friends get together and pick a band of fighters to fight each other week after week. Whoever has the most points, based on the players stats wins. Sounds a lot like some role playing games if you ask me.”

Director/actor Chris Geiger agrees, echoing many of the similarities between sports fans and nerd fans. He also points out that one of the guiding focuses of the Nerdologues is to “make people laugh and bring them together”, something which Lord of the Wrigley does with abandon.

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Thought from the Dugout: The Mendoza Line

May 23, 2014 by Travis J. Cook Leave a Comment

(Courtesy The Mendoza Line Facebook page)

Normally, I write about movies and baseball here on the Recorder. More often than not, these two fields exist independently of each other. (Side-note: after all these years, I still misspell independent from time to time. Just thought I’d share, none of us are perfect.) On rare occasions, these fields intersect.

(For the record, I’ve still yet to see Million Dollar Arm, which seemed to showcase a little too much racism for comical intent in its previews for me to really want to sink my teeth in. I’m also still behind the curve – so to speak – on seeing Moneyball and 42. Sue me.)

As a member of the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America, it is occasionally my pleasure to survey the work of other members. Usually, that’s in written form. (See my review of John Rosengren’s latest book here) On this occasion, I was privileged to be invited to screen writer/director Nathan Kaufman’s independent feature film The Mendoza Line. By screened, I mean set up with a laptop in a certain chain coffee shop across the street from Wrigley Field. (Nathan, if you’re reading this, you might be happy to note that I tilted my laptop towards that most hallowed of stadiums, so that Wrigley got to see a piece of your movie. Unfortunately, the Cubs are in San Diego, so no thoughts from Anthony Rizzo will be found here. I tried, man. I tried.)

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King of the Monsters: A Godzilla Primer

May 15, 2014 by Travis J. Cook Leave a Comment

Way, way back in kindergarten – somewhere around 1992, if my memory doth serve – I distinctly remember a journal entry I was asked to write. (Go ahead, try and remember what you were writing about in kindergarten. I’ll wait.) The topic was “What games do you like to play at recess?” In these journals, our teacher was looking for a minimum of one (1) word, which could be accompanied by pictures to better illustrate the nature of the physical activities we were getting up to for fifteen minutes a day five times a week. Many of my colleagues wrote simple entries about the joys of playing kickball, tag, or the legendary game of “slide”, which involved a stick figure standing halfway down a right angle triangle that would have given Pythagoras nightmares for millennia. My teacher, poor Mrs. Richards, went around the class, reading them out loud for everyone to share. Naturally, a fair shake of trouble-makers had not participated, which led to much laughter and consternation amongst the class.

Finally, she arrived at my desk. I proudly/simply handed over my journals – I had been unable to decide upon a single game that would accurately define how I spent my time at recess, and so I had provided not one, not two, but three journal entries. (This indecisiveness would become greatly reflected in my extracurriculars and career choices for years to come.) Mrs. Richards took them up, cleared her throat, and prepared to read them out loud.

Then she stopped.

“Travis?”

“Yes, Mrs. Richards?”

“What’s this?” She showed me the second – already out of order! – of my highly detailed journal entries, utterly baffled by what I had created.

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Star Wars Day, Chicago-Style

May 12, 2014 by Meryl Williams Leave a Comment

David Zoltan, from Geek Bar Chicago, brought Star Wars-themed eats from the bar’s upcoming tasting menu.

The Chicago nerd community descended upon the Public House Theatre on May 4th to celebrate a holiday manufactured purely from sheer fandom and a love of wordplay. There, nerds from all over the city gathered for a potluck and a viewing of the original Star Wars trilogy.

Greetings of “May the Fourth be with you” were exchanged as representatives from Geek Bar, The Nerdologues, Chicago Nerd Social Club, and the general public filtered in.

The event was coordinated by Kevin Reader, a founding member of the Nerdologues, as well as a producer at the Public House Theatre.

“I wanted it to be a low-pressure place [where] everyone could hang out, eat some food, and celebrate,” said Reader of the inaugural event.

“There will be some fun trivia throughout the day – some guys through Versus the Universe, a video group here in Chicago, are doing trivia stuff,” Reader said. “Elliott Serrano, the Redeye Geek, is going to be here to give away some prizes. The dudes from Geek Bar are here with food from their tasting menu.”
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The Fault in Our Star Wars

May 4, 2014 by Christopher Walsh Leave a Comment

Writer/Director/Producer J.J Abrams (top center right) at the cast read-through of Star Wars Episode VII at Pinewood Studios with (clockwise from right) Harrison Ford, Daisy Ridley, Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, Producer Bryan Burk, Lucasfilm President and Producer Kathleen Kennedy, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Mark Hamill, Andy Serkis, Oscar Isaac, John Boyega, Adam Driver and Writer Lawrence Kasdan.

Copyright and Photo Credit: David James.

Last Tuesday morning, the Star Wars team announced the cast for Episode VII. Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and Kenny Baker will once again take us to a galaxy far, far away, joined by John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, and Max von Sydow. Nerds and news outlets met the news with excitement (John Boyega!), amazement (Max von Sydow!), confusion (Adam Driver?), and a healthy dose of pushback for the dearth of women and people of color. Two female actors have been cast, including a returning Princess Leia, and two people of color have been cast, one of whom (Oscar Isaac) often plays or passes as white (Llewyn Davis in Inside Llewyn Davis, Prince John in Robin Hood, Orestes in Agora). Even if they add the rumored “major female role, which will likely be filled by an actress of mixed race,” the weight of the cast will still be heavily white and male.

This is a problem; I wish to be clear about that because many men disagree. Trawling the comments of any of the articles critiquing the race and gender disparity, you’ll find many voices in support of the critiques and many voices declaring it a nonissue, the latter often from white men. The chorus to their silencing tactics and eye-rolling is:

“Who cares?”
“What’s it matter?”
“Why is this even a thing?”

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Brew(er) Detective

April 30, 2014 by -J. Leave a Comment

The Milwaukee Brewers had an April for the ages. Just ask Hank the Dog:

A 20-8 record AND an adorable stray-dog-turned-mascot? Everything’s coming up Milwaukee!

Not only do they have something that resembles a playoff-caliber starting rotation, not only have they knocked together the best record in baseball, but they’ve put put together the best opening month in franchise history. As the Recorder’s resident Rollie Fingers (and Brewers fan), I set out to ascertain how my favorite team achieved this improbable early-season success. [Read more…]

Kristen Bell and the Future of Hollywood

April 19, 2014 by Andrew Rostan Leave a Comment

As our readers know from our extensive Oscars coverage, we love movies. We want to see the film industry thrive and grow and remain a vital art form into the next century, especially when such thriving and growth gives us pictures such as 12 Years a Slave and Gravity. But increasingly Hollywood seems to be operating on an uncomfortable formula. To wit, big-budget high-concept action spectacles with aliens, superheroes, and other visual wonders get released from May to August, the end of the year gives us Oscar contenders made with a bit more intelligence, such as those films mentioned above, and the rest of the time, middling movies, bad movies, movies targeted to ultra-specific demographics, and movies the studios just don’t know what to do with get shot out of the cannon in hopes of clicking. What I dislike about this pattern is that it can obscure some of the possibilities there are for innovation in the Hollywood system. The giant movies can have as much depth and intelligence as Oscar bait, the smaller movies don’t have to be works of high art to be really good, and there are a lot of potentially great films to be made that the powers that be in Los Angeles are wary of taking a chance on, but which audiences would really love to see. To illustrate these possibilities, I examined the canon of an actress who is increasingly becoming a household name.

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