Category: Reviews

Pass the Syrup: Celine Dion Defends Her Smooth, Sweet Style

Jae-Ha Kim

Candy-coated. Saccharine. Gaggingly syrupy. Celine Dion’s heard it all from critics who hate her music. “I’m used to getting some critics who like me and some who can’t stand me,” says the French-Canadian singer, who was sweet enough to call us from Quebec. “Thank goodness there are more people out there who like syrup.” Since 1990, when Dion released her first English-language album, “Unison,” Dion has won a loyal following of fans who fell in love with her smooth vocal delivery on such songs as “Where Does My Heart Beat Now?” After her duet with Peabo Bryson on the Grammy Award-winning “Beauty and the Beast” a couple of years ago, she became a bona fide star.

James Steals Show From Duran Duran

Jae-Ha Kim

The best thing about going to Duran Duran’s concert Sunday night at McGaw Hall was catching its opening act, James. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It’s a bad, bad idea for headliners to hire opening acts that are more interesting than they are. Don’t get me wrong. I like Duran Duran. And for a couple of years in the ’80s, I truly loved them. Until they stopped growing.

Greek Classic Gets Japanese Twist in `Kabuki Medea’

Jae-Ha Kim

With “Kabuki Medea,” Wisdom Bridge Theatre uses traditional Japanese Kabuki-style theater to tackle Euripides’ Greek classic “Medea.” The result is a splendidly clever tale that is familiar, enacted in a way that is not. Almost 400 years old, Kabuki theater is based on highly stylized and exaggerated moves. In Shozo Sato’s production, which opened Monday night, the actors speak English, but with exaggerated Asian inflections. The rich costumes and demure movements are decidedly Japanese, but the thoughts behind them are Western. The Greek locales in Euripides’ play are substituted by medieval Japanese islands. This adaptation keeps the Western names that Euripides gave his heroes. By the end of the first act, the audience doesn’t find it at all surprising that a Japanese nobleman would be named Jason.

Carl Reiner Gets Risque: Sexy Book Takes Funny Look at Marriage ’90s Style

Jae-Ha Kim

“All Kinds of Love” isn’t the “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” that’s for sure. When Carl Reiner created the classic ’60s TV series, his married couple – Rob and Laura Petrie – weren’t allowed to sleep together in the same bed, much less dally with next-door neighbor Milly.

`Cannibal’ Show Revels In Warped Wackiness

Jae-Ha Kim

A man has sex with a hamburger. A drug addict accidentally snorts a line of cremated body. A woman makes love to office equipment. A man gets nuked in a microwave. Welcome to “Cannibal Cheerleaders on Crack,” where blood flies and vomit flows – theater’s own little freak show. Regardless of taste, Chicagoans are eating “Cannibals” up. The grossly wacky socio-political comedy celebrates its second anniversary Sunday at the Torso Theatre. (It debuted Nov. 14, 1990.) The plot is less important than the farcical mayhem.

“The Last of the Mohicans”

Jae-Ha Kim

The Last of the Mohicans is as much a love story as it is a tale of how the West was won — by some people, that is, the poor Mohicans not being among them. Set in 1757, during the American colonial wars between the English and French settlers of North America, the movie stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Hawkeye, a frontiersman who agrees to escort Clara (Madeleine Stowe) and her sister to the fort where their British-officer father awaits them.

James (Rolling Stone review)

Jae-Ha Kim

The British rock group James understands that simplicity can be an elegantly powerful tool in concert. On its first tour of the United States, the seven-man band played an exquisitely stripped-down show in Chicago, proving that while the hype machine may be turned on full gear, the group is more than capable of living up to any hyperbole thrust upon it.