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More Than That Please
I saw Send Help, which is more aptly titled than I realized. Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams), who is a useful and reliable if also awkward employee, has been promised a VP promotion by the CEO who has recently deceased. This promise, which was known to other senior employees, is broken by the CEO’s son Bradly…
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No Holiday For Me
Chicago theater critics seem more entertained by Holiday, which has been extended reportedly by popular demand than I was. This Goodman Theatre production is a “contemporary adaptation” of a 1928 “classic play” by Philip Berry that had also been twice adapted into movies, including a second in 1938 with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. This…
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A Money-Hungry MLB
Major League Baseballs reminded me again at the start of spring training this year how much more it cares about money than fans. It notified me last week that MLB at Bat, which is its online radio subscription, was now called MLB+. It also indicated that the annual cost had been doubled. I have always…
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Unto Ourselves?
The movie Islands, which was written by Jan-Ole Gerster, Blaž Kutin, and Lawrie Doran, is an engaging exploration of appearance, reality, and aloneness that never quite coalesces into clear conclusions. Tom (Sam Riley), a former tennis pro and current resort coach, has an apparently ideal life at least to Canary Islands tourists. The sun is…
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Theater Today
I attended the final production of Manual Cinema’s The 4th Witch this past weekend, and was elated at the outset. I had forgotten how thrilling live performance can be. I unfortunately had sufficient time throughout the rest of the performance to contemplate the relative absence of theater in my life. Its presence dramatically diminished once…
“There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don’t expect you to save the world I do think it’s not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.”
–Nikki Giovanni