Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
So Robert De Niro and Marisa Tomei gained weight for their movie roles. Big deal. Comet – no last name, please – easily can one-up them. The 9-year-old had his luxurious blond mane snipped and dyed murky brown, perfected a limp and convinced the casting director that he could play a 1-year-old in the new comedy “Fluke.” Oh, did we mention that Comet is a dog?
If you like actors mingling in the audience and cajoling you to dance with them, then “Song of Singapore” is just the play for you. But if you prefer that actors remain on stage and don’t touch the ticket holders, you’ll want to skip the latest interactive play to hit Chicago. “Song of Singapore” – which opened Monday night at the Pipers Alley Entertainment Complex – isn’t nearly as obnoxious as the preternaturally successful “Tony ‘n’ Tina’s Wedding,” which still is running at Pipers Alley in a theater next door.
At the beginning of “Picture Bride,” a 16-year-old girl living in Tokyo is shown a picture of a handsome Japanese man who has immigrated to Hawaii. Along with the photograph, he has sent a beautiful, poetic letter that doesn’t win her heart so much as it promises her a better life than what she has now. She sends back her picture, and the two agree to marry.
This is the first time I’ve ever prefaced a film review with this tip: Trim your nails before going to see “Ride For Your Life.” The interactive film is boring to watch but fun to participate in.
By Jae-Ha Kim Chicago Sun-Times April 30, 1995 Crobar, Excalibur, Big Nasty . . . These Chicago clubs are as different as can be from one another. Similarly, the clubs that our favorite TV characters […]
The only thing super about “Super 8 1/2” is in its title. A low-budget flick that the filmmakers describe as a “faux documentary of sorts,” the movie is supposed to be to pornography what “Spinal Tap” was to heavy metal music – a witty sendup.
Russell Wong has been recognized. Best known for his role as the cruel, playboy husband in “The Joy Luck Club,” the 6-foot actor seems oblivious to the gawking female guests at the Four Seasons Hotel. He’s more interested in finishing his fruit salad and peppermint tea. Wong, who stars as Jian-Wa Chang in the syndicated series “Vanishing Son,” took a breather to chat with us during his first trip to Chicago.
The fans came early to the Near West Side with some of the most difficult-to-score tickets in town. Most had called in their orders weeks ago, never imagining they’d be watching history take place. After quitting prematurely, a Chicago legend was coming back to form.
The yakuza – the Japanese equivalent of the Mafia – has achieved notoriety of romantic proportions in films such as “Black Rain” and “The Yakuza.” But in his brilliantly clever “Minbo – Or The Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion,” director-writer Juzu Itami presents the group as nothing more than a bunch of thugs who take pride in chopping off bits of each other’s pinkies and think nothing of hiding cockroaches in food to blackmail restaurants for hush money.
Sarah Jessica Parker has gone from being a four-eyed Square Peg to one of Hollywood’s sexiest stars. Thanks to genetics, she can shun the Stairmaster and still balance on that unfair line of being reed-thin but shapely.
Crispin Glover, a character actor, also is quite the character. He once lived in an apartment painted all black, kept an operating table rumored to have been used for gynecological exams in his living room and gave new meaning to the word “hyper” when he greeted David Letterman with a kick-boxing move that got him booted from the show.
If male directors had made “Erotique,” the film would have been called soft-core porn. But because women were employed to direct the movie’s three vignettes, “Erotique” is being billed as “intelligent erotica.” Whatever. The result is the same – a film where sex is more important than content and where women’s – not men’s – bodies serve as the primary objects of titillation.
“Forever Plaid” is a tribute to the guy groups of the ’50s and ’60s who dressed exactly alike, performed choreographed moves and sang beautiful, heartbreaking harmony. It also is a hilarious, quick-paced 90-minute musical comedy that sends up those groups as much as it pays homage to them. Like the songs, “Forever Plaid” is light and frothy. At Tuesday night’s opening at the Royal George Cabaret Theatre, the four starring actor; singers perfectly depicted the euphoria of being in front of an audience while conveying the pathos of being dead.
In a perfect triple bill for a beautiful summer night, the Spin Doctors, Gin Blossoms and Cracker played to a capacity crowd Saturday night at the World Music Theatre, and the band’s diverse musical styles couldn’t have complemented each other better.
Chris Isaak used to joke that he had less screen time in the three films he’s been in so far than in the video for his breakthrough single, “Wicked Game.” Those days are gone. The San Francisco-based singer-actor stars as the father of a young boy believed to be a reincarnated Buddhist teacher in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “Little Buddha” (now playing in Chicago at the Fine Arts). Last year, Isaak took a break from recording for filming in Nepal and Seattle.
When the producers started auditions for the film “Backbeat,” they saw more than 100 actors for the role of the “forgotten Beatle” Stuart Sutcliffe, at least 50 actresses for the part of his German girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr and dozens of other actor-musicians for the other members of the Fab Five. But when it came time to cast the role of 19-year-old John Lennon, they saw only one actor – Ian Hart.
Here’s the story/of a TV sitcom/that just wouldn’t ever really go away/Though folks can see reruns on Channel 50/They still pay big bucks to see the live play. Since Chicago sisters Jill and Faith Soloway staged their first line-for-line recreation of a “Brady Bunch” episode three years ago at the Annoyance Theatre, their production of “The Real Live Brady Bunch” has taken on a life of its own. Running through Monday, the play returned to Chicago Tuesday night to a full house at the Park West.
Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! What would Alice say if she heard you were going around the country talking about safe sex and birth control? “She’d probably say, `Good for you,’ ” said Maureen McCormick, the actress who portrayed Marcia Brady on “The Brady Bunch.” “Marcia may have been a virgin, but obviously I’m not.”
Divided into two sets, spanning more than 26 songs and running three hours long, Poi Dog Pondering’s spectacular concert Friday night at the Vic was the creative realization of ambitious leader-singer Frank Orrall. In the second of four sold-out shows – three evenings at the Vic followed by a gig Sunday at Lounge Ax – Poi Dog Pondering put on an event that transcended the boundaries of a typical rock ‘n’ roll concert.
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.